The Conclave

The Ordos Majoris - Hobby, Painting and Modelling => Inquisitor Game Discussion => Topic started by: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 12:15:02 PM

Title: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 12:15:02 PM
Link to latest version (V0.3.1 - Released 2nd August 2018):

Printer Friendly: http://www.mediafire.com/file/4o8wtodtwde2fks/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-1+%28Printer+Friendly%29.pdf
Colour coded: http://www.mediafire.com/file/sc3d624bdoz231u/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-1+%28Colour+Coded%29.pdf

Codes:
- Red: changed from last IRE release (in this case, since V0.3).
- Green: Experimental/WIP
- Orange: Both the above
- Black: None of the above, but IRE differs from official LRB
- Grey: Essentially the same as LRB.


Latest Crib Sheet (V1 for IRE V0.3.1 - Released 2nd August 2018):
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cqb8lqdpp8faedz/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+Crib+Sheet+V-0-3-1.pdf




Original post:

If you're reading this, I know a lot of you aren't so much "rules people" - and I am somewhat aware that I have a bit of a habit of being rather forceful in my opinions of playing the game.

However, this project really does need input and feedback from the full spectrum of the Inquisitor community and is almost moot if it isn't a collective effort. So, if you're willing, I would very much appreciate it if you'd chip in with your comments and criticism. I (and others) may have counter-comments and critique, but discussion is what we need!

And with that said, what is this project?

I'm guessing there's one thing most of you probably agree with me on: Inquisitor, as a game, has problems. 12 years, hundreds of players, thousands of characters and some very large number of games have turned up a great many flaws.

Although the rumours of a new Inquisition themed game box are intriguing, the chance that the rules within will prove to be the second edition that Inquisitor needs are just about diddly squat. Any such project is going to have to come from the community... and while PrecinctOmega previously worked on an Inquisitor 2 ruleset, that project seems to be on hiatus (or worse) and didn't necessarily represent a consensus.

So, I think it's well worth trying to start such a project again.

This first post is mostly more of that bad habit of mine - a post that's mostly just a brainstorm; some of it is from the foetid depths of my mind, although other parts may well have been stolen from other places like Dark Heresy or Infinity first.
You'll likely notice that I'm not really looking to cut detail from the game - I feel it's part of what makes Inquisitor "Inquisitor", so I'd prefer to try streamlining things before we try simplifying them, although it is always an ultimate option.

So, without further ado, Marco-brand waffle:




General dice rolling:
This is going somewhat against previous convention, but it's a pretty damn clever idea from Infinity that makes it very fast and easy to include opposed rolling within the rules.

How much a roll passes by is the number on the dice (rather than how much below the target number has been rolled); even for the best mental mathematicians, it's far faster to see that a roll of 15 has passed by 15 than to have to subtract from the target number of 57 to get a pass of 42.

The distribution is essentially the same, just flipped - the absence of a 0 result (as 00 on a d100 is typically 100) to give a "just passed" result does mean that passes are increased by a single point, but the convenience strongly outweighs this, I feel.

~~~~~

Actions (and Reactions):
I'd like to see a greater degree of reactive play, giving characters more options to act out of sequence - this isn't entirely out of place, as it already occurs in the game with Overwatch and the IGT version of Lightning Reflexes.

It always seems funny that characters can run across open ground in front of armed mercenaries who, because they haven't overwatched, just ignore it.

My core idea here would be to allow characters to reserve actions to use as reactions.

The exact mechanics aren't completely set yet, but I'm imagining three ways in which characters might reserve reactions:
- Sacrificing action dice - each die sacrificed saves up a reaction.
- Declaring a "Wary" action - if the action succeeds, it saves up a reaction. (This might immediately seem less useful than the above, only having a chance of working, but it would be useful if declared later in the turn - not risking the chance of succeeding on important actions, or to use up that last action that you can't think what to do with).
- A "Ready" state where characters can take certain reactions without needing to reserve reactions, but any other action/reaction breaks the state. For example, Overwatch might generate a Ready state that gives free shooting reactions vs. characters in a given area.

This may also probably come with increasing speed values by a point (at least, on average).
Partly to stop saving reactions making the game sluggish, but also to tie into my house rule of 3+ actions until the action's about to kick off.
In this way, the start of the game could have the characters moving about faster (using all their action dice as actions), not watching their backs just yet, but later on through the game, they might be more wary and thus slower (saving reactions based on the perceived threat).

Hence, a character running around the side of a building he believes is clear might be faster and less wary, but one running past a building he knows is occupied might be slower about it.

My concern here is that this might be more time consuming, with variable action counts, reactions interrupting turns, etc.
It could work (and could be pretty cool) but I think it definitely needs some tests to suss out the pros and cons.

~~~~~

Risky Actions:
The maths of risky actions is a bit of a problem. As the character's speed increases, the chances of getting more ones than sixes also increases. What's a 16.7% chance on one die, is 25% on two, up to ~36% by Speed 6.

Given high speed characters are also more likely to have enough successful actions to reach the risky one (and thus fail it), this creates a bit of an odd effect that the more agile and alert characters are the clumsy ones.
It's also not possible to control the riskiness of an action. All risky actions are equally risky.

I know PrecinctOmega was also looking to move away from Risky Actions with his INQ2.0, making it a separate D10 roll, with a target number depending on riskiness.
My inclination here is to do much the same - personally, I'd adopt the system used in the Revised Armoury, where the units digit of a die roll is used to determine the risk of an action.

~~~~~

Movement:
There's not strictly anything wrong with most of movement.

However, I would prefer to move to a system closer to Dark Heresy for determining things like climbing and jumping, replacing Risky actions with Hazardous Strength/Agility rolls.

It's also an area where, if better thought out encumbrance rules were being instated, I'd like them to have some of their effect. For example, partially over-encumbered characters might take penalties to their movement rates, rather than their speed values.

~~~~~

Damage and Injury:
I think this is one of the more problematic areas in the rules.

I feel it's important to have a progressively debilitating sequence of injuries, as a "hit point" system doesn't work well for the player-vs-player play of Inquisitor (victory going to whomever doesn't run out of hit points first) or even its heroic style. Where's the thrill in a character heroically fighting through their injuries if those injuries don't actually make it harder for them?

Dark Heresy's system is an improvement, but it is still ultimately hit points until you reach critical damage. (When playing Dark Heresy, characters/enemies taking a boltgun to the face and not reacting at all because they've still got two wounds left afterwards... it feels wrong).

My best theory is to work from the current solution. It's not bad (I think my re-format helps) - it just needs more clarity and refinement.

On this front, I would genuinely like to keep mechanics like Rending, Trivial and Tearing such as I use in the Revised Armoury. I know they are a little more complicated than just adding or subtracting from the damage roll, but they also
allow for a wider range of variation (and, in many cases, actually speed things up).

None are overwhelmingly complicated effects - but if people are opposed, I'm entirely prepared to just leave them for a  2nd edition version of the Revised Armoury.

~~~~~

Close combat:
The problems I see with close combat:

- It's usually all the same thing. For many characters, the only actions worth declaring are attack (or advance and attack), defend (although that comes in parry or dodge flavours) or run away. Actions like circle* are usually unheard of, so the only movement is normally the dodge or (occasionally) an acrobatic character.
I'd like to encourage more movement. Any sustained fight from a film or TV show will usually involve trekking over a wide area.
* One of my characters does use it as part of a "signature move" - Move Up-close; Circle opponent & prime grenade; unarmed Attack to attach grenade. It fits a character who has experience fighting Traitor Marines in close quarters (and who has probably, background wise, killed the most Astartes of any of my characters).

- Combat is a little too weighted towards having to wear down your opponent's parry/dodge chance first. While a reducing chance of defence is realistic and helps weight things against outnumbered characters, I think it would be better if initial parry chances were lower and the successive penalties were milder.

This could also allow the phasing out of the halving WS, which usually results in several moments of muttering about mental arithmetic in order to work out what parry chance #3 is going to be.

What I have in mind is to make close combat opposed rolling. If a hit roll passes by 19, the parry will have to beat that.* This will naturally make parrying/dodging harder, so we could simplify and reduce the subsequent parry modifier to perhaps a straight -10 or -20, which would be much easier to add up during game play.
*This may require Critical rolls to be rethought a bit (else they'd be the most easily parried), but I'm thinking possibly something similar to the Hazard rules again - something like a units die of 1 is a critical hit.

Manoeuvring could also be included as a modifier to a combat roll - making the attack (or perhaps even defence) more difficult, but also making its opposing roll more of a challenge.
So, if a character wished to try and circle to the right to attack their opponent, that might be a -20 to hit, but also a -20 to the parry/dodge. With the right modifiers, it could make fights much more mobile and interesting.
Similarly, add in the possibility of trying to manoeuvre opponents.

Inspired somewhat by Taleworld's Mount & Blade videogames, I'm also wondering about different attack types; some bladed weapons could be offered both stabbing and slashing options -  something like a slashing attack might gain something like Rending(2) over a stabbing attack, but also count double armour. Maybe also different hit/parry penalties.
That, again, opens up more possibilities.

I don't know exactly. But I think close combat needs more options - other things like the option for offensive/defensive stances as in what I think were DapperAnarchist's house rules could potentially be built in.
As is, "Attack attack attack" is almost a platitude when it comes to the turn of a character in close combat.

~~~~~

Shooting:
The range table... um. Well - it's a mess. But I don't want to replace it with something that's vague - Inquisitor is too detailed to make range something too coarse (many games have very broad range modifiers); it needs to be reasonably granular. Similarly, I think I prefer look-up tables to mental maths.
Again, this is an area that I think would be better improved, but don't know how to improve.

Automatic fire also needs work.
Semi-auto less so, but things like Semi(6) being largely guaranteed to completely miss at point blank range are  daft, so I think it may need the specifics changed. My favourite options are either the semi-auto penalty scaling with range; or the penalty being reduced and increasing the range penalties for auto fire.

Full-auto is a lot of the time just hitting on the automatic 5% or near it (again, even at point blank range). I'd prefer to see it fit with the semi-auto rules better - being a "the same, but more" matter (with rules for engaging multiple targets - but strictly, I wouldn't say no to that with semi-auto).
As is, there have been three official versions of these rules, and none of them have been very good.

Overall, I should say I'm not hugely a fan of the "one roll with degrees of success" method used for auto fire in Dark Heresy as the method here. It looks tempting as a way of reducing the number of rolls, but the way it's done dramatically increases the likelihood of several hits; I always see that rolling location and damage for a hit takes longer than rolling more hit rolls. (Also, we don't want a huge chance of taking characters out with multiple hits in one!)

However... I do support "one roll with degrees of success" as an option with flame weapons. I've already made a  proposition for this in the Revised Armoury that takes it back to one hit roll per target, modified by range, movement and number of targets. Until something else comes along, I think that's my preference.

~~~~~

Psychic Powers:
While I do think Koval's recent attempts are very much an improvement, I think it's worth throwing in some other alternatives and picking through them (particularly if we do have the option for a complete redo).

I proposed a crude set of ideas some time ago... something closer to a mix of Dark Heresy and how magic worked in 6th/7th edition Fantasy (editions before or after that I don't know what it's like), about rolling power dice to beat a certain threshold. I recognise my early version was too complicated, but I think it can be neatly trimmed back.

So, power dice - then willpower may then enter this to control the power's effect - that is to say, after one has rolled to summon a fireball, it would be Willpower to make it go in the right direction; or after having enough power to forge a link to another mind, it would be an opposed Willpower roll to plant one's suggestion).

This might reintroduce Risky Action like rolling - counting the 1s and 6s on the power dice in order to determine Perils of the Warp. As I said, the risks ramp up (although diminishingly so) with more dice, so it's got a nice scaling effect to it.

~~~~~

Well, that's my thoughts on what would be best fixed, and how it might be possible to fix them.

Feel free to agree or disagree, make your own suggestions for problems or solutions, or whatever really.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Quickdraw McGraw on August 23, 2013, 06:01:28 PM
Reactions from action points is definitely a great idea. It seems naturally appropriate but Reactions are actions done instinctively not premeditated at start.

I propose Reactions should be taken anytime a character sees fit at the cost of existing action points.

Example: Said character takes a shotgun blast to the face... It's unlikely he was expecting to be shot in the face and held back action points to avoid this. More likely used one point his following turn's Action point pool to remedy this with a Reaction.

What about following turns? If a character's turn is already over they still can React but at a cost to their following turn's Action point pool. Thus shortening their action the following turn but combat seems to flow better from one turn to the next.

I'm currently at work, I'm sorry if this comes across a little rushed.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 07:36:35 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 23, 2013, 06:01:28 PMReactions from action points is definitely a great idea. It seems naturally appropriate but Reactions are actions done instinctively not premeditated at start.
"Reactions" is perhaps not a perfect word, but it's as good as I've got.

With regards to your idea, I'm not sure reactions to be something that characters can allocate at any time is as interesting - if it were that way, characters can just charge around willy-nilly and not be penalised for it.
Reactions seem more "right" to me if they're a bit of a gamble - keep one eye out while working on the cogitator in case in case the guards are just about to come around the corner... or hope they're not and put your full concentration into the decryption to try and get it done before they turn up?

If players can allocate actions from next turn (which has a problem in that you can never be sure what a character's speed might be by then) there's no choice to make. Either a brash or a wary character will take whatever reactions whenever they need to.
Letting characters have control of their wariness, paranoia and/or situational awareness may be better suited than than just letting them fix their (or the players') mistakes after the fact.

It could be good if some characters get to allocate extra reactions, but I think that's ground for something like the Lightning Reflexes skill (which might automatically allow a character a free reaction, even if they haven't assigned any - although maybe not be cumulative with any they've otherwise reserved, potentially of a limited number of uses per game or some other such caveat to stop it being an overly powerful skill).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Dosdamt on August 23, 2013, 07:44:02 PM
Does the "effectively auto passing" not negate the meaningful nature of stats? I'm not sure I'm reading that right, but it seems to infer you roll and autopass? I must be reading something wrong here?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 07:53:46 PM
You're going to have to give more context, I'm afraid! I'm not sure what part you're talking about.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Dosdamt on August 23, 2013, 08:05:32 PM
General dice rolling:
This is going somewhat against previous convention, but it's a pretty damn clever idea from Infinity that makes it very fast and easy to include opposed rolling within the rules.

How much a roll passes by is the number on the dice (rather than how much below the target number has been rolled); even for the best mental mathematicians, it's far faster to see that a roll of 15 has passed by 15 than to have to subtract from the target number of 57 to get a pass of 42.

The distribution is essentially the same, just flipped - the absence of a 0 result (as 00 on a d100 is typically 100) to give a "just passed" result does mean that passes are increased by a single point, but the convenience strongly outweighs this, I feel.

The above

Issue 1 - So we auto pass everything? Is that the inference?
Issue 2 - Opposed dice rolling on top of dice rolling? Too many rolls and you might as well simply play a maths simulator

Remember, the game is meant to be played with GM - you actually just need the rules to form a framework, anything super crunch in my opinion should be optional.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: greenstuff_gav on August 23, 2013, 08:51:12 PM
while not rulesy or smart enough to offer well-balanced feedback, regarding Actions:

Confrontation 3 offered a Combat system where each miniature generated X number of Combat Dice (1D6 for being alive, 1D6 for each opponent, 1D6 for the Born Killer ability etc)
at the start of Combat the lowest Initiative would allocate these die; Attack or Defense.
Then the highest I character would take one of their attack dice and roll to hit. the defender choosing to use one of their defense dice.

with Inq2.0 could it be something similar? at hte start of turn each player, starting with lowest I allocated their dice into Active or Reactive actions.
When it comes to that characters activation, they allocate actions as per normal, but only upto the # of Active Actions (skills to allow reassignment) and any unused Reactive dice unused at the end of turn are lost / carried over according to skills.
If a player is under attack and wants to reallocate out of sequence, a Ld test is required with more Levels of Success as they have Active dice...

... like i say, just a quick thought :)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Quickdraw McGraw on August 23, 2013, 09:51:07 PM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 07:36:35 PM

"Reactions" is perhaps not a perfect word, but it's as good as I've got.

Reactions seem more "right" to me if they're a bit of a gamble - keep one eye out while working on the cogitator in case in case the guards are just about to come around the corner... or hope they're not and put your full concentration into the decryption to try and get it done before they turn up?

If players can allocate actions from next turn (which has a problem in that you can never be sure what a character's speed might be by then) there's no choice to make. Either a brash or a wary character will take whatever reactions whenever they need to.
Letting characters have control of their wariness, paranoia and/or situational awareness may be better suited than than just letting them fix their (or the players') mistakes after the fact.

It could be good if some characters get to allocate extra reactions, but I think that's ground for something like the Lightning Reflexes skill (which might automatically allow a character a free reaction, even if they haven't assigned any - although maybe not be cumulative with any they've otherwise reserved, potentially of a limited number of uses per game or some other such caveat to stop it being an overly powerful skill).


My Bad I misunderstood.  If you want to reward characters for playing "Cautiously" then said Action(s) should take twice as long.  If a crazy cultist comes charging around a corner with knife in hand while your character is cautiously overriding a control panel door then you could do an action (reactive in nature) like shot him.  As long as you are feasibly able to, of course.  If the said cultist doesn't charge around the corner this turn then there is that risk that you lose an action or two.


Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 07:36:35 PM
With regards to your idea, I'm not sure reactions to be something that characters can allocate at any time is as interesting - if it were that way, characters can just charge around willy-nilly and not be penalised for it.

I can see characters abusing this like any other rule but you'd have to use common sense here and apply some regulations.   

But to be frankly honest Dave, the inquisitor rules really need a complete rewrite.  It would save you a lot of headaches trying to adjust already problematic rules.  There is an old saying I think applies..."Never put new wine in an old flask".

Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 11:44:52 PM
Quote from: Dosdamt on August 23, 2013, 08:05:32 PMIssue 1 - So we auto pass everything? Is that the inference?
As suggested, you want to roll as high as possible, but also not over your target number. As a crude analogy, it's like "The Price is right".

QuoteIssue 2 - Opposed dice rolling on top of dice rolling? Too many rolls and you might as well simply play a maths simulator
It's not really more rolls, or more complicated rolls either.

Imagine you make a close combat attack (55% to hit) which your opponent wishes to parry (45% to parry).
You roll 12 to hit - a pass, albeit a moderate one. Their parry now has to both pass and beat your margin of success
Their roll was 27 to parry. They passed and beat your roll - they thus deflect your blade.

This is no more dice rolls than before, but has made a good hit harder to parry with no additional mental maths.
The default percentages for parrying would need a tweak to redress that new "penalty", but a new edition can do that.

Quote from: greenstuff_gav on August 23, 2013, 08:51:12 PMwith Inq2.0 could it be something similar? at hte start of turn each player, starting with lowest I allocated their dice into Active or Reactive actions.
I do like the idea of forcing the slowest characters to make their decisions first - it makes sense; The fastest characters should get the advantage.
I am a little concerned that such a "turn start" phase might be sluggish, as it effectively asks players to make decisions for several characters at once (which could be bad for much the same reason as having several of a player's characters consecutively in the turn order).

My gut instinct was to have it declared (and discard any reactions left over) at the start of the character's turn. It's got precedent already - the characters that get the advantage of going first sacrifice the advantage of knowing what their opponents are doing .

Still, a thought to throw into the mix!

Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 23, 2013, 09:51:07 PMMy Bad I misunderstood.  If you want to reward characters for playing "Cautiously" then said Action(s) should take twice as long.
I think setting aside action dice as (potential*) reactions effectively has the same effect, but with a little more granularity than doubling the number of actions needed for playing cautiously - it slows the character down to some degree, but a more variable degree.

*I should stress, reserved reaction points would not by any means automatically be successful reactions.

QuoteI can see characters abusing this like any other rule but you'd have to use common sense here and apply some regulations.
With no offence intended... I can't quite get my head around quite what it is that appeals to you here. Myself, I like the possibility of characters being caught flat-footed, rather than always having a safety net of being able to borrow reactions from next turn - even the greatest action heroes can be caught off guard.

If you always want characters to be prepared for going around the corner and suddenly hearing "ARBITRATOR LARN CORMIX - DEFENDER OF THE IMPERIUM!"*, then I think it'd be probably just be neater to just hand everyone one default reaction a turn like in Dark Heresy and leave it at that (except perhaps for special abilities).
*For those that do not know: According to Koval's anecdotes from his old DH group, Arbitrator Larn Cormix's very favourite thing to do is introduce himself to heretics (or those he deems to be heretics) at the top of his voice... aaaaand then shoot them point blank in the face with a shotgun. So having Arbitrator Larn Cormix loudly introduce himself to you is generally a good time to duck.

QuoteBut to be frankly honest Dave, the inquisitor rules really need a complete rewrite.  It would save you a lot of headaches trying to adjust already problematic rules.  There is an old saying I think applies..."Never put new wine in an old flask".
I fully expect large parts will be heavily redone or ripped out wholesale. However, I really don't know what those will be - it may be other people have completely different ideas about what needs doing; having it "my way" rather than a consensus would just ensure no-one else was interested.

At the moment, I'm assuming most of the people here at present more or less like Inquisitor as is. To throw everything out might have the potential to make a fantastic game in a similar vein to Inquisitor, but I don't know that a total ground-up rebuild would necessarily be "Inquisitor 2". (And might be pretty ugly to port old characters into).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 03:15:34 AM
No offense taken Dave.  I hope you don't take offense at what I have to say.  I'm just shooting ideas here, some less productive than others I'm sure.

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 11:44:52 PM

Quote from: greenstuff_gav on August 23, 2013, 08:51:12 PMwith Inq2.0 could it be something similar? at hte start of turn each player, starting with lowest I allocated their dice into Active or Reactive actions.
I do like the idea of forcing the slowest characters to make their decisions first - it makes sense; The fastest characters should get the advantage.
I am a little concerned that such a "turn start" phase might be sluggish, as it effectively asks players to make decisions for several characters at once (which could be bad for much the same reason as having several of a player's characters consecutively in the turn order).

My gut instinct was to have it declared (and discard any reactions left over) at the start of the character's turn. It's got precedent already - the characters that get the advantage of going first sacrifice the advantage of knowing what their opponents are doing .

Still, a thought to throw into the mix!


My gaming group and I ran into this a few years back playing Cortex's Serenity (Firefly) RPG.  The slowest went first and the fastest went last.  Sadly Cortex dropped the RPG (right after the series was cut and the Movie hype had ended) the same way GamesWorkshop did with Inquisitor.  Large combats became confusing and short ones took longer than they should have. Simply put the combat system was broke.  Many folks still playing the game posted house rules on the forum for the combat and My group and I adopted one of these.  Combat resumed it's normal order again.  Afterwards we continued to play for several more years and now look back fondly to the game.   :)

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 11:44:52 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 23, 2013, 09:51:07 PMMy Bad I misunderstood.  If you want to reward characters for playing "Cautiously" then said Action(s) should take twice as long.
I think setting aside action dice as (potential*) reactions effectively has the same effect, but with a little more granularity than doubling the number of actions needed for playing cautiously - it slows the character down to some degree, but a more variable degree.

*I should stress, reserved reaction points would not by any means automatically be successful reactions.

Well, if you think it's best... I'm really not a huge fan of the Action point rolling "thing" to see if your declared actions work before you even try.  Then you have to take Penalties to your dice for those declared actions that succeed.  I call that double-dipping! 

Personally, I could agree on a set number of actions a turn.  It's reasonable to say a turn would last 5-6 seconds, no?  Then it's reasonable to say you could perform 3-4 actions in that turn.  These actions would be successful action points, by the way.  The only Penalty or Bonus would be for the actions taken.  Characters with a high number of action points over 3 would have extra reaction points.  This may seem extreme and I would agree that it needs Ironed out but I never liked the action point system especially when your "Arnold Schwarzenegger" type Inquisitor fails his first 2 or 3 action rolls leaving him standing in the middle of the street (at high noon) with no gun in hand.  Not very Hero movie like. 

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 11:44:52 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 23, 2013, 09:51:07 PMI can see characters abusing this like any other rule but you'd have to use common sense here and apply some regulations.
With no offense intended... I can't quite get my head around quite what it is that appeals to you here. Myself, I like the possibility of characters being caught flat-footed, rather than always having a safety net of being able to borrow reactions from next turn - even the greatest action heroes can be caught off guard.

It's not a safety net really. The character is still caught off guard but because he's a Hero (all inquisitors should be considered hero types and the odds should be set against them to add suspense) he can snatch victory from curtain defeat. 

It was after all an idea and i got the impression from your first post you would like to see more "movie magic" from the game than just "walk, slash, shot" style of play.  I wasn't even suggesting players borrow all the actions from their next turn as reactions.  I would like to see in Inquisitor, characters using reactions to duck behind cover when grenades or Auto-Fire is thrown their way much like characters can parry in CC.  If characters reserve a point from their pool to do this once a turn...fine.  But in an average game of Inquisitor with 4-5 human players with each their own Warband it will result in longer games as less actions are being made to complete the Warband's goals.  But if an occasional point is stolen from a players existing or following turn to squeeze the trigger on a readied gun or duck from auto-fire it shouldn't hurt anything...much.  Also characters could survive longer in a game instead of dying like a punk in the first turn.

With this in mind I would love to see some better Auto-fire rules.  They should be devastating up close, unless you pass an Initiative roll to duck out of the way. 


Here is another idea if the all that I have just wrote is utter crap!

Just go with the "Ready" state but at an increased percentage of failure to your roll.  Simple actions at the "Ready" are at a -2% increase per action during your turn while complex actions are at a -5% increase per action during your turn.

By the way these are just some ideas.  I've spend too much time already today thinking about ways to help but if my ideas aren't helping let me know.  I'll pull my hand from it.  I know my suggestions my seem like I'm poking a stick into a hornets nest but I really want to help and I believe we all want to see a more story involved, action-packed Inquisitor game with less dice rolling.   ;D




Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: greenstuff_gav on August 24, 2013, 07:45:47 AM
no offense but im offended by the overstatement of lack of offense! ;)
i think we are all throwing ideas here and no-one intends offense :)

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2013, 11:44:52 PM
Imagine you make a close combat attack (55% to hit) which your opponent wishes to parry (45% to parry).
You roll 12 to hit - a pass, albeit a moderate one. Their parry now has to both pass and beat your margin of success
Their roll was 27 to parry. They passed and beat your roll - they thus deflect your blade.

sorry, could you break this down further for me?  :-[

P1: <55 to hit (roll 12 - pass by 43)
P2: <45 to parry* (roll 27 - pass by 18)

so they passed by less yet their roll was still higher?
* no modifications for WS?

now i've written that, i see which infinity rule you are referencing; and as a personal note, it's the one rule that put me off infinity and lead to £200 worth of miniatures sitting in a box for 2 years (before i sold 2/3 of 'em) as it felt counter-intuitive and an extra "step" of calculation (its a simple comparison, but its another one)

regarding the action-pool phase, was thinking it's a small step (confrontation had Attack die placed at the head of the miniatures card, defense at the bottom or different colour dice) at turn start, but would still allow faster characters to see what others were doing (placing last) and act faster (going first) and allow for more non-combat skills (Reflex: character may reallocate their dice at their activation without a test, Witted: Character may allocate their Action Dice at I 75 (if I is lower) yet activate at normal I ) players with nothing to do in the Maintenance Phase may even start allocating dice / planning their actions during other activations...
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on August 24, 2013, 11:08:46 AM
I have to say that I like the current core mechanic for this game; i.e. roll a d100 and score under the relevant stat after any modifiers. So I probably wouldn't be happy to see that changed.

The current action roll system I don't like and never have. I'd much rather have a set number of actions for each character each turn, say three for an average character and four for exceptional ones, with only eldar or other alien species getting as high as five actions.

Risky actions I'd also like to see represented in a different way even if the current action rolls are kept. Not sure how to implement this though, possibly add a d6 roll at the same time as the action with a 1 as a fail?

Reactive actions is an interesting idea, maybe give a character the chance to act out of turn if they pass initiative test, although what actions they can take should be limited e.g. take a snap shot or dodge (i.e. if someone chucks a grenade at them).

Parry rules do need to be changed I feel as at the moment you need several actions usually to make sure you hit the target. The benefits for circling etc. should also be improved to make these more attractive instead of just swinging away with your sword.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 24, 2013, 01:28:25 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 03:15:34 AMWell, if you think it's best... I'm really not a huge fan of the Action point rolling "thing" to see if your declared actions work before you even try.  Then you have to take Penalties to your dice for those declared actions that succeed.  I call that double-dipping!
It's a tough one. I know more than a few people think it's weird, but I don't know what might be better.

Personally, I quite like it - it's not that different to how Fudge/FATE does dice rolls.

Fudge works by having different skill levels - they have names normally (such as "Great", so you can say things like "I'm great at stealth" rather than "I have Stealth 6"), but we'll use numbers to make it easier to understand.
The GM might set a task as difficulty 5, and you have skill level 3. You then roll four D6 - these have two "plus" sides, two "minus" sides and two blank sides. Each plus is added to your skill level, each minus subtracts from it. If you get enough plus signs (subtracting any minus signs) to add at least +2 to your skill, you pass that roll. If not, you fail.

(In less pretty, but perhaps clearer, speak, your roll in Fudge is effectively equal to *skill level* + 4D3-8)

Issuing every character a set number of actions means that... well, that rush to the last drop pod/get under the closing door/outrun the giant boulder is just down to getting out a tape measure: well - that's 15 yards, I have three actions, I run at 6 yards an action... so I make it.
There's no gamble in saying "well, I aim twice and then shoot", because you know you'll reach that shot. You'll never dilly-dally for too long and miss your window of opportunity.

We've often shown that uncertainty works well for Inquisitor, so I'm not sure I really want to hand characters a fixed number of actions, but it's a bit of a Morton's fork between what people want.

QuoteIt was after all an idea and i got the impression from your first post you would like to see more "movie magic" from the game than just "walk, slash, shot" style of play.
Very much so! Still, this is a game where both the heroes and the villains are protagonists, so neither side can benefit from the force of plot armour and the rules do have to leave either the chance of suffering un-heroic or ignominious misfortunes!

QuoteIf characters reserve a point from their pool to do this once a turn...fine.  But in an average game of Inquisitor with 4-5 human players with each their own Warband it will result in longer games as less actions are being made to complete the Warband's goals.
... thus my suggestion that Speed values were increased by a point.

This allows characters to act faster at the start of the game (when they've not yet got a want/need to reserve reactions) and hence get everyone into the meat of the game faster, but shouldn't slow them down too much when things kick off and they want to reserve reactions to be properly on their guard.

The other alternative, tying into your thoughts about actions being a bit too random might be to not increase speed values and instead permanently change action rolls to 3+. 3 action dice at 3+ is slightly less likely to only roll one action than than 4 action dice at 4+, even if they both average about* the same number per turn.
*At first glance, two thirds of 3 and half of 4 are the same number, but remember that no successful rolls (which has a different percentage chance in each case) still grants one action, so the mean is not exactly 2 actions in either case.

That would be less random, but still not completely predictable - which might be as happy a median as I can contrive between the mixed desires here.
As another plus side, changing the target number rather increasing than the number of dice will avoid them getting a fluke pass on five sprint actions and doing a Usain Bolt impersonation.

As an aside on sprinting, I have just wondered if an action/reaction system may make it possible to ditch a sprint rate entirely - if a character wants to put their head down and leg it, they have to spend all their Speed as actions rather than reactions (after all, the present rulebook does tell us that sprinting characters can't really pay much attention to their environment - and I can't imagine reactions like snap-shots or dodging making good sense at a full sprint!)

QuoteBy the way these are just some ideas.  I've spend too much time already today thinking about ways to help but if my ideas aren't helping let me know.  I'll pull my hand from it. I know my suggestions my seem like I'm poking a stick into a hornets nest but I really want to help and I believe we all want to see a more story involved, action-packed Inquisitor game with less dice rolling.
All suggestions are welcome... as I say, it's not much point simply just going with what I imagine are the right fixes for the game if other people have different ideas. You've definitely got me thinking.

I'm not necessarily sure we necessarily want less dice rolling so much as quicker dice rolling though. Dice rolling is good - we want an element of chance, because how can you triumph against the odds if there are no odds to triumph against?
Speeding things up will probably mean fewer dice rolls (it was certainly what I was going for when trying to rewrite grenades for the Revised Armoury), but it's not strictly a correlation.

Quote from: greenstuff_gav on August 24, 2013, 07:45:47 AMP1: <55 to hit (roll 12 - pass by 43)
P2: <45 to parry* (roll 27 - pass by 18)
No... you don't subtract the rolled number from the target number, your margin of success would be the rolled number (as long as you haven't rolled over the target number). So rather than passing by 55-12=43 and 45-27=18, they pass by 12 and 27 respectively.

Ignoring the normal convention of rolling as low as possible below the target number is unusual, but it's very simple and fast.

The distribution is barely changed - if I need a 73, a "roll under & low" system lets me pass by between 0 (73, minus a roll of 73) and 72 (73, minus a roll of 01), but "roll under & high" system lets me pass by 1 to 73 points (rolls of 01 and 73 respectively). It's an extra point of success, but that can be balanced out (it's irrelevant in opposed rolls, as both being a point higher equals out).

It's also quite nice in that it redresses the balance of potentially unfair dice - there's no single ideal roll (unlike the perfect 01 in standard convention), so there's little guilt to be had if you're not sure about the fairness of your dice (as I know my quartz ones cannot be, given they're not "square").

Quoteregarding the action-pool phase...
I like it as an idea - I certainly think it's worth trying both ways to see which works best.

Quote from: Cortez on August 24, 2013, 11:08:46 AM
I have to say that I like the current core mechanic for this game; i.e. roll a d100 and score under the relevant stat after any modifiers. So I probably wouldn't be happy to see that changed.
That part specifically isn't really being changed. As proposed, you'd still be trying to score equal or under the relevant stat - the difference would be wanting to roll as high as possible under the stat, rather than as low as possible under the stat.

It is an unusual convention, I fully admit - but if people can bring themselves to tolerate it, it will make calculating the margin of success far faster and open up lots of options.

QuoteReactive actions is an interesting idea, maybe give a character the chance to act out of turn if they pass initiative test, although what actions they can take should be limited e.g. take a snap shot or dodge (i.e. if someone chucks a grenade at them).
That's largely what's in mind - reactions will be of a fairly limited nature, and will require an Initiative test (probably modified in some way*) in order to be successful.

*Although some special skills might modify this, dependent on the action.

~~~~~

Anyway, lots of good ideas so far... I'll try and see how they boil down.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 05:04:58 PM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 24, 2013, 01:28:25 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 03:15:34 AMWell, if you think it's best... I'm really not a huge fan of the Action point rolling "thing" to see if your declared actions work before you even try.  Then you have to take Penalties to your dice for those declared actions that succeed.  I call that double-dipping!
It's a tough one. I know more than a few people think it's weird, but I don't know what might be better.

Personally, I quite like it - it's not that different to how Fudge/FATE does dice rolls.

Fudge works by having different skill levels - they have names normally (such as "Great", so you can say things like "I'm great at stealth" rather than "I have Stealth 6"), but we'll use numbers to make it easier to understand.
The GM might set a task as difficulty 5, and you have skill level 3. You then roll four D6 - these have two "plus" sides, two "minus" sides and two blank sides. Each plus is added to your skill level, each minus subtracts from it. If you get enough plus signs (subtracting any minus signs) to add at least +2 to your skill, you pass that roll. If not, you fail.

(In less pretty, but perhaps clearer, speak, your roll in Fudge is effectively equal to *skill level* + 4D3-8)

Issuing every character a set number of actions means that... well, that rush to the last drop pod/get under the closing door/outrun the giant boulder is just down to getting out a tape measure: well - that's 15 yards, I have three actions, I run at 6 yards an action... so I make it.
There's no gamble in saying "well, I aim twice and then shoot", because you know you'll reach that shot. You'll never dilly-dally for too long and miss your window of opportunity.

We've often shown that uncertainty works well for Inquisitor, so I'm not sure I really want to hand characters a fixed number of actions, but it's a bit of a Morton's fork between what people want.

I'm really glad you mentioned FATE.  I GM a FATE group on the weekends.   ;D  I understand how it works and I see what you are saying. It's really the only chance "fate" may have a hand at the Inquisitor game is though the Action roll phase.  But what you may or may not be aware of (and for those that are reading this Topic) is FATE has a Heavy GM influence.  If I set the difficulty at Great (sneaking pass two automated security cameras and my players have a +3 at sneak, I'm putting them at risk of failing.  See the average roll on 4 FATE/Fudge dice is +1.  Characters are then to roll the dice and see what the result is.  If it is a +1 they fail.  But not too fast! They can cash in on there FATE points but only through invoking one of their 5 Aspects.  This will give them a +2 if their reason for invoking it is story enhancing.  I'll say that again...Story Enhancing.  FATE is a fast and loose game.  They can describe how they please, how they got past the Security cameras. Now the success works much like Dark Heresy, they call degrees of success "shifts".  Rolling a tie may get you what you want but the GM adds a twist to the game.  Also the GM at anytime can introduce Situational Complications to make your life more difficult.

Now players are responsible to create Aspects (Personality traits) for their characters that not only can be "Invoked" for bonus's but I (the GM) can "Compel" against them to make the story more exciting. But as a loving sort of GM I would give them at least a FATE point for their pain to cash in later.   ;)

I've always felt that "Inquisitor" is lacking a balance in Character flaws.  These sort of complications can make game play way more interesting.   It also gets the GM more involved than just arbitrating the rules. 

For example:   One of your favorite characters Dave, is Malcolm Reynolds, right?  OK.  Mal has the "Tough As Nails" Trait (Special Ability), but he also has the "Things don't go Smooth" Complication. They balance each other out (point wise).  At anytime (Twice per session) I (the GM) see Mal (played by someone in my group) do something I feel is risky, exciting or heavy involved in the current plot.  I can MAKE him reroll that set of die.  The first time he passed and this time he failed!  I may still give him what he wants, but in the very least I'll  twist the story so... some of Niska's goons show up to collect on that bounty!

So when said character (up above) has to make it to the last drop pod before...  He may have time and the distance covered but that's when the GM steps in to Complicate...err add excitement to his life.

1. Is he running across loose gravel? Make him roll to see if he trips.

2. Does he have the "two left feet" complication? Make him reroll a successful roll when movement actions are involved. 

3. Are those wild dogs on his heels?  Run Forest, Run!   ;D

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 24, 2013, 01:28:25 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 03:15:34 AM
If characters reserve a point from their pool to do this once a turn...fine.  But in an average game of Inquisitor with 4-5 human players with each their own Warband it will result in longer games as less actions are being made to complete the Warband's goals.
... thus my suggestion that Speed values were increased by a point.

This allows characters to act faster at the start of the game (when they've not yet got a want/need to reserve reactions) and hence get everyone into the meat of the game faster, but shouldn't slow them down too much when things kick off and they want to reserve reactions to be properly on their guard.

The other alternative, tying into your thoughts about actions being a bit too random might be to not increase speed values and instead permanently change action rolls to 3+. 3 action dice at 3+ is slightly less likely to only roll one action than than 4 action dice at 4+, even if they both average about* the same number per turn.
*At first glance, two thirds of 3 and half of 4 are the same number, but remember that no successful rolls (which has a different percentage chance in each case) still grants one action, so the mean is not exactly 2 actions in either case.

That would be less random, but still not completely predictable - which might be as happy a median as I can contrive between the mixed desires here.
As another plus side, changing the target number rather increasing than the number of dice will avoid them getting a fluke pass on five sprint actions and doing a Usain Bolt impersonation.

As an aside on sprinting, I have just wondered if an action/reaction system may make it possible to ditch a sprint rate entirely - if a character wants to put their head down and leg it, they have to spend all their Speed as actions rather than reactions (after all, the present rulebook does tell us that sprinting characters can't really pay much attention to their environment - and I can't imagine reactions like snap-shots or dodging making good sense at a full sprint!)

I'm still thinking about this one...

Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 24, 2013, 06:52:47 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 05:04:58 PMI've always felt that "Inquisitor" is lacking a balance in Character flaws.  These sort of complications can make game play way more interesting.   It also gets the GM more involved than just arbitrating the rules.
That could certainly be very interesting, although perhaps best served as an optional add-on.

Aspects like in FATE can be very nice for a tightly run RPG with relatively few players and one character per player... but with Inquisitor and several characters per player, it would be more work.
And how that might have turned out at something like the recent INQvitational event - about 18 people, many of whom had multiple warbands each of several characters - would be a real struggle for a GM (who doesn't necessarily know who he'll be running the game for much in advance) to pick up all of the various different character threads for a game.

It could also be seen as more of a fairness issue when players are on different sides - bringing up a complication in FATE disadvantages all the players* (seeing as they are normally working together), bringing one up in Inquisitor is more partisan.
*As an example from our Dark Heresy game, Astraea's (or Alyx, as she's still calling herself) vendetta from her noble-born origin might specifically relate to her - however, when it kicks into play, it's generally unfortunate for all of the characters; perhaps because it draws unwanted attention, because she has to deal with it first (and can't help the others as well) or because someone's actually outright attacking the group...

Still, it could really add to the depth for a small close-knit gaming group.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Quickdraw McGraw on August 24, 2013, 07:28:26 PM
I see what you mean.   :o 

I still believe having players pick a balance between Positive traits (Lightning Reflexes, Blademaster, etc) and Negative traits may bring a fresh breath of air to the game.  Inquisitor has plenty of positive traits but the only thing it has negatively is mutations and demonic possessions and they workout to be positive unless you're really hard on your own characters.  So new ones will have to be drawn up if this route is even an option.

As with Aspects in a large group this would be hell for a GM!  I tell my players (wife included) if they want more "me" time they need to be willing to Compel themselves and take the spotlight for a moment.  But that's a small group of four and I can't manage anymore divas than that!   :P

Have a great day!
Josh
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on August 25, 2013, 05:14:09 PM
Marco -- firstly, shame on you for posting this thread when you knew I'd be away :P

Rather than posting about it, would it be worth discussing it over Skype so we can get some ideas and notes down in real time rather than have the "post" "have ideas analysed" "repost" cycle? I've got ideas, but they'll need refining anyway.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 25, 2013, 05:30:15 PM
Quote from: Koval on August 25, 2013, 05:14:09 PMMarco -- firstly, shame on you for posting this thread when you knew I'd be away
I plead boredom.

QuoteRather than posting about it, would it be worth discussing it over Skype...
I'm amenable to discussing it in any practical medium (telegram is discouraged and smoke signals will be ignored. Owl mail is acceptable only as long as the damn thing doesn't bite me again), but the minutes would still need to be carbon copied over to the forum, as this is an open project - suggestions aren't just about what I personally think of them.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on August 25, 2013, 05:43:31 PM
Oh, don't worry about minutes, I'll remember to dig out a notepad.

QuoteOwl mail is acceptable only as long as the damn thing doesn't bite me again
Please. This is the grim darkness of the far future; nobody uses owls anymore, it's all about psyber-eagles.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Dosdamt on August 26, 2013, 09:58:58 PM
Forced character flaws are a massive no go for me. "Unbalancing" positive traits with "negative" traits almost never work out well.

Is your character prone to falling over? Drop his agi
Is your character physically weak? Drop his str

No need to add bloat to rules in my view

The area that is in need a complete rebuild for me - Shooting, the shooting rules have always been silly and the charts counter intuitive. Having flat modifiers per group of weapons seems better for me.

Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on August 27, 2013, 10:03:09 AM
General notes from a Skype discussion with Marco last night:

General Dice Rolling: The proposed mechanic seems fine to me. We had to butt heads for a while over magnitudes of failure, though.
----Suppose you're making a Willpower test and you need a 65. If you roll a 12, you pass by 12 points. Simple enough.
----If you roll a 98, you fail by (98-65) = 33, which is what it is at present.
----So for a pass, you pass by how many points over zero you rolled; for a failure, it's how many points over your target number.

Actions and Reactions: This is a bit trickier. Early thoughts included defining what each type of "stored action" might be (so giving examples of how Sacrificed Actions, Wary Actions and Ready States work), and having the upper limit for stored actions be dictated by your Speed stat. Again, early days.

Risky Actions: Turning currently Risky Actions into Hazardous Actions seems like a decent idea as it eliminates the messy higher-Speed-means-greater-risk-of-failing-Risky-Actions thing we have at present, although we need to define what constitutes a Hazardous Action and how one can fluff it up. Providing examples would help to illustrate the point, but it does currently revolve around individual actions rather than the action roll at the start of the turn.
----How to define fluffing up a Hazardous Action? In the RIA, it's currently "if the units die comes up as a 5", though if it's percentile I'm more partial to "if you roll a double".

Movement: I had nothing meaningful to add here, but the jury's still out on whether getting rid of Sprinting is a good idea or not. I'm tempted to keep it, but impose a hefty penalty on Awareness checks and such like, as your focus is on pegging it.

Damage and Injury: I had a few things to say here.
----The Injury table needs some serious cleaning up. This is abundantly obvious. Taking the Abdomen chart as an example, we currently have a lot of "see the previous level, which redirects you to the previous level". That's a lot of messy bookkeeping that could and should be simplified and streamlined with discrete entries that don't refer you back to an earlier point.
----A suggestion I had was to scrap the current "one point into the next injury level forces that level of injury" mechanic, and introduce "floating injury points". Say you have a BIV of 6, and you're hit in the abdomen for 14 points of damage: that becomes two full levels (14/6 = 2.something), and then the remaining damage becomes "floating injury points" that can be transferred to other locations on the next wounding hit. So a subsequent hit to the chest for 4 points of damage might just add to the floating injury total, but because we already have two points saved up, that 4 becomes a 6 and that's enough to cause a Light Injury.
----I realise that the above means more bookkeeping and generally tougher characters, but sorting out the injury tables should balance that out, and it also gets rid of Four Slaps To The Head.

Close Combat: More actions and action types would be useful, but there's a danger of overcomplicating things if we go too crazy.
----Movement actions would help immensely.
----I took a hint from a couple of other games I used to play, where weapons were subdivided into such categories as "slashing", "stabbing", and "blunt". This has two implications.
----Firstly, we could incorporate "slash", "bash" and "stab" actions, each with their own additional effects. Stabbing actions, for example, could increase the likelihood of scoring a Critical Hit.
----Secondly, some weapons could be naturally suited to certain types of attack action and provide some measure of benefit -- a hammer would be a poor choice for stabbing someone, but ideal for inflicting blunt trauma and causing Knockback.
----I will freely admit that this needs more thought, as I came up with that at around 11pm. :P
----This branched off into ideas for a Close Combat RIA, or creating melee weapons where things like power swords and shock mauls are "upgraded" versions of normal swords and hammers. Needs more work.

Shooting: This needs more discussion, but basically, the current range modifier chart is a complete mess.
----I proposed a short/medium/long/extended range chart, so that each range band has discrete sub-ranges. That would be paired up with a single fixed modifier for each range; it wouldn't matter whether your weapon has Range A or Range F, firing at long range would still have the same fixed penalty, but what Range A might call long range, Range F might call medium or short.
----That ran into a problem where half an inch one way or the other might determine whether something gets slapped with a light modifier or a significantly heavier one.
----Cutting down the number of range categories (not range bands; I'm talking about 0-5, 6-10 et cetera) would be a compromise, making the table less messy without sacrificing too much granularity.
----What we do with Semi and Full Auto then depends on what we do with the range modifier chart.
----Aiming could be reined in to +10 rather than +20. This brings it more in line with Concentration and stops the silliness of a character's BS going well into triple figures*.
*At the most recent INQvitational, Sergeant Visstra managed to stack up no fewer than seven aim actions and ended up with an effective BS of 203. The DMR he was carrying made a very big mess of his unfortunate target's head. We decided that this made sense given the circumstances, but was otherwise a bit silly in practice.

Psychic Powers: Different systems can at the very least be used as starting points. This needs more thought.
----The "power dice" suggestion would only really make sense if we ported in Dark Heresy 1E's system (which IIRC was itself ported from WFRP 2E?). I'm personally more partial to Willpower tests than power dice, as that preserves a measure of the existing system, but then again, we can always playtest different options.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 27, 2013, 11:02:05 AM
To touch on a couple of comments I don't actually recall you making last night:
Quote from: KovalHow to define fluffing up a Hazardous Action? In the RIA, it's currently "if the units die comes up as a 5", though if it's percentile I'm more partial to "if you roll a double".
Doubles does fix it as a 10% chance though. The RIA does include increased Hazard ratings such as Hazardous(2) which expands the threat band to include rolls that end in 6s, Hazardous(3) adds 7s, and so on - allowing percentages of any decimal fraction (so 10%, 20%, 30%)

Shifting the percentages with a doubles system would be a right mess!

Quote*At the most recent INQvitational, Sergeant Visstra managed to stack up no fewer than seven aim actions and ended up with an effective BS of 203.
Robey had a suggestion of capping aim levels for his INQ2.0, such that most characters were limited to only so much of a bonus (those with some kind of marksman skill might be able to take more, but still limited to a degree).

This was also in addition to reducing the bonus (which you did say, yes). I'm open to either or both - but if it were staying at +20, I think I'd definitely cap it... possibly to three, maybe four. Seven is daft.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on August 27, 2013, 04:46:14 PM
Ok my thoughts on your Skype discussion.

Dice rolling mechanic: I don't see the necessity for this change. It seems to be a confusingly similar method to the current one, which is just going to cause problems with people forgetting about the change. Either change the mechanic completely, which should probably include the entire stats system, or leave it alone.

Damage and Injury: I agree that this needs some work and I like the idea of floating injury points. This may make characters tougher but will also make bolt and power weapons less overpowering.

Risky actions: Rolling a double sounds like would be a simple and easily remembered method of determining a risky action. I don't know how the hazardous action from the RIA works at the moment so no comment.

Close Combat: I like the idea of having slashing, stabbing and blunt weapons with each having a slightly different effect. I have had some ideas along these lines in the past with slashing weapons causing large wounds and so making the victim bleed, stabbing weapons having a bonus d6 vs armour (to represent sticking them in a weak spot) and blunt weapons causing knockback with a chance of knocking the victim prone.

Shooting: The range table could be simplified with fewer bands and possibly making the range degrees in 0-10" rather than 0-5". Other than that I'd probably leave it alone.
- Aiming: I'd restrict characters to a maximum of 3 aims without some kind of marksman skill. This would fit with what the aiming sytem is trying to represent. i.e the first level of aim represents bringing the gun up to your shoulder, the second represents using the sights, and the third represents actually pausing and making sure of the shot (adjusting the sights, your breathing etc.).

Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on August 27, 2013, 04:51:29 PM
Quote from: Cortez on August 27, 2013, 04:46:14 PM
I don't know how the hazardous action from the RIA works at the moment so no comment.
At the moment, Hazardous Actions are used in the RIA for plasma weapons. Basically, if the units digit of your hit roll is a 5, something's gone wrong and you roll on a plasma malfunction chart (which got expanded into a D10 table). Hazardous(2) has things go wrong if you roll a 5 or 6 on the units, and so on.

Though if we're not doing doubles, I'd be tempted to have it as "if you roll a 0", as that way it can scale down so that Hazardous(2) becomes "if you roll a 9 or 0" and so on.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Dosdamt on August 27, 2013, 06:14:27 PM
I would strongly suggest more complex actions for melee combat be restricted exclusively to Talents, or bake them into weapon profiles

Remember, we're looking at core rules here. All I spy so far are pushes for more complexity - complexity is the enemy of narrative games, and we should be mindful of that.

For ranged, I'd scrap the A-J range bands, and go with something like classifications

Pistol
Rifle
Flamer
Heavy

And link that with ranged penalties (i.e. anything over 20m is a penalty for pistol)

It's a rationalization and re-branding of the system which I didn't have any issue with, per se, but I felt was over-elaborate. To keep players engaged, I would avoid crunch.

Lastly, I'd push for a divide between Core rules and More rules. As I've stressed before, it's my belief overelaborate and crunch ridden rules should be avoided.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on August 27, 2013, 09:52:49 PM
The problem with the rules as they are at the moment is that they seem to use a lot of words to say very little. If presented sufficiently well, I'd say stripping out bumph and adding a bit of crunch might actually enhance the overall narrative experience without making things too complex.

Besides which, this is early days -- we're still hammering out a multitude of possible solutions for an alpha test that hasn't yet taken place.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 27, 2013, 11:58:54 PM
Quote from: Cortez on August 27, 2013, 04:46:14 PMDice rolling mechanic: I don't see the necessity for this change.
If we're going solely by necessity, I might as well tick the "lock this thread" box in my post options. Inquisitor works as it is - it doesn't strictly need any changes.

How many times Inquisitor takes the opportunity to really grab on to the margins of success on its rolls?
Placed shots, critical hits and counter-attacks might just count, but it's just a second target number. You can't ever get a super placed shot or a mega critical hit. And, to be honest, it's not uncommon to hear things like "28? Is that a placed shot...? Yeeeess... no, it isn't. 42 minus 15 is 27, right?"
Some psychic powers do it, but mostly in bands of 10. This is mostly because evaluating margins of success with the default rules always takes backwards maths.

But how often do I see people roll REALLY well and feel disappointed that doesn't actually mean anything? Pretty often.

It's a good thing to introduce more importance to how well a roll has been passed, but the current method is too slow. If we have to ditch the "roll high" idea because players don't think they can get their head around it, we'll either have to find some way of teaching everyone better mental maths or have to heavily dumb-down/ditch a lot of possibilities in kind.

QuoteRisky actions: Rolling a double sounds like would be a simple and easily remembered method of determining a risky action. I don't know how the hazardous action from the RIA works at the moment so no comment.
I'm really not keen on fixing the percentage at 10%, as it misses the opportunity to make different actions different risks.

Koval has already explained the basics of RIA hazards... but on that note:
Quote from: Koval on August 27, 2013, 04:51:29 PMAt the moment, Hazardous Actions are used in the RIA for plasma weapons.
Not just plasma weapons (which are actually a 2D6 table, for what it's worth). It also applies to several special ammunition types, weapon flaws and a couple of the exotic weapons. I'll probably also bring grenades in line with it at some point.
However, working down from 10 is a possibility, and may well make it in.

Quote from: CortezThis would fit with what the aiming sytem is trying to represent.
.... yeahhhh - I'd probably want to change those descriptions a bit, as not aiming is not really the same as not shouldering a weapon. Based on the descriptions as given, practically every character with a dang clue about guns should get Rock Steady Aim. It's not in any way hard to keep a weapon shouldered at a walk.

Quote from: Dosdamt on August 27, 2013, 06:14:27 PMAll I spy so far are pushes for more complexity - complexity is the enemy of narrative games, and we should be mindful of that.
I do have to argue otherwise. Complexity is not the enemy. Complicated rules - maybe. Slow rules - definitely. Dull rules - also definitely.
There is some natural correlation between complexity and slowness, but other factors also enter into it - so, if well designed, slow and dull do not necessarily have to be part of the package with complexity.

I've got some things in my sights because they're slow - such as the injury rules. I've got others in my sights because they're dull - reactive play is more engaging (literally so - direct involvement requires engagement) than sequential play.
And then there's things I have in my sights because they're slow and dull - such as the close combat rules.

QuoteFor ranged, I'd scrap the A-J range bands, and go with something like classifications...
I'm not seeing that level of simplification being a universal hit.

The Revised Inquisitor Armoury is comfortably the most frequently downloaded file on the archive of Inquisitor files I run; I am personally highly surprised, as it would be logical that it would get overshadowed by the official files that really don't exist anywhere else any more... but, still, that wordy pile of waffle I've been writing is apparently popular.

One of the core premises of the RIA project is greater variety - the repeated questions about things like what the rules for a bigger stubber should be what kicked that whole project into life.
If we change it so that pistols are all identically ranged and the only big ways in which they can be different are effectively damage or number of shots (given the weight of a pistol is usually unimportant), this is a great loss of depth.

Now, I recognise I'm firmly in the weirdo camp here; give me a blank range table and I could probably fill it in from memory. Still, I don't think that invalidates my thinking - it's clear a lot of people like the detail. Let's not axe more of it than we need to.

~~~~~

And yes... as Koval says, this is very early thinking. Any genuinely crap ideas won't make it through gauntlet of being discussed, compared, drafted, play-tested, tweaked, and all that.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Quickdraw McGraw on August 28, 2013, 01:55:58 AM
Quote from: Dosdamt on August 26, 2013, 09:58:58 PM
Forced character flaws are a massive no go for me. "Unbalancing" positive traits with "negative" traits almost never work out well.

Is your character prone to falling over? Drop his agi
Is your character physically weak? Drop his str

No need to add bloat to rules in my view

The area that is in need a complete rebuild for me - Shooting, the shooting rules have always been silly and the charts counter intuitive. Having flat modifiers per group of weapons seems better for me.

First, I agree " Forced Flaws" are a bad Idea! 

Secondly, I'm not talking about forcing flaws upon the characters.  Only about players building characters with personality flaws! If you want to build a character with 1 Special Ability, then Great!  But if you want two or more you'll have to "balance" out the scales with other traits that allow the GM and other players can take advantage of your current situation much like the "positive" traits you currently have let you take advantage of their situation.  When these personality traits pose a problem for the individual they could earn temporary fate points (like the ones in Dark Heresy) which could be spent to help them with impossible tasks???

Thirdly, you may be right Dosdamt!  Providing such a "balance" into any  tabletop miniature wargame may not be a good idea. As balances are ready baked into the character stats or equipment. But It almost always works out in RPG's which use this mechanic of defining character abilities during the game and focus on rewarding players who are willing color outside the lines and stick to their beliefs in spite of the consequence.  Inquisitor sits somewhere in between both.

There is thousands of posts/re-posts on this forum about players whose characters are overpowered with Special Abilities!  I seek to add to the game play by purposing a balance.  A compromise that everyone will be subject to. I hope these will aid flavor to characters without having to writing volumes of books to justify why they're characters have "this and that" special ability. A character background that has a game effect not just a "stat" modification. Everyone who has been around for a while should by now know how to properly build/set a character's "stats" realistically.  I'm really picky on that point myself. I make every character with a personality and function in mind first and keep their stats "Real". 

Inquisitor is a very different game than most because it's caught between two worlds...RPG and Table-top.  It has been abandoned by the producers and fans are becoming scarce and the model line is becoming extinct. My gaming group of 5 years now has no real interest in Inquisitor! But I love it!  I read the rule book the first day it released and GMed several games at my local hobby shop shortly after.  My gaming group doesn't want to try it because they're into RPG's, not narrative table-top war games!  They create characters on other games that overcome, grow and change with every story arc.  If Inquisitor part "deux" is to succeed, it's important that it catches up with the times and what people really want.

I believe the creators intended for Inquisitor to be more than just squad based combat game. Others have come to the same conclusion by creating back stories for their characters. I admit, its fun shooting it out in the streets or a warehouse but it's simply not enough. Lots of people create ultra-cool characters to live vicariously through.  But to me that's just boring!  I personally like to play individuals dealing with real problems (social or personal) all the while saving the world.  Sure, I believe this could be done through player decisions during play.  But I've seen a lot of people say it's all about the story, turn around in the same breath and stomp everyone with a "win at all costs" type of attitude. I've been guilt of it myself.   :(   Any step in this direction is better than someone saying "My three character here have Cat Fall, Fearsome, Quick draw and Blade Master. And that one over there has True Grit, Heroic, Lightning Reflexes, Hip Shooting, Rock Steady Aim...  Oh! I almost forgot the Psychic powers."   Then expecting everyone to be OK with it just because they wrote a long background.

There has been much discussion about these Special Abilities over the years (as I've already said) and nothing really wrong with any of them.  However, it would just be nice if players were given more options and little less excited about taking lots of Powerful abilities without hampering their creativity.  We could just simply leave it up to the individual and their GM as we always have.  If that is what is later decided upon, then I would support that, of course.

The same goes for the combat rework.  The combat mechanics are defiantly cumbersome and need help. I have full confidence that the combat wrinkles will ironed out in time, but it would be a shame not to focus on the Narrative possibilities more. 

Sorry, this has turned into a rant, but I wanted to explain where my thoughts were at the moment.

Edit:  I would be willing to post a few 12 dozen traits if any one is interested in this.  If not no worries.  :)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 28, 2013, 02:18:04 PM
Quote from: Quickdraw McGraw on August 28, 2013, 01:55:58 AMFirst, I agree ” Forced Flaws” are a bad Idea!
I've said something similar in the past - I tend not to recommend enforcing character traits through rules. Encouraging, yes - forcing, no.

For example, I've disagreed with the official bodyguard ability; rules-wise, this forces the character to stay within 6 yards of their charge... which doesn't make sense. Where's "Wait here, I'll go ahead and make sure it's safe" or "Run! I'll hold them off" in those rules?
Bonuses for staying close is one thing - requiring it is daft.

QuoteIf you want to build a character with 1 Special Ability, then Great!  But if you want two or more you’ll have to “balance” out the scales with other traits
I wouldn't want to enforce any strict limits like that. Special abilities are not equal, and are very often an alternative to stats.

Do we have a swordsman who is particularly talented at misleading his opponents? That could be some WS points or the Feint skill - if I have to go for the first because I've already used up my "free" skill slots, this is less representative and perhaps actually more powerful.

If abilities are looked on as extras to stats (or equipment), rather than alternatives to them... yes, then that would be a reason for limiting them, but it's a fix for a bad approach.

There are some characters that don't need special abilities, but there are others that can't work without them.

QuoteI personally like to play individuals dealing with real problems (social or personal) all the while saving the world.  Sure, I believe this could be done through player decisions during play.  But I've seen a lot of people say it's all about the story, turn around in the same breath and stomp everyone with a "win at all costs" type of attitude.
That, to an extent, is a player problem, not a rules problem.

As I started with, I'm a little concerned about the possibilities using rules to represent personality too much, particularly when it's subjective.

For an easy example, Silva Birgen tends towards being impulsive. She acts on her emotions - she'll be quite selfless when the heroic impulse takes her (and it does so quite easily), but she can also be very brutal if angered (also easy to achieve).

Still, I'm not sure how much I'd appreciate the GM or other players making their own interpretations about her thinking and trying to force her to be impulsive. It has a risk of exaggerating and stereotyping her character (what TV Tropes calls "Flanderization").
I know her - I know what'll get her riled up. Other people's interpretations are second hand at best.

Now, if, say, a compulsion involved giving her an carrot to act as per a GM's interpretion, rather than a stick for not doing so, that's another matter. But I'm not too keen on getting slapped because I'm apparently "not playing my character right".

Non-personality based short comings, such as being unlucky or having two left feet would be another matter. But personality... I'm wary about trying to enforce that. You don't really want to make players feel like they're not in control of their characters.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 30, 2013, 11:09:34 PM
Koval and I are hoping at trying to assemble some bits and pieces in the hopes we can hijack one of the games at the "Eramus Affair" event at the end of September to run some tests. It'll depend a bit on who else we have to game with, but it's plausible.

Our primary interests are probably reactions and close combat, given these are two of the bigger tasks; re-engineering the injury, shooting and psychic systems* are obviously other big ones, but any changes there will probably require lots of adjustments to avoid sudden shifts in character toughness or weapon effectiveness.
*If, in fact, we do go much further than Koval's revised version. It's not currently looking popular that we do, but I don't want to be taking ideas off the table too quickly.

So those two areas seem a good start - reaction is a new feature (rather than a changed one) that needs testing to make sure it don't slow the game down, and close combat shouldn't be too dramatic to re-engineer.

I'm also expecting to test of the more minor things like the modified dice rolling (it'll be important as a part of opposed close combat) and a replacement of the Risky Action rule at the same time; neither should be too large a task.

The modified rolling is essentially in a testable state already - and we've already got a basis for the replacement of Risky Actions.
It'll only take deciding on a default risk for any present risky actions and shifting a few Risky Actions that don't presently have a roll to using one - which is largely movement actions, so I'd expect a draft of things like new climbing, swimming and jumping rules.

Well, and deciding on a new way for Heroic to work too, seeing as I feel the effect on Risky Actions is an important part of the skill - their thrilling heroics wouldn't be very thrilling if they went wrong all the time.

It's possible we'll also throw in a very crude test of a (more) range dependent semi-auto too - the rules will likely have to change later on, after things like the range table have been adjusted, but it would be worth seeing how it plays out.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Dosdamt on August 31, 2013, 12:05:48 AM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on August 30, 2013, 11:09:34 PM

The modified rolling is essentially in a testable state already - and we've already got a basis for the replacement of Risky Actions.
It'll only take deciding on a default risk for any present risky actions and shifting a few Risky Actions that don't presently have a roll to using one - which is largely movement actions, so I'd expect a draft of things like new climbing, swimming and jumping rules.

Well, and deciding on a new way for Heroic to work too, seeing as I feel the effect on Risky Actions is an important part of the skill - their thrilling heroics wouldn't be very thrilling if they went wrong all the time.


I would really caution against Rules for Everything

Why do you need rules for climbing, swimming and jumping - why can't I GM those?

I would genuinely suggest if you are serious about this, you need to structure things.

There needs to be a decision on what your overall philosophy is - that should include whether you are looking to inject more detail into the system; whether you want more / less / no GM; where you draw the line on Core Rules.

I really think you're jumping straight into the detail without considering the overall vision, which for me when designing anything seems wrong.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on August 31, 2013, 08:37:05 AM
The simple reason we're paying attention to climbing, swimming, and jumping rules is because these things currently exist. Swimming's the least important but climbing and jumping have happened in games I've played. Climbing, in particular, was rather key in a game I played back in March.

I doubt they'll require a major change from their current state, though, as in my opinion, the only thing wrong with the movement rules is that their presentation in the rulebook is a bit messy -- they just need dusting off rather than actually changing.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 31, 2013, 10:08:16 AM
Quote from: Dosdamt on August 31, 2013, 12:05:48 AMWhy do you need rules for climbing, swimming and jumping - why can't I GM those?
Such rules already exist - and, even if they didn't, I'd say such common things need standardised rules.
Aside from the inevitable slowdown when GMs are required to contrive rules, it would be a bit problematic for a player if the size of the gaps he could jump was an unknown variable from GM to GM.

The key reason for their replacement is because of the attempt to phase out the very weird mechanism for risky actions - and as that's essentially the only test those movements make at the moment, they need something else instead.

(And on the note of "Rules for Everything", I really would like to see a universal set of Vehicle rules. Unfortunately, the somewhat sloppy way the rules were dealt with back in Exterminatus meant that lots of people went about making up their own...)

QuoteThere needs to be a decision on what your overall philosophy is
My overall philosophy is to try and reach a compromise between everyone else's overall philosophies.

Unfortunately, I've only had direct feedback from all of seven other people so far, so I'm having to guess from what I know people (and myself) have complained about in the past - and don't necessarily know that the fixes as I have them are what they want.

Without a completely clear view of what the truly overall philosophy is, we are a little restricted to tinkering with details, in the hopes that this might catch the attention of more people.

Quotethat should include whether you are looking to inject more detail into the system; whether you want more / less / no GM; where you draw the line on Core Rules.
Personally, I have relatively little interest in introducing further detail to the system - it's already quite a detailed system.
However, the success of the Revised Armoury has shown me that variety is popular, so compromising detail to the point variety cannot exist is not on my list of "good ideas".

Largely, my efforts relate to trying to simplify - or at least streamline - areas to speed up the game.

Injury, I want faster. But, as I've said, I think some form of scaling injury penalty is vital to a PvP "RPG" - simpler systems like hit points or wound only work well in PvE or much numerically larger games*, so I know we have limits here.
*Considering that each character in Inquisitor is the equivalent of entire squads in something like 40K, where the "scaling penalty" comes from simply losing squad members.

I am hoping to integrate some Revised Armoury damage types here (such as the Rending, Trivial, Tearing and Armour Piercing effects) but, once familiarised with, these standardised effects can be put to an endless variety of fast and easy uses - even faster uses in some cases.

Shooting - I'd like to make that quicker too. Aside from what's possible by changing the range table (although I believe it should still contain a decent number of options), I had a discussion with Koval the other day about completely stripping out Placed Shots, which complicate things quite a lot (particularly with Semi-Auto actions), and replacing them with either "location aims" (basically, an aim action that modifies the location roll, not the hit roll) or straight out "Called shots" similar to Dark Heresy.

The only area I'm really insisting on increasing in depth is the close combat section, as almost all close combat fights are a practically identical sequence of actions, unchanged by the characters in it or their surroundings. Sometimes counter-attacks mix things up, but that's it.
It doesn't really matter if it's fast (and it's not, players faffing around with working out their parry chances under the current system is often damn slow), because it's not fulfilling.

Reactions are, although something I would love to see included, far more up in the air. I don't know if they'll work.
They might slow things down too much - but alternatively, increasing either speed or chance on each action die and then introducing the play-off between actions and reactions may actually speed up games by letting characters get through the non-interactive parts of them faster.
They're here as a proposal, not a firm suggestion.

As for GMs... not really planning on changing things much. I know some people want to remove the GM from Inquisitor, but I feel their "director" role is an important part of the system.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: TheNephew on September 02, 2013, 12:28:15 AM
As someone who's only really learning rules solo so far, I'd say simplify the core mechanics as far as you can, and leave room for the GM to cover gaps.
I don't necessarily mean eliminate rules covering all the things, but have them working as similarly as possible.
Stuff like the range table, and a few other points, are way less intuitive than they could be, and it's a little trickier to get a handle on the game with different methods for working through specific occurrences.

But, to be clear, this opinion is based on an extremely low level of familiarity with the rules in a game context.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Nymie_the_Pooh on September 19, 2013, 11:38:34 PM
I think it's awesome that you are opening this up for discussion. I like that you also have a centralized vision as it lessons the chance of getting bogged down due to design by committee.

This may sound like an odd question, but what exactly is staying? It might be easier for people to weigh in if they knew exactly what you considered core and therefore not up for change then build everything else up around that. Right now it reads a bit like everything but the theme is up for a possible change. Are there any aspects of the game that you consider immutable?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on September 20, 2013, 06:37:57 AM
Marco and I found ourselves butting heads a few times over this -- I'm in favour of a "modular" system whereby, much like with fan-made Necromunda supplements, you can pick and mix different elements to slot into the rulebook as appropriate (thus allowing us to retain the rulebook and, ultimately, have two different GMs -- one wanting to just use the rulebook, one wanting to use lots of Revised elements -- still be able to play the same game). Marco... well, I'm less sure about how he wants to present it.

As we're likely to introduce new mechanics one step at a time, however (with some playtesting set to happen at the Autumn Conclave), it's fair to say that mixing and matching individual elements will probably happen naturally anyway.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on September 20, 2013, 02:18:45 PM
Quote from: Nymie_the_Pooh on September 19, 2013, 11:38:34 PMThis may sound like an odd question, but what exactly is staying?  Are there any aspects of the game that you consider immutable?
It's hard to define that. I'm looking at at almost nothing as utterly sacrosanct, although there are some things I do not believe need adjustment and am only likely to adjust if someone comes up with a brilliant alternative.

A large part of what I'm proposing is more alterations than replacements - the action system will not be that different (although the introduction of a reaction system will have an effect on turn sequence), movement won't be much changed (really only needing an adjustment to ditch Risky Actions), shooting is really just trying to simplify and/or improve modifiers (except for a plan to fix the uselessness of full auto fire).

Beyond that, things can expect more work.

That is to say... close combat is utter pants, injury is sluggish and has itself tied in knots and psychic powers have never felt an iconic part of the game.
I can look at the action or injury systems (despite the latter being clunky) and "see" them as Inquisitor. The element of uncertainty thrown in by actions and the scaling damage is what makes the game's PvP play work.

What I consider immutable is more intangible - the game needs to keep its style of play. If you play the 2nd edition, it has to feel like Inquisitor - tearing down dodgy parts of a house and rebuilding them is a fix; tearing the whole thing down and then building a swimming pool there instead is not.
Streamlining is one thing, but this is not a project to make Inquisitor more mainstream; it's an attempt to fill the niche it has better.

~~~~~

On the note of what Koval said, unless I get a really wild idea for psychic powers, I'm not really looking to do anything that will be wildly incompatible with the 1st edition.
For the most part, I'm hoping it should be possible to swap between 1st or 2nd edition games relatively easily; I actually think this is going to be fairly important for actually getting traction with the 2nd edition - given the small community, it doesn't take many people unwilling to give it a try before everyone is more or less forced to ignore it.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Nymie_the_Pooh on September 20, 2013, 08:53:40 PM
Where are you thinking in terms of scale? Will it support both 54mm and 32mm scale out of the box, just one, or will there be an attempt to make the same measurements work in both? Is this one of those things that would be a potential add-on that players can socket into place later if they want like what Koval was suggesting?

What sort of power level do you have in mind? Are Space Marines going to be available, or are they a force that should not be present on the table in the basic rules? Are you thinking of adjusting the rules to where lower stats are a little more effective than they are now so something like thirty might be closer to average so you have room for genetically modified super soldiers and still keep them under one hundred in all stats?

If I understand you correctly, you want an injury system, but not the current one and combat is to be completely reworked. Do you still want hit locations? Would a system where there are stages of injury be more desirable than a hit points system, or would you like to see them layered? On combat, if everybody is to get some sort of defensive roll for a dodge, parry, or similar, then should they also affect the roll the attacker performs to hit them? I mean, realistically they probably should, but mathematically that could be worked into the defensive roll. Do you want to keep weapon reaches as they are, or is that something to be ripped out or completely reworked as well? Do you feel reach could work with some small changes?

I like the idea of bringing some ideas of other games into it. You see circling in melee quite a bit in the Privateer Press games as an example. Generally not all the way around to get a hit on the model one is circling, but it can and does happen. The reason people feel free to circle in that game is it's just like moving as normal until you try to leave the reach of the weapon of the circled model at which point they get a free swing, but the mechanic it triggers could be altered to taste.

We've been using FATE style aspects off and on in Inquisitor to let players do things like tagging some barrels somebody is hiding behind with the Promethium aspect in addition to using them on characters which can make for some fun. Yeah, we could let players manipulate the table in similar ways before, but I like the idea of the players swapping a resource to add the tag in addition to convincing both the other player and myself it would add to the game to do so. We have one pool for each party instead of each character which makes tracking easier. I've been toying with the idea of introducing an environment hazard pool like the Doom Pool from the latest Marvel RPG (a Cortex game), but haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm thinking more like an escalating global modifier to perform actions that test against the environment instead of other players, but with options to lessen it through play. That might be more scenario dependent however.

Infinity is great with its reaction system, but as pointed out it might not be desirable to allow everybody to react to all actions at any time. It's been interesting reading some of the proposals around that. Dust Warfare has a reaction system as well. A unit may perform up to two actions per turn. Any unit may react similar to Infinity, but it removes one of their two actions from the following turn. They may also only perform one reaction each turn. I think limiting reactions to one per turn could work if you want to have it take away from the number of actions the character may perform the next time it acts. Then again, it does mean actions such as overwatch have no purpose unless you change it to a bonus on a shooting reaction, a free shooting reaction (paid for ahead of time instead of in the following turn) or something similar.

The basic dice mechanic for Infinity reminds me quite a bit of Alternity, but they don't have a reaction system in that game. Alternity also uses a modifier die in addition to a d20, but that's a separate discussion. Instead, Alternity split the turn into four phases. Depending on how well you roll determines which of those four phases you may act in. You may act in up to two phases, but only once per phase. If you fail at the action roll you may only act in that last phase of four. You don't have to act in a phase when it comes to your turn. You can hold your action until a later phase to see what slower characters will do first. So, Let's say a character ducks behind cover and takes a shot in the first action phase. That character can then hold their action in the second phase if they want to wait to see what everybody else does before acting. They can still use that action in the third or fourth phase if the player wants to. Any unused actions at the end of the turn are discarded. This meant that characters who failed their test only get one action that turn. Alternity was made by TSR between AD&D 2nd and D&D 3rd shortly before Wizards bought the company and used a similar move/free action/action system to those so that should give you some idea of what sort of actions happened during a phase, but used a d20 modified by a polyhedral based on outside factors with the goal being to roll under the stat of the character. I don't know if any of that helps, but the Infinity dice mechanic almost always makes me think of Alternity.

Thank you for taking the time both to read this and for the hard work you are putting in. I really love the concept of Inquisitor even though I think it falls down in places in its execution. I can't wait to see what you come up with and will definitely make certain to check back in to read up on the results of the Autumn Conclave.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on September 20, 2013, 09:36:48 PM
Addressing that mostly as bullet points:

Quote from: Nymie_the_Pooh on September 20, 2013, 08:53:40 PMWhere are you thinking in terms of scale?
- The game will continue to use "yards" as measurements that players can define their own ground scale to. However, that section will probably include recommendations for both 32mm and 54mm ground scales.

QuoteWhat sort of power level do you have in mind?
- Power level is expected to remain similar to "Conclave Standard", as it's how most contributors to this project play.

- Astartes will remain an option, but their presence should remain justifiable. I am not expecting to change from Dark Magenta's current rules.

- I'm not sure how I'd adjust the rules to "boost" lower stats without a colossal rebuild, and don't particularly see the need for it. Super soldiers can be better represented with special rules (again, see Dark Magenta's Marine rules) rather than trying to represent them just with stats.

QuoteIf I understand you correctly, you want an injury system, but not the current one and combat is to be completely reworked.
- Without a clear alternative I like, my current plan is attempting to streamline or adapt the current rules, but I am trying to find new alternatives if possible.

- Both offensive and defensive rolls in close combat will oppose each other.

- Weapon reach may possibly take cues from what I think I understood of Precinct Omega's INQ2.0, but I think the present system is functional.

QuoteWe've been using FATE style aspects off and on in Inquisitor to let players do things like tagging some barrels somebody is hiding behind with the Promethium aspect in addition to using them on characters which can make for some fun.
- This is a potentially interesting of FATE, but formalising it to specific rules may be more suited to an expansion.

I'm quite happy to, for general purposes, leave it to the GM to to answer the question of what's in those barrels based on his gut and whether that would improve or detract from the overall story rather than specific rules - although I can certainly imagine that some groups might like the feeling of control of their character's "luck".

QuoteInfinity is great with its reaction system, but as pointed out it might not be desirable to allow everybody to react to all actions at any time.
... yes, well, I'm struggling with a wording to appropriately restrict who can respond to what, but I'll probably find it. For the upcoming play test (if I get the draft finished), I'm expecting to adjudicate according to rough guidelines of reserved reactions only being between the active character and the reactive character, but more flexible possibilities for readied reactions.

Crude definitions (both "Reserved" and "Readied" are working names, and may not stick, given they're confusingly similar words, both starting and ending with "Re--ed")
Reserved reactions are action points that have been set aside - you'd reserve a reaction point, and would choose how to spend them later on. For example, if someone shoots at you, you could choose to spend a point to try and dodge. (Dodging will be a more general reaction where having the skill is not a requisite but improves your chances, like in Dark Heresy)
Readied reactions are pre-declared actions that have been delayed until certain conditions are met. An easy example is the Overwatch action, where you've essentially declared "I will be ready to shoot if someone moves into this area".

QuoteThe basic dice mechanic for Infinity reminds me quite a bit of Alternity, but they don't have a reaction system in that game.
I'm not familiar with Alternity, but that description is very intriguing... I'll have to look it up and think about all of that!

QuoteThank you for taking the time both to read this and for the hard work you are putting in. I really love the concept of Inquisitor even though I think it falls down in places in its execution.
No problem!
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Nymie_the_Pooh on September 21, 2013, 12:33:39 AM
Basically, the Alternity phase sequence translated as directly as possible over to Inquisitor would have each character perform an Initiative test. Those that fail can't act until the fourth phase. Those that pass may act in phase three or later. If you pass by rolling under half your Initiative then you can act in phase two.  Anybody that rolled under a quarter of their Initiative could act in the first phase. It's been a while since I have played, but if I remember the characters then would act in the order of their Initiative value from lowest to highest in each phase, but the actions are considered to be simultaneous in any given phase. The character sheets actually had a place for you to mark each value so you didn't have to do the math each time a character acted. You would need some sort of system for tracking when all the characters could act as it changes with each turn. It's probably a little easier in a roleplaying game where the players each only have once character each to keep track of while the GM might have four piles of markers to remind her who acts when. There are some interesting ideas in that game, but there's a lot of clunky stuff too and some of the ideas while good were pulled out of the oven a little early.

Maybe try something like Prepared action in place of Readied action. I can see what you mean by the two terms possibly getting switched about in people's heads.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on September 24, 2013, 02:12:34 AM
Ladles and Jellyspoons,

For your delectation, this is Alpha V0.1.2 (http://www.mediafire.com/download/6680bb9mgyad3ej/), which is largely what Koval and I are planning on hijacking a game to test at the weekend (although I may have made a few more adjustments by then!)
It's highly incomplete and many of the rules are only to test game-play concepts rather than the actual rules, but this is only really prepared for an Alpha test*.

* The colour formatting is something I currently use for Alpha versions of the Revised Armoury. A lot of you are probably familiar with the red text for things changed from the previous edition, but the green text is for things marked as for likely revision and the blue text for alternative notes**.
** And having said this, neither the green or blue text are exhaustive. Don't consider anything not in green to be fixed, or any suggestions not in blue to have been disregarded.


We'll probably be using Asandrea and Astrid for the test.
I'm a little bit divided on whether I want to try and hunt down a third play tester to join us, as an extra person to give feedback would be good, but having only a few characters on the table is also a plus when testing unfamiliar rules!

~~~~~

Anyway, due credit to lots of people, but Adeptus Noob (over on Ammobunker) gets special mention because I butchered large amounts of his text into the draft close combat rules.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on September 26, 2013, 11:23:00 AM
Looking good so far.

Couple of things though:

You need to include in the rules what trivial and rending damage are. Not everyone is familiar with the revised armoury.

Also I don't see why the thrust cc attack would only do trivial damage, sticking a sword in someone's knee or armpit is unlikely to be trivial. I would probably also change it to ignore d6 points of armour rather than a straight 4 points.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on September 26, 2013, 12:26:45 PM
Fair points, but this is an Alpha ruleset and we're a long way off the more robust Beta versions yet.

Describing damage types will eventually be essential and ignoring a random amount of armour is not unlikely (I may well have changed it to something based on the attacker's margin of success by Saturday) - however, both current Alpha testers know the Revised Armoury well, and the rules are still testing concepts rather than specifics.

As for why it's Trivial damage, it's either
a) a penalty in the rules to make it a trade-off. A hit penalty is another alternative, but I'm not sure I want to stack too many different hit modifiers by giving one to every last attack!
or
b) a name. It doesn't inherently mean the damage is of no importance, but it's the best term that came to mind when I first needed "anti-rending". I may eventually change the name to something like "Minor" or "Slight", which are probably more appropriate, but the rules don't actually care what I called them - they'd be the same whether they were called Apple damage or Orange damage... :P
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Necris on October 01, 2013, 10:58:46 PM
Something we've tried for number of actions in a few of the games ive played at my LGS is introducing a character state we first started by having characters being passive and active and have since expanded this to include a reckless, passive and active state

Explaining further

A character in a reckless state passes his actions test on a 2+ representing that they are rushing headlong into the situation, there are however draw backs to being in a reckless state, characters are unable to aim or move at less than a walk, they are not able to use their abilities unless they pass an initiative test and suffer a -20 to all rolls.

A character in a passive state is acting in a less cautious manner as such they pass tests on a 3+ (as if acting in a normal situation) for example approaching a combat zone, they cannot not evade or crawl but can freely use their abilities, aiming only provides a + 10 bonus and all actions are at -10

An active character is behaving cautiously as if in a combat sitauation or a situation that demands more attention and judgement  actions are passed on a 4+ and the character acts as normal.

We allow players to set the state of the characters at the start of the turn but had to include an ability for reckless characters that allowed them to use the reckless state, (we found it worked well for Arco's and fanatic style characters and those with low speeds and allowed them to get into games more effectively)

In summary we found that allowed the initial turns to move more smoothly and prevented the drag of low speed characters only getting 1 action per turn and ending up sitting out most of the games, but when the nitty and gritty of thing kicked off they at least got some activity
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on October 03, 2013, 03:24:55 AM
Right. Well, as it happened, this last weekend we had some brief chance to test some Inquisi2r rules.

We had originally planned to test at 28mm, although this was abandoned at short notice - we had the chance to get PrecinctOmega involved and get an extra playtester, but he only had 54mm characters with him. It was a bit of a negative to not get a chance to use those characters some more, but the additional feedback was fairly invaluable.

I'm glad to say, while rough around the edges, the results were generally positive.

I think, with some adjustment from our draft rules, the idea of introducing a greater degree of reactive mechanics into Inquisitor is feasible - that is to say, it doesn't have to dramatically inflict on the speed of play.

This, in itself, will fix several oddities of the system. Two-way interactions are very chopped up at the moment - things like a "freeze or I'll shoot" ultimatum are fairly meaningless in the official rules (due to an inability to act out of turn) and actually having a conversation in the normal turn order is a nightmare. Common consensuses on rule bending have improved such things, but it'd be nice to make a more fluid turn order intrinsic to the game.

Similarly, the close combat rules were a bit messy, but it was strongly due to poor organisation of the draft rule document and trying to explain things to Robey at short notice. Neatened up, I think they should prove a huge improvement over the current rules.

I've also been sent Robey's original INQ2 rules now, so I'll be trying to digest those. I'm not certain what I will and won't want to take away from it yet*, but it should prove useful input for the project.

*Given that Inquisi2r seems perhaps to have a slightly different end objective to Robey's INQ2.

~~~~~

@Necris: I've probably said as much previously (I can't remember, it's past three in the morning), but I do similar things to start games.
Until there's interaction between the players, I tend to tell them to roll their actions on a 3+, which gets the opening turns out of the way more promptly.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Nymie_the_Pooh on October 05, 2013, 11:36:02 PM
I have not had a chance to play test the proposed rules yet so this is all unproven theory and may have no bearing on how things actually play out.

I was thinking about reactions. What if performing a reaction that was not prepared gave the active character a free Pause for Breath action upon resolution of the reaction. Let's say Character A declared they were going to evade to a spot fifteen inches away then go into overwatch giving them a prepared reaction until Character A's next turn. They roll their actions, and only get the first three of evade move. After the first move, Character B can react. If this is a prepared action (like overwatch) then Character B takes the shot and Character A continues as normal after resolving the effects of being shot at. If the reaction fire was prepared then Character B can take the shot, but after resolving the reaction Character A may select the remaining two actions over again so can evade move another five inches into cover and go into overwatch rather than continue on the remaining ten inches they were going to originally move.

Something along those lines would make it to where there's no need to keep track of how many reactions are performed or reserved, but it's not always in the best interest of the player with a model capable of reacting to do so. I also think it might help if reactions not prepared ahead of the triggering circumstance were limited to once per activation of a character. Once per action if opened up would likely be too much.

One thing to keep in mind when pulling from other games is how a part of the rules affects that game and how that might translate over. Infinity is great with the back and forth thanks in no small part to the ARO system, but close combat is rare indeed. There are some models that are amazing in close combat, but it's hard to get into close combat due to all the reactions and being in the open for those reactions when moving to engage so even the melee focused models have to load up on guns and normally ignore their close combat capability. I think you have this balance in mind already, but two traps to look for specifically are reactions in melee and reacting to those closing to melee. The former never comes up in Infinity but could under the rules you have where the latter is deadly to the one looking to close and usually is not worth the risk. If a model closing the gap to close combat is ever out in the open during the move to engage then they won't have any protection beside their equipment and the range modifiers will normally be in the favour of the model doing the reacting. Again, it's something I would need to actually test to see how it goes, but it might end up calling for a to hit penalty with a ranged weapon on reactions against anybody that moves and finishes the move engaged in close combat with the shooter. I do not know if reserved actions will cause any problems in melee, but it's something to test. Maybe one possible reserve action can be used to take a hit at anybody that leaves reach (disengage/circle) and otherwise keep moving in melee as a normal walk action with no restrictions since you seem to want more mobility in close combat.

I like the idea of giving up actions to ready a reaction, but I fear it could promote turtling up and might be something the GM would have to build into every scenario they were running if their games tended to drag out from it. It's hard to tell without playtesting and having one player go on the defensive in this manner over multiple games and see how it goes.

From skimming over the rule set document it looks like there is no reason to prepare a reaction when you can reserve a reaction instead. They seem to do the same thing, but with prepared reactions having a set trigger where reserved reactions seem to be able to trigger from anything as long as the player controlling the reacting character can get the GM to agree that it makes sense to do so and can pass a test. Going back to Infinity as an example, they have the reactions which read sort of like reserved reactions in the document, but then they also have things like suppression fire which is a full attack on anything that enters the pre-selected area and lasts until the next turn no matter who passes through it. In the case of suppression fire this includes allies as it basically represents the model firing a steady stream of shots in an unobstructed column, but it serves as an example. Maybe prepared reactions could work more along the lines of that.

So for instance, Overwatch in the draft already affects a specific area and has a set trigger before it will cause the character on Overwatch to fire. There are greater restrictions on Overwatch than a reserved action if I understand the document correctly. It reads like a reserved action can be used to take a shot (any reaction really) at anybody that performs an action that can reasonably be reacted to with the readied action on a successful test as long as the reacting character is aware of the target. There seems to be little reason to use Overwatch over a reserved reaction since they are both usable once and the Overwatch is canceled if another reaction is taken anyway where multiple reserved reactions can be used in the same turn. With the limited area of affect of Overwatch (4 yards) one way to differentiate the two types of reactions is to make Overwatch usable more than once per turn in it's limited area. Maybe drop a large blast template for 56mm and small for 32mm to show the area of effect and have anybody friend or foe get shot at in the area as it seems something like this could make a friendly standing in it near impossible to engage in close combat. That holds true even without the templates, but it's an idea to have an area that is easy to see at a glance. It sort of emphasizes the specialty versus generalist natures of the two types of reactions. Right now it is a trade off between firing once in a fairly tight area with a penalty to the hit, or reserving multiple chances to shoot at anything you can reasonably react to that you can see as long as you pass a test each time you fire and you can choose to react in a different manner in that moment if you so choose.

Thanks for doing this. I do not know if I am of any actual help or not. I do appreciate you doing this. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play this draft some instead of just read and hypothesize.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on October 06, 2013, 01:34:28 AM
Quote from: Nymie_the_Pooh on October 05, 2013, 11:36:02 PMI was thinking about reactions. What if performing a reaction that was not prepared gave the active character a free Pause for Breath action upon resolution of the reaction.
I like the idea.

I might want to leave the possibility for an active character to still be caught off guard, so a tweak may be in order; possibly doubly so as I have another idea about reactions being used in the active turn to redeclare actions, but my brain is too addled to come up with any fully reasoned suggestion at the moment.

Perhaps reactions always permit the active character a redeclaration of their actions, but it takes an initiative test (or a spent reaction of their own) to skip the required PfB action. Although I'd have to see how messy that was with the rest of the rules - I'm not looking to have exception upon exception.

QuoteI also think it might help if reactions not prepared ahead of the triggering circumstance were limited to once per activation of a character. Once per action if opened up would likely be too much.
It could be a helpful limitation, but given reactions also include things like trying to not be an easy target for incoming fire, I'm not sure on that one. Again, too tired to think of a perfect answer.

Quotetwo traps to look for specifically are reactions in melee and reacting to those closing to melee. <snip> If a model closing the gap to close combat is ever out in the open during the move to engage then they won't have any protection beside their equipment and the range modifiers will normally be in the favour of the model doing the reacting.
Well, running across a large open space to get to close combat does carry with it a certain likelihood of expecting to get shot.
Obviously, I don't want to invalidate close combat through reactions, but I do think that making getting into close combat across 18 yards of open terrain a bit more of a challenge than getting three successful actions would be a positive.

In any case, one suggestion made by Robey was only (normally) allowing reactions to follow the action that triggers them - essentially, setting the reaction time of any Inquisitor character to one action.
This simplifies the sequence a lot, and would also make covering short distances to get into close combat little more of a threat than it is now.

QuoteI like the idea of giving up actions to ready a reaction, but I fear it could promote turtling up
This is addressed in the draft rules, to an extent. The version we tested was increasing every character's speed by 1, but the alternative of increasing action dice to 3+ is to be considered as well. This means a single reserved reaction has no major effect on a character's normal ability - and no reserved reactions (such as when a character has no reason to be cautious near the start of the game or is just throwing said caution to the wind) means a character can act faster than normal.

Additionally, there's also a restriction as suggested by Koval - a character cannot store more reactions than half their speed (rounding down). A character cannot go completely on the defensive.

QuoteFrom skimming over the rule set document it looks like there is no reason to prepare a reaction when you can reserve a reaction instead.
As written, prepared reactions do not need to test initiative to be activated - their "test" for activation is whether the conditions were met.

Quoteone way to differentiate the two types of reactions is to make Overwatch usable more than once per turn in it's limited area.
It is a possibility to be considered, although I think my primary point was just to define the fact that Overwatch should not just be "I'll shoot as soon as I see anyone, anywhere!" (which would require a less certain reserved reaction).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Nymie_the_Pooh on October 06, 2013, 07:05:46 AM
Thanks for taking the time to go through that.

My concern with the closing to melee was that last action to move to engage. If a character is moving eighteen yards in the open to engage then they are asking for trouble. I was thinking more in line when that last two yards of movement to engage is in the open. In those cases it makes no difference if the character used cover for the first sixteen yards. So basically, the character stays in cover then jumps out at the last second of moving to engage only to have the target react by shooting at them within a yard or two of engaging and the moving model counts as out in the open at that moment. It's that 4" move to actually get in melee then swing that kills melee in Infinity as performing such a move normally results in death. Maybe it's as simple as making reactions only happen at the end of an action and since that last bit was to close to melee range the reaction can be to perform a melee strike or dodge or something, but not to shoot. The issue with doing it only between actions during an activation is then you can't take shots at somebody as they dash back and forth behind obstacles that block line of sight.

I'm not sure if it will be a real problem with what you are doing as there are many differences between the two systems. I just know it practically kills melee in Infinity. It makes sense there as they want everything to be a firefight where I tend to think of the 40K setting as being more Science Fantasy or Space Opera than Infinity is.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Ynek on October 17, 2013, 03:59:13 PM
It's been quite some time since I posted anything to the conclave, but after reading through this entire topic, I thought this would be a good time to break my long-established silence and actually post something.

With regards to "reactions," I did a little experimenting with a friend about a week ago and came up with something that we think is quite a fun and dynamic way to represent reactions.

Ynek's suggested reactions rule:

A character gets a number of 'reactions' equal to their speed, divided by three, rounding numbers down. Therefore, a speed 6 character would get two reactions per turn whilst a speed 2 character would get none (*1).

With GM discretion, a reaction can only be used to do something to react to something that the opposing character has done. For example, if a character is fired upon, it's reasonable to assume that they might try to shoot back or dive for cover. However, it would be a bit of a stretch for a character to "react" to being fired upon by continuing to hack a door code or continue summoning daemonic assistance.

When a character reacts, the reaction is resolved as an opposed initiative test with the character that they are reacting to. (*2) If the reacting character passes his initiative test, then he or she successfully reacts. However, if they pass their initiative test by a greater margin of success than the character that they are reacting to, then they react FIRST. This means that a high initiative character has a chance of diving for cover before the first shot is fired, or drawing their sword BEFORE the enemy tries to strike them. If the reacting character fails his initiative test, then this means that they fail to react and may not attempt to react again until the next action at the earliest. If the "acting" character that the reacting character is reacting to fails their initiative test, then obviously, the reacting character manages to make their reaction BEFORE the acting character makes their 'action'. However, there is no further negative consequence for the acting character. They still get their action whether or not they pass their initiative test because, after all, this is their turn and they've already passed their action roll.

So, in practice, this rule might work like this:

Example one - an example of a 'defensive' reaction.
Character A spends his turn walking down an alleyway, minding his own business.
In Character B's turn, character B steps out from behind a dumpster and fires a shot at character A. Character A chooses to react to dive into cover.
Both players roll a D100.
Character A has an initiative of 80, whilst character B has an initiative of 75. Character A rolls 55. According to the "roll high, but under," convention described by Marco earlier in this topic, Character A has passed their test by 55. Character B rolls their initiative test and rolls 65, passing his test by 65 points. A glance at the two D100s will reveal that 65 is higher than 55, and both characters have rolled beneath their initiative values. The outcome of this dice result is that Character B fires their round at character A, and immediately after, before any following actions by Character B, Character A dives into cover.

Example two - an example of an 'aggressive' reaction.
Character A has been followed back to his lair. He closes the door behind him, draws his gun, and aims at the doorway.
Character B follows him and opens the door. The GM rules that an awarness check is required to notice the 'trap' that has been laid, with an appropriate modifier depending on how obvious the trap seems to be. Character B fails the awareness test and walks right into the trap.
Character A chooses to 'react' to the opening of the door by opening fire with his gun.
In the opposed initiative test, Character A rolls a 95, whilst character B rolls a 50. Character A, the reacting character, has failed his initiative test, and therefore does not react when character B opens the door. Character B opens the door and continues with their remaining actions (A smart player would have chosen to make a pause for breath after opening the door... Because the character doesn't know what might be behind it, and it makes sense that a character would pause for breath in that moment.)


An alternative version of this rule that I'm tinkering with alongside my usual gaming buddy is that a character is limited to one SUCCESSFUL reaction for every three points of speed. This means that if you fail your reaction test in this action, you can try again after the next. It seems to slow gameplay down a bit, but it does mean that just because a character fails to react in the first instant that a change occurs, they're not left standing there getting shot at for the several actions that follow in the remainder of the turn. Bearing in mind that there might be three or four enemy characters who get their actions before he does, it doesn't really make sense that just because he failed to jump for cover after the first shot was fired, that he just decides to stand and get blasted by every gun in the enemy's arsenal.

Of course, it's not a perfect rule... But I'm humbly submitting it for your consideration. ;)

(*1)= Such characters are likely to be too slow to react in time to any sudden changes in the situation. However, considering that Speed 2 is usually reserved for Orks, Ogryns, servitors, cripples and the like, I think it's safe to say that they aren't exactly the most reactive of characters anyway. Similarly, the only characters which are speed 6 are usually hyper-elite assassins and aliens such as Eldar, who are almost certainly going to be very reactive and fast to respond to any changes on the tabletop.

(*2)= This means that a slow and dull-witted character is easier to react to than a lightning fast one, and this is something that any rules for reactions ought to consider. For instance, it's easier to dive for cover and make it in time when your opponent is a dull-witted servitor with slow response times than it is to make the same dive when you're trying to avoid getting hit by a highly trained Eldar assassin.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Koval on October 17, 2013, 06:32:32 PM
That looks pretty cool. I might suggest "...every three points of Speed, or part thereof" as a possible alternative. It will of course need plenty of testing.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Ynek on October 17, 2013, 07:51:35 PM
Quote from: Koval on October 17, 2013, 06:32:32 PM
That looks pretty cool. I might suggest "...every three points of Speed, or part thereof" as a possible alternative. It will of course need plenty of testing.

I was reluctant to do this, because it would mean that the threshold for multiple reactions comes much lower, from the nigh-mythical speed of 6 down to the far more abundant speed of 4.

In addition, it means that speed 1 and 2 characters will start rolling initiative tests for their reactions, even though their chances of success (since a low speed inevitably means a low initiative) will be virtually non-existant. Now, whilst I appreciate that rolling the dice in a manner that completely defeats the odds on a nigh-impossible test can be satisfying, there comes a point where making a "snowball's chance" roll every turn gets tiresome and starts to bog the game down.

The other side of it is that when we consider the types of characters who typically have speed 1 or 2 (Obliterator cultists, hulking monstrosities, servitors, robots, and zombies,) we have to wonder if making reactive rolls for such creatures would even be characterful?

And also, just as an aside, I think that if such a rule as the above were adopted, it would become much easier to "nail down" exactly what the oft-difficult to define rules for "lightning reflexes" would become.... Simply a positive modifier for the opposed initiative test.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on October 17, 2013, 11:32:27 PM
Quote from: Ynek on October 17, 2013, 03:59:13 PMA character gets a number of 'reactions' equal to their speed, divided by three, rounding numbers down.
A few people have proposed fixed numbers of reactions now (although not all solutions the same).
I'm ultimately okay with that if such is the collective will of the player-base... but I'd be still be interested to hear why these people prefer the idea over an adaptive mechanic.

I know it's a little simpler, but I really do rather like the adaptive mechanic. At least if appropriately written, it could even could actually speed the game up.
If you increase the average number of actions at the same time as letting them be traded in for reactions, characters in (inter)action would still act close to the current rate (so no "lots of actions at once" imbalance, particularly if other characters can interrupt them). Characters not involved in interaction would get on with their stuff quicker (and thus get back into the middle of the game more promptly).

The other thing is that I'm toying with some rules for the close combat system that work around the idea and hopefully address some of the concerns that Nymie had at the same time.

A loose idea I've got in mind is that a character engaged in combat has to spend a reaction in order to unlock the full range of defensive options. Hence, a character not on their guard would be fairly at risk in close combat - and in the process, this makes for a decision between using a reaction to take a shot at an incoming assassin or preparing to fight them. (Or, alternatively, I've just realised that a simple reminder to players that they can swap weapons with reactions could work to an extent, with no real change needed).
But increasing the importance of having reactions in that way means less if characters automatically have them around.

QuoteHowever, if they pass their initiative test by a greater margin of success than the character that they are reacting to, then they react FIRST.
I'm increasingly in agreement with what Robey said on this one, I think.
Although a chance of getting that shot off first is interesting, it is going to be much simpler and quicker rules-wise to just put reactions after anything they're reacting to (with exceptions - things like dodge rolls logically have to be simultaneous).

Thing is, our playtesting showed up a few niggles with the originally suggested sequencing if you've got more than one reacting character (not unlikely in a three player game, which is a common way for Inquisitor to be played at events - after all, that's how we were playing when we found that out).

It may well be very worth allowing such things as an optional or "if the GM thinks it's cool enough" rule though.

Quote... they're not left standing there getting shot at for the several actions that follow in the remainder of the turn.
I'm not planning to ditch pinning tests, so characters are still quite welcome to choose to fail one and dive for cover.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: TheNephew on October 18, 2013, 02:02:42 PM
Disclaimer: Painfully unfamiliar with the rules as they actually function on the tabletop, all of the following is based on thinking it through rather than years of experience.
Also I got interrupted and my train of thought derailed catastrophically.

I'd have to agree with Marco re: reacting before the precipitating action - not a bad idea per se, but complicating matters further.
Perhaps Lightning Reflexes can allow you to do that on a successful I test.

I'm also leaning towards characters having a set number of actions per table turn, and splitting them into actions and stored reactions - intuitively feels like it would balance the process a little better.
That said, it adds (a little bit) to the number of things to be kept track of per character per turn, which is not so good news.

As for reacting more easily to lower I characters (Alan has higher I than Barry, Alan is more likely to successfully react to Barry's moves than vice versa), I too think that would work quite neatly with the "roll under, roll high" system, but with a multi-character situation, you risk going down the rabbit-hole with the number and order of rounds of reactions nested within the rounds of actions.
If Barry and Carl are both reacting to Alan stepping onto the street, you'd presumably have to roll A, B and C's I and then rank them and act/react in that order.
If Alan passes with a 30, Barry passes with a 40, Carl fails on a 50, do you then play it B-A-C (Initiative Roll order), or A-B-C (Action then ranked Reaction Rolls)?

If you've got multiple Reacting characters with multiple Reaction actions each, keeping track of it all gets that much more awkward.

I think in the interests of simplicity the I/3 Reactions per turn would be preferable, and would also bog the game down resolving one sequence of actions a bit less.
Naturally I'm pretty biased at this stage, but simplicity should be a driving force for the restructuring, as at the moment the mess of rules provides a significant barrier of entry to new players.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Nymie_the_Pooh on August 04, 2014, 09:14:57 AM
Please let me know if I should not be posting to this thread. I felt what I was saying was directly relevant to this conversation. Otherwise I can create a new thread if that is more appropriate.

I have been thinking about Reactions and Prepared Actions. I like the idea of anybody being able to make a reaction, but I think it should have some restrictions for multiple reactions. Here is the basic idea.

A player activates a model. The other player declares a reaction with one or more of their models. The player that controls the reacting models makes an Agility test for each. If the test is failed then the active model continues as normal as if nothing happened. If the test is passed then the Reaction occurs. The reacting model may attempt their declared action and receives a token to reflect they have performed a reaction. Depending on preference, that model could either not be able to perform any more reactions, or do so at a penalty. I imagine we would be leaning toward the latter. If going the penalty route then the penalty from multiple tokens stack. If the Reaction check is beat by half or better then the reacting character performs the reaction, but does not receive a Reaction token. I am still trying to work out if someone that failed the check should get a token or not. It makes a lot of sense to me the reason for their poor reaction might result from their attention becoming split, but game play wise it might make more sense to give them a Reaction token for attempting a Reaction.

Prepared Actions would work the same way, but the model would start with a Prepared token. Perform the Reaction check as before. If you would add a Reaction token to a model then remove the Prepared token instead. The model loses Prepared but may perform further Reactions as normal. A fail here would definitely remove the Prepared token. To me Prepared is a state of readiness. Having your attention become split should automatically shatter that state of being prepared. If a model with a Prepared token passes the Reaction test by half or better then it remains in Overwatch.

One downside is this adds a level of record keeping during the game through tokens. This could be a double sided token as no model would have both Prepared and Reaction tokens on them at the same time. You may want to add a rule that no model may have more Reaction tokens than their Speed. I imagine each Reaction token increases the difficulty by around twenty. There could be a case for them only going as low as ten, but I think that could result in many characters performing more reactions in a turn than they have actual actions. If going with only a penalty of ten, then maybe those that pass the Reaction test get two Reaction tokens unless they pass by half or better in which case they would only get one Reaction token. I would not change how Readied Actions work off of this without extensive testing.

This is a rough idea. There is quite a bit of wiggle room for it. It essentially treats both Reactions and Readied Actions the same with one adding tokens and the other taking away based on the test. The idea is not field tested and probably should not be used as is, but I liked the idea of one set of rules covering both to remember instead of separate rules for each.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on September 13, 2014, 12:30:15 AM
Sorry for a catastrophically late reply:

Quote from: Nymie_the_Pooh on August 04, 2014, 09:14:57 AMI have been thinking about Reactions and Prepared Actions. I like the idea of anybody being able to make a reaction, but I think it should have some restrictions for multiple reactions.
Well, as I've got it drafted at present, there's no form of reaction that doesn't have a restriction on how many can be performed.

Either they need to be stored up out of a character's actions for the turn and can only be spent once, or they're "continuous"... which, following a redraft from the last alpha release, carries a progressive penalty for each time they're used.

At present, all I've put into this category covers when a character is evading and when they're in melee.
- In the former case, a character this is evading gets a "free" dodge against any incoming fire.
- In the latter, it covers all the old basics like parrying and dodging (although I've currently called it "side-stepping" for the sake of differentiating it from trying to avoid shooting attacks), but also new options*.

* For an example, one experimental option is "Take the hit" - in this case, the character deliberately elects to forego their chance to defend (bearing in mind that a character now has to choose their defence before the attack is rolled) in exchange for a free counter-attack.

It's a dangerous option only likely to be popular with desperate (or excessively tough) characters, but it's an extra option, so it's working towards my ideal of there actually being decisions to make in melee.

... anyway, I guess I'm sort of drifting there, but I got up very early today, so I think it's bed-time now even if it does mean posting a load of rambling.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on December 31, 2014, 10:20:22 PM
I have a suggested Reactions mechanic. The basic system borrows somewhat from D&D 4E, which in spite of its many flaws I always found handled delayed actions quite simply and effectively.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16S4PBnM4yDDu4u0XmtBwFfKBAiMGCx6iI92nJBElyWk/edit

So, what are people's thoughts on this?

(Please let me know if anything is worded unclearly or ambigously)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on January 01, 2015, 12:01:30 AM
Thoughts for close combat:

-Every attack is an opposed roll: to hit, the attacker must both (1) beat their own target number and (2) do so by a greater margin than their opponent. If the opponent is unable/unwilling to react, the attacker only has to beat his own target number (probably with a bonus).

-Parrying with a weapon imposes the weapon's Parry Penalty on the attack. If the defender both (1) passes his Parry test and (2) does so by a greater margin than the attacker, an otherwise successful attack is negated.

-If a Parry is successfully made with a margin greater than or equal to the weapon's Parry Penalty (on top of the penalty applied to the roll itself), the defender may take a free out-of-sequence action (counter-attack, circle...)

-Evading without a weapon removes any chance of counter-attacking, but does not impose a Parry Penalty and in fact grants a +20 bonus.

-Each subsequent Parry or Evasion after the first suffers a cumulative -20 penalty.

-Parrying is Hazardous(1) - triggering the hazard results in falling prone. *

-Each and every attack where the attacker's WS Test is passed (regardless of the success or failure of any parry/evasion tests) allows the attacker to manoeuver his opponent by 1 yard. He may also follow if he wishes, but does not have to. **

-A special 'Manoeuver' Action like in the current rules draft can be used to manoeuver the opponent by a greater distance.

* & ** These suggestions probably seem somewhat unorthodox, and I'm not entirely convinced by them myself. But they might be a good start for forcing some more movement into combat.

EDIT:

-Critical Hits in close combat (as in, double damage) also knock the defender prone (?)

-Sidestepping is Critical (1) - when triggered, the attacker stumbles forward and falls prone (?)

NB: my proposed additions to Parrying and Sidestepping (Hazardous & Critical) improve sidestepping and worsen parrying - this means perhaps sidestepping would need to lose its +20 bonus in order for parrying to remain a viable alternative(?)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 01, 2015, 02:16:51 AM
Sorry, I did get your PMs, but the long and short of it is that I went to a party on Monday, ended up waking up at four in the afternoon on Tuesday, only really had the mental capacity to mess around with modding Skyrim, went back to bed at three pm on Wednesday, got woken up by someone vacuuming two hours later and now I'm in a horrible state between alertness and exhaustion at two in the morning.

I am thinking on it, but I'm not really organised enough today I think it's good for me to respond in depth just yet.

I will say I'm still rather attached to my shifting mechanic - I'm not sure it's the right choice, but I very much want it to be. If I can find out how to structure it, the dynamics for going between bold and cautious play could be rather beautiful.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on January 01, 2015, 12:47:44 PM
What exactly are you referring to when you say 'shifting mechanic'? A transition from 3+ action rolls sans reactions to 4+ action rolls and reactions?

My main issue with the current draft rules is that the distinction of prepared vs reserved reactions seems overly complicated. But then, I haven't actually tested them in play yet.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 01, 2015, 11:40:43 PM
When I say "shifting mechanic", I mean offsetting actions into reactions to declare later.

Several of the suggestions for alternative approaches seem to go by handing out reactions on top of actions. I guess that's simple, but I'd like to bundle it in with one of my favourite long time house rules.
I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but for a long time I'll start games I'm GMing off with 3+ action rolls. It still leaves an element of randomness, but gets you through the quiet turns quite a lot faster*. Of course, characters getting lots of actions in a row in combat is a bit of a problem, so I switch things back to 4+ when things look like they're about to get nasty.

* For one of the best games I think I've ever run, "Countdown Run" from the 2013 IGT, I quite literally told the players to deploy where they thought would get us into an interesting game fastest (on top of some 3+ actions where I thought it appropriate). Unlike a fair chunk of IGT scenarios, it thus didn't need me to rush the last few turns, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was really key to helping me win the Best GM vote.

So, as my current 2nd ed drafts go, action rolls will always be 3+. (I eventually preferred this to my original drafts of giving all characters +1 speed).
However, it won't need the the GM to make the decision that it's time to slow things down again, because players will want to start reserving reactions when things start getting messy. (And even if they don't, their opponents having the option to interrupt/react mid-actions will help the balance anyway).

~~~~~

Having looked at your approach, the above rant is largely redundant, as the reactions are not a separate resource from actions. However, it all feels very pre-emptive.

I definitely want part of the mechanics to represent times when a character does have a plan already their head (as they should get a bonus for that anticipation), but I'm not sure it'd be very fluid to have all reactions work that way, as it'd often come across too much like "expecting the unexpected".

I also feel it has an impact on player/character separation to be constantly announcing what the character has in mind. Generally, the less I know for certain about my opponent's plans, the easier it is to stay in character.
If I know for certain that Shyloque will get shot at if he goes around the corner, I might find myself playing differently (even if not intentionally) to if I didn't know if the reaction was going to be being shot at or a demand to identify myself.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on January 02, 2015, 11:26:14 AM
Well, yes, I strongly prefer actions and reactions coming from the same pool, too.

Hmm... we could have this:

You can use an achieved action as the 'Ready' action to prepare a specific reaction for later use under specific circumstances. You can have several of these (at a penalty to their execution, as outlined in the document), and you can chain several of them together and execute them in sequence.

Alternatively, you can, when your turn comes, choose to roll fewer action dice then you would normally do. Say, Inquisitor Shyloque, who has Speed 5, wants to run to the edge of the roof, then wait for further developments. The player first rolls 3d6 and achieves 2 actions, sufficient to reach the edge. What he uses his remaining actions for depends entirely on what happens later in the turn. For example, any of the following might occur:

*Sgt. Henchman, standing in the street, lines his heavy stubber up to open fire on the rooftop. Deciding he doesn't want to get shot, Inquisitor Shyloque declares his two remaining actions to run backwards for a few yards and throw himself prone, then use 'Ready' to prepare fire at the door to the roof. He rolls his 2d6 and achieves 1 action, running back and throwing himself prone. Sgt. Henchman may now Pause for Breath and re-assign any further actions, as his intended target is his lost.

*An Arco-Flagellant bursts through the hastily barricaded door and on to the roof. Because he doesn't want to risk having to fight the thing at close quarters, Inquisitor Shyloque wants to drop himself over the edge, and will spend his next action crawling into cover on street level. He rolls 2d6 and achieves 2 actions, dropping down and hiding. The Arco-Flagellant may now Pause for Breath.

*Inquisitor Shyloque spots an injured Inquisitor Tyrus running away from Shyloque's allies. Deciding to take a lucky shot, he wants to spend his two actions aiming and firing his plasma pistol at Tyrus. Rolling 2d6 and achieving both actions, Shyloque hits Tyrus.

*Nothing of note happens within Shyloque's line of sight during the remainder of the turn, and once the Speed 1 step rolls around, Shyloque decides he isn't going to wait around on the roof all day and carefully drops himself to street level.

This way, what you're essentially doing is splitting your turn up into two halves. You can take the remainder of your turn at any time during the round, even interrupting the turn of a lower-speed character. The penalty to this approach comes from splitting your action dice up into two groups without prior knowledge of which ones will succeed and which ones will fail, meaning you may very well have insufficient actions in one half of your turn and more than you know what to do with in the other. The advantage is that you're guaranteed a chance to use the actions (aside from the action dice failing) - even if nothing at all happens to trigger your reaction, you can still use them for whatever you want to be doing (most likely movement) near the end of the round.

Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on January 03, 2015, 09:15:42 PM
There's a lot going on here in terms of reaction discussions, so I'm just going to drop in my two cents on a few things:

- It makes sense for characters not to announce what they are saving their reactions for. While I prefer the actually triggering mechanic you mention Noob, the impact (as Marco points out) on actual gameplay is too much. Most players who know that their character will be shot if they take a specific action will take that into account (consciously or not) and it'll impact the way folks act. Which is a shame, I like the idea of declaring reactions like that.

- I'm in favor of allowing players to store a certain number of reactions that cross turns. The main reason for this is that characters with a low speed are pretty much relegated to NPC status in these scenarios. The higher speed characters will have shifted back and forth between each other in dramatic duels and reactions by the time it comes down to the lower speed folks who never get the chance to operate that way. Which brings me to my next point:

- Allow one reaction at a time. The whole "splitting the turn" dynamic sounds interesting, but I think allowing one reaction at a time helps allows characters to have some agency outside their turn while preventing another character's turn from being completely highjacked. It also makes it less appealing for a character to store up an inordinate amount of reactions.

- One thought on limitations: A character can only take a number of actions in their given turn equal to their speed. Meaning that if a character has a particularly lucky roll (5 of 5 actions, for example) then they are unable to take an reactions that turn.

Those are really random thoughts, feel free to use or discard as you see fit. I think I'll abandon my own CC thread as it seems more productive to just follow along here and add to this conversation.

Also, Marco, if you have a working draft of your rules in a single document I'd love to check it out and take them for a test drive. 
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on January 03, 2015, 10:58:41 PM
I do partly share the concerns about influencing how you play when you know about certain reactions, but consider the following two scenarios:

* I'm playing Inquisitor Shyloque. I could either round the corner and walk past the building towards my objective, or take a long detour. Around the corner, I know as a player, is the opposing Sgt. Henchman. He is holding his lasgun and has prepared a reaction to shoot me once I enter line of sight. I take the detour.

* I'm playing Inquisitor Shyloque. I could either round the corner and walk past the building towards my objective, or take a long detour. Around the corner, I know as a player, is the opposing Sgt. Henchman. He is holding his lasgun and has reserved a reaction to use as he sees fit. What do I do now?

I'm inclined to say that in the second scenario, just like in the first, my style of play will be influenced (or I might consciously will myself into taking the bad decision, just to prove that I'm not metagaming - which is not a highly desirable outcome either). I wonder if perhaps the difference in actual gameplay might not be as big as we think... but then again, there are probably lots of scenarios where it does matter, too. I suppose, for when it really needs to be secret, you could always just use notes or whisper into the GM's ear, but that's not practical as a standard mechanic. I do think that the option to do it like this should be there though, as it's really just a very extensive generalization of the existing overwatch mechanic.

To end this rant, I've found my opinion shifting somewhat towards your position while writing this. So yeah, there should be a solid system for non-pre-declared reactions.



As to your second point, I'm not 100% sure what you're for and what you're against. Could you re-phrase?



I agree that perhaps splitting the turn isn't optimal - while (in my mind at least) it's the most natural way to extend the existing action mechanic to reactions, it would perhaps be a total bookkeeping nightmare in large games. I do think there should be some possible way of taking multi-action reactions, though - perhaps only as prepared reactions?



However reactions are handled in the details, I'm firmly of the opinion that they should be drawn from the same pool as regular actions, so that'll provide a limitation in and of itself.

============================================================================================================================

So, new suggestion:

*Prepared Reactions: You can prepare reactions using the 'Ready' Action, set triggers, and make sequences, as discussed in my original document. Perhaps, to reduce bookkeeping, a character can't have more than one multi-action sequence of reactions.

*Reserved Reactions: You can set aside action dice before rolling for actions, and store them (visually indicated by leaving the appropriate number of d6's next to the character's model) for later use. You can interrupt another character's turn, but you can declare only one action at a time to do so. You roll however many dice you want, but any passes after the first are disregarded - rolling more than one die serves only to increase your chances of passing the action, not granting a chance at multiple actions. Failing all dice means the dice are wasted, and you cannot execute the reaction. Should you have lots of action dice left, you can attempt several reactions, but you can only make one attempt to react to each of the acting character's actions - so you can try again, but not until he performs another action.

*As discussed earlier, Action rolls will pass on 3+. Also, when rolling action dice for Reserved Reactions, there is no 'free' action if you fail all rolls.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 04, 2015, 05:36:55 AM
You'll have to forgive a rather short response, I'm in the midst of insomnia at the moment.

Quote from: Adeptus Noob on January 03, 2015, 10:58:41 PMI'm inclined to say that in the second scenario, just like in the first, my style of play will be influenced.
It was a rather simplistic example, and I have to admit that both would have an effect. Still, what's rather important is that the two scenarios can have different lead-ins.

In the first scenario that Sgt Henchman would probably have to aware of hostile characters - in the same way I'd normally forbid a the declaration of actions against characters that you're unaware of, I'd also want to know exactly why the Sgt is aiming at that corner "just in case" someone came around it.

In the second case, the undeclared reaction could reasonably be held on the excuse of "general paranoia".

Quote*Prepared Reactions: You can prepare reactions using the 'Ready' Action, set triggers, and make sequences, as discussed in my original document. Perhaps, to reduce bookkeeping, a character can't have more than one multi-action sequence of reactions.

*Reserved Reactions: You can set aside action dice before rolling for actions, and store them (visually indicated by leaving the appropriate number of d6's next to the character's model) for later use.
Largely, this is similar to my current drafts (although the idea of using multiple stored reactions at once to improve your chances is an interesting one), except for omitting the "Wary" action - which I think is worth keeping.

It's only my current draft that explains the design intent of Wary, so it might seem a little out of place otherwise in the earlier versions. The short version is it's there mostly because of how often I see characters end their turns with actions left over and players express laments that they can't be saved for later.

Quote from: Alyster Wick on January 03, 2015, 09:15:42 PMAlso, Marco, if you have a working draft of your rules in a single document I'd love to check it out and take them for a test drive.
There is a very out of date link (http://www.mediafire.com/download/6680bb9mgyad3ej/Inquisitor+2nd+Edition+Alpha+V0-1-2.doc), but the current version is a mixture of very messy notes and in my head.

I do need to try and produce a more up-to-date version though.

Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on January 04, 2015, 10:12:04 AM
Yes, it seems that I've found my opinions drifting closer and closer towards what you'd already written. If you could put together another draft, I'd very much like to read it (testing will probably have to wait 'till next month, because of upcoming exams).

I suppose reactions are partly settled now, so perhaps we could introduce another important topic of discussion: close combat. I've brainstormed a bit on the previous page, and most of it probably isn't usable in its current form, but I hope it at least provides some useful ideas.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 04, 2015, 10:38:31 PM
Quote from: Adeptus Noob on January 04, 2015, 10:12:04 AMIf you could put together another draft, I'd very much like to read it
I'll do what I can, although it may take a little while to get it into a vaguely polished format.

QuoteI suppose reactions are partly settled now, so perhaps we could introduce another important topic of discussion: close combat.
I actually quite like your idea that close combat attacks automatically manoeuvre the opponent, as giving the movement for free means players will try and actually use it.
I'd still want an option where the intent is actually to move the fight, as that's quite reasonable to want to do, but I suspect it will be considered quite situational.

As far as Hazardous Parrying... I think that's one to veto. I find parrying and counter attacking considerably more interesting, but rarer, than attempting to dodge in close combat, and don't want to do anything to dissuade it. Keeping it appealing may already be fairly tough, because once you have to beat your opponent's margin of success (effectively penalising your defence), the higher chances of sidestepping will already be a significant advantage.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on January 04, 2015, 11:32:15 PM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on January 04, 2015, 10:38:31 PM
As far as Hazardous Parrying... I think that's one to veto. I find parrying and counter attacking considerably more interesting, but rarer, than attempting to dodge in close combat, and don't want to do anything to dissuade it. Keeping it appealing may already be fairly tough, because once you have to beat your opponent's margin of success (effectively penalising your defence), the higher chances of sidestepping will already be a significant advantage.

Fair enough. I wasn't really convinced either. I was thinking of melee fights in movies, and one thing that appealed to me was how these typically involve grabbing your opponent and pulling them to the ground and/or repeatedly ramming them into solid obstacles. This was just the first thing that came to mind to try and emulate that. And if we want to incentivize sidestepping over parrying, we'll probably have to drop Critical sidestepping, too.

(Come to think of it, nearly all of these movie fights are unarmed, so maybe modelling Inquisitor's swordfighting on them isn't a great idea.)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 10, 2015, 12:13:38 AM
Sorry, it's taking longer than originally planned to get my latest thoughts down in words as, predictably, thinking about it keeps changing what I have in mind.

What I'm currently contemplating is if I can stop close combat sitting apart from the rest of the rules, by removing or minimising any specific "melee" state. Instead characters would get automatic reactions if an action is performed within melee range of them (Within certain limitations - no running past your own characters to give them reactions!). Making melee something simply defined by a vicinity could also allow freer movement. No specific "step back" action to get to arm's length, it's now just standard movement.

Hopefully the whole thing will allow more fluid engagements where characters are able to constantly manoeuvre in and out of melee range.

I'm going to have to work on ironing out a few issues (like not making it too easy to just naff off out of a melee), but I think it could be interesting.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on February 16, 2015, 11:23:37 PM
I just got to play an unexpected game yesterday, intending to test out the reaction mechanic and some close combat ideas.

Not a single character was involved in a close combat (one unconscious npc was executed by pumping an autopistol into his neck at point blank, but that hardly counts), so not much news on that front.

We used reactions exactly as outlined in my earlier post from January 3, which I think went reasonably well - it sure made for some interesting scenarios which wouldn't have been possible under the normal rules. We had several characters standing on rooftops and bridges, jumping on a truck as it sped by. There was also one instance of an assassin preparing to drop a plasma grenade on that same truck as it attempted to make its escape under a walkway he was standing on, only for the telekinetic psyker who was riding shotgun to use his reserved reactions to fling it right back.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 25, 2015, 02:06:38 AM
Ugh... sorry, very late response to this.

Quote from: Adeptus Noob on February 16, 2015, 11:23:37 PMit sure made for some interesting scenarios which wouldn't have been possible under the normal rules.
Sounds good - that's largely what I'm hoping for, that a reaction system allows a better flow of the action.

Have you any thoughts on how it affected the speed of gameplay?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on February 28, 2015, 10:58:54 AM
Given that this was our first ever time using the mechanic, I felt it went pretty smoothly. I suppose next time I could play two different games of a similar size, one with reactions and one without them, and have someone time all the turns with a stopwatch to see the actual results. But by gut feeling, I don't believe there was a significant slowdown, save the few times we'd go "so I'm going to do this - oh no wait, there's reactions, so I guess instead I'll do this..." (because it was our first time).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 28, 2015, 01:59:24 PM
Don't worry about timing it - I'm not too fussed about the individual seconds, more the overall impression of the rate the game was progressing.

While I've played a few games with reactions and felt the speed was good, I'm pretty good at juggling rules in my head, so it helps to get feedback from others too.
A more reactive game is a desirable goal, but if it actually felt sluggish at the same time then some drastic rethinking would have been needed.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 17, 2015, 01:28:54 PM
Right, I've been in a thinky place for the last few hours, and it's been about re-engineering semi and full auto fire more.

I don't want to move onto Dark Heresy's method where the number of hits is just a direct function of the degrees of success - whenever autoguns get used in our DH sessions, they often score four or five hits (fine for shooting NPCs, but not so great in a PvP system) and almost never score a full ten hits (in most circumstances, a DH character would benefit from autoguns being Full 5 or 6, as they're very unlikely to score 7 or more hits anyway but would get more bursts from a magazine)

However, while this is a very early draft that I've not rigorously run the numbers on yet and for which I will probably want to tweak the modifiers (a lot), here's a possible proposal for semi-auto fire:

Basic BS, double range penalty, +5 per shot in the burst, +20 for Semi-auto.
If a shot beats the margin of success of the last shot in the burst, roll for another shot (up to the maximum used in the burst). If not, all remaining shots automatically miss.


This obviously abstracts things more, such as the sequence of the shots (the shots that hit might not actually be the first in the burst), but an "exploding dice" mechanic does considerably reduce the amount of rolling needed, as you have to roll a maximum of one miss per burst (and quite possibly none, as a shot can be a hit, but not successful enough to allow the next shot).

Semi (6) therefore wouldn't be particularly more time to resolve than Semi (3) - and a variant of this for full auto fire would make a massive difference to the time it took to resolve a burst, as bursts of many tens of shots would normally be resolved in just a few rolls.

This is weighted IMHO somewhat better than DH's system, as the need to chain successes means that one hit is more likely than four (in DH, both are equally likely if your target number is high enough), but there is actually a reason you might want to fire more shots than you're likely to hit with (as it affects your target number) and no shots that are absolutely doomed to miss (although admittedly are still very unlikely to hit!)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on April 17, 2015, 08:57:18 PM
That's... actually a very interesting idea. Very unorthodox (I'd never have thought to do it like it that), but it sounds cool. I particularly like the fact that it takes no real effort - apart from remembering the result of the d100 you just rolled - to see whether you score another hit.

I would like to run the numbers, but that actually looks fiendishly complicated in this case.



Having scribbled around a bit, I think this is how to do it:

(I'll be ignoring automatic passes and failures, because frankly that'd be too much work. Plus, to-hit chances below 5% almost never happen anyway, outside of the RAW version of full-auto fire)

Call x your final to-hit chance in %. This includes everything - BS, range, +5's and +20's... Call n the number of shots you fire (i.e., you're firing on semi(n) or full(n) ).

The odds of scoring 0 hits are then (100 - x)% . The odds of hitting your first shot are x%. The expectation value of the margin of success obtained on the first roll, given that it passed at all, is [(x+1)/2] , which will be your target number for shot nr 2.

The odds of scoring exactly 1 hit (hitting nr 1, missing nr 2) are then x% * (100 - [(x+1)/2])% . The expectation value of the margin of success obtained on the second roll, given that it passed at all, is [([(x+1)/2] +1)/2] = [(x+3)/4] , which will be your target number for shot nr 3.

The odds of scoring exactly 2 hits are then x% * [(x+1)/2]% * (100 - [(x+3)/4])% ...

...and so on, until you reach the nth roll, where the final factor is omitted because no matter how good you roll, there won't be an (n+1)th shot.

To summarise, given a to-hit roll of x%, the chance of getting exactly k hits is:

k < n: P(k) = (100 - [(x + (2^k) - 1)/(2^k)])% * Product of ( [(x + (2^j) - 1)/(2^j)] % ) for j going from j = 0 through j = k-1

k = n: P(k) = Product of ( [(x + (2^j) - 1)/(2^j)] % ) for j going from j = 0 through j = k-1

k > n: P(k) = 0

And then the expectation value of the number of hits is Sum of ( k * P(k) ) for k going from k = 0 through k = n (or k = any larger number, for that matter).



One last thought is that this might cause issues when a character louds multiple different kinds of ammo in his magazine and fires more than one kind during an action (which shots hit), but that's such a rare event that I really don't care all that much.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 17, 2015, 11:52:02 PM
It is a slightly odd mechanic, but I've been trying to figure out an escape from the normal one hit roll for every shot - while it's fine as a system when each hit roll is one die (as in WH40K), it gets messy when you're using two dice for a D100 roll (even if you've got multiple D100 colours, as I have - they tend to get jumbled) and rolling it one shot at a time gets tedious past about Semi (4).

I don't like the DH method much (for the reasons in the last post), so exploding dice occurred recently.
Having a flat target number was a problem (as the expected number of hits is an exponential function that ramps up scarily fast with initial hit chance). I was originally playing with an idea to have cumulative penalties that built up per shot, but it was getting rather maths heavy.

The margin of success thing on average halves the likelihood from the last shot, just with practically zero maths.

Quote from: Adeptus Noob on April 17, 2015, 08:57:18 PMOne last thought is that this might cause issues when a character louds multiple different kinds of ammo in his magazine and fires more than one kind during an action (which shots hit), but that's such a rare event that I really don't care all that much.
I'd suggest either continuing the abstraction (and having the first hit be the first round and so on), or just simply randomising it.

It's also messy with Hazards and weapon jams, but I think that can probably have some kind of fudge factor applied so that the first roll has a higher risk and then it's ignored for the rest of the burst.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on April 18, 2015, 11:15:36 AM
Woops, looks like I did something wrong. I misread your post and my calculations so far all assumed that if a shot didn't beat the previous shot's margin of success, not only would there be no further shots, but the shot itself would miss too. Back to the drawing board for my calculations.

And to think I've just spent an hour or so implementing the formulae in Maple...
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 18, 2015, 11:23:17 AM
Don't worry! I am considering both possibilities. ( Sorry, can't say much more, I'm busy in Oxford for a folk festival today).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on April 19, 2015, 10:17:16 AM
I think this is about it, probably (?)

(http://puu.sh/hj9Lh/aaad7042d2.png)

Top three lines is for the misinterpreted version, bottom three for the version as you originally described it.

x = to-hit chance from BS, range modifiers, movement etc, but not modifiers for autofire
n = number of shots
s = 1 for semi, 0 for full

F/G is the expectation value of the number of hits given all these things.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 13, 2016, 09:06:00 PM
It's a while since I last worked on this, and I know that the announcement of a new SG Design Studio now means that there may eventually be a 2nd edition anyway, but I'd kind of like to press on anyway and have currently settled on a version of semi-auto fire that I'm reasonably comfortable with:

QuoteSemi-auto fire is resolved as the overall effect of a burst rather than individually rolling for every shot. The character first rolls for one shot from the burst. If this first roll hits, the character may roll for another shot, but his target number is now the value he rolled for his last hit roll.  This process continues until the character either misses a shot (at which point all remaining shots also miss), or all shots in the burst have been rolled for.

Modifiers:
Semi-auto fire doubles range penalties, but has a +10 bonus for weight of fire, increased by a further +5 for each shot in the burst. All other modifiers are as normal.
A character may aim before firing on semi-auto, but all levels of aim are lost after the first semi-automatic shooting action.
This significantly increases the effectiveness of high-burst semi-auto (as compared to the LRB version, where characters tend to end up fishing for 01-05 results), but I think that's fairly reasonable, given that firing a Storm bolter currently feels a little like this:

(http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy3/MarcoSkoll/Miscellaneous/zorg-zf-1.gif)

It's an abstraction, as it disregards the sequence shots are actually fired in, but as far as the game is concerned, it doesn't hugely matter if it's the first or the fourth shot that hits.
I think the rule of thumb for the (rather rare) case that there's mixed ammunition loaded into the weapon is just going to be assuming shots hit in said order, although the GM could certainly randomise it if it's desperately important.

I'm now adapting Full-Auto to the same principles - I'm thinking about smaller bonuses for the number of shots and/or even higher range penalties, but it'll instead get bonuses for firing at a group and will continue to ignore movement penalties, so it'll find actual use in dealing with fast moving or clustered targets.

~~~~~

Melee-wise, I've been trying to look at whether it's possible to do away with the concept of being "engaged" in combat, in order to allow the system to be more fluid, but it seems like doing away with it entirely may be quite difficult, due to the fact the system does kind of need to allow characters in a brawl to handle their actions one at a time.

I have had a different thought though...

Changing the engaged state so that it's a more general state which a character decides to be in (rather than the rules choosing that for them). If a character elects to be in an Engaged state:
- They can declare their actions one at a time.
- Get free reactions to anything within X (probably about five) yards.
- Become unaware of everything outside that area.
- Characters can become Engaged as a free action (or reaction), but breaking the state mid-active turn requires an action to be spent Disengaging.
- Possibly some other minor things like firing guns a WS test.

This potentially gets very interesting, because it means that the other character isn't immediately Engaged as well - if, say, Sgt Stone gets within range of Inquisitor Shyloque (who's currently aiming for Barbaretta) and engages, Shyloque has the choice to try and take his shot (but with the drawback that this will give Stone a free reaction and the chance to dive for him*). Melees can also start other than with a charge.

*The melee rules as I've currently got them allow reactive characters to completely forego defending themselves in exchange for a much higher chance at a counter-attack... although they only get that attack if the incoming attack doesn't inflict knockback, prone, stunning, system shock, unconsciousness, etc. of course.
(Remember that in the Revised version, you decide your reaction before the attack is rolled for, so choosing this can be very risky if you're being attacked).

It also has other uses. If, say, a character needs to pick a lock where the need for a successful Sg test means it might take a variable number of actions, this tends to be difficult to declare within the normal rules (although I usually let such things be declared as "As many actions as necessary").
Broadening the purpose of Engage could allow characters to Engage themselves on such things, roll the necessary number of tests to pass and then disengage.

There's quite possibly an exploit I haven't seen yet, but aside from the old "GM hits the player with the rulebook" solution, I think with it limiting a character's awareness range so heavily, it can't be too heavily abused - none of the "Oh, I have three actions, I'll aim, shoot then duck back" stuff that the old Lightning Reflexes got used for, because the target (probably) won't be within Engagement range.

EDIT: As an aside, I may at some point want some volunteers to join me at Dark Sphere to do some more play-testing.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on January 14, 2016, 02:11:00 PM
I'm liking those semi-auto rules. It is an abstraction, but one that works. There is something that seems terribly unfair (or at the very least, incredibly unsatisfying) about missing on the first role and losing all the subsequent shots. Statistically though it seems to make sense. With all the bonuses, if someone is a reasonably short distance away you may end up with a 95% to hit them on the first role, meaning there's a relatively remote (1 in 20) chance that you won't hit them at least once.

I may playtest that at the very least. I'll post the results if I do.

As for combat, I think I need more time to wrap my head around the concept. That tends to be a bad thing (at least for me) as it indicates a lot of complexity. When I'm struggling with the concept of a rule/game mechanic that probably means it's going to be clunky to play with.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 14, 2016, 09:22:16 PM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on January 14, 2016, 02:11:00 PMThere is something that seems terribly unfair (or at the very least, incredibly unsatisfying) about missing on the first role and losing all the subsequent shots.
The chance of getting at least one hit with low rates of fire like Semi(2) or (3) is usually very similar for average hit chances.

If a character has a 60% chance of hitting with a single shot, the LRB version would give him a 40% chance of hitting with each Semi(2) shot and therefore a overall 64% chance of any hits. The Revised version (assuming a -15 range penalty)... 65% overall.
For high rates of fire, it usually hugely improves their effectiveness, because handling semi as a bonus rather than a penalty stops the "fishing for fives" that happens almost automatically when -60 semi auto penalties are involved.

As another point, remember that the Inquisitor2 draft includes the possibility for reactive characters to try and dodge. Keeping the percentage rolls for semi-auto fire closer to those for single shots makes those modifiers much easier to balance.
A -20 to a 65% chance works out at 45%. -20 to two 40% chances works out as an overall 36% chance (effectively increasing it to a -28 penalty).

So it might at first glance seem unfair to decide that all shots miss based on just one roll (although this is exactly how Dark Heresy handles it), but the modifiers have been chosen fairly carefully... and it has the potential to massively speed up game play. When it comes to full auto, being able to handle 10, 15, 20 shots in just a few rolls is going to be massively quicker.

QuoteAs for combat, I think I need more time to wrap my head around the concept.
Essentially, it's not that different from how close combat works anyway.

Current effects of being engaged in close combat: Engaged by a charge, declare actions one by one, only aware of the immediate vicinity, can react to attacks, breaking it during the active turn requires spending an action (either a disengage or Pause depending on whether the opponent is still scrapping).

Revised Engaged state: Engaged at will, declare actions one by one, only aware of the immediate vicinity, can react to everything*, breaking it during the active turn requires spending an action.
*It always seemed weird that a character would just stand there while his opponent was circling around behind him!

Making it a more general and at-will state will hopefully make close combat integrate better with the rest of the action and, to an extent, rules (rather than the action system in close combat being an exception to the rules, it can become a core part of them).
Building Engaged up as a standard framework has a lot of possible uses - for example, Greenstuff_gav's Conversation rules are mechanically a lot like verbal melee, and could easily be presented as a special case.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on January 15, 2016, 01:47:50 PM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on January 14, 2016, 09:22:16 PM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on January 14, 2016, 02:11:00 PMThere is something that seems terribly unfair (or at the very least, incredibly unsatisfying) about missing on the first role and losing all the subsequent shots.
The chance of getting at least one hit with low rates of fire like Semi(2) or (3) is usually very similar for average hit chances.

If a character has a 60% chance of hitting with a single shot, the LRB version would give him a 40% chance of hitting with each Semi(2) shot and therefore a overall 64% chance of any hits. The Revised version (assuming a -15 range penalty)... 65% overall.
For high rates of fire, it usually hugely improves their effectiveness, because handling semi as a bonus rather than a penalty stops the "fishing for fives" that happens almost automatically when -60 semi auto penalties are involved.

As another point, remember that the Inquisitor2 draft includes the possibility for reactive characters to try and dodge. Keeping the percentage rolls for semi-auto fire closer to those for single shots makes those modifiers much easier to balance.
A -20 to a 65% chance works out at 45%. -20 to two 40% chances works out as an overall 36% chance (effectively increasing it to a -28 penalty).

So it might at first glance seem unfair to decide that all shots miss based on just one roll (although this is exactly how Dark Heresy handles it), but the modifiers have been chosen fairly carefully... and it has the potential to massively speed up game play. When it comes to full auto, being able to handle 10, 15, 20 shots in just a few rolls is going to be massively quicker.


Oh no, you're totally right and I get the percentages. Unfair was the wrong term, it should have just been "unsatisfying," as in it's incredibly unsatisfying to crack off ten shots, roll one bad d100 and then call it a day. The effect is purely psychological as it's actually much better for the firing player the way you've done it.

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on January 14, 2016, 09:22:16 PM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on January 14, 2016, 02:11:00 PMThere is something that seems terribly unfair (or at the very least, incredibly unsatisfying) about missing on the first role and losing all the subsequent shots.
The chance of getting at least one hit with low rates of fire like Semi(2) or (3) is usually very similar for average hit chances.

If a character has a 60% chance of hitting with a single shot, the LRB version would give him a 40% chance of hitting with each Semi(2) shot and therefore a overall 64% chance of any hits. The Revised version (assuming a -15 range penalty)... 65% overall.
For high rates of fire, it usually hugely improves their effectiveness, because handling semi as a bonus rather than a penalty stops the "fishing for fives" that happens almost automatically when -60 semi auto penalties are involved.

As another point, remember that the Inquisitor2 draft includes the possibility for reactive characters to try and dodge. Keeping the percentage rolls for semi-auto fire closer to those for single shots makes those modifiers much easier to balance.
A -20 to a 65% chance works out at 45%. -20 to two 40% chances works out as an overall 36% chance (effectively increasing it to a -28 penalty).

So it might at first glance seem unfair to decide that all shots miss based on just one roll (although this is exactly how Dark Heresy handles it), but the modifiers have been chosen fairly carefully... and it has the potential to massively speed up game play. When it comes to full auto, being able to handle 10, 15, 20 shots in just a few rolls is going to be massively quicker.

QuoteAs for combat, I think I need more time to wrap my head around the concept.
Essentially, it's not that different from how close combat works anyway.

I think the idea is congealing more in my head. My brain works funny, if I sit down with two miniatures in front of me and go thru a hypothetical round or two in my own head it'll probably make more sense. The way you're describing it is actually closer to the way I would envision a proper revision of the rules (I've tried my own hand at it a couple times, but generally I start and then lose steam).

Anyway, if I get to a good place with my understanding of it I may implement these rules in my next game or two and will report back. I'm very open minded when if comes to improving close combat.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on January 16, 2016, 03:06:24 AM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on January 15, 2016, 01:47:50 PM...as in it's incredibly unsatisfying to crack off ten shots, roll one bad d100 and then call it a day. The effect is purely psychological as it's actually much better for the firing player the way you've done it.
Well, there's only so much I can do about how people psychologically perceive statistics. I get it to an extent - it can be underwhelming in DH to go full-auto on some nearby targets, roll a 90 and watch it all go wide - but is it enough to justify keeping a system that can call for that many dice rolls?

I've been working on trying to find an alternative full-auto mechanism for years, originally as part of the Revised Armoury (which already hosts an alternative flame weapon rule). I did try to see if there were ways of being able to divide it down - for a time, there was a concept rolling one hit roll for each five-ish shots (sort of trying to split the difference between Inquisitor and DH), but I eventually found it to be really ugly to try and explain in rules text.

As far as options that are mechanically simple, there's only a few that come to mind: one roll per shot (as per 1st Ed), which gets sluggish and ill-balanced at high burst; one roll per burst (as per DH), where characters often take six hits at once and go out of the game without a chance; or exploding dice (as per above).

QuoteThe way you're describing it is actually closer to the way I would envision a proper revision of the rules.
Well, I try. :P
People are quite within their rights to tell me when they think I'm trying to fix things that ain't broke (or just breaking them more) though*.

*Within reason. I've had a few lengthy PMs (on various forums) full of suggestions for what to do with Inquisitor where I've had to explain that the project is about improving game mechanics, not changing what the game actually is, and if you don't like Inquisitor now, you're probably not going to like it after I'm finished.

QuoteAnyway, if I get to a good place with my understanding of it I may implement these rules in my next game or two and will report back. I'm very open minded when if comes to improving close combat.
I won't make promises, but I'll see if I can get a polished and up-to-date version of the melee rules ready.

While the latest ideas are heavily built into the Inquisitor2 reaction system (a lot of the point of establishing Engaged as a general state is so melee can build on that core framework), it shouldn't be necessary to use that system outside of melee, if you don't want. After all, that's loosely how 1st edition already handles it.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 03, 2016, 11:15:51 PM
I'm currently working on the next Beta of the Revised edition, which is going to be... well, as long as it takes, I'm afraid. I'm handling it as a more complete document, which means I need to sort out introductions, explanations of characteristics and the like. (And I'm trying to avoid just direct copy-pasting everything from the LRB).

However, there's a modification to the Injury rules I'm thinking through (and I know I've already mentioned it elsewhere).

System Shock has always seemed a bit oddly balanced.  With both the SS value and the chance of passing the test being based on the character's T, characters go from being highly vulnerable to nigh-immune over a relatively narrow range of T. I've been playing around with a couple of possible ideas.

1) System shock always happens at 10 damage. This stops certain characters being nigh immune by having an SS of 15 or so (even before armour), separates it a bit from the injury levels done, and instead makes a character's resilience to it entirely dependent on their Toughness test.

These tests then get modified depending on how much the threshold is exceeded. Possibilities is that for every extra 5 damage, the character must make an extra SS test, or maybe every point of damage over 10 adds a penalty to the test. (Maybe -2 or -3. Something like -5 would make 20 damage hits put characters out almost automatically which, while realistic, would make already powerful weapons even more so).
In either case, I'm thinking about modifying the basic test with a moderate initial bonus (around +10) to compensate.

2) The somewhat more radical option is that system shock tests become a 2D10+BIV roll (or similar) to try and equal or beat the damage.
I've already used this mechanic for my NPC rules, in order that lower powered weapons weren't completely useless at taking out NPCs (unlike the original Architecture of Hate rules I based them on, where you had to bypass a certain threshold to succeed. With the way it was done, unless you had a boltgun, I think that mostly meant head shots!)

This naturally scales with damage, but it does require SS tests are made a lot more often and it's going to have the above issue about balancing really high power hits. (The NPC version includes a rule that on a double, the NPC either auto passes or fails, depending on whether the double is 6+, or 5 or less, but that's too small a chance for me to think it gives PCs a fighting chance).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on February 05, 2016, 04:28:02 AM
For option 1, I actually really like that. That way lots of basic weapons will very rarely cause an SS test. It really helps tier the weapons out a bit. A bonus to the T test initially is good as well. Characters under T 50 really get the short end of the stick when it comes to SS tests.

Option 2 is interesting, and I'm definitely not opposed. Doing something aside from a straight characteristic test is intriguing and thought provoking. This could be a model for reimagining other applications for the various other characteristics rather than just operating off of the d100 system. On the other hand, one could argue that it's the opposite of streamlining.

In either event, what are your thoughts on additional penalties based on the injury level of the limb affected (before the hit, not due to the damage cause by the hit)? The thinking would be that if you hit an area that is already quite injured then the pain will be increased. For option 1 it could be -10 per injury level (or something like that) and possibly just -1 for option 2? Going to slightly more involved route, you could "downgrade" one dice for each level of damage, a d10 becomes d6, d6 becomes d3. So 1 level of damage would be 1d6+1d10, 2 levels is 2d6, 3 is 1d6+1d3, etc.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 05, 2016, 08:38:56 PM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on February 05, 2016, 04:28:02 AMOption 2 is interesting, and I'm definitely not opposed.
Well, I threw it in for the sake of comparison, but while I'll probably keep it for my NPC rules, I have been drifting away from it for PCs.
It seems a bit like it's changing things for no particular reason, and it's more likely to conflict with old rules. For example, if an effect calls for "testing for system shock", then having changed the test that way would be messy.

My current favourite is Option 1a (the one with more tests for higher level shock). It needs a little more rolling than the modifier of 1b, but it keeps the maths down.

QuoteIn either event, what are your thoughts on additional penalties based on the injury level of the limb affected (before the hit, not due to the damage cause by the hit)?
I hadn't thought about it. It's an interesting idea, but it could have quite a lot of rules crunch.

As an alternative, what about basing it on injury total and re-purposing the current system shock value? Make the proposed bonus to a SS test somewhat larger (maybe +20), but it only applies if the character's prior injury total was equal to or below their SSV. (Above that, there'd be no bonus at all)
In this case, a tough ~T70 character who hadn't taken any hits yet would be pretty likely to shrug off L1 system shock, and even a T40 or so character would have a reasonable chance of staying in the game (although he'd have a hell of a wound to show for it), but a character that was already wounded and taking higher level system shock would be quite likely to pass out.

That sounds reasonable to me, as it's not hugely interesting if a character passes out to one hit early in the game, but it means even reasonably tough characters will sometimes pass out other than by exceeding their consciousness threshold. And rules-wise, it's not too involved.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 14, 2016, 04:02:41 PM
I've been thinking more about melee combat.

I've already determined that I want weapon reach to affect hit modifiers based on the separation of the characters (which I will be making far more fluid), not the relative lengths of their weapons.
For example: Currently Inquisitor A and his Reach 3 sword always has a +20 reach bonus over Guardman B and his Reach 1 knife (unless up-close, where reach gets reversed, but that's a rules exception I'm hoping to remove).

In the current IRE draft, their reach is instead compared to their separation. If they're separated by 3 yards*, this is the same as the Inquisitor's Reach 3 blade, so he gets a +10 bonus for being at his optimum engagement distance. The Guardsman is two yards from his optimum engagement range, so his Knife suffers a -10 penalty.

*I may eventually use half-yards, should full yards prove to make characters feel too far apart, but I'm intending to make close combat distances slightly larger so that there's more terrain within the "melee area" with which characters can potentially interact. (In any case, characters aren't always blade-to-blade when fighting, and will often be backed off)

Were they separated by 2 yards, they would both be a yard from their optimum engagement ranges, and would both have no benefit or penalty. At one yard, the Guardsman's knife is at its optimum range (+10), but the sword is two yards from its ideal distance (-10).

While the Guardsman will have to work to get close in the first place (so there will still be some advantage to having the higher reach), if he can, the Inquisitor's large blade will actually be difficult to use.

Handling it this way allows the exception of Up-close to be removed (as it becomes an inherent part of the rules that shorter weapons work better closer in - although I intend to include some grappling options for characters in base contact), avoids a high Reach basically just being a hit bonus and probably also allows the exception where Reach 4 weapons become improvised at less than arm's length to be removed**.
** I'm considering allowing a generic option where any weapon can be willingly used as an improvised weapon though - for example, attempting to bash someone with your sword's hilt if they get too close for you to swing the blade properly.

~~~~~

I'm also considering what might be a more radical idea. Defending in close combat is an opposed roll in IRE; this effectively makes the success of the attack a penalty to the defence (making a skilled opponent harder to defend against than a less competent one), which stacks the odds rather heavily against the defender.

So, what if a weapon's Parry Penalty now also applied when attacking? This would obviously need certain weapon profiles to be tweaked, but it would make things a little less weighted against the defender, and would also increase the depth possible with the weapon profile.
As many characters very often opt to dodge, the stat often doesn't mean much at the moment, but this way, the damage of chain or power swords would be slightly countered by them being harder to wield.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on March 14, 2016, 09:21:27 PM
That looks pretty good - I'd like to say I'll try to playtest this, but I don't see see myself getting in a game any time soon :(

Do you think that maybe a weapon profile should have separate 'attack penalty' and 'parry penalty' stats for extra granularity, or would that be too much?

I suppose melee weapons could use a redesign of their stats anyway, to give them traits like Rending, Tearing, Trivial etc. (I think you may have once mentioned that you didn't want to force the RIA into IRE, but to be honest I think it would actually be good to include the special traits - just not listing all the innumerable variations of weapons).

Power Weapons - Heavy AP, plus the current weapon-destroying property.
Chain Weapons - Rending and/or Tearing - both seem appropriate, but one is probably enough.
Mono Weapons - Light AP, plus cause Bleeding (?)
Shock Weapons - Trivial, maybe? It would fit with the style of incapacitating people without causing (heavy) damage.




How is the current state of reactions, in your mind?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 15, 2016, 01:54:33 AM
Quote from: Adeptus Noob on March 14, 2016, 09:21:27 PMDo you think that maybe a weapon profile should have separate 'attack penalty' and 'parry penalty' stats for extra granularity, or would that be too much?
It would work fine mechanically (and I see no reason players couldn't write weapons that way), but at the moment I'm trying to keep things reasonably compatible with 1st edition character sheets.

There aren't a lot of weapons that really need a distinction between their attack and defence, so I think I'd keep the basic format and instead introduce something like the "Balanced" and "Unwieldy" traits from Dark Heresy to be used on the weapons that need it.

QuoteI think you may have once mentioned that you didn't want to force the RIA into IRE, but to be honest I think it would actually be good to include the special traits - just not listing all the innumerable variations of weapons.
I definitely plan on including things like Rending, Tearing and the like in the injuries section (they've been fairly well received) although I don't know to exactly what extent they'll get used.

Some of the possible melee attacks use them, but I'll have to see exactly what happens when I finish boiling everything down.

QuoteHow is the current state of reactions, in your mind?
It's looking quite good, as I'm managing to iron out of most of the wrinkles and screw down a lot of the terminology and descriptions.

- Action/reaction order is a lot less wishy-washy now; Reactions follow the action that triggers them, unless they're described as "Defensive", which means it makes a simultaneous and opposed roll-off. (This is for things like parrying and dodging)

- Being aware of a reaction automatically allows a character to attempt to change their declared actions. (It's not a good idea to rely on this though, as failing the initiative test ends their turn).

- I've also now described certain actions as "Passive", meaning they never trigger reactions. This covers things like Pause for Breath and recovering from pinning, to avoid reactions being triggered when a character isn't really doing anything.
(Making sure they can never trigger reactions is to avoid discouraging the use of PfB - it's something that should be being used to help account for unexpected things happening, not the cause of unexpected things! And it'd usually be a weak excuse for a reaction anyway.)

- And the concept of the Engaged state seems to have merit. I need to check all the specifics of how it works in multiple combats and there are a couple of possible exploits to deal with, but it does seem to work with the more fluid approach I want for melee.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Van Helser on March 15, 2016, 10:18:59 AM
I can get behind the idea of specifying the range between hand to hand combatants, and it certainly would add more to the usual choice of actions being "attack, attack, attack, attack".  It could now go "charge, close, attack, close;" where a charge takes you to 3 yards, and each close action narrows by a yard. A successful dodge by the defender could take them back a yard, should they choose.

I think that making parry/dodge rolls with a negative modifier based on the attackers pass would make for many more decisive combats. This is a good thing in my eyes, as currently combats can roll on for ages, and it's infuriating when your swordsman can't dispose of a goon. Tempering it slightly with a negative modifier based on how easy it is to wield the weapon isn't such a bad idea. A fencing expert should not be able to use an eviscerator as deftly as a rapier.

Ruaridh
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 15, 2016, 02:16:14 PM
Quote from: Van Helser on March 15, 2016, 10:18:59 AMI can get behind the idea of specifying the range between hand to hand combatants, and it certainly would add more to the usual choice of actions being "attack, attack, attack, attack".
I hope so. The fact I've heard multiple players at the table actually go "Attack, attack, attack" shows that the current system fails at making melee into an interplay of action and reaction (even though that's what its chopped up turn structure is supposed to support). Things are just so weighted in favour of attacking, with the benefits of manoeuvring being too small in comparison to incessantly wearing down an opponent's parry chance.

Specifying the range is a fairly fundamental part of changing that, I feel, as it establishes an importance on positioning that's not really there at the moment. I may have to wrangle the exact modifiers after some play-testing and there's some stuff to do with regard to the rules for how characters position themselves (as opposed to just why they would want to), but I feel the concept is coming together.

Quotecurrently combats can roll on for ages, and it's infuriating when your swordsman can't dispose of a goon.
I don't want close combats to be too decisive, as the defensive character should at least have a reasonable chance of surviving until his own turn and getting a chance to attack back, but I want to change some of the balance around WS.

For example, the current WS halving means that after a couple of parries, there's very little difference between an expert WS 80 character and a more moderately skilled WS 60 character. Also, as you can only currently parry (and thus counter-attack) attacks that hit, that WS 80 expert apparently leaves twice as many holes in their attack as a WS 40 numpty!

However, a WS 80 character is almost impervious to the first hit in a turn, regardless of how skilled their opponent is. Any attacker who rolls only one action is likely to do nothing with their turn, which is part of the problem you talk about.

I hope to address all this, shifting high WS characters towards being more dangerous, but more vulnerable. (Although I am looking at lifting the concept of "stances" from Ynek's close combat rules; not all characters will be able to use stances at all and characters will only normally be trained in specific styles, but this will allow some characters options like being more or less aggressive).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Holiad on March 15, 2016, 08:56:16 PM
I've found that one of the big problems with the inq1 close combat rules is that, at +20% and no penalties, the dodge action is far too easy, particularly on the first attack.  The big problem being, it marginalises any character with a low or average speed in close combat-to be a credible threat you need to be able to inflict three or four hits. An entire character archetype of slow-but-powerful melee fighters is rendered ineffective.
The penalty on parry rolls based on the original attack roll worked well on addressing this problem in Precinctomega's original Inq2 rules, combined with reworking dodge as simply ignoring penalties, with no additional bonus.
Another thing I liked was that reach modifiers were capped at 10%, preventing excessive bonuses, although I also like the concept of an ideal fighting distance. I think probably these two rules would work well in combination, so you got 10% for being at a favoured distance, but didn't, as you currently can, get an excessive boost like 30% for having a superior weapon. 20/30% ends up as a bit too much, especially when combined with a high basic WS.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 16, 2016, 12:52:45 AM
I'd say that's all a fair assessment.

I want to keep dodge in at least some way - it gives low WS characters a chance to not get minced immediately, and having the distinction between dodging and parrying introduces some of the little variety that does show up in the current system - but I'd agree that it's too effective at the moment.
As you say, opposed rolls definitely have an effect on this, but I'll need to put together a reasonably full set of melee rules and run some sample combats to see what modifiers I think dodge should be using.

In the LRB, Dodge only ignores parry penalty, but I might also have it ignore reach and maybe some positioning modifiers in order to produce a more variable set of benefits/drawbacks compared to parrying.
(For example, the benefits of parry vs. dodge would then change depending on whether you were at a good engagement distance or a bad one, rather than just being a static difference of 20 plus whatever parry penalty).

I don't think ignoring more modifiers would be complicated to handle, but it does add a variety that would encourage characters to not always react in exactly the same ways.

~~~~~

When it comes to reach bonuses, that's largely what I have in mind: +10 for being at optimum distance (rounding to the nearest yard), +0 for being a yard from optimum, -10 for being two yards from optimum, and -20 for being three yards or more from optimum.
That said, I may scrap the last one, depending on how it looks like all the possible modifiers stack up.

Even if it does stretch to -20, the modifiers still measure up at essentially half what they'd be than in the original rules. At 4 yards, a reach 4 spear versus a reach 1 knife would be +10 for the spear and -20 for the knife (a total difference of 30), rather than the +30 and -30 (a total difference of 60) the LRB would inflict.
(And, the knife has an opportunity to turn it around by getting closer in, so it's no longer a clear-cut advantage for the spear).

I'll have to look at the positioning rules to make sure it's neither too easy or too hard to out-manoeuvre your opponent, but I think those modifiers sound about right to be a reasonable (but not dominating) incentive to vie for good positioning.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on March 16, 2016, 04:06:50 AM
I really like where you're heading with this. I will definitely try out the distance modifier rules.

This may be a bit much, but I'm wondering if you don't want to set some limits on effective distances. For instance, at 3 meters inside the optimal distance a weapon must be used as improvised (a reach 4 weapon at 1 or 0) and at 3 meters outside the effective distance you can only dodge (reach 0 weapon at 3, reach 1 weapon at 4). This also opens the door for some interesting special abilities (the fighter is always considered at their optimal distance w/ hand to hand combat). Possibly over-complicating things, but the idea just struck me.

For the stacking penalties, I love applying the margin of success against the defender's roll. Taking that into account, should it be a flat -10% to the defender for each subsequent roll as opposed to halving every time? Halving is a strange mechanic, and makes almost any sane player opt to dodge after a couple tries.

Also, as far as movement goes, are you proposing to keep that as-is? I think it would be interesting to play around with that a bit. Perhaps a successful hit allows the attacker an inch of free movement, whereas a successful parry allows the defender the same privilege. My thinking on this is very preliminary, I'm trying to think of ideas that would give fighting a bit more motion to it without making a player seem foolish for opting to move rather than attack. Your proposal in regards to reach bonuses is getting there, I just wanted to see your thoughts on this. 

A comment on the Parry Penalty proposal (having it count against both attacking and defending). I like the idea of it but I'm definitely intrigued at the idea of having a Parry Penalty and Attack Penalty separately. I picture a chainsword being heavy and cumbersome, but it may react quite differently in terms of ease of attack versus ease of parrying a blow. While it's definitely more difficult than a regular sword in either situation, but I'd imagine the parry penalty would be higher than the attack penalty. More something to think about for the future, I'm in no rush to make a change that would necessitate a change to the current rule sheet. 
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 16, 2016, 04:45:21 PM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on March 16, 2016, 04:06:50 AMThis may be a bit much, but I'm wondering if you don't want to set some limits on effective distances.
I don't know that it needs hard limits.

I'm currently thinking about allowing most weapons to be used as improvised should the character wish (as earlier suggested, bashing someone with a sword pommel if they get too close) and making Dodge ignore reach modifiers; Under more extreme reach circumstances, these options are likely to become more reliable.

At 1 yard, a Power Halberd would be at -40 (-20 for being three yards from optimum and -20 PP). In comparison, using it as an improvised weapon would be at -10 (+10 for optimum range, plus -20 PP*), or dodging (assuming it ignores all these modifiers) would be at +0.
*Depending on which version of the PP given in the rules you believe. In some places it's quoted as -20, others at -30.

This could be interesting in combat, making a character choose between trying to whack his opponent with the haft of his halberd, or somehow contort so that he can attack with the energised blade.
(And it's not an easy decision. A -40 penalty is quite significant when you also have to beat your opponent's roll).

QuoteThis also opens the door for some interesting special abilities (the fighter is always considered at their optimal distance w/ hand to hand combat).
Something like this could work well for a "Weaponmaster" special ability. Usually, that kind of rule has usually gone for a +/- 1 reach approach, but either what you've said or ignoring any reach penalties (penalties specifically, they could still benefit from the bonus) with their chosen weapon.

Blademaster could be similar, but with a few knife specific bonuses.

QuoteTaking that into account, should it be a flat -10% to the defender for each subsequent roll as opposed to halving every time?
Other than that IRE avoids the % convention for modifiers (due to it being potentially confusing), that's pretty much what I already have.
(The main exception is that characters can still spend any conventional Reserved reactions independently of this penalty).

This does however assume I keep subsequent parry modifiers at all, which I'm currently in two minds about.

QuoteAlso, as far as movement goes, are you proposing to keep that as-is? I think it would be interesting to play around with that a bit. Perhaps a successful hit allows the attacker an inch of free movement, whereas a successful parry allows the defender the same privilege.
A similar suggestion came up before (possibly from Adeptus Noob?) about successful attacks allowing the character to manoeuvre the combat.

Your version might be simpler to implement. Any success (perhaps regardless of whether or not the opponent beats it) on an attack or parry could allow the character a yard of movement.
It might have to be ignored occasionally; one of the actions I've got in mind is specific "manoeuvre" option (where, for example, a character tries to back his opponent into a corner**, off the edge of a roof or the like) which doesn't really want more movement stacked on top, but we'll see.

**As I'm currently writing it, an opponent who can't make a full dodge move will take a penalty to his attempt. I want melee to interact with the terrain a lot more. A fight in a tunnel should be different to one in an open courtyard.
(I also expect to see cover taking a role in melee - characters to trying to hide behind stone columns and the like).

QuoteI'm definitely intrigued at the idea of having a Parry Penalty and Attack Penalty separately.
Well, as said, it's certainly possible. Having thought it over, I'm seeing more arguments for it, so I may go with the idea and drop in a footnote to use the Parry Penalty instead if that's all the weapon has.

Something like the difference between an armoured gauntlet and a knuckleduster probably merits the difference. They'll probably be similarly accurate at hitting things (both being for punching!), but the armoured gauntlet should clearly be much more effective at fending off blows.

There could also be some mechanics regarding counter-attacking, if the counter-attack depended on beating your weapon's attack penalty. Weapons that are very good at parrying, but not so good at exploiting an opponent's openings. (For example, shields already have a penalty to counter-attacking).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on March 18, 2016, 10:21:49 AM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 16, 2016, 04:45:21 PM
(possibly from Adeptus Noob?)

Yup, that was me.


I actually like the 'any success, regardless of whether or not the opponent beats it' idea. Characters in movie swordfights spend a lot of time moving around even without hitting anything but each others' swords.

Otherwise, I don't think I have much to offer on the subject of close combat - I have little experience with it that I can remember*, and thus hold no strong opinions on it.

*Which is a very bad sign - either close combat has rarely been worth getting into for my characters (thus causing there to be few combats to remember), or all combats have been bland, unmemorable affairs (thus causing me to not remember them.)
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 20, 2016, 02:19:20 AM
Quote from: Adeptus Noob on March 18, 2016, 10:21:49 AM*Which is a very bad sign - either close combat has rarely been worth getting into for my characters (thus causing there to be few combats to remember), or all combats have been bland, unmemorable affairs (thus causing me to not remember them.)
I have certain combats that do come to mind, but they usually involve either fights finished with brutal critical hits or extenuating circumstances that had little to do with the combat system, such as duelling under the wing of a Valkyrie or actually playing both characters in the combat (the GM gave me control of an NPC and made it clear he was a conniving little turd; after I'd had him causing various carnage, Silva decided she'd had enough and kicked the snot out of him).

~~~~~

Anyway, a couple more thoughts I've been playing around with:

- More potential to use guns in close combat. If a character gets charged while holding a lasgun, is his only thought really going to be to try and club his attacker with it?

That's not to say they should be particularly good, but I don't see why a character can't try blasting his opponent at point blank. The possibility of an Attack Penalty potentially opens this up quite well, the attack modifier for a gun could start with an idea as simple as the weight of the weapon, inherently making pistols easier to use in melee than assault rifles.

- Height modifiers. They are at present fairly simple, but not necessarily accurate. A higher position, while quite good offensively, is harder to defend from. (Your legs are harder to defend than your torso, given they're more out of the way. On even terrain, this isn't normally a concern, as your opponent also finds them harder to strike, but when you're at a higher level, that changes).

Whether or not I change things to reflect this... I don't know. I want characters to be fighting for position, and I'll need to think about whether the various incentive options are going to make them do that or just result in one character hogging a position for the whole fight.


Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on March 22, 2016, 02:42:34 AM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 20, 2016, 02:19:20 AM

- More potential to use guns in close combat. If a character gets charged while holding a lasgun, is his only thought really going to be to try and club his attacker with it?

Yes please, I totally agree with this.

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 20, 2016, 02:19:20 AM
- Height modifiers. They are at present fairly simple, but not necessarily accurate.

It's granular, but makes sense. Attacking from high ground offers some potentially huge advantages (given how much more likely you are to get a head shot) but acknowledging the fact that it's much harder to dodge the counter makes a lot of sense.

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 20, 2016, 02:19:20 AM
Whether or not I change things to reflect this... I don't know. I want characters to be fighting for position, and I'll need to think about whether the various incentive options are going to make them do that or just result in one character hogging a position for the whole fight.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and take your quote slightly out of context (but within the frame of its spirit) to get your thoughts on an idea I've been toying with (can't remember if I posted it recently or not). What do you think about having movement coupled with attack actions? It keeps things flowing and allows for more drama, especially among equally talented fighters. At the moment if two high WS fighters go at it there's a decent chance of one attacking, one blocking, and that being it (or if they're both talented enough, parries and counter-parries are made). What if the high-scorer got to dictate some of the movement within the close combat, even if no damage was dealt? So the attacker succeeds by a margin of 50 whereas the defender succeeds by a margin of 40. So the attacker gets to move two inches (or perhaps they have a choice of moving themselves one inch and their opponent one inch?). The idea would be that even if no one is getting hit there will be lots of motion and someone will be holding the advantage.

This could potentially be too powerful under the current "defender halves WS every attack" dynamic, but if that is tweaked it could work. I'm aware that the mechanics of what I'm proposing aren't perfect but I wanted to get feedback on the spirit of what I'm suggesting and whether you think there's a way to implement it. Rather than trying to get players to opt to move rather than attack this provides some drama even when attacks aren't successful. 
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on March 24, 2016, 02:01:53 AM
You know, I just had this thought. If dodging (IE jumping straight back 2 inches) takes you beyond the 4 inch combat range, should that then mean the your opponent's next action is by definition a charge? Maybe this has always been implied and everyone has been playing this way except me, but it strikes me that opening yourself up to a charge makes dodging a much riskier proposition. That may make it the favorite choice of cowards as a final action though (I mean it's the smart thing to do), though I suppose that isn't really a departure from the current situation.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 24, 2016, 04:10:06 AM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on March 22, 2016, 02:42:34 AMSo I'm just gonna go ahead and take your quote slightly out of context (but within the frame of its spirit) to get your thoughts on an idea I've been toying with (can't remember if I posted it recently or not).
What do you think about having movement coupled with attack actions?
You did make a similar suggestion in your previous post.

I've currently adapted that into the idea that a successful attack or defence allows the the character some movement. That'd be even if the roll was beaten in an opposed roll, but the winner of the roll would get to decide who moves first.

Exactly how much movement that would be is something I'd need to balance. I had originally thought one yard moves, but I think then a short weapon would have too hard a time of actually closing in.

For example, if a sword wielder and knife wielder character both had a 50% chance of succeeding on their roll (for this, we'll assume the modifiers aren't changing), we have four 25% chances:
- Both pass: Knife tries to close, sword backs off to maintain distance. No change.
- Both fail: No change
- Knife passes, sword fails: Knife gets to close in.
- Sword passes, Knife fails: Sword moves to optimum distance (if not already at it).

It's an example of a mathematical random walk; If considered independently of other factors (like the fight ending, either character getting injured or someone running out of space to back into) it can be modelled as a Markov chain, and show that if the knife wielder needed to close in twice to get to optimum range, it'd take him about eight and a half actions on average. (Or a little over six if we consider his chances improving at 2 yards).
This is all assuming I haven't messed up the sums. Matrices are not my favourite maths.

That seems too much, so one yard seems a bit too stingy, although two yards might potentially lead to a fight moving too much. (And one and a half just messes with the distance system!)

QuoteRather than trying to get players to opt to move rather than attack this provides some drama even when attacks aren't successful.
Balancing the manoeuvres (a word I seem to be getting slightly better at spelling) is going to be interesting, but I think part of it will be allowing a character to negate his opponent's chance to react to the movement - that is, the opposed rolls will cancel here.

Quote from: Alyster Wick on March 24, 2016, 02:01:53 AM
If dodging (IE jumping straight back 2 inches) takes you beyond the 4 inch combat range, should that then mean the your opponent's next action is by definition a charge?
At present, when at arm's length, you dodge side-to-side, and I'm currently working on the same assumption that dodges won't let a character move beyond combat range. I'm taking combat range to be slightly abstract,

Charging is however proving a challenging question. As positioning is becoming more important, I've got to nail down ways to stop a knife wielder just charging straight in to one yard and bypassing that mechanic entirely.
Currently, I'm looking at providing either an attack penalty or a defensive bonus for pushing past your opponent's optimum range. (Much like charging a wall of pikemen is a good way to get impaled).

I will add that, unlike the LRB, IRE doesn't make charging a pre-requisite of starting a combat. Nor, in fact, entering IRE's Engaged state, although as the Engaged state is essentially a voluntary version of the LRB's melee structure (declare actions one at a time, react to opponent, unaware of events outside of combat), you'd be at something of a disadvantage.

~~~~~

Anyway, I'm trying to think about some of the basic combat actions I need to get in here. These are the things I've currently got on my list:

- Standard Attack. Obviously. You already get the basics of this.
There may be variants that let characters aim for weak spots in armour or otherwise try for specific damage, but they're fundamentally all about injuring your opponent.

- Disarm. Character tries to knock their opponent's weapon from their hand.

- Grapple. Character tries to grab their opponent. Exactly how complex this will be, I don't know. I'm inclined to keep it basic and let the GM adjudicate the many possibilities, because the grapple systems in some games are an entire ruleset unto themselves!

- Stagger. Character attempts to knockback or down their opponent. This may end up based or partially based around unarmed attacks, giving characters more of an excuse to throw in an occasional kick or punch into a fight.
(While not necessarily realistic, it's common enough in the action movies that Inquisitor is emulating. To quote Mystery Men: "How many weapons do you wield?" "Just one, Sphinx" "No. The fist, the knee, the elbow, the head! You must lash out with every limb, like the octopus who plays the drums.")

- Feint. Character tries to mislead his opponent. Depending on what I come up with, I may make this available for all characters, but those with the skill will be better at it.

- Fire weapon. Using guns in close combat. Not likely to be efficient, but it should be allowed.

- Flanking. The character tries to out-foot his opponent.

- Manoeuvre. The character tries to force his opponent to move (backing him into a corner, off a roof, into traffic).

- Combat stances. Representing different fighting techniques. (Akin to styles of Kung Fu and the like).

- Plus parrying, dodging, footwork, anything I think is needed as a reaction to the above.


If there's any other fairly fundamental combat actions anyone thinks should be part of the basic rules, tell me!
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Alyster Wick on March 24, 2016, 01:29:50 PM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 24, 2016, 04:10:06 AM
At present, when at arm's length, you dodge side-to-side, and I'm currently working on the same assumption that dodges won't let a character move beyond combat range. I'm taking combat range to be slightly abstract,

The downside of me spending infinitely more time writing about this game than playing it is that I sometimes flub fundamental details like this :(

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 24, 2016, 04:10:06 AM
Charging is however proving a challenging question. As positioning is becoming more important, I've got to nail down ways to stop a knife wielder just charging straight in to one yard and bypassing that mechanic entirely.
Currently, I'm looking at providing either an attack penalty or a defensive bonus for pushing past your opponent's optimum range. (Much like charging a wall of pikemen is a good way to get impaled).

I will add that, unlike the LRB, IRE doesn't make charging a pre-requisite of starting a combat. Nor, in fact, entering IRE's Engaged state, although as the Engaged state is essentially a voluntary version of the LRB's melee structure (declare actions one at a time, react to opponent, unaware of events outside of combat), you'd be at something of a disadvantage.

As far as the flow of the charge, if the charger's optimal range is greater than or equal to the person they are charging, things proceed per the rulebook (or if they prefer to stop at a range greater than or equal to their opponent's).

If the charger opts to charge inside of their opponent's optimal range, I have two thoughts. The first is an opposed Initiative role, with the defender getting +10 per difference in Reach of their weapons (IE a reach 3 sword vs reach 1 knife means the attacker gets +20. This bonus occurs regardless of the ultimate range the person is trying to reach. So the Attacker wielding a knife could be trying to get to any range between 2 inches and base-to-base, but the +20 will still be given to the Defender). In this scenario, if the Defender wins, the Attacker must stop at the Defender's optimal range. If the Attacker wins, they close to their preferred range and combat continues.

The second option is that the Attacker automatically closes to their preferred range but the Defender's first counter attack goes off as if it were at the Defender's optimal range. This is perhaps a poor attempt to simulate the Attacker diving within the reach of a longer weapon and the Defender having a better opportunity to defend. Whoever gets the better of this first exchange dictates where the Attacker stops (with the straight line of their charge).

As I write this, I'm inclined to go with option 1. I suppose you could tweak it to be WS rather than Initiative based on taste. I really do like it though as I think it does a better job of giving a distinct advantage to Reach 4 weapons. The current rules make halbreds and spears kind of lame, whereas this would make charging a pikeman a very risky proposition if you're carrying a knife.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 25, 2016, 02:20:11 AM
Quote from: Alyster Wick on March 24, 2016, 01:29:50 PMThe downside of me spending infinitely more time writing about this game than playing it is that I sometimes flub fundamental details like this :(
... and it seems the downside of me writing at three in the morning is I don't finish all my sentences.

My point about combat range being abstract is that a defined limit to "combat distance" may sometimes mean that positioning has to be representative rather than necessarily realistic. However, it seems somewhat necessary in order to avoid the powerful "Engaged" state being exploitable at longer ranges.

QuoteAs I write this, I'm inclined to go with option 1.
My favoured option at the moment is roughly a combination of both.

The attacker automatically closes to whatever distance, but a charge allows the defender to pick any point during said move as their engagement range, and gives them a bonus if they have the longer weapon.

The specifics aren't yet nailed down, but I'd like to keep it as part of the same roll if possible, just to keep the speed of play going.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 21, 2016, 01:44:46 AM
Although it's been a while since my last forum post, IRE has not at all been forgotten - I'm still trying to push towards a complete beta ruleset, in the hope that a playtest day can be held at Dark Sphere sometime in the not too distant future.

~~~~~

System Shock is something I discussed before, and I've been sitting on the IRE rules text for a while:

QuoteSystem Shock
A character suffering a lot of damage at once will often pass out simply due to pain and shock. This is known as System Shock, and is one of the most common reasons a character will go out of action.

A character who takes 10 or more damage from one hit (after armour, etc) must pass a Toughness test or be taken out of action for the remainder of the game.
Characters may also be called upon to take System Shock tests or automatically suffer System Shock as a result of particularly traumatic location injury.

There are also higher levels of system shock, representing more major injuries:
Level 2 system shock is caused by taking 15 or more damage from one hit, and requires that they take an additional System Shock test (over the basic test required.)
Level 3 system shock is caused by taking 20 or more damage from one hit, adding a further System Shock test (over that for levels 1 and 2).

A character who is in good health is less likely to suffer System Shock than one who is already heavily injured. If a character's prior Injury total (i.e. before adding the current hit) is equal or less than his System Shock Value (equal to one fifth of his Toughness value - see the Characteristics section), then he gains a +20 bonus to his Toughness test.

QuoteGamesmaster's Note:
Some characters may have special rules that increase their System Shock values. In addition to increasing their System Shock value, this also increases the thresholds for System Shock tests.
- Characters that are noted to increase their System Shock threshold by half treat the damage thresholds as 5 points higher (meaning that L1, L2 & L3 System shock are caused at 15, 20 and 25 points respectively).
- Characters that are noted to double their System Shock threshold treat the damage thresholds as 10 points higher (meaning that L1, L2 & L3 System shock are caused at 20, 25 and 30 points respectively).
As said before, this is intended to even out System Shock a little. It should remove the near-immunity that high toughness characters have had, as almost everyone now tests at 10 points of damage (although tough characters will still be much more likely to pass the test), but also give low toughness characters at least a moderate chance of not getting knocked out by one hit.

And with levels of system shock, a serious hit is now also actually a serious hit. Staying conscious if hit with a plasma gun will be a tougher feat than if hit by a stub pistol.

Playtesting may show that the thresholds need tweaking, but we'll see.

~~~~~

I'm also looking at updating the injury charts.

First thing is that IRE plans to make injury levels cumulative. I, and quite a lot of others, already play this way (to the point it had mostly slipped my mind that he rulebook says that only the current injury level applies).

As the original rules are written, an Acute chest wound has a persistent penalty of just -1 speed and Bleeding, but a Heavy wound to both legs would be -2 speed. Now, to me, it just makes sense that "serious fractures, dislocations, vicious exit wounds and extensive muscle damage" to a character's heart, lungs and spine should probably be quite a bit nastier than cuts and sprains, even if they are to both legs.

With that change in mind, and also the fact that Speed penalties will be a bit meaner in IRE (as IRE uses 3+ action rolls), I may actually pull a few results off the injury tables.

These are the main changes I've got ear-marked:

- Exchange the -1 Speed penalty for a heavy leg injury for "Fall prone". (The speed penalty will probably be retained for higher injury levels).
- Dropping some of the "lighter" stunned results to 1 turn (or maybe D3-1 turns) rather than D3 turns. (As taking two injury levels and being stunned for 2D3 turns isn't that fun).
- Swapping some of the system shock results for different levels of System shock tests.
- Possibly injury total penalties for all levels of groin hits. (Partly because I'm considering reducing the severity of the stunning for heavy injury)

~~~~~

And here's a passage I've been writing to put into the Awareness section:

QuoteDegrees of Awareness
Awareness is not a completely binary matter, and there are a huge number of ways in which a character can be partially informed. It is easiest to explain this concept through an example:

QuoteAt the start of the game, Inquisitor Shyloque has no idea that Enforcer Barbaretta is in the area, and is therefore completely unaware of her presence. While his general paranoia (an Inquisitor doesn't live long if not wary) may cause him to act cautiously at any time, he won't be able to take any action that would be intentionally be acting against her.

Later on, Shyloque hears the sound of Barbaretta's footsteps on metal decking. He now becomes aware that someone is in the area and has a reasonable idea of her location, but will not know who she is or much about what she is doing. He can reasonably infer she is probably walking around, and also that she is probably not having a chainsword duel (as he'd have heard that!), but won't know more than he could have worked out by listening. He now knows that someone else is in the area, and can act accordingly.

Shortly afterwards, Shyloque moves into an open area, where Barbaretta is standing a few yards directly in front of him. As he can clearly see her, he is now fully aware of where she is, what she is doing and "who" she is.

However, as soon as she finds an opportunity, Barbaretta runs around a corner. Now Shyloque can't see her, he is no longer aware of her exact location or actions. However, he will remain aware of anything  he has previously seen Barbaretta do. This includes which direction he saw her run off in, thus allowing him to attempt pursuit.

The rules will occasionally force a character to be or become unaware. In these circumstances, the character is unable to become aware of any new information (as limited by the given rule) but, as in the above example, will continue to remember any information he was previously aware of.

For a common example, the Engaged state forces a character to focus on their immediate surroundings. Should, before Barbaretta have run off, Shyloque have become Engaged in a melee with Sgt Stone then, with his attention fully on that fight, Shyloque would have been too busy to have seen which direction Barbaretta had departed in.

The GM should apply common sense to these cases. Shyloque may knock Sgt Stone back out of the normal Engaged area, but in this case his attention will probably remain on the Sergeant. Also, should something dramatic happen (such as someone flying/crashing a Valkyrie into a nearby building, or an entire ammo dump exploding just behind him), he will probably notice!
It's not introducing any actual change in the rules and it's the kind of thing veteran players are fluent in - but with Awareness being a very important concept in the rules, I thought the concept of how aware a character was could do with a little elaboration.

I'm quite happy with the definition of being unaware of someone as "you don't know what they're doing now"; even for me, being able to state it in clear terms is quite helpful.

Quote from: Alyster Wick on April 08, 2016, 11:44:04 PMAdding + and - categories to Reach.
Also, I've nicked this (or at least my version of this) from Alyster's CCW discussion. As integrated into IRE, weapons with a Plus reach double their ideal range bonus, but weapons with a Minus reach lose their ideal range bonus.

As I said over in his thread a couple of months back, I think the original close combat weapon profile is quite limiting (excluding special rules, CCWs have just three stats, one of which can only vary from 0-4); expanding the profile will hopefully make weapons play more differently, and therefore lead to more varied close combats and strategies.

For example, a character might have a Reach 2 short sword. Hence, he would therefore normally prefer to fight at his optimum 2 yard range. However, unlike in the current rules, facing off against a Reach 2+ axe or a Reach 3 sword will be strategically very different for him.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on April 21, 2016, 09:20:39 AM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 15, 2016, 02:16:14 PM
Quote from: Van Helser on March 15, 2016, 10:18:59 AMI can get behind the idea of specifying the range between hand to hand combatants, and it certainly would add more to the usual choice of actions being "attack, attack, attack, attack".
I hope so. The fact I've heard multiple players at the table actually go "Attack, attack, attack" shows that the current system fails at making melee into an interplay of action and reaction (even though that's what its chopped up turn structure is supposed to support). Things are just so weighted in favour of attacking, with the benefits of manoeuvring being too small in comparison to incessantly wearing down an opponent's parry chance.

Specifying the range is a fairly fundamental part of changing that, I feel, as it establishes an importance on positioning that's not really there at the moment. I may have to wrangle the exact modifiers after some play-testing and there's some stuff to do with regard to the rules for how characters position themselves (as opposed to just why they would want to), but I feel the concept is coming together.

Quotecurrently combats can roll on for ages, and it's infuriating when your swordsman can't dispose of a goon.
I don't want close combats to be too decisive, as the defensive character should at least have a reasonable chance of surviving until his own turn and getting a chance to attack back, but I want to change some of the balance around WS.

For example, the current WS halving means that after a couple of parries, there's very little difference between an expert WS 80 character and a more moderately skilled WS 60 character. Also, as you can only currently parry (and thus counter-attack) attacks that hit, that WS 80 expert apparently leaves twice as many holes in their attack as a WS 40 numpty!

However, a WS 80 character is almost impervious to the first hit in a turn, regardless of how skilled their opponent is. Any attacker who rolls only one action is likely to do nothing with their turn, which is part of the problem you talk about.

I hope to address all this, shifting high WS characters towards being more dangerous, but more vulnerable. (Although I am looking at lifting the concept of "stances" from Ynek's close combat rules; not all characters will be able to use stances at all and characters will only normally be trained in specific styles, but this will allow some characters options like being more or less aggressive).

I don't seem to have posted any thoughts on this, so here we go:

The main problem seems to be that the best thing to do in combat is just use the base attack with as many actions as possible, as this essentially gives you the best chance of success. This is because, with the current dodge rules, even low WS characters are often virtually immune to the first attack and so wasting actions circling etc. is seen as counterproductive as it only gives you -20% to the parry roll and so merely cancels out the dodge bonus.

The second problem is the halving of WS for each subsequent dodge/parry, this means that even for a high WS character there is rarely any point to trying to parry (and thus counterattack) after the first round. It also quickly reduces said character to the lvl of an unskilled grunt. The result of this is that getting 4-5 actions in a close combat turn will probably result in your traget being killed, while just rolling one action is unlikely to even kill the weakest of grunts. This also doesn't make a lot of sense as the defender gets tired/sloppy but the attacker doesn't?

In my opinion it needs to be made much more important to gain advantageous positioning i.e being to the side or behind the target or being higher up than the target, while also making parrying more attractive to get the more cinematic attacks and counterattacks (with even another counterattack back, which did happen to me once and was rather cool). To do this I would suggest the following:

1.Increase the penalties for turning to parry to -30 for <90degrees and -50 for >90degrees (It's currently -20 and -40)
2.Being on lower ground should give -10% (this seems to be an omission to me as the defender being higher gives +10) - i'd like to see people jumping onto boxes or other scenery to gain an advantage.
3.Rework parry penalties on the various weapons, at the moment they're too punishing.
4.Possibly decrease the dodge bonus to +10 (I still think the dodge bonus is needed to prevent insta-death for low WS characters) - I'm not sure if this needed with the other changes, it might make dodging too weak.
5. Change the subsequent parry rules from 1/2 WS to -20% weapon skill - this would give high WS characters a greater advantage as befits their greater training.




I like some of your additional attack suggestions, but here are a couple more based on abilities I can recall from D&D:

Power Attack - Increased damage with a decreased chance to hit.
Critical Strike - Can add +50 to the location roll, with a decreased chance to hit.
Flurry - Multiple attacks on the same action, decreased chance to hit but with a decreased chance to dodge/parry as well.

obviously these would need to carefully balanced so that atack, attack, attack ism't just replaced with Flurry, Flurry, Flurry.




System shock.

The biggest problem I see with system shock is that allows no chance to recover unless you have true grit. I think rather than adding bonuses to the role it would be better to allow characters a chance to recover with a toughness test in the recovery phase. Other characters should be able to try and revive the character too. I like the idea of making it a straight 10 damage rather than based on toughness though.[/list][/list]
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 21, 2016, 01:40:39 PM
Quote from: Cortez on April 21, 2016, 09:20:39 AMTo do this I would suggest the following:
1.Increase the penalties for turning to parry to -30 for <90degrees and -50 for >90degrees (It's currently -20 and -40)
2.Being on lower ground should give -10% (this seems to be an omission to me as the defender being higher gives +10) - i'd like to see people jumping onto boxes or other scenery to gain an advantage.
3.Rework parry penalties on the various weapons, at the moment they're too punishing.
4.Possibly decrease the dodge bonus to +10 (I still think the dodge bonus is needed to prevent insta-death for low WS characters) - I'm not sure if this needed with the other changes, it might make dodging too weak.
5. Change the subsequent parry rules from 1/2 WS to -20% weapon skill - this would give high WS characters a greater advantage as befits their greater training.
1) I'm going to have to re-evaluate most penalties anyway. With IRE having parrying opposed by the original to hit roll, what any given value of modifier means will be changing quite significantly.

For example, if your parry needs to beat an opponent's hit margin of 20, that's massively harder if you're rolling under 30 than if you're rolling under 50, so even the same -20 flanking penalty would actually be "bigger" than it was before.

2) I think the "high ground" gets taken too literally in a lot of media.

In reality, the high ground is only a significant advantage on a large scale. You need a a lot of height, and preferably a big battle for it to prove significant.
If you control the top of a hill, you have long lines of sight (making it easier to shoot people as they attempt to close) and the enemy usually needs to come to you - meaning that the opposing army is slowed and worn out by having to climb the slope. It's also easier to ambush from the high ground, as you're naturally difficult to see from down below and your opponent's ability to escape the ambush (or find useful cover) is usually restricted.

In individual combat, not so much. The Mythbusters looked into it, and while they're not expert swordsmen, I would agree with their conclusions -  it's a more dominating position, but it's actually quite difficult to parry blows to your lower body (which your opponent now has easier access to).

I may keep some kind of bonus for the high ground. It's a game; exciting action is more important than realism and that kind of bonus would encourage characters to try and compete for position, but it needs to be done cautiously, as I want to minimise equilibria in close combat.

To explain: If jumping up on a box is an advantage for a character, I want there to also be reasons he might jump off. It's not interesting if he gets on a box and just stays there. That might just be as simple as being on a box makes him easier to outposition though (as, if he wants to stay on the box, he has a more limited range of motion).

3 & 4) I've not finalised any bonuses or penalties yet, but presently the plan is to reduce some of the harsher parry penalties and scrap the dodge bonus. However, dodging will ignore certain modifiers. Not just parry penalty as it currently does, but also Reach (which, as originally written, it does not) and possibly some of the others.

This will give dodging a less fixed relationship to parrying (as opposed to the currently fairly fixed difference of +20 plus whatever parry penalty) -  sometimes dodging will be massively better than parrying, but occasionally parrying may actually beat dodging.
But a character will have to fight for good positioning to make parrying optimal, and even if it does, his opponent then has a motivation to try and outmanoeuvre him. (The thing about making positioning more important is that it's not just about what's best for you, it's about what's worst for your opponent).

5) I'm already fairly set on a -10 penalty for successive melee reactions. Partly because of what I've already said under point #1 about the new "meaning" penalties will have under an opposed rolling system, but I also found in previous (unopposed) testing that -20 penalty was actually still pretty darn harsh! (I was looking into it as a house rule to make the maths easier).

QuotePower Attack - Increased damage with a decreased chance to hit.
Critical Strike - Can add +50 to the location roll, with a decreased chance to hit.
Flurry - Multiple attacks on the same action, decreased chance to hit but with a decreased chance to dodge/parry as well.
All fair ideas. As you say, they'll need some balancing, but I think they can be used.

QuoteThe biggest problem I see with system shock is that allows no chance to recover unless you have true grit.
I'm partially inclined to agree.

I can see a lot of arguments for allowing characters to re-enter the game - it would help avoid a player being put completely out of the game should a couple of his characters take unlucky hits, and it has the potential to be very dramatic if a character rejoins the fray at a crucial moment. (Although not quite the same circumstances, moments like "Big damn heroes, sir" or "You're all clear kid, now let's blow this thing and go home").

However, that's going to be a tough one to balance or avoid cluttering the gameplay. True Grit is a potentially very powerful ability. I definitely don't want all characters consistently getting up like that - firstly, it'd be kind of daft; secondly, it'd make True Grit a lot less special.

That said, introducing a low chance of recovery for out of action characters might have its merits.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 30, 2016, 01:13:16 AM
If anyone has any more thoughts on the above discussion about out of action characters having a slim chance of recovering, do feel free to chip in.

~~~~~

In the meantime though, blast weapons!

The concept of Area and Blast is manageable. Some weapons having up to blast 8 takes ages to resolve, but that's more of a problem with the weapon profiles than the basic rules. (And I've already been handling that with the RIA).

The change I've got earmarked is changing the scatter on a miss. Originally, it was D10 yards +1 for every 10 points or part failed by (with a cap of a quarter of the range to the target), but I think it's better as D3 yards + D3 for every degree of failure.

I feel the original modifier for the margin of failure is far too small compared to the range of values a D10 can throw up. A character can miss by a single point and have his grenade fly up to 11 yards wide*, or miss by 50 points and yet still land 6 yards of his target. (Which is still close enough for a super-frag warhead to still do damage).

*Admittedly though, there is the scattering restriction, so you'd only get this with the few characters who can throw grenades 44 yards or more, but the restriction itself is fairly daft. At 12 yards, no matter how badly the character rolls - he could need a negative target number and then roll something in the 90s -  a frag grenade cannot scatter more than three yards and thus will always score at least one hit.

Changing it to D3 yards for failure and each degree of failure means a narrow miss with a frag grenade will probably still do damage, but catastrophically missing with any weapon means it will almost certainly go very wide.
Putting more focus on the degree of failure allows the hard limit on scatter to be forgotten (as shots at longer distances are likely to miss by more) with no more than a note to the GM to adjudicate if anything really silly happens (which there already is, to be honest).

~~~~~

Part of the reason I'm thinking about this is to standardise indirect fire more. The rules for it have always been rather useless (almost every time I see people use grenades, they're throwing directly) and unnecessarily different. Once the degrees of failure are doing more to define how much a target is missed by, indirect fire can quite reasonably just be reduced to an additional to hit penalty.

Here's the current draft rules text:
QuoteSome blast weapons, such as thrown grenades or some grenade launchers, can angle their shots over or around intervening terrain. Such weapons are said to be capable of Indirect fire.

An indirect attack requires the character to declare a trajectory for the attack, such dropping a grenade through an air vent, throwing it over a building or bouncing it off a wall - as always, the GM should adjudicate if this is plausible.

Indirect fire is resolved as per a normal blast weapon (or thrown blast weapon) with an additional penalty decided by the gamesmaster to represent the difficulty of the shot (and any uncertainty in the target's position).

A relatively easy throw over a wall or around a door frame would require a penalty of -20.
Getting an attack through an open window or bouncing it off the side of a truck might be at -40.
A throw that requires ricocheting a grenade off a wall into a small thermal exhaust port could be -60 or more.

Note that indirect fire is linked fairly heavily with the principles mentioned in the Awareness section, and a GM should veto characters throwing grenades around corners without good reason.
The recommended penalties will be subject to revision, but the system should prove more usable than the original.

~~~~~

Psychic Powers.

On this, I'm borrowing from Koval's RIPPA as the core system, hence introducing Psy Rating - such that a psyker's power is not inherently the same thing as their control.

What I am having to do though is remove the Risky Action system, because that won't exist in IRE, due to extreme mathematical screwiness.

To explain, Risky Action percentages in 1st edition currently look like this:

1st Action  2nd Action  3rd Action  4th Action  5th Action  6th Action 
Speed 1   16.67%XXXXX
Speed 225.00%0.00%XXXX
Speed 329.63%11.11%0.00%XXX
Speed 432.48%19.75%7.90%0.00%XX
Speed 534.41%26.12%15.43%5.49%0.00%X
Speed 635.82%30.63%21.92%11.67%3.76%0.00%

The risk falls throughout the turn not because characters are less likely to reach later actions (this table accounts for that, and only counts the cases where the character rolls at least the necessary number of actions), but because every action you pass can't have rolled a 1 (but is more likely to be a 6).

Higher speed characters, despite apparently being more alert and agile, are also at higher risk. The statistics are because the more dice rolled, the more likely you are to roll a 1 - and while you are also more likely to roll a 6, the two things tend not to happen at the same time (after all, any die that's rolled 1 reduces your number of chances of rolling a 6) and thus won't cancel.

It also doesn't cope well with multiple risks in the same turn, and makes everything the same risk. (The only variation on this risk in the base rules is the Heroic ability, but the changed risk is still applied to the character rather than any actions).

To describe the system in one word: bonkers. And thus it's being gutted entirely and I'm replacing it with the Hazard system originally introduced in the RIA. (Whether it'll be called "Hazard" or "Risky" I'm not yet sure). For psychic powers, I intend to tie the Hazard to the Psy Rating the character is using (note a character will be permitted to use less than their full Psy Rating). Using more power from the warp should be more dangerous, after all.

There are parts of the RIPPA mechanics I will be leaving out of IRE though. That's not to say I think they're bad, but more that they're perhaps better left to an expansion. I'm leaving much of my own RIA material out of IRE for the same reason*.

I'm probably going to end up doing a fresh rewrite on the LRB psychic powers rather than stealing the RIPPA ones for that reason.

~~~~~

* I'm keeping the Hazards (for the above reasons) and at least some of the expanded damage rules - things like Rending & Tearing, although quite likely not all of them. Recoil, weapon jams, all but the most basic of the weapon and ammo types, all of that... that's going to stay in RIA.


Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 02, 2016, 12:12:56 AM
Having been skyping with Koval earlier, the subject of special abilities came up. Not every ability has been or will be update, of course, but there are some that are messy (for example, Catfall is mathematically something of a nuisance), and others where the IRE mechanics either invalidate them or provides a better option.

Lightning Reflexes (at least in its IGT version) is an example of something that can be done better in IRE, which has an integrated reaction system to base such an ability off. On the other hand, Heroic was an example of an ability (partly) invalidated by IRE. While it does improve a character's likely number of actions, the ability is probably most significant for averting Risky Actions (cutting the risk by on average about two-thirds), a system that's been replaced in IRE. As such, Heroic characters now get a chance to cancel one Hazardous roll per turn.

All the LRB special abilities have or will reappear (and, as said in the last post, all the LRB psychic powers) whether changed or not, but I've been expanding the list a bit. There's a lot of times players have written similar abilities, and standardising such things would help things at the table.

I'll have to appeal to people to list abilities they see often - although it's perhaps hard to believe, I can't remember every single Inquisitor character sheet I've ever seen off the top of my head.

So far I've got:
- Combat Stances: This is a skill group that can be used to represent different styles of melee combat (similar in concept to styles of Kung Fu: Tiger, Bear, Mantis, Dragon, etc).
- Bodyguard: New reaction options that can protect nearby characters. (The original version from the Boatswain article is a taboo subject around me).
- Marksman: Increased aim bonus
- Stealthy: Penalty to detect the character
- Just a Flesh Wound: An additional light injury level
- Iron Jaw: Toughness tests to resist stunning
- Feel no Pain: Increased resistance to system shock and unconsciousness, halve speed penalties from injury
- The various persuasion/threatening type abilities from PrecinctOmega's INQ2.0, as IRE will be combining this into things like Greenstuff_Gav's conversation rules to give the core rules some decent talking mechanics.

And some ideas I've nicked from Dark Heresy that I'm still working on Inquisitor-related specifics for:
- Hardy: This will be a recovery bonus, but I'm backwards and forwards between it being a fairly straight bonus to recovery tests, or allowing the character to heal three injury levels rather than just two.
- Paranoia: There's either an awareness or reaction bonus in this one. Possibly both - one idea I've had is that it will allow the character a chance, albeit reduced, at reacting to actions without being aware of them. (For example, it might allow a character to dive out of the way of a hidden sniper's shot).

I'm also revisiting the Fear system. The original system doesn't work in IRE anyway, as IRE doesn't have an obligatory combat state (the job of restricting a character's awareness, but allowing them to act and react one action at a time is replaced by the voluntary "Engaged" state), but I want to see it expanded.
As it is, the existing system only handles characters who it's scary to be in close combat with. That works reasonably well for an Arcoflagellant, Chrono-Gladiator or an Ork, but the ability often lacks a punch on things like daemonhosts (who very often have no intention of entering melee) or when it's supposed to represent an Inquisitor's reputation.

I don't want to clutter the game with too many Nerve tests when these characters are around, so I'm currently going with such characters' presences penalising Nerve tests in general. It seems appropriate that a character is more likely to dive for cover (screaming like a little girl) if a daemonhost is hurling witchfire at him than when under lasgun fire.

And, while I've not yet nailed down the rules, I will try and find a space for a Disturbing Appearance trait to allow all those badly scarred characters out there to be given something a little more appropriate than Fearsome. (All of those Inquisitors suddenly panicking and coming to a screeching halt when they realised how ugly the person they were about to smack with a power hammer was... yeah, that didn't work for me).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 03, 2016, 01:08:39 AM
Although no-one else has yet responded, I'm taking a look at the idea of recovering from out of action.

If the idea is going to be used, it will definitely need to be penalised as compared to regular recovery so that out of action is still a fairly serious state to be in and also to keep True Grit special, but not so much as to just be a complete waste of dice rolling.

My first thoughts were a flat penalty, but on reflection I'm not sure that would have the right effect. Something like -40 would be much more surmountable for a T70 character than a T50 character which, while probably realistic, would play back into the steep curve of resistance to system shock that things like the flat 10 point threshold have been trying to reduce.

A divisive modifier might therefore work better. (I've considered mixed possibilities, such as (T/2)-10, but I think these are somewhat messy).

The question though is exactly how often characters should be regaining consciousness. If a T60 character (fairly tough) suffers system shock in the early game, should he on average wake up in the mid-game, the end-game, or be most likely to not wake up at all?

My thinking is probably somewhere between the mid-game and end-game. That way a character who goes down in the mid-game will have a chance (although not a guarantee) of returning for the end-game and making a dramatic intervention, but a character who goes down late on will probably stay out of the game.
If it took longer than that, I think it would prove annoying (rolling for characters that have little chance of returning to the game) and potentially unbalancing (as it'd be very likely that only one player would get lucky enough to have characters return to the game).

That to me sounds like a moderately tough character should on average take about three to five turns to recover from system shock. I may have to adjust if it turns out that the IRE mechanics encourage more or fewer turns than the LRB though.

A reasonable starting point then might be for a character to use half toughness when recovering from out of action (meaning that a T60 character will recover on average in 3.33... turns), but automatically be stunned for the turn after recovering; that slightly extends the average and minimum durations a character will be incapacitated for, meaning even if a character flukes their recovery test first time, they won't immediately be back into the action.

Naturally, True Grit will get to ignore these penalties and will thus act much as it currently does.

There is the question of how stunning will stack with out of action, but that shouldn't be too difficult (either it ticks down while the character is out of it, or it doesn't).

~~~~~

On a broader note relating to stunning though, I'm considering whether it just shouldn't stack at all.
The original rulebook is unclear as to whether it should or shouldn't, but as far as I know, everyone does stack it - and under these circumstances, it's not that difficult for a character to get stunned for five or six turns, which isn't particularly fun.

What if a character instead just counted the highest result? For example, a character shot at by semi-auto fire takes two results of D3 turns stunned. When he rolls, he gets a 2 and a 3, and is hence stunned for the higher result - three turns. Two turns later, down to one turn remaining, a stray grenade inflicts a hit that causes another two turns of stunning, which brings him back up to two turns (as the new result is greater than what remains of the old result).

Hence, he recovers his wits four turns after the original hits, rather than the seven turns that would have occurred otherwise. This is still obviously a serious penalty (and taking multiple results is still bad, as it increases the likelihood of a high roll), but not so much as to have entirely eliminated him from the game.

Another alternative is a hard cap on stunning - for example, the "clock" could be limited to never go above three turns (later hits might reset that clock, but at no single time would a character be due to be stunned for more than three turns)

Either way, this would probably allow me to avoid some of my earlier proposed changes to the injury tables.

~~~~~

That said, I do need feedback on which way people think injury effects should go.

Core differences between proposed IRE changes and the LRB are:

- As IRE uses 3+ action rolls, speed penalties become more significant (typically costing a character two-thirds of an action rather than half).
- The fixed system shock threshold means high toughness characters will be more prone to system shock, but low toughness characters a little less so.
- Powerful hits will result in a much higher chance of system shock.
- A limit on extreme stunning duration.
- Possibly a chance of recovering from out of action.

This would probably limit the changes to the injury tables to swapping the Heavy Leg result for "Prone" rather than "-1 Speed", and perhaps using the new "levels" of system shock on the table.

So, some areas are getting a little meaner, some areas are getting a little softer; I think it will roughly balance out against the LRB, although whether that's what people want... I don't know.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Van Helser on May 08, 2016, 09:22:23 AM
I don't know if I am behind the idea of people recovering without the True Grit special ability. In my mind, True Grit represents those characters that take a horrific beating but don't know when to stop. These moments of influencing the final outcome of a game should be rare in the horrific reality of the 41st millennium where life is cheap and there is no hope.

A hard cap on stunning of 3 combined with always taking the higher result is the way I think that one should go.

System Shock... I think seeing how this stands up to playtesting is needed. My initial feeling is that by making everyone test at 10 damage, we are going to see a lot more dice rolling breaking up the flow of the game.

We do need to do something about risky actions. Being high speed making them more likely just doesn't seem right. Perhaps speed 5+ characters could discount each 1 rolled if they roll 5s or 6s instead of just 6s?

Beware I have just fired out the following as a stream of thoughts: Or by designating a level of "risk" to particular actions. Sprinting across uneven ground would be low risk, firing a plasma gun high risk. If a low risk action is the only risky action during a turn you have to roll two 1s (with no 6s) to fall foul of it. Two low risk actions would be treated as it is currently. Three low risk and your 6s wouldn't count. A high risk action is treated as it is currently, and attempting any other low risk action would mean your 6s count for nothing. Two high risk actions can't be attempted.

Ruaridh
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 08, 2016, 10:42:56 PM
Quote from: Van Helser on May 08, 2016, 09:22:23 AMThese moments of influencing the final outcome of a game should be rare in the horrific reality of the 41st millennium where life is cheap and there is no hope.
It's probably controversial, but there are some sane arguments for it.

While Warhammer 40,000 is the grim dark future, "hopeless" is not necessarily the reality for Inquisitor characters. They're momentous heroes and infamous villains, many of them more than human (or less than!).

Ultimately, the important question is "is it going to be more fun?". From my experience, characters getting put out of the game early on generally isn't wildly fun (from either side of the table - to the point that I often find myself not attacking because the game will be less interesting).
Yes, it's good when a player improvises through adversity and even better if they actually pull it off, but missing a character for several turns and then getting them back injured is still quite adverse, even if it's deliberately steering clear of dire.

I'm not sure about it myself, but that's why I think it's probably worth (some) play-testing. The V0.2 draft has a few such experimental elements  because I'd rather test slightly outlandish ideas and ditch them if they don't work, rather than dismissing them all out of hand.

If I had to guess, I suspect the ultimate answer will be to split the difference - no recovery while unconscious, but allowing characters to help allies recover from out of action (as, at present, the letter of the rules is that recovering from either system shock or unconsciousness is only possible via True Grit).

On the note of healing, but this time intentional first aid (as opposed to passive end of turn recovery), I think this should probably be changed to an Sg test. Being a tough bastard doesn't mean you'll know how to apply a proper tourniquet.

QuoteA hard cap on stunning of 3 combined with always taking the higher result is the way I think that one should go.
That's possible. If combining both ideas, the cases of stunning I can think of from 1st Ed that can exceed three turns in their own right aren't that common in game...

- Falling damage
- LRB Graviton guns
- RIA Photon Flash
- Stun toxin
- Choke (the psychic power, not the toxin*)
- Psychic Shriek
- Vortex of Chaos
- And probably some from articles, but even I can't remember every rule off the top of my head.

(* The toxin stuns one turn at a time, like Bloodfire or the Mesmerism psychic power, so wouldn't really count).

... but as I'll be revisiting some of those anyway, I'd say it's reasonably viable. Even if such attacks could no longer stun for more than three turns, they'd still have a considerably increased likelihood of doing so. Or, if necessary, certain things could be made specific exceptions.

QuoteSystem Shock... I think seeing how this stands up to playtesting is needed. My initial feeling is that by making everyone test at 10 damage, we are going to see a lot more dice rolling breaking up the flow of the game.
Dice rolling itself is not that time consuming. Deciding what you need to roll... that can be:

GM: "11 damage. Is that enough to cause system shock?"
Player: "I don't know."
GM: "Well, what's your system shock value?"
Player: "Erm... no, wait, that's his knockback... Ah. 12. How much damage was it again?"
GM: "11 damage. So no."

Alternatively, what you get is:
GM: "And that's 11 damage, take a system shock test."
Player: "34. Passed."

10 damage is still a moderately large amount of damage to take from one hit (at least after armour), so it's not like we'll be seeing it on every single attack. (And some characters are already testing at 10 damage or under anyway). And given it's already following all of the location rolling, damage dice, table consulting, character sheet updating and such necessary for having taken that much damage anyway, the extra dice rolling is very unlikely to be what affects the game. My concerns are more regarding how it will impact the hardiness of characters.

As far as the complexity, what I am open to is being talked out of the modifier for a low injury total (in which case, the current plan is to just turn all system shock tests into a flat +10 modifier*). For the same reasons as I talk about for out-of-action recovery, I'd like to see how the more complex version plays though, rather than going straight for the dumbed down version.

*Both because I want to make low toughness characters slightly less likely to faint at the sight of blood, and also to compensate high toughness characters for the fact they'll be taking more tests.

QuoteWe do need to do something about risky actions. Being high speed making them more likely just doesn't seem right. Perhaps speed 5+ characters could discount each 1 rolled if they roll 5s or 6s instead of just 6s?
Well, that's where the RIA hazard system comes in.

Hazards are based on the units die of the D100 roll (or for those skills that don't require a test, a separately rolled D10). Something might be described as Hazardous (9+), in which case it'll trigger on units rolls of 9 or 10, for an overall 20% risk.

This is moderately tunable (coming in bite-sized chunks of 10%), but I'm even patching together a mini-hazard system (although I'm still hunting for a better name than "mini-hazard"...) that only triggers on rolls of 91-00 for when there's a need to juggle smaller percentages.

~~~~~

EDIT: Can I also note that I could do with more feedback if people want to be able to be playtesting this in July!
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 11, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
So, Psychic Powers. Or, at least, an early draft of some of them.

As I've already said, my current draft is stealing many of the basic mechanics from Koval's RIPPA. This means that IRE psykers have a Psy Rating to represent their psychic potential (whereas Willpower represents their control. The concepts are loosely analogous to a character's Strength and Weapon Skill in close combat).

A character may not always choose to use all of their psy rating however, as drawing more energy from the warp is a dangerous thing. The Hazard rating for any psychic power roll is based on the Casting Psy Rating.
This is whatever proportion of their maximum Psy Rating the psyker is using for that power. Normally a psyker can choose how much power to use, although a poorly trained or addled psyker may not get a choice.

Using more Psy Rating slightly reduces the difficulty of the harder powers (effectively taking a brute force approach to casting, rather than a finesse one), but its more significant effect is to scale up the effects of the powers. A power's Effective Psy Rating (a character's Casting Psy Rating, minus any penalties*) has a dramatic effect on many of the re-written IRE powers.
* Stuff like psychic nulls, probably range (possibly -1 PR per 10 yards, if the power is Ranged, anyway), but I'm also considering whether certain powers will have PR penalties to represent the sheer level of energy needed to channel them.

For examples, here's the draft of how I've currently re-written the first page of psychic abilties, Miscellaneous and Biomancy (now called Biokinesis for pedantry reasons. Things ending in -mancy are divination).

QuoteMiscellaneous powers

Detection - Difficulty 0
The psyker scans his surroundings for the life signs, mental signatures or warp echoes of his enemies.
The character is immediately aware of everyone within D10 yards per level of Effective Psy Rating.

Gaze of Death - Difficulty 10 - Psychic bolt
Dark energies shoot forth from the psyker's eyes, scorching at the flesh of his enemies.
Type   Rng Mode    Dam
Psychic A  Semi(4) 2D6+EPR


Biokinesis

Blood Boil - Difficulty: 1/2 Target's Toughness -  Line of Sight & Ranged
The psyker reaches into his target's body, rapidly accelerating the target's pulse and pushing his blood pressure to extreme levels. In the most spectacular cases, the victim's heart and brain explode!
Roll a D6 for every level of Effective Psy Rating. For every result of 4+, the target suffers one level of Unnatural** damage to both the head and chest locations, to a minimum of one level.
Characters with a bionic heart are only affected on rolls of 5+. Characters without blood or a blood substitute are immune.

Choke - Difficulty: 1/2 Target's Toughness - Ranged
The psyker paralyses his target's respiratory tract and diaphragm, robbing him of breath.
Roll a D6 for every level of Effective Psy Rating.  The target takes a stunned result equal to one turn for every result of 3+, to a minimum of one turn. (For the purposes of determining stunning priority, all turns are added into one result).
Characters with bionic lungs are only affected on rolls of 5+. Characters who do not need to breathe are immune.

Enfeeble - Difficulty: 1/2 Target's Strength - Ranged & Persistent
The psyker drains the vigour from his victim, making him weak and incapable.
Until the power ends, the target's strength is reduced by D10 for every level of Effective Psy Rating.
Characters reduced to 0 strength or less fall out of action while the power lasts.
The strength of any bionics is not affected.

Hammerhand - Difficulty 5 - Persistent
The psyker hardens the flesh of his arm, forcing his muscles past their normal limits.
While the power lasts, the psyker's unarmed attacks instead do D5 damage per level of Effective Psy Rating.

Regenerate - Difficulty 20 - Persistent
Focusing his power on a cellular level, the psyker binds wounds and knits flesh.
The psyker may target himself or another character he can touch (within 1 yard). While the power (and physical contact) are maintained, the target gains the Regeneration exotic ability.
Any regeneration actions use the psyker's Willpower in place of the character's Toughness, and the power's Effective Psy Rating in place of the character's Toughness bonus.

Storm of Lightning - Difficulty 5 - Psychic Bolt
Bio-electrical energy jumps from the psyker's finger-tips, arcing from target to target.
Type   Rng Mode    Dam
Psychic 15  Flame D10+EPR


Warp Strength - Difficulty 5 - Line of Sight, Ranged & Persistent
The psyker invigorates the target, strengthening muscle, toughening tendons and hardening bone.
Until the power ends, the target's strength is increased by D10 for every level of the power's Effective Psy Rating.
** Unnatural damage is IRE-speak for "Do not pass Go, Do not collect £200". It completely ignores toughness and armour, dealing injury levels directly.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 18, 2016, 07:02:40 PM
Well, that's quite a lot of no response.

I know I'm being technical and verbose yet still only providing bits and pieces at a time, but I don't really want to commit to full rewrites of sections without getting some feedback on the core ideas. Even responses that were mostly swear-word riddled instructions on how to castrate myself and thus avoid the risk of passing on my rules writing skills would be more useful than nothing. (Not that I particularly want crude guidelines on self-emasculation).

~~~~~

Anyway, for the sake of keeping tabs on things, both for my benefit and to make it easier for people to follow, I thought I'd go for a summary/overview on the current state of IRE - what is (or will be) changed from 1st Edition and what isn't.

Going by rules section:

Basic Conventions
No real changes.

Characters
- Characteristic tests now use a "The Price is Right" approach to determine how much a test has passed by - you want to roll as high as possible under your target number.

While ditching the "roll low = best" mechanic takes a bit of getting used to and isn't absolutely essential for playing the game, it dramatically speeds and simplifies the maths, particularly in opposed tests. If a D100 roll passing on 23 means it has passed by 23, it's just less maths than having to subtract it from 67, and much simpler to compare to someone else's roll of 45.

Actions
- Action rolls have been changed to a 3+. This is mostly to interact with the new reaction mechanics.

- Risky actions, which were very statistically screwy and didn't allow different actions to have different risks, are ditched in favour of Hazards, which use the units die of a characteristic test (or a separately rolled D10 for actions which don't need a roll) to determine the risk.

- Because of the introduction of the Reaction system, being aware of a character reacting to them allows a character to attempt to change their actions. (Although, as before, this is riskier than using Pause for Breath, as failing the Initiative roll immediately ends the character's turn).

Reactions
This is probably the core mechanical change in IRE, although it does actually have grounding in 1st edition.

Reactions fall into two sets of two broad categories:
>> Out of turn Actions and Defensive reactions; overwatch and counter-attacks, for example, are cases of out-of-turn actions you'll already know. Parrying, dodging (both the close combat version and the special skill) and psychic nullifications are examples of what IRE calls Defensive reactions. (Defensive reactions in IRE are largely now opposed roll-offs though).
>>  Prepared and Reserved reactions; Prepared reactions happen automatically when triggered (overwatch is a 1st edition example),  Reserved reactions are declared when used, but require a reaction test (the IGT version of Lightning Reflexes is closest, but close combat reactions are broadly similar) reactions.

Reactions come primarily from actions the character has set aside to use (in whichever combination of these ways). This makes it easier to keep a cap on how much a character can do in a turn and, combined with the increase to action rolls, allows a natural fluidity where characters can act more quickly when they're not having to keep responding to their enemies. You'll naturally see games get to the meat of the action quicker, with fewer turns wandering around ignorant of each other.

There is also the Engaged state, which acts somewhat similarly to the close combat state in 1st edition, allowing characters to declare one action at a time, react for free, but at a considerable awareness penalty. The main difference from 1st edition is that the state is voluntary, and can be used for non-close combat purposes.

Aside from reactions giving a more dynamic sense to the play, standardising how characters act outside their turn will hopefully make the rules more robust and less prone to exceptions.

Movement
Movement hasn't had any ground shattering changes. Aside from updating Risky movement actions to the Hazard system, most things are loosely as they were. For the moment, at least, I've ditched the idea of using more Dark Heresy-like tests for jumps and climbing.

A few sections have been unified and simplified slightly in accordance with how I normally see things played - the obstacle rules have been rolled into climbing, I've ditched the note about stairs being difficult terrain (things are usually slow enough if you're measuring diagonally up them, anyway). And I've moved the Falling rules here rather than in the Appendix.

Shooting
- Fire Arcs have been broadened to 90 degree arcs. (45 degrees always felt too restrictive and 45 degrees is much harder to measure/approximate in game if you need to).

- Placed Shots have been rolled into aiming, and are now a form of called shot (where levels of aim can be used to modify hit location rather than hit chance). This makes it possible both for a character to plan a called shot (as opposed to only getting them at random) and works better with semi-auto fire (both the new and old mechanism, whichever we eventually stick with)
Similarly, resting a weapon is rolled into aiming, and is free as part of an aim action. (As there was no point to it before, given it provided a smaller benefit than aiming for that same action).

- Semi auto, Full auto and Flame weapons get new rules. Semi-auto and full auto are now hit bonuses (but with increased penalties for range) and there's an "exploding dice" mechanic for successive hits. Flame weapons now roll once per target, with more hits based on the success on the hit roll.
(Semi-Auto may go back to a similar system to 1st edition. Depends on how things play test).

- Blast weapons scatter D3 yards for failure and each degree of failure on the hit roll, in order to make the margin of failure more important than in the old system. Indirect fire is now rolled into this as a GM determined penalty depending on the difficulty of the throw/launch.

- There's a shooting specific Defensive reaction: Evade (the movement action has been renamed to "Weave". The old rules used the term "Dodge" as both an anti-shooting reaction and an anti-melee reaction, which both worked differently. "Evade" was the best term I could think of here).

- More in depth rules for Friendly fire, using the new hazard system. The closer a friendly character is to being in the way, the more likely you are to hit him instead.

Close Combat
This is one of the more considerable overhauls.

- Close combat builds into the reaction system, in order to standardise things. This means that parries and dodges are defensive reactions and thus now have to beat the hit roll to succeed, so no more dodging a master swordsman as easily as a knife wielding scribe. (The flip-side though is that successive parries are much less penalised, and that's if I decide to penalise them at all. High WS is becoming more important than wearing down a defender's parry chance with lots of actions).
As these reactions are now declared before rolling off, a parry may counter attack even if the attacker misses. (As it should be. The knife wielding scribe will definitely leave more holes in his attack than the swordsman, as opposed to the backwards effect as it currently is).

This means a serious close combat fighter is going to be pretty darn good at his job and is less likely to need three turns to kill a no-name NPC who won't stay still.

- Positioning is becoming much more important, allowing the special cases of arm's length and up-close to be discarded. A swordsman is inherently in trouble if he lets a knife fighter get too close.

- More standard combat actions. Grappling and staggering an opponent are options I'm working on, and characters can now try to use pretty much any gun in close combat (although the heavier it is, the less likely it is to hit!)

- I'm also extending the close combat weapon profiles slightly. The original three characteristics (two of which only really took about five different values) were very limited and limiting compared to the much more extensive ranged weapon profiles. As such, there's now special Reach characteristics (which modify positioning bonuses) and Attack Penalties (the slow nature of a power fist, for example, can now be represented in the rules).
However, this is should still be loosely compatible with old character sheets, as the Attack Penalties (at least in the current draft) are generally roughly the same as Parry Penalties.

Psychic Powers
This section is loosely based on Koval's RIPPA. Hence, it's introducing Psy Rating in order to allow the power and skill of a psyker to be separate.
For example, you might have an Inquisitor who is very skilled with his telekinesis, but weak - he might be easily able to pick a lock with the force of his will alone, but not be able to lift more than a few kilos - or a completely untrained rogue psyker who can summon huge fireballs but mostly in the wrong place.

The portion of their Psy Rating that a psyker uses determines both the riskiness and actual punch of the powers. This is necessitating a fairly broad rewrite on the existing psychic powers in order to integrate Psy Rating in more, but the results will hopefully be reasonably intuitive.

I'm also establishing Willpower as the standard to hit characteristic for psychic bolts. (Hence allowing psykers to be a crap shot, but decent at throwing a lightning arc).

Most of of the rest mirrors RIPPA (which itself borrows quite a bit from the 40kRP systems from RT onwards).

Injury, Damage & Recovery
There's less radical changes to this than I was expecting when I started the project. Having had more experience with the reformatting of the injury quick reference table I made some time back, I think it's made the original system rather easier to handle.

(http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy3/MarcoSkoll/Miscellaneous/Injury_V1-2f.jpg)

There are a few changes earmarked, though none of them are massive overhauls on the system:

- Injury results are cumulative, so an Acute wound now adds up to a bigger speed penalty than a Heavy wound. As it is, I know a lot of people played this way anyway.
(There's also odd side-effects from table not being cumulative, if you take the letter of the rules. For example, should a character with True Grit recover from System shock caused by the injury table, these levels have no persistent effects. Not that I expect players to abuse the system, but there's no sense in leaving holes that don't need to be there.).

- ... except Stunning, which now doesn't stack (a character just counts the highest result) in order to avoid characters missing the entire game. There's also a maximum cap on any single stunning result of three turns (although a character can be stunned for a longer total duration than this by taking subsequent hits).

- System shock has been standardised to a fixed 10 point threshold, in order to remove the near immunity of high toughness characters (and stop low toughness characters fainting on every single hit). Particularly high damage attacks now call for multiple SS tests.

- Recovery from out of action is now written in. Whether or not any characters will have a (small) chance of recovering themselves from out of action is still out for playtesting, but at a minimum allies will be able to assist unconscious characters. (Before, the letter of the rules was that only True Grit could overcome out of action)

- Injury tables are largely unchanged. The Heavy Leg result has been replaced with "Prone" rather than "-1 speed" - which matches the effects of the arm table better, and also reduces overall speed penalties a touch (which become more severe with 3+ action rolls).

- Some of the simpler of the core Revised Armoury damage effects have been put in here, like Rending (treats the target's Base Injury value as 1 lower) and Tearing (roll an extra die for damage, discard lowest)*, as I feel they add quite a lot of breadth to the damage system.
*Which I really just nicked from Dark Heresy, anyway.

Awareness
Nothing particularly drastic is going on here. I'm going to a greater length to explain the concepts of awareness, and also suggesting that the section is more guidelines than rules (which is how most GMs handle it anyway).

Conversation
Another new section, although it's mostly based on rules that the community have been using for years.
Improving the rules for characters communicating  talk more easily gives them choices other than just shooting each other.

This is built off Greenstuff_Gav's close combat-esque mechanics - that being that when in conversation, characters choose what they want to say an action at a time (being reasonably generous about what can be said in an action, so that short conversations don't take six turns!), allowing the  other character to respond.
Precinct_Omega's persuasion/threatening rules from his drafts of Inquisitor2 are also being borrowed.

Abilities
Primarily, this is a polish up to bring the original abilities into line with IRE changes, but I'm also rolling in many common traits that didn't show up in the first rulebook. There's not a lot drastic going on here.

Armoury
- As far as ranged weapons, I'm doing a bit of a "Revised Armoury"-lite here, in that long-arms such as rifles and shotguns now have a notable damage bonus over pistols, rebalancing a few things and cleaning up some of the more rule-intensive weapons.
However, the list of weapons and ammo is massively cut down from the RIA to keep it more accessible, and many of the more intricate rules of the RIA have been left out.

- The basic CCWs have been updated as much as necessary for the new CC mechanics.

I'm planning on revisiting chain and power weapons - power weapons in particular will stay nasty but they won't be capable of quite such extremes of damage as are possible in the core rules. The intent is to make it so that the weapons don't have to be routinely ignored for being overpowered.

Some of the changes to the Daemon weapon rules we discussed in Cortez's thread are making it in there, making it a less binary matter of "Is my Wp better than the daemon's? If yes, profit. If no, get possessed".
Characters can now reliably resist a fairly powerful daemon under normal conditions, but in vulnerable moments (getting pinned or stunned, for example), even a weak daemon can potentially find its way into its wielder's mind.

- Bionics might get a bit of an overhaul. I'm not sure yet.
My personal approach to them at present has been more armour, but a modest Base Injury value (independent of the character's). Hence, a knife is unlikely to do much more than scratch the finish, but anything powerful enough to do actual damage is likely to rupture hydraulics or shred circuit boards. That may not be enough to everyone's taste though to make it "official".

Vehicles
This probably won't make it into the next draft, but I think having a robust core system for vehicles (as opposed to the "OMG, everything explodes" version that Exterminatus magazine gave us) would be a strength.

NPCs
Again, this probably won't show up in the next draft, but this will be a section that includes simplified the rules for unimportant NPCs - goons that really don't merit a full level of detail.


~~~~~

That's the summary for now, but I may come back and discuss more pieces in detail again.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Raghnall on May 19, 2016, 07:06:52 PM
I am interested Marco, but I'm very busy at the moment. In particular, I like the pay rating mechanic, although I hope that is accompanied with an expanded list of powers compared to the LRB.

Proper feed back will come when I have the time, but I wanted to assure you that there is some interest.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on May 24, 2016, 10:53:11 PM
Movement

Now that action rolls are on a 3+ and reactions are a thing, I feel like the Sprint action should be removed:

A character who might previously have spent all of their actions Running would now spend most of them Running, and some of them preparing Reactions. A character who might previously have spent all of their actions Sprinting would now simply spend all of their actions Running, with no regard for Reactions.

It seems to me that the intended use - to move faster than you ordinarily would, at the expense of awareness/versatility - is already achieved by the action mechanics.

Reactions

I've probably asked this before, but how exactly are Prepared and Reserved Reactions going to work? I keep forgetting.

Conversation

I've never really understood how the Persuasion mechanics are supposed to work - can a heretic dissuade an Inquisitor from doing the Emperor's Work by just rolling really well? Or is that not how it works?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 25, 2016, 12:57:01 AM
Quote from: Adeptus Noob on May 24, 2016, 10:53:11 PMNow that action rolls are on a 3+ and reactions are a thing, I feel like the Sprint action should be removed
It's not an unreasonable possibility*, although at the moment I've marked up certain actions so that using them hinders the user's perceptions and responsiveness. Stuff like Sprinting actually now has an associated penalty for awareness and reactions.

*Although I have considered making Sprinting slower. 8 yards is a possibility, although I may tie that specifically into an Encumbrance system.
The original version was far too over the top (a Stormtrooper in carapace usually ended up being Speed 1), and is hence usually entirely ignored, but a better system could still encourage lightly equipped characters.
Perhaps unencumbered characters could sprint a full 10 yards, lightly encumbered characters only 8 yards and heavily encumbered characters not at all.

QuoteI've probably asked this before, but how exactly are Prepared and Reserved Reactions going to work? I keep forgetting.
Prepared reactions are declared as part of the character's normal action sequence, but their execution is delayed until outside the character's normal turn. They must meet all normal conditions of the given action (for example, if you prepare a shooting action, you must declare a valid target), and the preparation must be a character's last (successful) action.

For the examples from the rules text:
- "Inquisitor Shyloque will prepare to dive for this cover over here"
- "Magos Gruss will prepare to shoot Sgt Stone on semi-auto"
- "Quovandius will prepare to duck back behind the corner"

Note that preparing a reaction does not need a character to declare when or why they will use said reaction. The player can decide when to use it when the time comes (although the character will still need to be aware of something to react to).
Maybe Shyloque will dive when he sees Covenant draw his shotgun, or when Von Castellan suddenly comes around the corner.

In this way, Prepared reactions are very specific (much more so than Reserved reactions), but are paid back for it by being automatically executed. (The character has already passed their action roll, the execution is just delayed. But in fluff terms, because they're already expecting to do it, they don't need to think. Hence, there's no test to react).

~~~~~

Reserved reactions are saved up either by holding back action dice or using the "Wary" action (which is more intended to be used at the end of the turn, to soak up any excess actions without affecting the chance of earlier actions).

In contrast to Prepared actions, they're declared when used, but require a successful Initiative test on the character's part.

Reserved reactions are usually the more common type, at least in the testing I've done so far. While they're less reliable, their greater versatility tends to be more appealing.

QuoteI've never really understood how the Persuasion mechanics are supposed to work - can a heretic dissuade an Inquisitor from doing the Emperor's Work by just rolling really well? Or is that not how it works?
When they were first starting to spread through the community, I did sometimes see the Persuasion/Threatening mechanics go that way, but I did make a point of annotating them when I started copying them into my own event packs.

I see it that the GM should modify the persuade/threaten test (or the target's opposing roll) depending on the eloquence of the player's argument.

"Stand aside or I'll shoot you" isn't a particularly good threat when you're pointing a stubber at an Inquisitor in full carapace, so that would suffer a serious penalty to any roll - or the GM could veto it entirely in certain cases. A Space Marine with Nerves of Steel isn't going to be even slightly fazed.
A more credible threat like "You're surrounded on all sides from elevated positions" might do better, and something genuinely creative (more creative than I can think of right now) may even get a bonus.

In the case of your heretic, exactly the same thing would apply. The more reasonable what he argues is, the more chance he has of persuading the Inquisitor. After all, there are some pretty silvertongued heretics out there, and the lure of Chaos is insidious.

However, this isn't the be-all-and-end-all of it. On one side, the target can automatically choose to be persuaded should they choose, but inversely characters get to re-consider anything they've currently been persuaded by. Perhaps as they think it over, they realise the holes in the argument, or alternatively they force themselves to stop thinking about it and thus continue to bask in their own ignorance and dogma.

So, a heretic with a good argument might be able to stall an Inquisitor for a moment, but no matter how well he rolls he's not going to be able to turn them to worship of the Great Deceiver... unless he has the Inquisitor's willing consent.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 04, 2016, 02:44:23 AM
In the hope of more response on the proposed Psychic rules, I've taken the risk of writing large chunks up properly. This is far from a finished version, as I'm reluctant to fully develop these ideas in case they get completely shot down by you lot.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/i41pidn937g7z75/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+Psychic+Alpha+V0-2-0-1.pdf

This also gives you something of an idea of the intended writing style and graphical layout of the IRE rulebook (the current cover and credits pages* are included for reference).
I'm no graphic designer, haven't the artistic speed to litter the rulebook with illustrations throughout, and want to keep the whole thing fairly "printer friendly", so there's a limit to how much can be done, but it should all be rigged up in a PDF with embedded fonts (most notably, the Inquisitor font, Vibrocentric), internal links, a proper contents page and searchable text.

*On which note, the credits include people who I feel have made significant contributions to IRE discussion (or whose work I've been plagiarising inspired by).  If anyone on the current list would prefer not to be credited or would rather be credited under a different name (I've been using forum names, given that people made the contributions publicly under those names), get in contact with me.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on June 04, 2016, 05:00:51 PM
So having read your initial rules ideas, I must confess that I'm somewhat confused.

The psy rating thing seems fine and what effect it has and how it is used (to increase the damage/lower the risk) all  seems fine. However I'm confused about this whole hazard thing and how you determine if the caster has rolled a hazard. Is this like the old risky action thing? What happens if the psyker doesn't successfully cast a power?

My other issue is that some of the effects on the penalty tables seem a bit extreme. e.g. 2d10 knockback seems a lot when compared with the other effects on the phenomenon table (considering it could easily blow someone straight into a wall or off a roof causing potentially high levels of falling damage). The Perils of the warp table has some nice, cool ideas but the penalties again seem rather severe to me especially when you consider that the chance of it doing nothing is the same as your character suffering damage to the head or being possessed by a daemon. Perhaps using a 2d6 roll would be better as the odds of rolling one of the more extreme effects would be far less. I'm also not a fan of the idea of a double penalty, taking a hit of -2d10 willpower and a roll on that table seems a bit too high to me at the moment, although this will depend somewhat on how frequently you roll a hazard. I'd suggest adding the -2d10 penalty to the table possibly as the '7' result if you change it to a 2d6 roll on the table.

The formatting etc. seems fine.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 05, 2016, 01:01:08 AM
QuoteHowever I'm confused about this whole hazard thing and how you determine if the caster has rolled a hazard. Is this like the old risky action thing? What happens if the psyker doesn't successfully cast a power?
Hazards are a system I've been using in RIA for a while (although they did get updated a bit in the last version), and which I think I've elaborated on several times in this thread.
It's based on the units digit of the D100 roll. A Hazard (8+) is therefore triggered if the units die is 8, 9 or 0 - essentially, a 30% chance. Unless specified otherwise*, Hazards apply both if the D100 roll passes or fails.

* One exception is the IRE friendly fire guidelines. Hazards are used to determine the risk to friendly targets, but if the shooter hits his actual target (and isn't using a flame or full auto weapon) he's assumed not to have hit his ally.

Quote2d10 knockback seems a lot when compared with the other effects on the phenomenon table
The knockback results are various combinations of "stagger back D3 yards" and "fall prone". While 2D10 is quite likely to stagger a psyker, he's not in serious trouble unless he's right next to a ledge. It's not even hugely unlikely that 2D10 will be less than a psyker's knockback value and not affect him at all.

The only significant changes to knockback in IRE is that it's only used when an attack specifically calls for it (or if the GM thinks it'll be cool) - but that's much the way that it's used anyway, it's just formalising it - and trying to strip out some ambiguities like Psychic Impel talking about knockback; in that specific case, the power doesn't actually rely on or relate to the normal knockback rules in any way, so all it really needed to say was "target is thrown 2D10 yards away from the psyker and falls prone". (But it'll probably be something like D5 or D6 yards per Psy Rating in IRE).

QuoteI'm also not a fan of the idea of a double penalty
I felt Perils of the Warp (or, at least the Risky Action fail I personally used to call "Perils of the Warp") lacked something in first edition. It was far too common and far too boring.

As far as the common-ness, as I mused on in an earlier post, Risky Actions usually have a percentage around 20-35%, which meant that pretty much the most common cause of a psyker failing was completely out of the Psyker's control and had no relation to their skill level. Under the LRB, I have to give my "dedicated" psykers like Maya Avens or Epsilon-47 risky action reducing rules (Heroic, or variants on it that only count the re-roll for calculating risks).

The current IRE draft has Perils chances heavily reduced and the Psyker has a lot of control over it, both deciding the Hazard with their Casting Psy Rating and with the Wp test as a "save" that turns Perils into Phenomena.
With a moderately capable psyker using Psy Rating 3 and Willpower 70, the Perils chance is down to 9%. You need really extreme examples like powerful yet unskilled psykers with Psy Rating 6 and Wp 50 to get into the same ~30% chances as in 1st edition.

As far as effect, I felt that Perils just being Willpower loss just wasn't up to scratch. Compare the common Risky Actions - a missed jump or fumbled grenade is dramatic, exciting and actually moves the game forwards. A psyker losing a few IQ points isn't really any of those things, particularly when we know the kinds of things that can occur when the warp is abused.
However, I think Wp loss should still be a familiar part of Psychic Powers, but as I've scrapped the Psychic Overload for failing a power (psychic powers shouldn't either be success or your brain dribbling out of your ears*), I don't want to see Wp loss relegated to just being one possible result on a table.

Whether the penalties will be too harsh in practice, I don't yet know. But between the considerable reduction in the number of things that'll cost a pysker Wp and the strong possibility I'll be putting in the "Psychic recovery" house rule that's sometimes used, I don't think the default Perils effect is going to be the side of things I'm going to have trouble keeping in check.

* I'm hoping that players are less likely to spend time worrying about whether they'll take a stab at a 40% chance power and thus play faster. (Although they might then fret over what Psy Rating they use. I don't know yet). Also, it helps when balancing things like Hexagrammic Wards.

QuotePerhaps using a 2d6 roll would be better as the odds of rolling one of the more extreme effects would be far less.
Well, that's really the reason I've not been happy with any of my attempts to make a 2D6 table work. Rolling a bad result is one thing. Rolling a rare bad result is a real kick in the teeth.

There may be ways to make a different combination of dice work within the limitations of the D6 and D10 Inquisitor uses, but I'm not sure what at the moment.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on June 05, 2016, 10:41:13 AM
Thanks for clearing that up Marco, and yes I was reading the knockback rules entirely like the psychic impel rules for some reason  :-[.

With the much reduced chances of failing the test, the double penalty wouldn't be too much of a burden although I'd still prefer a 2d6 table to a d10 one though.

N.b. I've never been a fan of the whole risky action thing, as it always felt too arbitrary and seemed to dis-proportionally disadvantage high speed characters vs low speed characters.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: TallulahBelle on July 10, 2016, 02:45:17 PM
Firstly hi guys sorry iv not been around iv been deathly ill and on a cocktail of meds that are probably as scary as anything in first ed inquisitor.

Ok quick comment on the psyker thing ypu say that some psykers may not be able to control their power draw because of injury/ability how will that be represented? I know adding more rolling is going to ruin the flow somewhat BUT would something like a 'channelling' mechanic work either the psyker makes a control test and eother gets the desired power or full power or on a failure gets less than what they desired potentially with some modification based on in game events.

For example a psyker with 3 or four things that are anti psyker (hex wards, prayers etc) would find it harder to get their full potential whereas a psyker stood in front of the portal opened in the big battle report that attempted to ascend a demon prince in white dwarf/in a cult ritual room with an active circle  would find it hard to use anything but their full potential.

Or if annother roll isn't wanted maybe something like a power dice mechanic with the psyker making an actions test style roll and using the amount of successes to determine their level of fine control (based on an abstraction of psy rating in the same way that Speed is an abstraction of I)

Just the warp is inherently dangerous and unpredictable ndda psykers 'control' is a very tenuous thing at the best of times so attempting to fine tune their power should at least to my mind be something seperate from the pass/fail have I cast machine empathy.

Iv been playing allot of paranoia which had sme influence on allot of 40K especially powers and some of the weapons (the plasma genarator pretty much being the initial version of the plasma cannon) being something GW were producing models for and supporting as 40k was being shaped and they handle mutant powers in a similar way. Using the full strength of your abilities as well as granting potentially more impressive effects on the game world also is easier because you aren't having to do anything BUT focus on manipulating the psyckic energies whereas if your attempting to do something low powered (to avoid notice or detection) ypu have to have one eye on the rev counter as it were.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on July 12, 2016, 03:02:25 PM
Quote from: jediknight129 on July 10, 2016, 02:45:17 PMOk quick comment on the psyker thing ypu say that some psykers may not be able to control their power draw because of injury/ability how will that be represented?
As far as injury, I'm considering adding a "concussed" effect or the like to the head injury tables. Being concussed might hinder a character's mental stats as well as causing them to lose control of their PR.

As far as abilities, it's just going to be simple negative traits. One psyker's powers might be so instinctual that he lacks any ability to restrain them, and thus have a trait that forces him to always use his full PR. Another psyker might lack any training and thus have a trait that forces him to randomise his casting PR.

QuoteI know adding more rolling is going to ruin the flow somewhat BUT would something like a 'channelling' mechanic work either the psyker makes a control test and eother gets the desired power or full power or on a failure gets less than what they desired potentially with some modification based on in game events.
Given the psychic test and Perils test already represent a specific psyker's ability to control his powers, that sounds like more tests than necessary. (But a psychic test could certainly be modified if a psyker has elected to drape himself in hexagrammic wards, particularly as IRE no longer penalises test failure with Wp loss).

When it comes to PR, I want it to be kept very low maintenance for the sake of game flow. Mostly, either a character will have full control over his PR or no control over his PR (although that may mean "max PR" or "random PR" depending on circumstances).
Any psyker with a shattered skull or standing on the cusp of a warp tear is going to lack full control but, due to the Perils test if he should suffer a Hazard, the more skilled ones are less likely to suffer catastropically under those circumstances.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 07, 2016, 12:36:56 AM
I am, when I can, still trying to push on with the IRE project.

Cortez (not so) recently suggested I release an Alpha version... which is probably a reasonable suggestion; I may well be trying to refine the V0.2 release too much. That's not to say that I imminently have a ruleset to release, as the fullest version of the IRE rules exists partly in my head, several poorly annotated spreadsheets and two scrawled notebooks, but it should allow me to cut some corners.
Some corners, mind - the really big task is still making sure that what I'm writing is what I want people to read. (And then usually realising that I have no idea how to clearly explain what I have in my head, which often means having to change the rule until I can explain it).

This is meaning a need to expand the terminology a bit in order to avoid ambiguity.
For an example of one problematic term: "successful action". The original rules use the term to refer to actions that pass their action roll, risky actions that have been completed without going wrong, actions that also pass their hit roll/psychic test/etc... it's a minefield.

For the sake of rules clarity, I want to clean this up. I'm not expecting such things to enter the player's vocabulary, but it's just a good idea for it to be less murky.

There's a few terms I'm currently using that I'd appreciate feedback on. I'm not yet certain I'll need to use all of them and these are not going to be the final wordings of the definitions in the rules, but it'll give you an idea.

Confirmed action: An action/reaction which has passed an action roll (or otherwise didn't require one).
Initiated action: The action/reaction which is in the process of being carried out.
Resolved action: An action/reaction that has been carried through to completion.
Fumbled action: A "failed" hazardous action. (I'm not entirely happy with the word "fumbled", but I've yet to think of anything better).

Initating and Resolving are fairly important to the reaction mechanics, as reactions have to be declared after initation of an action, but before it starts being resolved. (Reactive players are expected to be quick on the draw when declaring. They'll already have had the chance to consider whether they want to react during the other player's action declaration).

Turn Character: The character whose turn it currently is.
Non-turn character: A character whose turn it currently isn't.
Active character:A character using an action.
Reactive character:A character responding to an action.

These two categories are distinct. For a 1st edition example: A character using a counter-attack is a non-turn character (usually) but would also be  an active character (as a counter-attack is an action).

Sorting out some of this stuff will help me screw all IRE's core mechanics in place, get something to you guys and then we can argue about what does work, what doesn't and quibble over specifics like exactly what modifiers are needed for an attempt to grapple or something*.

~~~~~

*On the note of grappling though, it's one of the things I've said I've wanted to add to the repetoire of skills in close combat (in order to avoid the notorious "attack, attack, attack").

I want to avoid it falling into the same pit of horrendous overcomplexity that some grapple rulesets do; making it a system of relative simplicity that the GM can throw modifiers at if needed. A summary of my current thoughts are as follows:

Initiating a grapple requires physical contact - an unarmed attack, but it grapples rather than doing damage.

Grappling is an opposed strength test. The first grapple grabs a location, which "disables" it. (If an arm is grabbed, the character can't attack with it; if their leg is grabbed, they can't walk; if their opponent gets them in a headlock, they can't look around). Breaking out of a grab is itself a grapple test.
Once a location is grabbed, then a further grapple action against it allows it to be "used". (If you have control of his arm, you could attempt to pull the important artefact from his hand, or try to shoot him with his own gun; if you have his leg, you can trip him up; if you have his head, you can strangle him; if you have a grip on his torso, you can drag him around or throw him).

While that's not mechanically very complicated, I'm hoping that there's enough substance there to open up new options in close quarters; in some cases, physically manhandling a character could become a serious alternative to trying to beat him into unconsciousness.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: TallulahBelle on August 09, 2016, 02:03:29 PM
With grappling how are ypu going to balance it so it doesn't become the best option and thus it being first to grapple wins in close combat or mean that a character with the right build will grapple and be completely unbeatable?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 09, 2016, 05:59:16 PM
Personally, I think the problem could potentially be the other way around.

The initial grab requires hitting with a "Touch" attack (which, with Reach 0, is only effective if you can get close) and winning an opposed strength roll. That hit can potentially be parried, dodged or "taken".

The thing is, a reactive character doesn't have to use a defensive skill (such as a parry, psychic nullification or evasion - skills which roll-off to oppose the incoming attack), and can instead attempt to wait until after the triggering action* and hope that he's still in a state to perform a counter-action of his own.
* To be clear, in the current drafts of IRE, reactions that don't have the defensive trait are resolved after the action that triggers them. While the V0.1 Alpha had reflex roll-offs between active and reactive characters, the playtests showed they were far too much of a nuisance and took the initiative away from the turn character. Also, it was a mess to explain.
The reflex roll has been reduced to an optional rule that the GM can use for suitably dramatic moments. (A stand-off between characters is one possible example).


If the first grapple doesn't hit and successfully grab a location that suitably inconveniences the target, said target is potentially standing there with a chainsword in a free hand and a poorly armed muppet (as you obviously cant grapple with a hand that's holding anything) floundering in front of him.

I'm suspecting that grappling may actually need to give characters the option to heavily modify the location roll such that characters who want to try and grapple for control of a weapon aren't hopelessly grabbing each other's ankles all the time.

Of course, someone like an Astartes is going to be pretty unbeatable when it comes to a grapple (given their huge strength, but their large target modifier is also applied as a bonus), but to be honest, if they're doing that rather than actually hitting you, it would probably be an improvement...
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: TallulahBelle on August 10, 2016, 04:19:08 AM
It's just I can see nasty uses for the grapple rules and done in such a way that it becomes dominant. Grapple hold in place someone else takes the killshot or similar. I am interested in seeing it work in mathhammer and actual practice however.

Question have you thought about some variation of sub damage in H2H?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 13, 2016, 01:44:36 AM
Quote from: jediknight129 on August 10, 2016, 04:19:08 AM
It's just I can see nasty uses for the grapple rules and done in such a way that it becomes dominant. Grapple hold in place someone else takes the killshot or similar. I am interested in seeing it work in mathhammer and actual practice however.
I don't see any particular problem with grapple rules being used that way. It's certainly feasible to do such a thing in real life, but it'll take the efforts of two characters and quite a lot of actions; you've got to move two characters close, attempt to grapple the target and then shoot him, all the while hoping that no step in the plan goes wrong or that another character shows up to help your target.

(And frankly, if help doesn't arrive, two characters against one is never likely to be pretty with or without grapple rules.).

QuoteQuestion have you thought about some variation of sub damage in H2H?
I'm not sure what you mean by that.

That said, as far as damage in general, I don't intend on doing much to change the damage rules. I think they're one of the game's best and cleverest* mechanics, but they're already one of the more time-consuming elements of the game.

I've discussed the broad details before; Trying to redress the balance of system shock tests (which vary far too much with toughness), capping stunned results (hits that stun for 4 or more turns are excessive and practically eliminate characters), making persistent results cumulative (which makes more sense and is how many people play it anyway) and throwing in some of the RIA damage effects as core mechanics.

~~~~~

* Although what was intentionally clever about Inquisitor's rules and what was accidentally clever, I don't know; I'd love the chance to one day talk to Gav Thorpe about some of the design processes behind the game, although I suspect I'd probably bore him to tears.

Very often, these parts of the game are those that detractors cite as issues. I had a discussion not that long ago with someone who disliked the randomness of the action mechanic.

To me though, the action mechanic is broadly similar to what you get in many RPGs. Most RPGs tend to slice things up so a turn is how long it takes a character to do about two "things" - two moves, a move and an attack, that kind of thing. It stops characters getting to do too much before anyone can respond. Inquisitor does much the same - an average Speed 4 character will do about two actions per turn.

However, a problem with a completely predictable two actions per turn mechanic is that it means that a player *knows* he can make it across the street before the sniper gets to shoot again, or he *knows* he definitely can't draw his pistol and shoot the two men in front of him before they react. That leads players and characters to act unlike people would in real life.

The randomness Inquisitor has in its action mechanic means that players can't make unrealistic predictions about how much their characters can do with their turns. Sometimes they will be punished for making assumptions, sometimes they will be rewarded for taking risks. To me, that's far more interesting.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: TallulahBelle on August 13, 2016, 05:34:32 PM
I like the action mechanic requires a little luck that things don't always work out you can't get everything off perfect like in training it brings out some of the randomness of conflict perhaps the target ducked mid move or you didn't get the right angle to snap a shot off reflected in the rules

Sorry Sub is used as a call in allot of the larps I have played in over the years it uses the same damage mechanic as standard damage (so with an 8 hits character it takes 8 blows to reduce to 0hp or 4 double call blows) however the keyword Sub means rather than doing lethal damage and the character entering bleedout/death on 0hp Sub means the character has been knocked out or in limb Hp systems rather than that arm being mangled and bleeding/crushed it's been deadened and can't be used.

Thought it might be an interesting idea we have shock weapons which kind of do something similar but there isn't really an option for a knockout/stun effectbeyond drugging someone with a needler or beating them to the state their Out Of Action. I could see it being useful for dealing with NPC sentries or characters that players want to interrogate.

The grapple rules made me think of it really the idea of getting behind someone and choking them with a grapple trying to remain undetected.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on December 29, 2016, 09:34:51 PM
Those grappling rules are truly a stroke of genius. I've often thought about how to make grappling more interesting (specifically in DH), but not once has it crossed my mind to simply use hit locations.

I'm having visions of characters using one another's pistols to fire wildly at their enemies, or better yet, bashing each other's heads into walls.

I haven't actually played Inquisitor for nearly two years now, but damn this makes me want to play again.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on December 30, 2016, 04:58:17 AM
Quote from: Adeptus Noob on December 29, 2016, 09:34:51 PMI've often thought about how to make grappling more interesting (specifically in DH), but not once has it crossed my mind to simply use hit locations.
To be honest, I'm taking long enough over this that I now entirely forget how I originally got the idea.

It's perhaps more guidelines than actual rules, but I kind of know I'm going to have to go that way with some areas of IRE* - at least if I don't want them to get buried under ridiculous complexity that GMs would probably wing anyway.

* For example, I'm also planning on relying on that for the indirect fire rules. Given I'm changing the scatter weapon rules slightly (Scatter will be D3 for failure and each degree of failure, which makes the failure margin more important than with the D10+degrees method), I want to just make indirect fire a GM defined penalty depending on the difficulty, rather than having it be its own separate rules.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Drubbels on December 30, 2016, 09:31:37 PM
On top of the basic mechanic, the rules for grappling probably just need to list:


I'm trying to get back into playing Inquisitor (I haven't actually had the opportunity since the playtest for reaction mechanics, mentioned in this thread nearly two years ago now) so I might be able to contribute to this project more regularly from February onwards.

Any other specific things you would like input on?
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 22, 2017, 01:15:55 AM
Right. While this is not yet a complete beta version, it is getting close, so I've decided to stop telling myself "I'll release a version once I've just sorted X", and just release an Alpha version.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/17th71fs0zbhdf1/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+Alpha+V0-2-0-2.pdf

This is most of the core IRE rules. The only significant absence at the moment that can't be filled in with bits from the LRB or common community house rules is the rules for manoeuvring in melee. (Updated abilities and the armoury are not included here, but obviously the core rules need to be at least broadly in place before that can be dealt with).

While I realise it's quite a lot of text to review, it is broadly colour-coded in order to hopefully make it easier to absorb.
- Black text is new or otherwise changed rules. (Many of which may have been common house rules, but it's different to the LRB one way or another).
- Grey text, while pretty much everything has been rewritten to some degree or another, broadly says the same thing as LRB text. While you probably shouldn't just skip over it, there shouldn't be any big surprises here.
- Green text is variously design notes, incomplete sections, stuff I want to rework, or things that I'm not completely certain I want to put in the core book. Basically, areas I know or think I need to work on.

(Polite) feedback on the project so far is, of course, highly appreciated.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on February 22, 2017, 11:47:20 AM
Looking forward to playtesting this. Good job so far though.

Some typos:

Page 9: Certain superhuman characters may have very high Characteristic bonuses that are very large the die roll they are modifying.

Page 37: Characters may choose to end a close combat a (unfinished sentence).

Questions.

Regarding parrying: Do we still have the half WS for successive parry/dodge reactions? Needs to be made clear if that rule has changed (I'm assuming it has at the moment).

Prepared reactions: Can characters save actions if they're expecting to get charged? If so what benefit would the character get?

Suggestions

Attack: Feint: A successful feint should do no damage but should reduce the opponents WS for their next parry/dodge attempt. I would suggest the reduction should be the same as the margin of success. I think the feint attempt shouldn't allow for a reaction but if it is failed the opposing player gets an immediate counter attack.

Attack: Precision Strike: Allows the attacker to choose the location struck with an appropriate WS penalty (would -20 be too high?).

More feedback/suggestions to come.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 22, 2017, 04:19:52 PM
Quote from: Cortez on February 22, 2017, 11:47:20 AMLooking forward to playtesting this. Good job so far though.
Hopefully, if I can get at least very preliminary melee manoeuvring rules in place (as well as core parts of the armoury - the melee weapon profiles will need some sprucing up in order to fit the changed rules), it might even be possible to do some testing at Golden Aegis if it goes ahead and a couple of willing victims volunteers can be found.

While there are a few other holes in there, most of the rest of them can be patched with 1st edition or the tried and tested method of "winging it". (Doubtless, it'll need some on the fly adjustments anyway).

QuoteSome typos:
Page 9: Certain superhuman characters may have very high Characteristic bonuses that are very large the die roll they are modifying.
Page 37: Characters may choose to end a close combat a (unfinished sentence).
Duly noted.
p9 is supposed to read "very large compared to the die roll". p37 is... well, a goof. I needed a passage somewhere to emphasize that close combat is much more open than before.

As IRE doesn't have any "locked" close combat state (turning your back on your opponent and running is going to be difficult/dangerous more than it is forbidden), a close combat will ends in much the same way as as a gunfight might - that is, by the characters deciding to stop hitting each other with swords.

QuoteRegarding parrying: Do we still have the half WS for successive parry/dodge reactions? Needs to be made clear if that rule has changed (I'm assuming it has at the moment).
There is no penalty for successive reactions. I've long found the halving WS mechanic to be an awkward mechanic, as it was more stuff to keep track of and fairly slow mathematically. (It wasn't a straight penalty, meaning it required completely recalculating the WS and then applying modifiers every time). I had considered a -10 penalty per parry, but even that's (currently) been dropped.

This aspect of parrying/dodging now comes from the opposed rolling mechanics, where the defender is expected to beat his opponent's attack roll (or at least hope for a critical parry*).
This in a way does a similar job - theoretically, before, more skilled attackers were more likely to hit, would therefore likely hit more times, therefore making their hits harder to parry. Now it's handled by more skilled attackers being more likely to hit well, and therefore being harder to parry.
*Mostly put in so that there is always that slim chance of parrying, like in 1st edition. Before, characters could always pray for 01-05, but in IRE's opposed mechanics, 01-05 rolls are easily beaten. Hence why "Critical" parries automatically win (a percentage broadly in the 4-8% range), meaning defenders always have a slim chance, even against the most skilled opponents.

I feel it has several other advantages:

- It opens the doors for slow, but skilled, swordsmen.

- Before certain characters became more effective against more skilled opponents. Because the LRB only allowed a parry/counter-attack if the opponent first hit, characters with a high enough counter-attack chance (particularly if they had reduced successive parry modifiers, such as a buckler or shield) could easily get more attacks per turn.

- And because it's now important to not just hit, but hit well (aside from a narrow hit being easier to parry, a missed attack is pretty easy to counter-attack), hopefully characters will instead try to work on positioning rather than just relying on "attack, attack, attack".

QuotePrepared reactions: Can characters save actions if they're expecting to get charged? If so what benefit would the character get?
As far as prepared reactions, they either automatically confirm, or provide a +20 bonus to any defensive reactions. A prepared parry reaction, for example, would give the character a pretty good counter-attack chance.

I have wondered if I do want to provide characters with the option to use stored reserved actions to re-roll parry tests or something (in order that there is still a dynamic with keeping back actions), but I need to think of a rulesy way to word that.

QuoteAttack: Feint: A successful feint should do no damage but should reduce the opponents WS for their next parry/dodge attempt. I would suggest the reduction should be the same as the margin of success. I think the feint attempt shouldn't allow for a reaction but if it is failed the opposing player gets an immediate counter attack.
I had similar thoughts. On some level, I feel a more skilled swordsman should be less likely to fall for a feint, but just keeping it as a very simple "passive" action would certainly be a quicker way to handle it.

One thing I'd note is that I want to open up feints to all characters (although only those with the skill will be particularly good at it).

QuoteAttack: Precision Strike: Allows the attacker to choose the location struck with an appropriate WS penalty (would -20 be too high?).
Precision Strike is intended to be broadly the same as the "Sure Strike" ability from 1st edition, allowing characters to aim for weak spots in their opponent's armour.

"Calling" melee location has been (perhaps too quietly) added as an optional modifier, where the character can choose to take a -20 to hit penalty in order to get a +/-20 on their hit location roll. The exact numbers there are still up in the air; the hit penalty should perhaps be only -10, but right now I'm more interested in broad mechanics than precise modifiers (which will need to be refined through playtesting).
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on February 22, 2017, 06:14:56 PM
I'm more than happy to help out with playtesting at Golden Aegis (or whenever if that doesn't go ahead). I don't think I'm going to get a Space Marine ready in time for that event anyway.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 28, 2017, 07:22:18 PM
I'm still tackling the missing close combat movement rules.

As suggested before, I quite like the idea that successful attacks/parries grant the character a free yard of movement. This would be even if beaten on an opposed roll, but the winning character would get to decide who moved first. (Although depending on whether that's found to hold things up, I might force an order on it).

Normal movement will remain an option, but this will allow the opponent free capacity to react, and as you can already see from the "Reach during combined movement" section, trying to close in this way carries a fairly high risk of being impaled.

However, I also think there need to be proper manoeuvring actions, to do similar things to "step back", "close" and "circle" in the LRB. I think I'll consolidate these to one skill that can be used to move in any direction (now that the rules allow freer positioning), with the special element to the skill being that it restricts or otherwise hinders the opponent's options to react.

In IRE, something to remember is that a character can now react to any action in melee, including movement. This means that there has to be some mechanism to just stop manoeuvre actions just being immediately countered (or just giving the defending character an easy opportunity to try getting a stab wound in).

What comes to mind is that manoeuvring will involve be a WS test, and the opponent will be unable to use a turn or move as a reaction to this manoeuvre skill unless he actually beats this roll. (Or, possibly, as above, will be forced to let the attacker decides who moves first, making it difficult for him to react).

This I think could even tie into the existing reactions, with the same risk/rewards for dodging/parrying/taking the hit.

A dodge has the best odds of matching the opponent's footwork, but cannot get a counter attack
A parry has worse odds (usually), but can.
And taking the hit has the best odds of a counter-attack, but as a non-defensive reaction cannot beat the roll (as it's not opposing it), meaning the character cannot turn if he takes this option. (And attacking might even give the opponent the chance to dodge or parry, flanking you further!)

I'm quite happy with this option, because it's comparatively simple and very much ties in with existing mechanics.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: Cortez on February 28, 2017, 11:17:47 PM
I like the WS roll to see if the maneuver is successful, not sure about the dodge/parry to oppose it idea though. The character performing the circle needs to have enough of an incentive to carry it out otherwise it'll never get used (like in the current rules). If it can be countered then it may not be worth giving up an attack for it.

Perhaps the maneuver can be combined with an attack? But you also don't want the circle/attack action to become the standard attack either.
Title: Re: Musings on a fan made 2nd edition
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 01, 2017, 01:09:23 AM
Quote from: Cortez on February 28, 2017, 11:17:47 PMI like the WS roll to see if the maneuver is successful, not sure about the dodge/parry to oppose it idea though.
Manoeuvres may have been rare in 1stE, but when it did happen, I always found it really daft when a defender couldn't respond to another character just walking right around them. As much as IRE wants to encourage more movement in close combat, in making position more fundamental, it's also going to be important to let characters respond to that.

So I feel it's both necessary and valid - after all, a more experienced fighter is more likely to be able to avoid being flanked. Still, balancing it may well be a concern, but then, all of IRE's close combat modifiers are going to need  playtesting and refinement to make sure they work as intended; the system is different enough to 1stE that the same values of modifiers no longer really mean the same thing.

I'm doing some of that through statistics, doing some old fashioned mathhammer to work out how the numbers play out, but it's definitely going to need to hit the table too.

QuotePerhaps the maneuver can be combined with an attack? But you also don't want the circle/attack action to become the standard attack either.
I do plan on allowing circle/attack as a possibility, although again the modifiers will need refinement.

As far as encouraging variety, while I won't be too surprised to see individual fights quickly settle on strategies as opponents get a measure on each other and their environment, hopefully the opposed mechanics and the changed reach system will make this a different strategy in different combats.

Fighting an opponent with a Reach 2+ axe will need you to choose your distances differently to if they have a Reach 3 sword, and fighting a high-WS swordsmaster who's good at parrying will call for stacking modifiers in your favour more than if you're trying to handle some wizened scribe.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: TheNephew on March 02, 2017, 12:55:10 AM
Dates allowing, I'd like to help playtest the IRE if it's happening at Dark Sphere.

Couple of notes from a first proper read-through:

Reactions read like they'll play a lot more smoothly than I'd originally thought - nice simple yet comprehensive rules.
Edit: Especially impressive as every question I have is answered in the next paragraph or section, so far.

I assume, since I didn't see it stated explicitly, that Prepared/Reserved Reactions hold over the end of the turn?
If I use all of my actions/dice last activation/turn, I will have no Reactions available until my next turn (besides close combat)?


Location Injury & BIV - I vaguely recall chatting about your plans to solve the "slap a marine to death" problem on the canal walk back to the station after the Lachesis Affair (maybe...), but it looks like the rules are the same.
I bit of forum searching has turned up some discussion, but the conclusion seems to be "it doesn't come up often enough to be a problem".
Have you given any thought to making the damage track for Injuries cumulative?
BIV 6 means one hit of 7 damage to  the chest will cause a (7 of 12) Heavy Injury, but 4 more points is still a (11 of 12) Heavy Injury, another 4 damage puts it into (13 of 18) Acute Injury.



Typo:
p17 Action/Reaction Order - First example - "However, after half og his 6 yards running..."
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 02, 2017, 02:49:12 AM
Quote from: TheNephew on March 02, 2017, 12:55:10 AMDates allowing, I'd like to help playtest the IRE if it's happening at Dark Sphere.
A formal playtest day probably will be at Dark Sphere, although I'm hoping I can lure a couple of players for a game at Golden Aegis in order to spot any glaring errors.

QuoteReactions read like they'll play a lot more smoothly than I'd originally thought - nice simple yet comprehensive rules.
Edit: Especially impressive as every question I have is answered in the next paragraph or section, so far.
It's almost like I spent three and half years writing it. :P

QuoteI assume, since I didn't see it stated explicitly, that Prepared/Reserved Reactions hold over the end of the turn?
If I use all of my actions/dice last activation/turn, I will have no Reactions available until my next turn (besides close combat)?
Although I may need to make it more apparent, top of page 19:

At the start of a character's turn, any unspent reactions they have previously reserved or prepared are automatically lost. If a character chooses to delay his own turn until later through the game turn, he will retain his actions until that point.

QuoteLocation Injury & BIV - I vaguely recall chatting about your plans to solve the "slap a marine to death" problem on the canal walk back to the station after the Lachesis Affair (maybe...), but it looks like the rules are the same.
I think that was Ancient Rites. Lachesis was at Dark Sphere, so not much meandering back along canals.

Anyway, I've found that one hard to resolve without nasty amounts of bookkeeping, rules clutter and/or a complete re-write.
Where possible, IRE does try to keep things as a logical progression from 1stE; for example, the reaction system, while inspired by Infinity, draws from Inquisitor's rules for things like close combat, overwatch and the dodge/deflect shot skills.

Tracking injury total by location means a lot more paperwork and would interfere with the healing system.

Inquisitor's injury system is actually pretty robust when I try to attack it. All I've been able to do is some minor tinkering (a few injury chart changes, capping stunned results and levelling the system shock threshold). And the thing is, I honestly cannot remember the last time the slapping problem actually was a problem.

The best I've been able to come up with is the idea of a toned down version of the Ossmodula rule from the Dark Magenta Astartes article - a hit of less than half BIV (or possibly a fixed value like 3 or 4) before armour can't increase the injury level above Heavy, and will instead just do immediate damage for the current level.
However, I think I'd have to make it an optional rule, as I think that penalising low damage weapons might actually be more of an issue than the slapping problem.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: Cortez on March 02, 2017, 10:27:07 AM
Yeah, don't remember the 4 paper cuts and you're dead/crippled being a problem at any Conclave event. It's more of a problem with heavily armoured characters anyway, which are fairly rare these days (unlike when the game first released and everyone went a bit crazy at the lack of restrictions).

As for a testing day at Dark Sphere, maybe we should hold that earlier (May/June) and push the IGT back until August/September?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 02, 2017, 01:46:11 PM
Quote from: Cortez on March 02, 2017, 10:27:07 AMIt's more of a problem with heavily armoured characters anyway, which are fairly rare these days.
Well, I think I'd have to make any minimum damage limit before armour anyway (although perhaps not before cover and forcefields, which are less of a constant).

If I made it so that some minimum damage had to be done after 10 points of power armour, then attackers would have to score a minimum of about 13 or 14 points of damage to have a chance at doing those characters any serious hurt at all, which is impossible/near impossible with some weapons.

Yes, power armour should be tough against low powered weapons, but making it completely invulnerable would make it even less reasonable to take in game. And that's kind of a problem. I did have a discussion with someone a while back - it rather missed the point of IRE*, but one of the points it did bring up was that if you do want to create a completely-over-the-top Tyrus-type who thinks they need to put the fear of the God-Emperor into everyone, you're quite heavily restricted.
* It basically started "You're fixing Inquisitor? Good, I've never played it, because I always thought it was terrible. Here's a list of games I want you to turn it into", and I had to explain that the IRE project was for people who actually like Inquisitor.

I did feel that was a valid point. While I do think that Inquisitor should largely remain about covert and semi-covert wars, loud bombastic and arrogant types are an established archetype of the Inquisition - and it is also sometimes entirely valid to call in a Space Marine.

As such, I actually want to make high armour less effective - or, perhaps better worded, less absolute.
The broad plan at the moment is to put some options in so that characters can try to attack weak spots in their opponent's armour, trading hit chance for some armour piercing ability. (Broadly, adapting the "Sure Strike" and "Crack Shot" skills into actions any character can attempt)
Armour would therefore still be very useful against low damage weapons (as hitting the weak spots would be hard), but not completely invulnerable.

QuoteAs for a testing day at Dark Sphere, maybe we should hold that earlier (May/June) and push the IGT back until August/September?
Possibly. Ideally I'd like to (hopefully) run the test game at Golden Aegis to get a broad idea of if anything big needs fixing before I commit to a full event, but I'd also like to know when people are available. (I have to check my availability over those weekends one way or another). If we've got a day which would have really good attendance, it'd be better to use that for the IGT; the playtests would still be informative even if we could only scrape together one table's worth of players (particularly as I could then really focus on that one table), but that'd be a pretty miserable IGT.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: Cortez on March 02, 2017, 02:42:05 PM
The armour thing is a tricky one. I agree that there needs to be a place for Tyrus and Space Marines, but I also feel they shouldn't be allowed to completely overpower everything else. At the moment I feel the rules achieve this by making it so that any basic weapon can penetrate power armour with a bit (ok a lot) of luck. The problem is of course is that this makes power armour a bit too vulnerable (from a fluff perspective) to weapons such as boltguns and chainswords.

I like the concept of having to attack the joints etc. on power armour. Would you be upping the AV at the same time though? Otherwise I feel it would make power armour too vulnerable to the more powerful weapons. It would also allow the rules to reflect different grades of armour i.e. Space Marine Armour > Tyrus Armour > Sororitas Armour or something like that.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: TheNephew on March 02, 2017, 04:44:31 PM
Point thoroughly addressed and rebutted - I'm satisfied.

The only alternative that occurred to me was some sort of criticals ignoring armour system, but that might be hard to mix with the current crit system.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 02, 2017, 05:36:08 PM
Quote from: Cortez on March 02, 2017, 02:42:05 PMWould you be upping the AV at the same time though? Otherwise I feel it would make power armour too vulnerable to the more powerful weapons
Precision attacks are unlikely to affect the effectiveness of the more powerful weapons. There'll be a to-hit penalty for precision attacks, so for weapons which already have a fair chance of breaching power armour anyway, trying to aim for weak spots will actually worsen their damage output.

For a rough example, let's say a precision attack is a -20 to-hit and gains Penetration(D6). If we have a BS 60 character (no other modifiers).

With a 2D6 autopistol:
Standard shot: 60% (hit chance) x 8.33% (rolling 11+ on 2D6) = 5% chance of causing at least one point of damage through AV10
Precision shot: 40% x 50% (rolling 11+ on 3D6) = 20% chance

With a 2D10+4 bolter:
Standard Shot: 60% x 85% (rolling 11+ on 2D10+4) = 51% chance
Precision Shot: 40% x 96.66% (rolling 11+ on 2D10+4+D6) = 38.66% chance

Those numbers may need balancing, but show that it's entirely possible to make precision shots so that they benefit low damage weapons, but not those weapons that already threaten power armour.

~~~~~

That said, yes, introducing these options could possibly be used to justify toughening up some armours in IRE.

With precision attacks, power armour could actually be put up to something like AV12, yet still remain more feasible for low damage weapons to pierce (continuing the above example, a 2D6 autopistol would have about a 10.4% chance*).

* That's ignoring the chance of the target evading (they're more likely to evade a lower to-hit value). However, I've not yet looked at encumbrance in IRE. It'd be entirely possible to balance an increased AV for things like carapace or power armour with an evasion penalty** - wearing a quarter tonne of armour might be very good at stopping bullets, but you're not going to be dodging them.
The advantage to Astartes armour might then be not that it's thicker, but that the Black Carapace makes it much less encumbering.

** Also, I have currently included power armour with a mention in the target size modifier rules (wearing power armour does make you a bigger target). But I'll make it more specific when I get to that part of the Armoury.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 08, 2017, 05:28:02 PM
Possibly in time for a playtest on Saturday, I bring you V0.2.0.3:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/pgup1aw4o2vkh2m/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+Alpha+V0-2-0-3.pdf

Changes are marked in red, with tentative changes in orange. Where entire sections are new, I've only marked the section header.

It now includes:
- a few more designer's notes.
- preliminary close combat manoeuvring rules
- a slight expansion to the psychic rules
- the start of the abilities section (thus far it only covers rulebook abilities that need changes in IRE)
- updated versions of most of the psychic powers from the rulebook
- And an early draft of the close combat weapons section of the armoury
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 09, 2017, 05:23:18 PM
In the hope of a playtest at the weekend (although it's looking doubtful, due to lack of victims willing volunteers), I've put together a print copy. (I'm not expecting to either need, or be able, to make any massive changes before Saturday).

(http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy3/MarcoSkoll/Miscellaneous/IMG_3493_800.jpg)
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: Cortez on March 09, 2017, 06:03:49 PM
I think the lack of tables may be a bigger problem  :'(

We'll need to plan a specific event I think. Doesn't need to be that big, 3-4 players would be sufficient.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 10, 2017, 01:20:10 AM
Oh, it'll definitely need a specific event, but I was hoping to get a test in before then to spot any major "What the hell was I thinking" mess-ups before they had a risk of derailing an entire test day.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 04, 2017, 02:19:58 AM
I've put together a crib sheet for the current version of IRE, listing/summarising most of the rules changes from the LRB, which will hopefully make a useful reference for anyone wishing to playtest the rules.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/0oo6czattlu269p/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V_0_2_0_3+Crib+Sheet+V1.pdf

I expect to release a slightly updated version of IRE in the coming weeks (prior to the Dark Sphere day), as I've been playing around with example combats and such to get an idea of how the modifiers need to be fine tuned. (I expect to keep most of the underlying mechanics, just adjusting the exact numbers).

Hopefully, this will also include more of the missing chunks of the rules/skills/armoury.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 26, 2017, 12:58:39 AM
Sooooo, IRE news...

I've found time over the last while to run some more tests. Mostly just example cases of different characters trying to kill each other, but tests nonetheless.

Given that some of the rules have thus far been more statistics, theory, instinct, experience and what makes sense on paper* theory than actual playtesting (particularly given the rush I had trying to get them ready in hope of a playtest at Golden Aegis last month), even I'm still getting a grip on how some things actually feel on the table.
* An early revelation in this project was that what worked in my head could easily sound like the ravings of a madman when actually put into words. Which probably means I'm a madman.

The feel of the revised close combat in particular isn't what I expected, although it's exactly what I should have expected - given it's ... um, more or less how I said I wanted close combat to work. Stupid as it sounds, I was surprised when the rules did what I wrote them to do. ::)

So yes, much more movement, with different close combats being unalike in their style. Changes in terrain, weapons or skill can heavily affect how characters can approach combat. Some of the test combats I ran came out all Princess Bride, others were chaotic brawls with characters trying to blast each other point blank with shotguns.

Unsurprisingly, I've found a few points I might need to clean up before New Dawn, but I'm pretty happy so far.

~~~~~

The other part of this post is that I was at Salute on Saturday, and had the chance to discuss some of Inquisitor's rules design with something of an authority...

(http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy3/MarcoSkoll/Inq/IMG_3745.jpg)

More than just the discussion we had on the day, he's made the generous offer of coming onto the Conclave and answering some questions about the philosophy and decisions that drove Inquisitor's design, as time and his recollection* permits.
*And, indeed, mine. While he'd read something I said earlier in this thread about having questions about aspects of the game design, I only mentioned having questions - not what those questions actually were. So I now need to remember what I actually wanted to ask.

That's a big thing for IRE - any additional insight into the original design process will be very helpful in keeping the updated edition faithful to its predecessor.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 28, 2017, 02:24:32 AM
Referring to the testing mentioned above, one question that came up about close combat was about the "Fighting for position" move, the free 2 yard move that passing an attack, parry or dodge roll offers a character in IRE.

I'm very happy with it from the perspective of what it's intended to do - it does mean fights move a lot more, and that makes them feel so much clearer and more vivid in my mind's eye. It's easy to see one character ducking out of the way

However, although I established an order for this movement (the winner of any opposed roll decides who moves first), I didn't really establish a when. During the testing, I mostly assumed it was at the end of the action, after any hit was resolved - while this felt like it flowed better from the perspective of game mechanics, it did occasionally cause odd cases where a character who'd just been heavily injured might then want to make a move that felt off. Say, a character who'd just been stunned by a hit to the head might then want to use his positioning to move as close as possible to a character with a long weapon (therefore reducing his future hit chance).

I guess it's possible to say that taking serious injury from a hit would cancel the positioning move, but I don't really want to layer on any more conditionals and exceptions than I have to. One alternative would be to make the positioning move take place immediately after the hit/parry/dodge rolls are made, before any injury is resolved.

This is presumably more realistic, as the combatants will  have decide where and how to move before blows land, although it perhaps feels a bit strange as an order for the game mechanics.
What I do know is that I'm happy for the characters to decide where they're moving after the hit roll (as opposed to as part of the action declaration), as it is very much going to be a split second decision based on how an opponent moves and attacks. (Also, it plays faster to decide on the fly).

Thoughts?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: TheNephew on April 30, 2017, 10:10:36 PM
Perhaps the winner of the roll also decides when the sidestep/shove/chase takes place?
Though this is perhaps a win-more issue, if whoever starts controlling the combat can continue to do so too easily re: weapon reach and the like.

While moving after the roll's success seems most appropriate, it's really only a matter of protecting against abusing the system, and the -][- ruleset has never really catered to the power gamer.
It seems like you'd expect folks to agree that they'd do the 'logical' thing in response to what occurred in the combat, so the exact timing needn't matter.

As for the Godfater Q&A, I can't think of any immediate specific pressing  questions, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing his views on how the game's grown out of what was originally envisioned, especially post-support withdrawal.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 03, 2017, 02:53:34 AM
Quote from: TheNephew on April 30, 2017, 10:10:36 PMPerhaps the winner of the roll also decides when the sidestep/shove/chase takes place?
Well, that really only benefits the attacker if they win, because if the defender wins, the attack is cancelled and there's no difference between moving before resolving damage or after. Given the attacker already has the advantage of having hit, and also gets to choose whether he moves first or second, he's at quite an advantage anyway.

It'd also increase the number of decisions players could hesitate over, so I think I want to nail it down. (And depending on how the playtests go, I may well also define a specific order that the positioning moves have to be taken in, rather than letting the winner decide).

In terms of realism and least opportunity for abusing the system, immediately after the hit/parry rolls makes most sense, as that's the instant in which the characters would be making the decision about which direction to step in.
It's just not what I'd originally expected in terms of game mechanics.

Quoteit's really only a matter of protecting against abusing the system, and the -][- ruleset has never really catered to the power gamer.
If possible, I want the IRE rules to feel tighter than the originals. While I have no pretence of achieving flawless balance, I don't really want players to ever feel like they can't do something because it's "dirty".

For example, something like sticking a krak grenade to an opponent's back in melee, for example, is very cool, but in 1st edition it had such a high chance of success that it was very rare to see anyone do it; it just felt unfair to even try.

Better balance and fairer play is a good thing even for casual narrative games like Inquisitor.

QuoteAs for the Godfater Q&A, I can't think of any immediate specific pressing questions, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing his views on how the game's grown out of what was originally envisioned, especially post-support withdrawal.
That could be a rather informative one for me too, seeing as IRE is developing upon and continuing from that growth. (Yet still trying to remain true to the original game rather than just mutating into some subjective view of what makes the perfect narrative game).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 03, 2017, 03:24:06 PM
A quick draft of IRE's Fearsome rules. These will be subject to change, as I need to decide if/how certain traits may cancel*, but the core of it is there.

*For example, Brutal Foe works somewhat like the LRB version of Fearsome. As it's now specifically about characters who are scary in close combat, and it now reasonably makes sense that another such character wouldn't be quite so worried.

QuoteFearsome
The character tests the nerve of all those who face them, instilling a penetrating horror to simply look upon them.

There are several forms of Fearsome, detailed below. Some particularly scary characters (such as manifest daemon princes!) may have more than one of these traits.

If any Nerve test caused or affected by a Fearsome trait is failed by four degrees or more, the affected character must immediately attempt to flee away from the Fearsome character, until they regain their Nerve by successfully passing a Nerve test at the start of one of their turns (before actions are declared).

Note that any character who becomes aware of a Fearsome character must also be made aware of any Fearsome trait(s) they possess. Terrifying people is not a subtle matter, and can often mean attracting attention you would rather have avoided.

Fearsome: Brutal Foe
The character is a hulking warrior, a foe who could tear you limb from limb with his bare hands. Getting within arms' reach of such an opponent is a death sentence.

If a character comes within melee range or starts their turn within melee range of an opponent with Brutal Foe, they must take a Nerve test. (Rolls of 96-00 do not automatically fail).
If passed, the character may continue to act as normal. If failed, the character must attempt to keep no closer than maximum melee distance from the Brutal Foe until their next turn.

Fearsome: Dread Reputation
The character has a reputation that precedes him. Whether it is because of an invincible record in hundreds of battles or because he exacts the most extreme cruelties upon his victims, only a fool or a hero would stand against him.

Any character aware of a character with a Dread Reputation, is at -20 Nerve for all Nerve tests caused by the Dreaded character. (e.g. Pinning, Threatening, etc).

Fearsome: Unnerving Presence
Simply being around a character with Unnerving Presence is a horrifying experience. Whether they have an psychic aura, a hideously scarred appearance or exude terror pheromones, they sap the nerve of those around them.

While within 10 yards of a character with Unnerving Presence, all opposing characters are at -20 Nerve.

You'll note that I've made Fearsome a trait that other characters are automatically made aware of.
If a character is supposed to be bad enough news that other characters are scared of them, that's important roleplaying information, not something that other characters should only find out when they try to charge and then suddenly get told by the other player.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 09, 2017, 01:59:03 AM
When I went to the local gaming club this evening, I had originally planned to maybe convert one of the Sororitas from the Triumvirate box, but quickly realised that between my model case and what was left in my backpack since I'd brought it back from the boat trip, I had the assets to run a full IRE playtest. (I didn't have other players, but I could manage on my own).
With the Dark Sphere playtest event less than two weeks off, this would give me a last minute opportunity to spot and iron out any fatal flaws I hadn't yet spotted in the rules.

Anyway, while I need to mentally process the game, the news is mostly good - it's opened up a few questions, but nothing major.

I don't expect I'll make a full report out of it, as my notes from the game are mostly rules notes rather than an exact sequence of events, but there is a photo album, and I've added basic details to the picture descriptions:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcoskoll/albums/72157681460733971

There were a good few fun moments, including a couple of close combats that really didn't go the way I expected. (Lesson for the day: Don't try to grapple someone who's wearing shock gauntlets).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: KaptiDavy on May 17, 2017, 09:30:45 PM
First I have to say that I still didn't find the time to read the whole document thoroughly, but here are my questions (musings??) anyway:

I'm curious about your influences ruleswise, e.g. what other systems do you know intimately? When it comes to INQ, FFG's Fireborn RPG comes to mind immediately, as it uses a very similar action sequencing. But that one enables the characters to build combos, so a quick comparison might do good to the cinematic aspects, if I may suggest

The other thing in this direction would be GURPS. Precint Omega once wrote about checking an older edition of its Martial Arts supplement, which could be a great resource for special moves design. (Check 4th edition, it's a very streamlined rules heavy system)

I also wrote some time ago a version of Psychic rules which have a very different outlook than yours - if you'd like to see it, drop me a note
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 17, 2017, 10:28:12 PM
Quote from: KaptiDavy on May 17, 2017, 09:30:45 PMI'm curious about your influences ruleswise, e.g. what other systems do you know intimately?
I've tried to avoid IRE having been influenced too much by other systems, as I want it to feel like an updated version of Inquisitor rather than turning Inquisitor into a different game. No-one would be able to agree on what's best to turn Inquisitor into... so I'm just trying turn it into Inquisitor.

As far as rulesets I know have influenced IRE, I can name:
- Dark Heresy/40kRP, which added Psy Rating, the degrees of success terminology, some damage modifiers like Tearing and reactions.
- Infinity, which further influenced reactions, particularly in the way that defensive reactions use opposed roll-offs. The choice to take a "roll high, but not over" (a.k.a. "The Price is Right") approach to margins of success (which removes a lot of maths, particularly when comparing two rolls) also came from here.

Still, I've tried, where possible, to implement large mechanical changes using rules that actually existed in 1st edition. Many of the fundamentals of reactions are built on the foundations of existing out-of-turn-action like parrying, counter attacks, psychic nullification, overwatch and the like.

Of course, some IRE mechanics have been lifted from or inspired by what other members of the community have written over the years, so they may well have had their own influences, but I can't comment on what those might be.

QuoteWhen it comes to INQ, FFG's Fireborn RPG comes to mind immediately, as it uses a very similar action sequencing. But that one enables the characters to build combos, so a quick comparison might do good to the cinematic aspects, if I may suggest

The other thing in this direction would be GURPS. Precint Omega once wrote about checking an older edition of its Martial Arts supplement, which could be a great resource for special moves design. (Check 4th edition, it's a very streamlined rules heavy system)
I'll see if I can take a look. As it is, I'm currently very happy with the core of the current IRE melee rules, which manage to do everything I wanted while making only fairly basic changes to the original system; I won't want to completely overhaul that, but I'd certainly be open to being able to build upon that for better unarmed combat and the like (even if it ends up as an expansion to the rules).

QuoteI also wrote some time ago a version of Psychic rules which have a very different outlook than yours - if you'd like to see it, drop me a note
I'd be interested. What I've gone for at the moment is what I feel is a fair compromise between Inquisitor's original rules (which weren't exactly the most fleshed out section of the rules, meriting only a single page) and the more detailed approach of the 40kRP systems.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: KaptiDavy on May 18, 2017, 08:35:28 PM
I see where this one goes, and I understand the somewhat tighter horizons to focus on the task more clearly, but I also see GW's current urge to go back to 2nd ed to "renew" the system. And amateur games developers tend to go with their own ideas before checking if those ideas alredy exist - hence the question:)

Fireborn is certainly worth a look, and I can send it over (GURPS too, but it's a longer read).
I never played Dark Heresy although I have the pdf's, and I have to say I found it a bit clumsy after all (especially considering its publish date)- the percentile system has it's limitations on lower levels, but that can be avoided in INQ
I also had a sketch of Close Combat revision, but I'll check yours before anything else
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 18, 2017, 10:44:36 PM
Blarg - now I've been promoted to admin, I have to get used to the fact that other people's posts are surrounded by a lot of buttons that aren't "Quote".

Quote from: KaptiDavy on May 18, 2017, 08:35:28 PMAnd amateur games developers tend to go with their own ideas before checking if those ideas alredy exist
Well, the IRE system has been in active development for about four years, and is built on experience and feedback from many years before that (including a lot of lessons learnt from my Revised Armoury project).

Quite a lot of different approaches have been considered or refined along the way.

QuoteI never played Dark Heresy although I have the pdf's, and I have to say I found it a bit clumsy after all (especially considering its publish date)
I do find Dark Heresy to be a fairly sluggish ruleset at times, and the damage system doesn't really have much granularity; there's a very steep gradient where a single point of damage modifier or toughness soak makes a huge difference to how effective a weapon is.
(At the bottom end of the scale, a D5 damage knife is almost entirely useless against even unarmoured targets).

Still, it does have several similarities to Inquisitor, and a lot of people are already primed to the idea of combining elements of the rulesets.

QuoteI also had a sketch of Close Combat revision, but I'll check yours before anything else
The most fundamental changes are:
- The successive parry modifier (which was awkward to calculate) has been replaced by parries/dodges having to roll better than the attack roll.
- Reach modifiers are now calculated compared to character spacing, not relative weapon lengths.
- Free movement on successful attacks/parries.

The first point means it becomes a lot more important to stack modifiers against an opponent, limiting their chances of rolling better than you.
The second means that character positioning is now a much more important modifier (for both you and your opponent)
The third means that characters actually try to spend time positioning!

When I've playtested it so far, it's resulted in fights that have much more movement and are much more vivid for it; you can now see how a character ducked past that screaming chainsword, how he stepped past his opponent,

There's a few other things like the addition of more combat attacks (I've tried grappling in some of my playtests, and it definitely adds something new) and that the close combat state has also been made optional (although still very valuable), but I feel the system has been revitalised mostly by those relatively basic changes.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: KaptiDavy on May 19, 2017, 09:18:41 PM
I started reading the file this morning (but the grey letters on my ebook gave me some headaches... can we change that to black??), and my initial thoughts might just seem heretical to most of you:)

I'm heavily considering to drop the D100 system altogether, because it only makes room for more maths and more failed rolls. Differentiating between characters in a character based and character-level game can be achieved in other ways: in our case the special abilities, which tend to pop up in good numbers on almost any character sheet (and would further the tradition of one of a kind characters).
Having one digit Characteristic Bonuses in a D100 roll doesn't mean much, but it widens the gap between characters with low and high values.

Action sequencing is the heart of it, so I'd keep it anyway, but with a strict 1 Action=1 Roll design. This means you either roll the Action Dice, or something else, but not both (like rolling for Initiative to grab a chance to roll a Characteristic Test).
The main reason I quit 40K so many years ago is the combat mechanisms (roll to hit, then to wound, and even a save after anything has gone through is silly)...

Now in this case I would say to Roll the Action Dice and have Mods for it based on Characteristics. That would also mean that Characteristics are capped at 10, for any characters (so Marines might have a Strength of 8 or 9, but no humans are allowed in that region).
Interacting with the environment is mostly player facing business handled via modifiers to the Action Roll, while player interaction can be solved with combat rules and the reaction system, which is quite good in this iteration (but I'd leave Reserved Reactions' Action dice roll to the point of declaration)

So I would change the Action Roll to be a D10 Roll, have a quite similar threshold (like 4+ or 5+), and have Degrees of Success or Failure (each with a certain effect): each point above or under the threshold would count as one. The GM might adjust the threshold for the task at hand (this would replace Risky Actions), and we can use the Characteristics (0-10) as modifiers if appropriate

I wouldn't worry about older rules conlicting these ideas, rather work my way up from here, as a good Radical would - thanks for watching 8)
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 19, 2017, 10:21:02 PM
Quote from: KaptiDavy on May 19, 2017, 09:18:41 PMthe grey letters on my ebook gave me some headaches... can we change that to black?
The colour coding is deliberate during the draft stages - black text is IRE rules, grey text is broadly as original (although often rewritten to avoid it being complete plagiarism), green text is experimental (or WIP) IRE and red is changes from the last version. (Orange is both experimental and changed).

I wanted to avoid using a colour for such a large quantity of text, as it would make it rather costly if someone wanted to print it.

QuoteI'm heavily considering to drop the D100 system altogether, because it only makes room for more maths and more failed rolls.
Decisions like that are impractical for IRE.

I know that any unofficial ruleset, no matter how well written, is going to struggle to gain traction against its official predecessor. Even if it's the most revolutionary thing since a turbo-charged merry-go-round, someone won't like it.

As such, I'm trying to make it as viable as possible for players to switch back and forth between the LRB and IRE. People who like IRE can play it, and yet still use basically the same character sheets if they go to an event where the GM still uses the original rules. It reduces the barriers to getting involved.

Overhauling rather than completely re-envisioning the mechanics also means that the changes are less likely to be controversial and cause people to resist the new version.

So that does mean keeping the roll for actions before the roll to hit, D100 mechanics, etc - yes, these are often things that have been criticised, but to drastically change them would be to make an entirely new game.
As I've said before, IRE is not about making "the best narrative game", it's about making "the best Inquisitor"; it's very specifically for people who like the existing game. IRE isn't looking for new fans, it's looking to give the dedicated players something perhaps a little bit more refined.

Yes, IRE has made changes, but I think that most people would be able to look at it and see the original underneath.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: KaptiDavy on May 19, 2017, 10:34:31 PM
Oh well... I hoped it would seem familiar enough  :-[
Anyway, I'll have a look at the other chapters to at least check what other goodies it has
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 20, 2017, 12:41:21 AM
Don't get me wrong, many of those ideas could be really interesting for a more streamlined narrative game, and I may well consider a project of that nature at some stage. 

However, (at least at this stage), I think it's important to keep IRE reasonably compatible with existing character sheets.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project (or Musings on a fan made 2nd edition)
Post by: KaptiDavy on May 20, 2017, 10:25:05 AM
No offense taken, of course, your concerns are valid enough - I just tend to forget about such, as the INQ scene here is non-existent
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 24, 2017, 02:54:17 PM
Thanks for that stuff KaptiDavy - I haven't yet really had a chance to look at it, as things have been a little hectic over the last couple of days, but I will try to get around to it.

Saturday's playtest day was IRE's first real outing (earlier versions weren't really a complete ruleset, and other playtests have been me playing against myself), so this was actually quite a trial by fire. Even I wasn't entirely sure if it was going to work.

However, I'm pleased to report that while we found a few areas that needed refinement and fine-tuning, all involved on the day felt that IRE was generally working well (or at least that's what they told me).

~~~~~

As far as the things that were mentioned as possibly needing work:

- The psychic rules. Now that Hazards do not automatically cancel the power, I perhaps haven't compensated enough for how easy it is to cast certain powers. That said, the psyker present was supposed to be fairly formidable, so I may need to see more playtesting with lesser psykers.

- The NPC rules (not yet in the public version of the rules). These perhaps made the various goons a bit too hardy at times. In an attempt to not have to track injury for these nobodies, NPCs instead have to roll over the damage they've taken in order to stay in the fight, but they seemed a little good at managing that.
I feel reasonably confident in the overall idea of avoiding bookkeeping, but I may have messed up the percentages there.

- Characters can gain a lot of counter attacks in melee. Unlimited counter-attacks has theoretically always been possible (there has never been a cap on counter attacking, and I have often seen characters get three or more counter attacks in a turn), but as dodging has often been the go-to choice, has perhaps not been hugely apparent.

However, there has definitely been an increase, as counter attacks are now permitted against missed attacks. That is something I want to keep, otherwise a defender gets to counter-attack more against more skilled opponents (who should really be leaving fewer openings in their attack), but it may mean that dodging needs a buff again - IRE deliberately nerfed it, as it was too advantageous before, but parrying perhaps has the edge now.

Still, again, this is something I need to see with more characters and which I expect to change as players get used to the system.
As pretty much all of the characters on the day were using Reach 3 weapons (not too surprising, given their general prevalence under 1stE rules), weapon reach penalties never massively came into play, and that's mostly when you would choose to dodge (as dodging ignores reach modifiers in IRE).

Things may also change as players get more of a sense of manipulating not only their chances in combat, but also their opponents'. If players choose to outmanoeuvre their opponents, then their opponents will get fewer counter attacks.

- Various minor errata, like falling damage.

Of those though, a lot of it is just a case of adjusting a few modifiers. The underlying mechanics generally seemed to work, they just need some rebalancing.

~~~~~

Of the points I'm particularly happy about from the day, I think I'm most happy with the modified close combat. The above questions about the fine-tuning of the parry/dodge balance aside, it seemed to work particularly well, producing a much more dynamic result than the "attack, dodge, attack, dodge" mantra from 1st edition.

The players have to think more about what they're doing, so it is a little more involved, although it never really felt sluggish* and the speed of play will naturally improve as players get used to the system.

* Possibly in part because the maths is a lot easier and less intrusive, but I feel that the opposed rolling mechanics also helped things never feel like a foregone conclusion. Before, it could mostly be assumed that a character would dodge the first attack in a turn, but would probably get hit by the third, making it somewhat tedious to even roll for them.

And on that front, we did see some brutally short close combats where a single attack or counter-attack rolled really well early in the fight and finished things very quickly. (That said, we also saw epic duels where characters traded blows for some time).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: TallulahBelle on May 29, 2017, 12:29:07 PM
Iv always LOATHED the mechanic of ok I have X points/slots for abilities/talents/traits but if I'm building a character that i feel needs three of them rather than two I have to take a negative trait which gives a penalty especially things like 'nervous' or 'impulsive' where I'm then expected to react as the grpup/gm defines those things and being told/pressured into having to react a certain way.

IMO inquisitor doesn't NEED to change anything because of the tired trope of 'evolving with the times' and id be very wary pf changing things in order to 'attract roleplayers' especially when in the same breath a reason for the suggestion is 'to avoid writing lpads of background to justify your skills'  Inq is not and should not be an RPG with miniatures ala 2nd ed Iron Kingdoms (it uses the warmachine/hordes rules for combat and damage etc) it's a narrative war game ot needs to be a war game first and the negative traits system..honestly people need to play the characters negatives rather than use a rule to show it.

E.g Tallulah Belle my Inquisitor, looks 16-17, I tell the other players this and in social/investigative situations she plays up to that, she is somewhat brash and flighty and indulges her whims precisely as spoiled nobles are expected to do, she will take risks to show off and be really act like a teenager but when she needs to use her station and bring the rosette out she becomes colder, more confident, somewhat arrogant and commanding. If i had to play bed with a negative trait to do that i couldn't have the dramatic switches between her cover and her true identity.

For firearms I have always been partial to the Cthulu mechanic where a gun has ranges where they are effective but a shooter can go beyond those ranges with a modifier to his skill to represent the difficulties with sights and holder and at extreme ranges a penalty to damage. So Yes you can shoot your snub nosed .357revolver at a target 100m away despite long range for that pistol is considered 50ft but you will have an additional modifier because your hold over is about 6" (too lazy to do the maths offhand) you have low profile combat sights on the gun as to not get snagged on the draw and your projectiles will be hitting at 380acp level vs the full power screamer 357+++p you have loaded.


For melee weapons I would love to sit and work out some rules to separate the weapon types and give then more flavour in the same way the RIA does guns because currently a sword could be a backsword or a shieldbreaker or a sabre and they are still one handed swords. I'd like to see more than tweaks to parry penalties. I know allot about different melee weapons but don't have the experience with INQ necessary for such a project as some of my suggestions end up being unbalanced (usually too conservatively) or clunky. Anyone who would like.to help hit me up.

I do have some suggestions for things like batons and nightsticks and knuckleduster type weapons something I'm toying with for my ex commisar. A 'sub' damage system based on my time in larps. Basically vs permanent damage breaking bones and death, sub damage is designed to subdue someone. It would be harder to do and pretty much a blunt weapons only type skill but your swinging to render cpmpliant/unconscious to be captured for questioning. The reason for a negative modifier is for example with a baton to subdue someone you are limited by areas you can't strike like the head or the hands or the grpin because you can cause real serious damage that way.


As for rock steady aim... The eulebooks description isn't great its a skill about firing acurately on the move but as it is currently its something you could make an argyemwnt for pretty much everyone with a longarm having.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 29, 2017, 08:01:53 PM
IRE doesn't, won't and, in my opinion, can't include a points mechanic or any other "hard" costing system.

(And, it will, with time, update any official abilities that I feel fall into "ruleplay" rather than "roleplay"; one example is the bodyguard skill - the original version forces the bodyguard to stay within 6 yards of their charge, but this obviously precludes the possibility for "Run! I'll hold them off" or "I'll draw their fire".)

IRE is also not a project that is trying to attract new players to the game. It's not inconceivable it might do so - a more refined version of the game could potentially fix things that some detractors didn't like - but it's not a specific objective.
As far as whether it could be described as evolving with the times, I don't know. The reaction mechanics are perhaps that way, as it's an idea that is common in a lot of more modern wargames, but as I've said before, I've done a lot to try and keep them within the existing style of game mechanics.

The shooting rules for IRE are relatively unmodified. Placed shots have been replaced by called shots, and the semi-auto and full-auto mechanics have been changed.
(I'm not yet necessarily sure the new semi-auto mechanic will stick, but I put in the current version because it's mechanically very similar to the full-auto rules, and therefore allows the overall concept to be tested more thoroughly than the relative rarity of full-auto would normally allow. That said, it did work reasonably well at Dark Sphere).

As it happens, there is more differentiation in melee weapons. Or at least the changes to the mechanics better represent the differences in how weapons are used (and there are a couple of additional stats that help increase that variety). There are limits on how far that can go though while remaining broadly compatible with the existing rules.

"Sub" damage is possibly a tricky one, as it needs to remain within the limits of the existing system without drastically complicating it.
I have got a mechanic from RIA's Beanbag rounds where the attack does Immediate damage but not Persistent damage (although there's also stuff about Toughness tests, etc). That's probably the avenue anything like that would have to go down.

And the issue with Rock Steady Aim isn't so much its own description, but the descriptions of aim levels (which assumed that an unaimed shot was taken from the hip, and one aim level was shouldering/raising the weapon); these descriptions have already been amended in IRE on the assumption that characters actually have a dang idea how to fire a weapon. (Aiming is now just described as taking more time over a shot).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: TallulahBelle on May 29, 2017, 08:26:49 PM
I was just sort of responding with my view to a post on the previous page I probably should have quoted the person but the multiple quote mechanic is pretty clunky on a mobile browser and dpubly so when you use speech to text to do it.  I agree with you on the role play > ruleplay side of things 100%


Iv always ignored the bit in the book where a normal shot is described as from the hip because that's just silly even in fast paced CQB/FISH combat where I am pretty much always pointshooting my longarms are on the shoulder I may not be taking time to line myself up between each shot and carefully shooting on the outbreath but I'm always supporting the weapon properly with either it being on my shoulder with a solid cheekweld or using sling tension and a push pull setup as appropriate. Possibly the only times iv shot from the hip in my force on force training experience is if I'm using NVGs on a helmet mount but even though I'm not using my sights or optic, I have a zeroed IR laser mounted to the weapon.


Yeah I always thought sub damage would be cool but difficult to do well as it can't just do injury level style damage because that doesn't give the effect you want of knocking someone unconcious and them coming round after a while without a penalty beyond being dazed and confused for a little bit Plus it can't be so clunky its never used as an option because if its easier to do lethal damage and patch the guy up later rather than using stuff from the less than lethal toolbox its pointless to have the rules there tbh.

Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: mcjomar on May 29, 2017, 09:56:36 PM
The closest thing we have to "sub" damage, off the top of my head, is the "subdue" skill which came with the Arbites Brava character (the alt barbaretta sculpt). I'd pair that with shock-based weapons, as it makes sense to me that a shock baton or similar would apply such damage (in addition to any blunt weapons, such as clubs, blackjacks, etc). In fact, at least In my head anyway, that's how I've always felt it should be treated. I'd go so far as to say that if the subdue skill was re-written, then it would include lines stating such things, so as to ensure it could not be used with anything that wasn't blunt, shock, or some other variation of direct force non-lethal attack.


On the other topic, for me, mechanically (and for me sort of thematically - yes I'm aware I'm ruthlessly misusing that word a bit), I'd say (as I think Marco said, if I'm reading that right) that IRE is largely just an improvement/upgrade/alteration to the existing system.
However, outside of any potential it might have to speeding things up (I hope? - I like anything that gives us more time/games on IGT days, or campaign days at various venues) I doubt it'll bring back any of the detractors of the current =][= system.

One side (the RPGers) will decry the lack of balance in the current or new systems due to coming from systems that have such things as Combat Ratings, or Point Buy systems for character generations, or similar. In short, they like to have more bounds for their system than Inquisitor currently has. They're the pure Narrative types I guess. Even in Fate they have some vague sort of restrictions to give them structure for chargen or similar. And in addition to wanting more limits in terms of chargen or combat balance, they'd also (ironically?) want ~less~ rules in terms of things like shooting/melee or similar (unless they're fans of Hackmaster or something like that I guess - exception to any rule I suppose). Best to point them at Fate, or the Cortex system, or something like that.

On another side are the Wargamers, who are also looking for points systems as balancing mechanics, but less CR (and the involved GMs for sweeping on/off rails storylines) and more something to the tune of Killteam or the Necromunda/Inquisimunda/Shadow War Armageddon type stuff. Something fast paced, and less cluttered with charts, rules, and details. In short, less Inquisitor. An RPGer might find some fun with Inquisitor, as there are ways to do it, but a wargamer straight up wouldn't (unless they become an RPGer). They're better off pointed at SWA, Necro, KillTeam, Infinity, or similar.

And both groups will complain about things like the Actions system, the detail density of range tables, injury charts, etc etc.

After that you get the people who complain about 54mm scales, but that has been debunked repeatedly through use of both 28mm and 54mm models, and both 28mm and 54mm scenery, vehicles, etc etc, so for those people the fastest current way to sort them out is to point them at Blanchitsu, or discuss the suggestion that Saussure made long ago in an SG article regarding the fact that 54mm models in 28mm scenery makes the board feel cramped - which it's supposed to!!

As to the first two groups, I don't know that you could (using current mechanics) bring them to the table.

There are ways, but it would require an overhaul of the Inquisitor mechanics, such that it would not be the existing system, and to do such a thing without sacrificing the raw "feel" of what makes Inquisitor what it is would be difficult.It would probably necessitate a complete gutting and rebuilding from the ground up. I do not consider it impossible or unacceptable, however. I would go so far as to say I consider it worth the attempt, even if only as a learning experience, if nothing else. But it would not really be something for this thread/topic, as this is about the IRE, and not about a complete overhaul and gutting of the system. Perhaps such discussions on such subjects, mechanically or thematically, should be in a separate thread.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on May 30, 2017, 12:07:22 AM
Quote from: mcjomar on May 29, 2017, 09:56:36 PMOn the other topic, for me, mechanically (and for me sort of thematically - yes I'm aware I'm ruthlessly misusing that word a bit), I'd say (as I think Marco said, if I'm reading that right) that IRE is largely just an improvement/upgrade/alteration to the existing system.
Pretty much. IRE is a fan edition - it has to remain faithful to what it's based on. There are certainly a lot of things that could be done with a complete ground-up rebuild, but the result wouldn't really still be Inquisitor.

A good fan edition is a purified version of the game, keeping the best bits, changing what doesn't work and keeping other tweaks to a minimum.
In that respect, IRE is supposed to be a relatively uncontroversial update to the game.

QuoteBut it would not really be something for this thread/topic, as this is about the IRE, and not about a complete overhaul and gutting of the system. Perhaps such discussions on such subjects, mechanically or thematically, should be in a separate thread.
IRE is to an extent predicated on any discussion of what players want out of a fan edition, but (admin hat on) it probably would be better kept for another thread, particularly if it's going to spiral out into things outside IRE's existing design principles. (e.g. trying to keep existing character sheets)
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: TallulahBelle on June 01, 2017, 10:27:34 PM
Exactly, it can't be about changing the game. To please none players at the expense of the fans of the game, it's one of the reasons I'm hoping if GW ever reattempt inquisitor they either do something obviously inspired by but not a rewrite ala the new shadow war killteam thing if its done in 28mm rather than redoing Inq in 28mm tearing out iconoc parts of the game to appeal to new players

There are things that need changing like some of the skills but we are used to that with DM/Conclave versions of things. Some of how combat works needs tweaking and certainly how weapons work in some cases but the core game needs to be recognisable and i think Marco you leading the project will have that in mind throughout it.

Dunno what help i will be other than maybe some advice on melee weapons and the more active part of shooting but i do want to help anyway I can.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: mcjomar on June 02, 2017, 09:26:48 AM
When it comes to a non-fan official edition of Inquisitor, I think GW is relatively more likely to rebuild it from the ground up, and go pure 28mm to leverage their existing range, rather than risking 54mm again. I don't think we can expect a SW:A style edition from them. They're getting better, but I doubt they'd be adventurous enough to risk stepping too far outside the box they've created. They're more likely to attempt to speed things up (as they did to a lesser extent with the campaign system in SW:A).

How well that works will, I think, be entirly subjective, and will depend on the target market they go for out of their existing supporters. And how well they write it, of course.


As to more topical discussion, I do agree that the existing skills do probably need a review - although I would prefer to relabel them as abilities, rather than skills, on the grounds that semantically, I tend to think of things like shooting, or swordsmanship, or lockpicking, or playing the piano as skills.

I see skills as a general umbrella, within which fall certain abilities demonstrating specialisation and/or talent within that skill. Some warriors will be skilled with delicate attacks, and deserving of the Feint ability, while others will be more brutal, and be superior with blunt, heavy weapons, like great hammers, and so be better off with some other ability to better reflect that (Furious Assault would work better for a manic attacker with fast reflexes, and pure rage, but no fine control).

However, this relies as much on the pre-existing descriptions of the abilities, skills, and stats, rather than purely on the raw mechanics of the abilities alone. It is this sometimes workable, and sometimes disconnected combination of mechanics and description of an Ability that tend to bother me most.
Prime example is probably Heroic, which gives the user the ability to reroll 1s.

Heroic as described suggests that the user is courageous "willing to brave tasks that would leave lesser mortals quivering in fear". Somehow this translates as being able to avoid/reduce Risky Actions by rerolling a single die roll of a 1? The mechanic sounds more like luck protecting the user from their own screwups. Heroic as described sounds more like something that should affect Nv or Ld, rather than actions - to ignore pinning, or willingly stand up to fearsome, or even terrifying situations. We end up having to extrapolate the description to suggest that the user is "pushing themselves extra hard" to justify the disconnect between description and mechanic. I would absolutely have rewitten this as "Lucky: the user is gifted with extraordinary luck, either because of the blessing of the Emperor, or gifts of the Dark Gods. Regardless, the user is less likely to suffer misfortune in the course of their duties. The user may reroll a single action die result of a 1 per turn." as this still gives the mechanical benefit (rerolling a 1, preserving the ~actual~ functionality), but gives a much more believable description to fit how or why the character may have it, as compared to the original writing. The writer then has to justify in the character history with suitable but believable situations where this "ability" may have occurred.

Lightning reflexes is another one that - as originally written - is both questionably powered, and relatively disconnected with mechanic and description. And has received multiple justifiable rewrites because of this. Based on description alone I would suggest reducing this to allowing the user to be able to choose when in a turn they can act, rather than purely going by initiative order. It would still end up being justified by a high Init stat, which would be functionally similar, but not quite the same.

Nerves of Steel and Force of Will, just by name alone, never mind description vs mechanics, have problems. The latter - in a sense, based on name alone - sounds more like a term that could be better applied to a psyker, relying on their willpower to control a particularly tricky bit of psychic witchery, given that Wp is one of the primary (if not THE primary) stats for psychic powers. Possibly by allowing a single reroll of a WP test in a turn when using a psychic power, but being forced to use the second result, maybe.

Nerves of Steel is more appropriate in terms of application ( given that it applies to Nv and pinning tests), but still has its own set of issues. Perhaps it could be softened to only applying to pinning from being fired at, but not to things like explosions, or warp phenomenae.

Ambidextrous is another one, with an almost acceptable description, but a somewhat overpowered application mechanically. I'd probably carve it to only applying to non-combat actions, given that combat requires a certain degree of focus. Plus Gunslinger already exists, for those that want to use gun-fu, or act like Neo.

All of these need either rebalancing, rewriting, or at the very least redescribing, or renaming - something that has already been applied to Lightning Reflexes to one degree or another.

And this is before we even so much as look at psychic powers themselves. Or non-LRB Abilities, like Subdue, or Plain Dumb Luck (which I still have a copy of somewhere).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 02, 2017, 01:32:18 PM
Quote from: mcjomar on June 02, 2017, 09:26:48 AMWhen it comes to a non-fan official edition of Inquisitor, I think GW is relatively more likely to rebuild it from the ground up, and go pure 28mm to leverage their existing range, rather than risking 54mm again.
I'm doubtful that it will get remade. It's an acquired taste, isn't exactly a candidate for massive sales (only needing a few models - although I concede that Shadow War may only be selling a box or two) and would need quite a heavy rework.

I suspect that Shadow War is actually already doing quite a good job of filling people's desires for 28mm Inquisition conversion (and has more familiar gameplay for most people), so I'm not sure that a 28mm Inquisitor would be worthwhile, and a 54mm one just doesn't really make sense any more.

QuoteHowever, this relies as much on the pre-existing descriptions of the abilities, skills, and stats, rather than purely on the raw mechanics of the abilities alone. It is this sometimes workable, and sometimes disconnected combination of mechanics and description of an Ability that tend to bother me most.
While I do agree with most of your points, one challenge is that IRE is not a blank slate. Changing around ability names and descriptions messes up existing character sheets.
If there's a better way to make the abilities do what they already do or their rules need to be updated because of IRE mechanics changes, then by all means I'm happy to go with that, or should it be possible to rewrite their descriptions to better match their role - but outright renaming and swapping around effects will impact on how well character sheets can be made to work for both IRE and the LRB.

So far, the only abilities that have been renamed in IRE are the Dodge ability (which is renamed to "Agile", because "Dodge" is already a reaction in close combat and I wanted to remove that ambiguity) and Blademaster (which has been rolled into the more general "Weapon Master" skill, which can apply to any category of weapon in which the character specialises - and as that can include hammers, armoured gauntlets, etc, the name "blademaster" was no longer appropriate).
Even then, these abilities specifically reference the old ability name.

Still, to look at the specific cases you mention:

- Heroic's description has been changed to "never hesitates in the face of danger". If the character is the right combination of insane and magnificent that they don't stop to think that a jump might just be a bit too far, then it does make sense that they're less likely to panic and get it wrong.

- Lightning Reflexes now ties into the reaction system, much as one community version of the skill provided the chance for one (possible) reaction per turn.

- Nerves of Steel and Force of Will. When it comes to FoW, I can't really justify turning it into a completely different class of skill. While I agree the name is more appropriate for something like psykers, I don't want people to look up what Force of Will does in the new rules and then find out that their daemon-hunting, psyker-hating Monodominant now has a re-roll on psychic tests.

And Nerves of Steel already applies pretty much as you say. Blast weapon pinning already explicitly ignores special rules, and supernatural horrors don't use the pinning rules.

- I've never really found Ambidextrous to be overwhelmingly powerful. For example, when it comes to the guns akimbo desperado archetype, the Gunfighter ability is certainly more significant (as it removes a -20 penalty from both hands, not just one of them).

In any case, as someone who can comfortably shoot both left and right handed (it helps that I'm left eye dominant), I'm happy that the skill remains as it is. It doesn't seem worth complicating with conditions about exactly when characters are and aren't ambidextrous.

QuoteOr non-LRB Abilities, like Subdue, or Plain Dumb Luck (which I still have a copy of somewhere).
I'm not yet focusing on non-LRB stuff. I will get around to it eventually, but it's kind of necessary to get the core mechanics nailed down first.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: mcjomar on June 02, 2017, 02:18:20 PM
RE: Heroic descriptions, I suppose it comes down to how you treat the action system (and Inquisitor in general).

I mean, during a simple non-combat section of a scenario, perhaps you want to walk (menacingly or otherwise) towards someone/something.

You are using an "average" (by Inquisitor standard) 4-speed character.
This gives you four actions.

Thus it takes roughly ten second to walk 16 inches.
Assuming an average of 1.8 metres = 54mm = 2 inches, that gives us an extremely rough estimate of 3.6m x 4 or 14.4m in ten seconds. Reasonable.

Now let's assume you get the usual average of about half your rolls. Now you're doing 7.2 m in ten seconds.
So I guess you slowed down to add to the menace. Or apparently you got sidetracked by a pretty butterfly.
Ditto, but moreso if you rolled only one success (or none, which ends up the same for actions).

From this perspective it makes sense if we describe Heroic characters as more decisive. The Heroic character will be able to be more menacing (or more likely to draw fire to protect their comrades, if that is their intent).


As an aside, I find it also highlights an issue that is shared with games like D&D - namely that rolling tests for mundane actions, because RAW suggests that this is required (assuming we have a GM who is completely RAW - a regrettable circumstance, I find), ends up placing supposedly competent characters into situations where they end up bungling (because statistically rolls of the dice will cause this to occur) simple things that people of their talent should not objectively be bungling.

Thankfully, with GMs who work with the spirit of the rules, and occasionally ignore the letter, this can be avoided. But the same is true of any RPG, RPG-lite, RPG-like, or RPG-related game, and basically requires that GMs essentially are fixing things that rules break when applied RAW. Not that this is something that can be changed in IRE - merely that it's a logical bugbear that I have found increasingly bothersome in many different gaming systems, both wargame and RPG, due to the type of abstraction and how it is applied.

To reduce it to something quotable:
"We should not be rolling for mundanities, but instead for interesting things based in chance (such as shooting). We should not use dice rolls as a means to limit our gameplay. Instead we should encourage decision-making, OODA loops, player interaction, psychological warfare, and ultimately freedom of choice within a sandbox."

Or to paraphrase Charax;
"Why are you relying on random dice rolls? Do the dice have a gun to your head? Are they holding your family hostage?"

But again, this is all an aside, separate from the IRE project.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 02, 2017, 03:00:26 PM
I wouldn't call movement a mundanity. It's one of the most important things in the game.

It can determine whether a character can rush to the rescue in time, can get to the escape capsule before it launches or dash across a street while a sniper is reloading. At its core, movement affects pretty much every other aspect of the rules. It affects whether a character is in cover in a firefight, it affects whether they can charge into combat, it helps them hide from their enemies.

I once spoke with someone who said he'd ditch the action mechanic, and asked him what he'd do instead - how do you make it exciting and tense to rush to that bulkhead door before it slams shut? He said "Oh, I'd make them roll a test".
But that's what the action roll is. (I actually compare it to how the Fate/Fudge system rolls all of its tests).

At its core, Inquisitor's action system conforms to a pretty standard concept in RPGs. Pretty much every RPG gives a character two (or sometimes "one and a half") actions per turn. It's sort of the biggest chunk of time where the active character isn't at an absurd advantage by being able to do too much before his opponent can respond.

And Inquisitor does just that, an average character, Speed 4, will normally get two actions per turn.

But not always. And for me, that's important. It stops players knowing that they can definitely make it across the street in time, or that they definitely can't draw a pistol and shoot their two opponents in time.
That would be unrealistic - reality doesn't work that way. Giving players a clear idea of exactly how much they can do encourages unrealistic behaviour where characters always make safely it into cover, or don't even try because they can see it's too far and they know they'd get shot.

Whenever I'm playing Dark Heresy, I often end up in these loathed situations where I know straight up whether I can or can't try to make a move.

~~~~~

Also, the action system ties heavily into the injury system. In a PvP game with so few characters, it's important that characters can take progressive debilitation. (Because hits need to mean something, but there also needs to be more granularity than whether you have two or three fully active charcters).

The action system provides a very good compromise here. Loss of speed does reduce a character's effectiveness, but only by a fraction of an action (and even a moderately wounded character can still get lucky and get a standard two actions)
Imagine what it would be like if you had a fixed two actions per turn and you just straight up lost one of them.

The action system, while often criticised for its uncertainty, is to me actually one of the most profoundly clever things about Inquisitor. No, it's not what other RPGs do... but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: mcjomar on June 02, 2017, 04:46:01 PM
I don't know that I'd agree that it's not what other RPGs do - by definition, much like testing RAW for picking the lock on the door (or taking 20 - which in D&D terms is apparently an hour or some other oddly long amount of time) you're testing for success/failure. It's just in this case, it's a success/failure on how much you manage to do, in addition to testing for success/failure on your ability to shoot a gun/swing a sword/walk ten metres/etc.
And when this is applied to simple situations (for example, walking to a door) to suddenly discover you failed to make it, and have to retroactively describe it as stumbling, or being distracted by something ends up seeming rather odd - especially when applying it to the kind of capable characters used in Inquisitor.

The two situations (walking to a door, vs sprinting to the escape capsule) are the apples and oranges of mundanity vs exciting. Currently the existing action system is blind to this difference. RAW the action system treats the two situations as exactly the same with no mechanical difference whatsoever. It is this that causes the logical problem for me.
Sprinting for an escape capsule and not knowing if you'll make it in time? Exciting!
Walking over to a door to open it because someone just knocked on it? Something people do every day, so why are we testing for this again? Start rolling tests after the mutants break down the door, by all means, but not beforehand!

This is the core of the criticism, and the meaningful difference as to why we should not test for mundanity. Should we have a test to see if you achieve the goal of getting to safety in a dangerous and exciting situation? YES! But in a diplomatic, peaceful situation, when the guns have not been drawn, the swords are not swinging, and the daemons aren't distracting you with a little bit of attempting to devour your soul?  It's a firm no.

Should you possibly be making social rolls to see if you convince the governor that perhaps he should lend the Inquisitor a few units of PDF to go down and root out the Genestealers? Yes. Should you roll a test to see if you successfully pick up the teapot, or walk across the room while discussing things with the Governor? Nope, not even a little bit.

And the Actions system should see the difference between these two kinds of actions, not just in movement, but in everything - movement is just the most obvious example. The Actions system should be applied contextually, but currently is not, and it is this lack which I rail against, not just in Inquisitor, but in any system which is blind to these differences.

There are some things which should be uncertain (your example of successfully escaping), and some which should be certain (being able to calmly walk around in a non-combat everyday situation - probably before the horrible heretics manage to successfully ambush you because you failed the interesting test to see if you were aware of them).

Interesting and exciting things, like escaping, shooting, dodging, casting psychic powers, etc should be tested for, absolutely. But mundane, boring, everyday humdrum things should not require a test. They should just happen. The focus of our games in Inquisitor is about interesting things happening - the boring things should just happen in the lead up to those exciting things. As I said, a good GM will already be handwaving this sort of thing, but this basic concept of focusing on the interesting things should be a core component of any RPG rules system, even the hybrid ones such as Inquisitor. We play games to see interesting things happen. To be excited, because that is fun.

I want to test to see if I made it to that escape pod. I want to see if I successfully blew off the heretic's head before he could summon the daemon. I want to know if I managed to detect the infil-traitor before he could reach the Governor's office. I don't want to have to roll to see if I successfully walked somewhere during a diplomatic or other non-combat situation. Sneaking, running, sprinting, yes! By definition, at least for sneaking or sprinting, these are things which require focus, and require the user to attempt to be capable in a stressful scenario. Especially in a combat situation, at any rate. But walking? Pshaw! If I'm walking through the underhive as a distraction, then I don't want to be testing for walking, I want to be testing to see if the local toughs are intimidated by me (or if I'm intimidated), and react to that.

Maybe if you're walking over a tightrope bridge, or trying to walk calmly through a storm of bullets, sure - although both of those seem more like Nv tests, really. But walking before the ambush happens that you didn't know was coming? I'm strongly on the "no" side of that sort of situation, because by definition, if the character doesn't know it's coming, then they'll be acting normally, rather than under high stress conditions. And most people can successfully walk at 1.4m/s in non-stressful conditions (so says wikipedia), which amounts to the 14.4m deduced by my previous post.

In short, in Inquisitor I'm far more interested in Inquisitor Hapshant's adventures in executing heretics than I am in Administratum Drone Gordian 592's adventures in filling out his three-hundred-and-seventh form of the day. I don't want to test for either person's ability to successfully walk ten metres to the front door. I do want to roll to see if both of them will successfully reach the escape pod before the Daemonette of Slaanesh catches them and takes their heads off. There are scenarios where both of these things can happen (clearly they both are currently inhabiting an orbital station!), and under current rules for the Action system I still have to test for both of these things unless a suitably flexible GM (who will ignore said rules) is available, RAW. I would far rather find a superior alternative to this situation, that allows for this contextual flexibility.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 02, 2017, 05:51:55 PM
Quote from: mcjomar on June 02, 2017, 04:46:01 PMThe Actions system should be applied contextually, but currently is not, and it is this lack which I rail against, not just in Inquisitor, but in any system which is blind to these differences.
IRE already has a contextual dynamic. Not one that bypasses randomness entirely*, but characters outside combat situations do act faster and more reliably in IRE. It's an integral part of the reaction mechanics.

* The contexts of whether something should or shouldn't be random are far too complicated to handle without human interpretation. It's something for a GMing guide, not something to try and write into the rules.

QuoteAnd most people can successfully walk at 1.4m/s in non-stressful conditions (so says wikipedia), which amounts to the 14.4m deduced by my previous post.
My current draft version of IRE deliberately elects for the more vague "several seconds", rather than any specific number of seconds.

It's a deliberate change, because all of these systems have to be non-exact. It's a game - balance and gameplay trump precise realism.

Even if we take a system that has no randomness, it's still inevitably wrong. Dark Heresy describes a turn as "approximately five seconds".
But it takes three full turns to empty a 30 round autogun on full-auto; Quoted rates of fire for autoguns (e.g. from the Forge World books) should mean that it should be possible to get rid of that many rounds in about half a turn.

Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: mcjomar on June 02, 2017, 07:40:41 PM
IRE having a contextual mechanic (in my head I was calling it combat vs noncombat) is absolutely a good solution in the IRE context.
Ditto your current draft about nonexactness due to balance and gameplay trumping realism (though I do consider our discussion regarding movement under various forms of circumstance to be an exception to the rule).

However, in a counterpoint nonIRE consideration, there are a lot of rolls in GW games. In Inquisitor (classic nonIRE) not only am I rolling to see if I blow off the zombies head, I'm also rolling to see if I even get the chance. In other games I'm just rolling for the thing rather than the chance to do the thing. I think that's as much part of the issue for the Action system as anything else. Someone else said it better so I'll just quote them: "choices provide player agency. Dice rolling does not.". In the former we encourage OODA loops. In the latter we cause reliance on randomness of dice rolls. In general not a bad thing but when overused it hurts the former because we're letting possibly too many things be controlled by dice. And it's the former that causes the most interesting and fun things to occur. Some randomness and/or definite things are good. Obviously too much of either is bad.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on July 08, 2017, 03:54:01 PM
Following up on the feedback and playtesting from Dark Sphere:

~~~~~

For melee, it seems to be a case of rebalancing.

The current plan is to reduce the attack penalties (possibly to be renamed "attack modifier") by about 10 points, so many weapons will (again) have a modifier of 0. Quick, agile weapons might now get +5 or +10, slow cumbersome weapons might be -5 or -10.

This somewhat simplifies interaction with old character sheets (where weapons don't have an attack penalty, minimising the need to look up new profiles or have the GM wing it), but as far as balance, it will mean that by making it harder to beat the attacker in the opposed roll, it will somewhat reduce the number of counter-attacks a defender can get; although I am very happy with the kind of back-and-forth trading of blows that allows, the balance probably does need to be shifted slightly more to the attacker.

I may also give Dodging a slight bonus to its roll again. Although I nerfed that because Dodging was overly dominant as a reaction in 1stE, I underestimated the extent to which IRE allowing parries to counter-attack against missed attacks was a boost to parrying, so the balance needs to be redressed.

Maybe not the full +20 of before, but +10 is certainly viable.

~~~~~

The stunning on falling has been reduced from D3 turns to one turn. Most likely a character who's taken a really serious fall will be stunned by the injury tables anyway; any fall more minor than that shouldn't be taking characters out for several turns.

~~~~~

When it comes to psychic powers, I'm inclined to agree with Cortez's point. Although Isabella is supposed to be a very powerful psyker, she didn't actually break much of a sweat to manage everything she did in the playtest games.

I think the main issue comes from IRE no longer automatically cancelling powers when there's a Risky Action; That choice is deliberate, as Risky Actions always felt like a very tedious way to fail a psychic power; it also meant that even the most skilled psykers couldn't rely on their powers unless they had some form of special rule that stopped them failing roughly a third of their attempts before the Wp test was even taken.

However, it has upset things.

I think I will have to fix it by making Perils of the Warp again automatically cancel the power. Psychic Phenomena won't cancel the power though, so the Perils of the Warp test will act as something of a save for skilled psykers to not automatically fluff their power in the same "because frak you that's why" kind of failure as the Risky Action used to be.

That said, I also plan to have any Psychic test modifiers also apply to the Perils test (previously, it was unmodified Wp). This will make Psykers have to think slightly more carefully about taking complete "long shots" with their powers. It kind of makes sense that a psyker is more likely to royally screw up if he's trying to do something really difficult - I just don't want that to be in the same way as before, where any failure weakened a psyker.

Cortez did also suggest that there needs to be more use for Psy Rating for existing powers that I've yet to update. I'm not sure what my answer to that is yet, but it is a valid point.

~~~~~

Also, some of the IRE armoury.

As I've said before (http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2645.msg35977#msg35977), I've said that I find the current daemon weapon mechanic to be fairly basic. The user is usually given a Wp just slightly higher than their weapon, so they generally just end up as pretty powerful weapons that are only dangerous to their user if they fluff a psychic power.

The IRE rules make it so that daemon weapons are now no longer a binary question of whose Wp is higher - instead, they capitalise on their master's moments of weakness, such that even a high Wp user has to be somewhat careful about carrying a daemon weapon.

This version, although not finalised (some modifiers may get changed), incorporates some of Raghnall's suggestions from the thread, although slightly streamlined.

QuoteDaemon weapons
Daemon weapons have had the spirit of a daemon bound into them, imbuing them with some of the daemon's unnatural power. Daemon weapons can be truly powerful weapons, but using one can cost a man his soul...

Daemon weapons will have one or more special properties, depending on the power of the entity bound to the weapon.

Entity           Warp Power   Daemon's Willpower
Daemonic Servant       1       55+D10
Daemonic Beast         2       60+D10
Lesser Daemon          3       65+2D10
Daemonic Herald        4       70+2D10
Daemon Prince          5       75+3D10
Greater Daemon         6       80+3D10


Warp Power defines the number of daemonic traits that the weapon may have. A daemon weapon may have any combination of traits costing up to their total Warp Power, as long as no single trait requires more than half of the daemon's Warp Power (rounding up).

Daemon weapons, as sentient entities, also have their own Willpower value, which may influence the effectiveness of some of its traits.

Daemon weapons also have a Possession Modifier, equal to the Sagacity of the character who bound the daemon, minus the Daemon's Willpower. For example, if a character with Sg 78 had bound a daemonic beast with Wp 66, then the weapon would have a Possession Modifier of +12 (Sg 78 - Wp 66 = +12).
Make a note of this value on the weapon's profile.

The cost of power
At the start of each of their turns, any character carrying a daemon weapon must test against daemonic possession.

This is a Willpower test, modified by the weapon's Possession modifier. There may also be additional modifiers depending on the character's status.

A character is weakened if they are Pinned, Stunned, Fleeing, or wielding an unfamiliar daemon weapon. Weakened characters take no additional modifier.
A character is vulnerable if they are Out of Action, on Fire, or suffered Perils of the Warp last turn. Vulnerable characters test on a -30 modifier.

If a character is neither weakened or vulnerable, then they test with a +30 modifier, and will not automatically fail their test on a roll of 96-00. (If this should make a character's Willpower 100 or more, it is not necessary to roll for the test).

If this Possession test is failed, then the character succumbs to the daemon within their weapon and is possessed.
The character must pass their Possession test at the start of any subsequent turn to regain control. They are automatically deemed to be at least weakened while possessed.

In the event that a character needs to test for carrying more than one daemon weapon, roll in order of the daemon's willpower values, starting with the highest.

Daemonic Traits
List is work in progress

Possession rules aren't set in stone yet, but I plan on having those as a standard framework, as they'll also come into play during certain Perils of the Warp results.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Cortez on July 14, 2017, 09:24:04 AM
Just realised that I'd forgotten to respond to your latest post  :(.

I like the sound of the Daemon weapon changes. I've always liked the idea of the sword taking control during a moment of vulnerability/distraction and it means that non-psychers (who would almost never lose willpower) would still face the risk of possession from time to time.

Pscychic powers definitely felt too strong, but I would like to have more testing as Isabella is definitely not a standard psycher (I will also need to revise the rules for Isabella's sorcerous tome to fit in with the changes to the psychic rules which will help somewhat).

Perils of warp cancelling the power would certainly help as would adding the modifier to the perils test. I completely agree that the loss of Wp used in the original rulebook should be avoided as all it did was make it so that psychers failed one or two tests and then probably never used another power as their brains were dribbling out of their ears. I certainly don't want another game where three powerful psychers were all reduced to vegetables before the final turn (although that was quite funny).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 15, 2017, 05:36:56 AM
Well, I headed down to the club on Monday evening to do some more playtesting.

The changes I'm looking at to close combat seemed reasonable - reducing the attack penalties and reinstating a dodge bonus did make going for the counter-attack more of a gamble than it was in the last IRE release.
I'm not convinced I've hit the final version yet - boosting dodge too much may potentially make it too good at countering manoeuvre actions, but we'll see.

When it came to testing the psychic powers though, I have no gorram idea.
I did put two high level psykers in the game to try to maximise the amount of testing, but while you'd think that two witches throwing high Psy Rating powers around throughout the game would result in someone failing at least one Hazard roll, the little sods refused to bow to the law of probability.
Their success rates felt considerably above a statistical average, with the only real exception being that Maya's Psychic Shriek consistently failed to actually affect targets (And not because she was failing to cast it, but because the targets kept fluking their Wp tests, despite being at a considerable penalty because of the Psy Rating used).

One thing I feel safe about drawing conclusions on is that I need to adjust Blinding Flash to reduce its effective area, as Maya did throw a small supernova into the middle of a combat. Although a Psy Rating 4 Blinding Flash should be pretty effective, distant targets were rolling on lower numbers than felt right.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 23, 2017, 04:30:35 AM
Not a massive update, but I've uploaded the pictures from said playtest game with some brief captions. (The captions don't mention everything - there were quite a few more psychic powers used than explicitly detailed).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcoskoll/sets/72157684277372572
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Thinking Stone on March 05, 2018, 05:37:39 AM
Well, now that my introduction post is done, time to share some of my observations!

MarcoSkoll, I downloaded your most recent version of the Inquisitor Revised Edition and had a bit of a tinker! Whilst I've not had nearly the level of experience as you or others here have, I did notice a few things as a relative novice.

The first was for the free close combat reactions. I do really like the fluidity and mobility of combat now, and the range system works very well, I think. As a fencer myself, however, I did wonder if the unlimited chains of reaction counterattacks that your rules seem to imply (to me, at least! Maybe I misread them?) should be limited.

I think the first free reaction is appropriately realistic and should be kept, but I kept thinking that even very skilled fighters are going to have to take some time and thought to restart their attack—so perhaps subsequent reactions should require the spending of an action point? So that would mean A attacks, B gets free reaction to parry and succeeds in getting a counterattack. B counterattacks and A gets free reaction to parry and succeeds in getting counter attack. A (counter)counterattacks and B may choose to react but this reaction will not be free.

Unless, I suppose, the reactions continue to be opposed rolls from the opponent's previous WS tests? (Which might naturally limit chains enough, and is justifiable).

My second set of thoughts is based on my novice Inquisitor experience! Of course, one gets to know the rules better as one goes along, but I think most would agree that the organisation and description of the rules has always made them hard to conceptualise for a new player, particularly since reactions depend a lot on what the acting character does (so you have to know what you're allowed to do and how to do it!).

Part of that could be addressed with a layout change/summary. An initial section showing the structure of an Inquisitor turn before you explain Actions could be useful, so that people know exactly what actions are supposed to be from the start. A list of 'official' action types you can use might be helpful, too (e.g. Movement, Shooting, Engagement for actions, Overwatch etc. for reactions).

Since you've already done an excellent job of cleaning up so much of the terminology, I did also think about the implied difference between Movement actions and other Actions. Maybe it would be useful to formally name two categories of actions: Continuous actions (like Movement is currently, though maybe it could be used for automatic fire, and/or any similar continuous activities) and Discrete actions (like most other actions currently are, e.g. shooting, aiming).

Either that, or you could remove the confusion of why Movement is different altogether by just saying that you work out how far you want to move and then treat each Move as an individual ('discrete') action—though this would remove some of that interesting uncertainty.

Of course, all this is just friendly observation and commentary! But this is exactly the sort of project I always thought Inquisitor could benefit from! (Apologies also for the ramble-y-ness).

Thinking Stone
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 05, 2018, 04:11:34 PM
Quote from: Thinking Stone on March 05, 2018, 05:37:39 AMUnless, I suppose, the reactions continue to be opposed rolls from the opponent's previous WS tests? (Which might naturally limit chains enough, and is justifiable).
In all cases, you'll need to win your parry (not necessarily easy, as you now have to beat your opponent's roll) and by enough to earn a counter attack, so counter attacks are by no means automatic.

That said, we did find in the Dark Sphere playtests that counter-attacks were a bit too frequent. We did like some of the circumstances where it happened, where a couple of fights were brutally turned around by a defender counter-attacking right at the start of the combat (because now, their counter attack has a chance to roll well and be really difficult to defend against, unlike in the original rules, where the first attack of the turn is always easy to defend against), but we wanted it to happen a bit less.

This was a bit of an oversight in the statistics I worked on, as I'd not really considered just how much allowing counter attacks against failed attacks (which I felt was fairly vital, otherwise you have the really weird mechanic where experienced fighters leave more holes in their attack!) swung the balance between dodging and parrying back too far towards parrying. (Whereas before dodging was often the safe choice).

The rules as put out haven't yet been amended with any of the revisions I've been working on. Thus far, in the WIP v0.2.4 rules:

- I've reduced the attack penalties on weapons. In the currently released v0.2.0.3, the attack penalties averaged out at about -10, but in v0.2.4, attack penalties have been shifted to an average of about 0. Aside from the fact this should improve compatibility with existing weapon profiles, it shifts the balance back towards the attacker a bit.

- Some form of dodge bonus will be reinstated. Maybe even back to the full +20 from before*, in order that dodging is more reliable than parrying.
* Although I need to test this, as dodging will still ignore reach penalties - that's a deliberate choice. I want each option to be better in different cases in order to avoid the same stagnancy that happened in 1stEd.

QuoteI do really like the fluidity and mobility of combat now, and the range system works very well, I think.
I've said it before, but I was actually shocked by how well it worked when I started doing playtests.

None of the changes to the system felt particularly drastic when I wrote them, but from the very first playtests, it was clear that this was an entirely different beast.

Quoteso perhaps subsequent reactions should require the spending of an action point?
There's two issues here.

Firstly, this would considerably defeat the merits of parrying, as it's supposed to be an additional risk in order to get a free action (I perhaps failed on this as far as the percentages in v0.2.0.3 thought). While I can see there are uses to being able to get an attack in early, it's much less tangible than a free action.
Secondly, outside their own turn, characters don't have action points. Spending actions from a turn they haven't had yet does complicate the rules (and gets really weird if they should be stunned and therefore don't get that turn) and if I expect players to use reserved reaction points, the wording on the Engaged state has to get a lot more complex (and the whole state becomes a lot less useful).

That said, I have had a few possible thoughts about potentially providing bonuses for using actual reserved reactions rather than Engaged reactions - theoretically the free action from counter-attacks can be used for the "Wary" action, allowing a character to save reserved reactions. So a character could then choose to forego an attack in order to increase their chances at defending, so you might see fewer chains of attack/parry/counterattack.

QuotePart of that could be addressed with a layout change/summary. An initial section showing the structure of an Inquisitor turn before you explain Actions could be useful, so that people know exactly what actions are supposed to be from the start. A list of 'official' action types you can use might be helpful, too (e.g. Movement, Shooting, Engagement for actions, Overwatch etc. for reactions).
A fair suggestion.

Ultimately, I intend to build up proper summary pages and quick reference sheets, and will do an example turn in the vein of the one you see in the original rulebook. However, I'm not pursuing these during the developmental stages, as they'd have to be redone with every rule change and could potentially lead to inconsistencies if I fail to update details.

QuoteMaybe it would be useful to formally name two categories of actions: Continuous actions (like Movement is currently, though maybe it could be used for automatic fire, and/or any similar continuous activities) and Discrete actions (like most other actions currently are, e.g. shooting, aiming).
I was going to say that would confuse things because of the existence of "Continuous" as a term in the rules already, but apparently I've already written that out. (Originally it referred to a kind of reaction state where you could react repeatedly - for example, Engaged was said to put a character in a "continuous" melee reaction.)
The entire system of various action "flags"/"categories" went through quite a lot of revisions. Things like the "defensive" and "passive" flags saved a lot of headaches. Rather than trying to describe what kinds of reactions were simultaneous or what actions couldn't be reacted to, just saying "this, this, this and this" straightened it out fast.

With this case... I'll have to think about it. I'm not sure what other cases it would really apply to very well, so I'm not sure if it really needs to be a universal category in the rules rather than just saying "movement is a special case".

Movement is handled differently in the rules because you need to have the number of actions vague to as a work around to avoid pre-measuring. (With something like full-auto, it's not like you open fire without knowing exactly how many targets you're firing at).
That's why I've had to treat it a bit different for the purposes of when reactions happen, because having to figure out where each exact move starts and ends would slow down the game. (And that's, as far as possible, something I'm trying to avoid).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 02, 2018, 07:25:30 PM
It's taken me a while to think around how I wanted to handle stats of 100+ in the margins of success of IRE, where the number on the dice represents a roll's margin of success.

Two initial thoughts were:
- Don't bother. Just say that they're getting the benefit of being able to take penalties and still pass by massive margins of success.
However, it does feel weird that a Space Marine can be easily beaten on a strength test.

- Add the amount the characteristic exceeded 100 added back onto the margin of success.
This makes the rules more like they used to be, where rolling a 90 with a character with S 120 still meant a pass by 30.
However, it also means putting more maths back in, and it also keeps high stats nastily powerful in a system where succeeding by large margins has become more important.

After some thinking, I'm currently looking at this idea:
QuoteMargin of success with characteristics over 100
In the event that a character has a stat that exceeds 100, either naturally or due to modifiers, then if the roll was successful (such as not automatically failing by rolling 96-00, see the Automatic Success and Automatic Failure paragraph below), then the character may elect to use the stat's remainder over 100 as their margin of success, up to a maximum of 50 points/5 degrees of success

For example, Battle Brother Artemis has Strength 145 in his power armour. When required to take a strength test,  he rolls a 32 - a respectable margin of success, but as the roll was passed, he can instead elect to succeed by 45 (the amount his strength exceeds 100). As this beats the margin of success he would otherwise have had, he elects to pass by 45 instead.

If Nug, an Ogryn with Strength 182 were to roll the same pass of 32, although his strength exceeds 100 by 82 points, he would be limited to passing by 50 points. While his massive strength would allow him to pass by at least 50 points even if he were taking a moderate penalty, he will still have to get at least somewhat lucky with his dice to pass really well!

This seems a reasonable compromise - it means the characters will get to pass by least a reasonable margin, but not by a massive margin.
I felt it still had to be capped to stop high stats being entirely unbeatable, but the number of times that characters will exceed a stat of 150 is going to be fairly thin on the ground (and they will still be getting the benefits of being able to soak a few penalties and get a decent characteristic bonus).

~~~~~

Another idea I'm potentially looking at is adjusting the way that characters can delay their actions.

As in IRE, any reactions characters are holding are automatically lost at the start of their next turn, it's possible that players will want to end up endlessly delaying to try and keep their reactions.

I'm not certain how big a problem this could prove to be, but I've got a few ideas of different severity as possible answers (should it prove necessary to reign it in at an event).

- Delaying automatically costs the character a stored reaction.
There's less point in delaying to save reactions if you'll lose them. This could be reasonable, as it'll discourage characters from delaying to hoard their reactions.

- Delaying means that a character must act at the Speed value they delay to.
If a Speed 6 character wants to go after a Speed 4 character, they will have to be Speed 4 this turn.
This is a potentially viable penalty, but it is harder to keep track of (GMs tend not to count down Speed categories like is stated in the original rules, and knowing the way it's actually played, it could get complex with the oddities of some character's speed values, injury, etc), and it feels a more drastic change from the original rules (potentially heavily penalising the way some characters are played).

- Delaying automatically costs the character 1 speed for the turn.
If two characters get into an endless cycle of trying to delay after each other, one of them will eventually have to chicken out.
However, this has similar problems to the above.

- Delaying automatically forces a character to go right to the end of the turn.
No more jumping in at any point (although it's possible that a skill, a la one of the proposed fixes for Lighting Reflexes, could allow characters to go whenever).

I think this is my favourite, as it's simple, makes it easier for the GM to keep track of ("Delayed characters" can become a standard end of turn thing), and although characters aren't hugely penalised, it may still be enough of a drawback at times to make players to think a bit about whether delaying is a good idea. (Currently, there are no real drawbacks to delaying, and I often watch games where it feels like players are, intentionally or otherwise, exploiting this by queueing up several characters for co-ordinated carnage where opponents get little chance to intervene).

It would also make it harder for players to use meta knowledge to try and wear down an opponent's reactions. ("He's got two reactions, but I'd rather he used those to try and evade Jaxon's lasgun than Covenant's Psycannon, so I'll have Covenant wait...")
Although I don't anticipate a lot of players doing that kind of thing, I certainly wouldn't complain if the exploit was less viable.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 12, 2018, 06:50:19 PM
I headed down to the club again last night to run another playtest (reusing "The Reactor" from the London GT as the scenario), which had some beautifully dramatic moments, including Kronen dropping two characters in their own turns, Evelyn managing to pull off some very fluky reactions, and Lyra missing wildly with a graviton grenade (it clattered into a heap of oil drums and launched them almost back at the originally intended target...)

I didn't have a Space Marine on hand to test the rules for 100+ stats, but I did test out the rules for delaying characters automatically waiting to the end of the turn, which I was quite happy with. It certainly simplified the process of keeping track of those characters, and meant that characters had to consider delaying a little more carefully rather than just doing it with impunity.

There were a few issues that sort of showed up:

~~~~~

- Characters being attacked from behind
IRE states that characters must be aware of an action to react to it (in order to stop characters doing things like evading shots from behind), and that after an action has entered the execution stage (i.e. dice are being rolled) it's too late to declare a reaction.

However, a case came up where a character had to choose between either having to fail their pinning test (and thus be able to turn around as they dive) or stand there like a lemon while being shot repeatedly from behind unable to spend any reactions they have.

There's two possible fixes that come to mind:
- Allow a character to turn towards their attacker (or at least attempt to) if they pass their Pinning test.
- Change it so that passing the pinning test also allows a character to attempt to dive to cover, rather than having to choose to fail to do so. (This is a fairly significant difference, because Pinned characters are only allowed to use Defensive reactions). However, I don't particularly like this, as I suspect this option would become overly popular - given how often people want to take cover anyway, an option that lets you not be Pinned would be a no-brainer.

~~~~~

- Semi auto fire
IRE has deliberately made rapid fire more effective against close-in targets (no more cases of a Storm Bolter being unable to hit a barn from the inside) and more challenging against distant ones.

However, seeing it more on the table makes it clearer that it has been affected by more than just long range, but all difficult cases. Before, it was possible to wildly fire at a weaving target while you ran across the street and possibly hope for one of those shots to get a natural 5, but that's less the case now.

The full-auto implementation sort of avoids this by disregarding most penalties, but semi-auto can become very inaccurate against difficult targets, and it doesn't feel as dramatic or realistic to be firing one shot at a time when you're hoping for a lucky hit.

As far as solutions, I could look at adopting some of the alternative semi-auto solutions I proposed - the current version of semi-auto in IRE is something that is partly as it is so that it can help test the mechanic for full auto weapons (which are somewhat rarer)., rather than because I'm necessarily expecting it to be a final solution.

The simplest of the alternatives I looked into would be handling it as in the current LRB, but with a sliding semi-auto penalty of -5 per 10 yards (or part) range. (Making short range accurate, but long range much less predictable).
This does however mean that bursts of multiple shots would again call for every shot to be rolled, rather than the somewhat quicker "exploding dice" roll for the entire burst IRE currently offers.

The other possibility is to keep IRE's current semi-auto fire, but cap the initial roll at a minimum of 5x the rate of fire to emulate the auto-hit band of before. For example, Semi(4) would always have at least an initial 20% chance of a hit, broadly the same as the minimum ~18.55% given by the chances of rolling at least one 01-05 across four D100 rolls.
This would probably be quicker in play and the percentages seem fairly fair, although it feels a little mechanically odd to have rolls with what are essentially increased auto-success chances.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 20, 2018, 10:42:12 PM
I'm looking at expanding the Psychic Powers section, with general rules for Daemonic Possession (which can potentially occur as a Perils of the Warp result, or through misuse of a daemonic weapon*), Sorcery and Psychic Nulls.

*Possibly, the current IRE rules for daemonic weapons might have to be rebalanced slightly to make possession less likely, as I've decided to make Possession a bit nastier than it is in the LRB, with a penalty to regaining control. (Although, as characters will generally lose less Wp in IRE, it may balance out?)

It's possible that Sorcery and Psychic Nulls will end up moved to a supplement rather than being in the core rules, but they do need to be thought out one way or another, as the original Pariah rules won't be very compatible with the IRE psychic rules.

I've opted, at least in this draft, to make Psychic Nulls affect Psy Rating, rather than being a penalty to the psychic test like they are in 1st edition. I felt this was probably more appropriate, and it also helps make them feel different to Nullification - Nullification is beaten by skill, Nulls are beaten by raw power.

QuoteDaemonic Possession
On badly fumbling a psychic test, a psyker may find themselves possessed by a daemon, although daemonic possession may also occur in other cases, such as by a character wielding a daemon sword.

While a character is possessed, control is passed over to the GM (or another player, if appropriate). The character should act in a self-sacrificing, destructive and chaotic fashion - lashing out at allies, deliberately provoking conflict, carrying out casual murder - but cannot deliberately directly cause themselves harm (they cannot choose to jump off a building or shoot themselves in the head, for example).

They will also gain a random Daemonic trait, and the Possessed trait while they are possessed.

They will remain possessed until they pass a Willpower test at -30 in the Recovery Phase.

Sorcery
Not all characters who can manipulate the warp do so through innate psychic talent - some instead must rely on the deeply blasphemous art of Sorcery, shaping aetheric energies through dark ritual and arcane practices.

Characters can have a Sorcery Rating, allowing them to use Sorcerous Powers.

Sorcery uses the same basic framework as Psychic powers, but when using Sorcery Rating:
- Sorcerers test against their Sagacity rather than Willpower
- When calculating the Hazard for using a power, a character counts twice the Sorcery Rating being used.
- Sorcery requires the character to be able to gesture and incant the ritual, so the character must have at least one free hand and be able to speak. (Although some very talented Sorcerers may be able to invoke their powers through sheer will, but more on that in later versions of the rules!)

Although both rare and exceptionally dangerous, a character is permitted to be both a Sorcerer and a Psyker. In this case, they can combine their Psy Ratings and Sorcery Ratings if they wish.
They may test against either Willpower or Sagacity, although the Hazard for the power is still doubled.

Psychic Nulls [Experimental]
An exceptionally rare mutation within humanity, psychic nulls (also known as blanks, untouchables or pariahs) are a formidable weapon against the energies of the warp. Valued and reviled in equal measure for their soulless natures, untouchables can absorb and nullify the energies of the warp.

These characters have a Null Rating, expressed as a dice roll.
A weak psychic null might only be Null Rating 1D3, a formidable blank would likely have a rating of 2D3 or 3D3, but a Culexus Assassin would have an obnoxiously high Null Rating such as 3D6.

If any psychic power (friend or foe) is used or targeted near a psychic null, then roll the dice that relate to the Null's Rating, subtracting the full number of yards between the null and the power's user or target (whichever is closest). Should this result in a negative value, the Null is treated as having rolled zero.
For example, if a null has a Rating of 2D3, and the power is targeted three yards from them, they should roll 2D3-3.

This value is immediately applied as a negative modifier to the Power's Effective Psy Rating, reducing its effect. As detailed in the Psy Rating section, should a power's Effective Psy Rating fall to zero or less, the power is entirely negated.

Similarly, if the target of, or a psyker maintaining, Persistent powers is near a Null (or Nulls) in the Recovery Phase, roll again - should this equal or beat the Psyker's Psy Rating, then all associated Persistent powers are immediately nullified.

More powerful Psychic Nulls will also generally cause an intense distrust in any nearby allies - the more extreme their nature, the more abhorrent they are to those around them. This will be addressed in a future update.

~~~~~

Outside of psychic powers, I've also opted to modify IRE's system shock rules to keep them streamlined:

Level 1 System Shock (10 damage from one hit) is now a +20 Toughness test
Level 2 System Shock (15 damage) is a straight Toughness test
Level 3 System Shock (20 damage) is a -20 Toughness test

(Previously in IRE, a character needed 1, 2 or 3 tests for each of these, with a +20 toughness bonus to the test if they started below their System Shock Value).

I'm reasonably happy with this, as although flattening System Shock to 10 damage means that high toughness characters will often now have to take system shock tests (as opposed to almost never against common weapons), the toughness bonus for the first level of System Shock means that they still remain fairly resilient, while also keeping lower toughness characters from repeatedly fainting. (Certainly, in the past, I've had to recommend against really low toughness characters, because they've got such a hopelessly huge chance of fainting that they're not fun to play or play against).

I chose to remove the bonus for being below the System Shock Value - it was an unnecessary complication, mostly put in there to keep SSV relevant in IRE. (The value is now not used in IRE, but I've elected to keep it mentioned in the Characteristics section to help players keep their characters back compatible with the LRB).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 27, 2018, 06:51:04 PM
So... power weapons.

These represent a common issue in the game, although not just for the reason people initially assume. Although the high damage stat is obviously a balance concern, the fact they have a 75% chance of destroying an opponent's weapon in a parry actually makes it very difficult for any opponent whose weapon isn't immune to face off against them - and forces interminably dull endless dodging.

With IRE deliberately trying to push to make close combats so they're not an endless dodge-fest, I think this needs to be adjusted. While I'd definitely like to keep it a concern, in order that characters have to fight against different weapons differently, the fraction needs to come down a lot.

Currently, the easiest option in mind would be to make it so it only applies on a Critical Attack or Parry - i.e. one where the hit roll ends in a 1, making for effectively a 10% chance (assuming both the hit and parry are successful, anyway).
This is simple, but I'm not sure if it's a big enough risk. 10% risk is the kind of thing where I suspect players will largely assume it's not going to happen, meaning its effect on games will only happen when it actually destroys weapons, rather than because players are worried about it happening. (At least to start with. Maybe players will get more cautious as they realise that a 10% risk over several attacks adds up).

Although it will make things a little more complex (having a weapon where the critical effects have different probabilities in different cases) I'm wondering if this should instead be made a Critical (2) effect, pushing it up to a 20% chance.
For very rough probabilities, this will probably mean that each turn of close combat (assuming two broadly competent characters with a typical speed) has roughly an evens chance of destroying a weapon.

Obviously, a 10% chance would instead put the chance as roughly evens for every two turns of combat.

Which of these feels better - or do people think that the chance should be kept pretty dang high, meaning that losing your weapon is actually almost the primary threat of fighting against a power weapon wielder?

Anyway, again - looking to hear from you (although it does seem that this thread has largely just turned into me talking to myself).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Cortez on June 27, 2018, 08:26:38 PM
The weapon destruction thing is definitely one of the biggest issues when facing a power weapon wielder. Your proposal seems ok, although I'd probably go for ~20% chance and not as low as 10%.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 28, 2018, 06:08:16 PM
Yeah, something in the region of 20% currently feels about right. High enough for a power weapon wielder to try parrying, hoping it's going to happen, but low enough for their opponent to try parrying, hoping it's not going to happen.

I'm currently looking at this as the wording for the rules:
QuoteIf a power weapon makes a Critical(2) roll when either successfully parrying or successfully being parried, then the opponent's weapon is cut in half, and can now only be used as an improvised weapon. If the weapon was already only an improvised weapon, it is outright destroyed. (Should an opponent be electing to use the haft or butt of a weapon as an improvised weapon, it is not considered to be only an improvised weapon the first time it is cut in half).

Note that the parry must win any opposed roll to count as successfully parrying, and this effect does not apply if the attack is dodged instead of parried.

Power, Shock, Daemon and Force weapons are immune to being destroyed in this manner.

As you'll note, I've elected to make it that it cuts the weapon in half rather than outright destroying it first time. This is still a significant penalty, but means a character isn't completely helpless if their only weapon gets bisected.
(And there are certainly a lot of cases in film where weapons get cut in half and the hero still stabs the baddie with what's left of it).

As far as the section in brackets up there, I should add the context that IRE's armoury allows any close combat weapon to be used as an improvised weapon if the character desires - this is largely because of the change to the reach mechanics (and to carry out the goal of adding more options to close combats!) so that a character can, for example, try to clobber someone over the head with the hilt of their sword if they've not got enough room to swing it properly.
As I didn't want to discourage use of this rule, I've deliberately noted that a weapon used in this way won't be outright destroyed by the first hit by a power weapon.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on July 14, 2018, 11:55:47 PM
Inquisitor Revised Edition V0.3.0 Alpha release: http://www.mediafire.com/file/6sd56yqo6q0uemf/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-0+Alpha.pdf

Please report any errors or complete nonsense to me so that it can be tidied up into a full fledged release.

Major revisions to consider since the last version (V 0.2.0.3):

QuoteActions:
- At least for this version, a character choosing to delay their actions now automatically sends them to the end of the turn order (unless they have the new "Swift" ability). While I want to still give characters the option to wait, I've felt at times that players are (either intentionally or unintentionally) managing to stack their characters up for co-ordinated carnage that leaves little option to respond.

Because of reserving reactions, when you go in an IRE turn can be even more important than in the LRB, so I don't want players deciding that with absolute impunity.

Reactions:
- The circumstances for leaving the Engaged state have been reworded slightly to make the state slightly less exploitable.

Movement:
- Minor tweaks. Sneaking is less hazardous, and falling now only stuns the character for one turn (although they can still be stunned for longer by being badly injured by the fall)

Shooting:
- An alternative version of Semi-auto (closer to the original) has been put in for people to try.
- I've added a set of rules for trying to shoot at completely obscured targets (sort of "I know there's someone behind that flimsy barrel" circumstances).

Close combat:
- The attack penalty of most weapons has been reduced in order to put the attackers slightly more on the upper hand.
- Parrying now has to beat the attack's margin of success by at least 20 points to result in a counter attack. Flattening the margin makes it easier to keep track of, and making it a bit higher than it was on average previously should slightly reduce the number of counter attacks (which was considerably higher in IRE than the LRB, given that counter-attacks are allowed against missed attacks).
It's possible I may re-revise the exact margin in future.
- Dodging again gets a +20 bonus, but only against attack type actions. (To stop it being constantly used against opponents trying to manoeuvre).

Psychic Powers:
- Failing the Perils of the Warp test if a power is fumbled now cancels the power, to compensate somewhat for the number of powers that now don't automatically fail because of a Risky Action.
- The Perils of the Warp test now uses the same modifiers as the original psychic test (making using complete long shot powers a bit more risky).
- Maintaining Persistent Powers is now Hazardous (although only one level of Hazardous), and hence has a slight possibility of causing psychic phenomena or Perils of the Warp.
- The Nullification rules have been extended to allow Nullification of existing Persistent Powers.
- The chance of a non-psyker resisting a Psychic powers is now slightly higher so that it's not a complete shot in the dark for characters to try it.
- Some rules for Daemonic Possession, Sorcerers, and Psychic Nulls.

Injury & Damage:
- Levels of System Shock have been simplified to modifiers on a single test, rather than multiple tests. All use of the original System Shock Value has been removed.

Communication & Psychology:
- Characters are now limited to one action of considering a persuading character's offer per turn, so that persuading a character means something more than them just standing around contemplatively and not actually doing what they were persuaded to.

Abilities:
- Too much to address. I believe that almost all original rulebook abilities (although I realise I've left out at least Spit Acid) have been brought into the IRE rules, as well as some other common and related abilities.

Armoury:
- Changes to Close Combat weapon stats, as well as rules for Chain, Shock, Power and (some of) Daemon Weapons.
- Armour section. Mostly as in the LRB, other than adding in a note about Power Armoured characters being larger targets, slightly reducing the awareness penalties for helmets, and updating the shield rules for the LRB.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Cortez on July 15, 2018, 10:21:55 AM
QuotePsychic Powers:
- Failing the Perils of the Warp test if a power is fumbled now cancels the power, to compensate somewhat for the number of powers that now don't automatically fail because of a Risky Action.
- The Perils of the Warp test now uses the same modifiers as the original psychic test (making using complete long shot powers a bit more risky).
- Maintaining Persistent Powers is now Hazardous (although only one level of Hazardous), and hence has a slight possibility of causing psychic phenomena or Perils of the Warp.
- The Nullification rules have been extended to allow Nullification of existing Persistent Powers.
- The chance of a non-psyker resisting a Psychic powers is now slightly higher so that it's not a complete shot in the dark for characters to try it.
- Some rules for Daemonic Possession, Sorcerers, and Psychic Nulls.

I agree failing the perils of the warp test should cancel the power. Makes things a bit riskier. I really don't like the loss of 3D10 willpower though especially as you're planning to use the same difficulty modifiers as for the psychic test. That puts us back to the situation where one failed test means no more psychic powers for that game, thus discouraging purely psychic characters.

Making long shot or high difficulty powers more risky could also have a negative effect on the game especially for ranged powers which in the original rulebook quickly become unusable. One thing I liked about IRE was it allowed for the 'Hail Mary' power without having a ridiculous risk of your psycher being turned into a vegetable.

Not a fan of persistent powers being hazardous. It might only be a low chance but it will penalise any pure psychers who are heavily reliant on psychic defences to stay alive (such as the old Isabella, before she was warped in the recent campaign).

Nullifying a persistant power is a good idea, although I think it should need line of sight.

Not sure about resist for non psychers. Most of the powers that target people have some sort of resist built into the power. Will this be as well as that or a universal rule instead of power specific ones?

For demonic possession Wp -30 is too high for the recovery test. Even very powerful pschers (80wp or higher) will have only slightly better than 50% chance of escaping possession and probably worse especially considering the -3D10 wp you're proposing for failing the perils test. I'm assuming this also covers possession by other means than just the perils table (Daemon swords etc.)

Sorcery rules look good.

Psychic nulls look interesting. Not completely effective but pretty nasty.

Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on July 15, 2018, 04:41:07 PM
Quote from: Cortez on July 15, 2018, 10:21:55 AMI agree failing the perils of the warp test should cancel the power. Makes things a bit riskier. I really don't like the loss of 3D10 willpower though especially as you're planning to use the same difficulty modifiers as for the psychic test. That puts us back to the situation where one failed test means no more psychic powers for that game, thus discouraging purely psychic characters.
The thing to consider about this is that this is the only way in IRE that characters are commonly likely to lose Willpower, characters can recover Willpower, and generally Perils are massively less likely than in the LRB.

A character has to be doing things like throwing around Psy Rating 5 powers at around a ~30% chance before they're in the same ballpark for a chance to trigger Perils of the Warp as fail a risky action.
And this is still assuming that the Psyker doesn't have the new "Favoured by the Warp" trait, which is intended to help protect characters that really have very little in their arsenal but Psychic powers (such as my own Maya Avens, who other than having about thirty psychic powers to choose from has a compact laspistol and BS 47).

In this case (assuming no Favoured trait), the expected Willpower loss for attempting a Psy Rating 5 power at 30% chance is 5.8 Wp. (Averaging all possible outcomes, both successful and failed).
Trying it under the LRB, (for which we have to assume a Speed 4 character, because Risky chances vary with speed) and that expected loss is 11.4 More or less double, which comes from possibilities like a ~7% chance of passing the risky action, but then failing the test by 60 points or more and thus losing 6D10 Willpower.

As Perils is now the only one common source of Wp loss, I thought I had to turn it up a bit, because to be honest, even rolling badly on 2D10 Wp loss isn't that disastrous to many psykers.

QuoteNot a fan of persistent powers being hazardous. It might only be a low chance but it will penalise any pure psychers who are heavily reliant on psychic defences to stay alive (such as the old Isabella, before she was warped in the recent campaign).
I'm not absolutely certain about it myself (so perhaps it should be in orange text), but IRE is still an work-in-progress project being written primarily by a single person - the only large playtesting team I have is the community. Otherwise it's just me with spreadsheets, and occasionally playing against myself.

While the theory and spreadsheets are often effective, they don't give an exhaustive sense of how something feels on the table - never more so than with IRE's close combat rules, where somehow I ended up being surprised when the rules did exactly what I'd designed them to.

This means that some of the rules that make it into the release versions are experimental - things that might work. If they don't, then the hope/expectation is that players will give feedback and then house rule them until the next version.

The thing is, it does feel "realistic" that maintaining a power while under the stress of a combat situation has some risk (beyond simply failing to maintain said power), and now that borrowing the Psychic Phenomena system from Dark Heresy offers a mid ground between "Nothing" and "Your brain explodes"
If it proves too problematic, it might be tweaked - possibly into a "Mini-hazard", possibly by making it so that it's automatically Phenomena rather than Perils, or whatever - or removed, but one of the problems with IRE so far has been that psychic powers can become quite dominant.

QuoteNullifying a persistant power is a good idea, although I think it should need line of sight.
Nullification has a 5 yard range and characters will still need to be aware of their target, so I don't imagine that's a major issue.

QuoteNot sure about resist for non psychers. Most of the powers that target people have some sort of resist built into the power. Will this be as well as that or a universal rule instead of power specific ones?
This is a universal rule (and actually existed in the last version of IRE). The issue is that without something, psychic powers become largely exempt from the Reaction system, exacerbating the fact they're already fairly formidable in IRE.

I may need to fine tune the balance (it occurs that "half willpower" may be better than -20, so that high Wp characters don't have a really easy time of it, but it's also not impossible for low Wp characters to resist).

Short of completely redressing the balance of psychic power difficulties in IRE (and therefore causing back compatibility issues with the original rules) or slapping a broad -20 penalty across all psychic powers, it's proving quite a challenge to have hit the mid-ground where psykers aren't penalised for even thinking about using their powers but where they aren't completely overpowered gods.

QuoteFor demonic possession Wp -30 is too high for the recovery test.
Possssssibly, but the problem for me is that almost all of the rare few times I've seen daemonic possession occur in a game it usually goes...

1) Daemon possesses character.
2) Daemon gets one or two actions of moving into position to try to do some damage
3) Daemon gets expelled at the start of the next turn
4) Character drops the daemon weapon.

... which isn't exactly thrilling.

Maybe things will be a bit different with IRE making possession both a bit more likely and less predictable (between Perils and the adjusted daemon weapons, it's now a case that it can happen at any time rather than just when the character already has reduced Wp, so avoiding it isn't just a case of dropping a daemon weapon), but I would like to see it as a bit more of a threat, where other characters actually have time to worry about it before it's over.

Possibly it should be -20 rather than -30, but I do think the roll should be somewhat penalised so that it's not always completely transient.

QuotePsychic nulls look interesting. Not completely effective but pretty nasty.
It's experimental right now, but they did need a large overhaul to bring them into line with the updated psychic rules having split psychic prowess into both Psy Rating and Willpower.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on August 02, 2018, 07:31:59 PM
Evening, Inquisitors.

Following up from the release of the V0.3 release of the Inquisitor Revised Edition a few weeks ago, and with the Guardian playtest event at WHW only a little over a week away, a few details have been adjusted to create V0.3.1.
These changes are relatively minor, an adjustment of a few modifiers in the psychic rules, and no longer vetoing conversations with hostile characters (you can try - doesn't mean they'll necessarily want to talk though!)

This release includes the normal colour coded edition, as well as a more printer and e-reader friendly edition that just uses black (although it does still include the cover art), and an updated crib sheet (which summarises most of the changes from the official LRB to help veteran players adopt the new rules).

Colour coded Edition:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/sc3d624bdoz231u/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-1+%28Colour+Coded%29.pdf

Codes:
- Red: changed from last IRE release (in this case, since V0.3).
- Green: Experimental/WIP
- Orange: Both the above
- Black: None of the above, but IRE differs from official LRB
- Grey: Essentially the same as LRB.

Printer Friendly Edition:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/4o8wtodtwde2fks/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+V0-3-1+%28Printer+Friendly%29.pdf

Crib Sheet:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cqb8lqdpp8faedz/Inquisitor+Revised+Edition+Crib+Sheet+V-0-3-1.pdf
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Joble on October 29, 2019, 01:36:12 AM
Hey, I'm new to these forums, new to inquisitor, new to the whole show, as it were.  I was wondering if these rules were still being worked on, and if not, if there are any rules projects being played today for inquisitor-type games?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on October 29, 2019, 03:53:19 AM
Quote from: Joble on October 29, 2019, 01:36:12 AM
Hey, I'm new to these forums, new to inquisitor, new to the whole show, as it were.  I was wondering if these rules were still being worked on, and if not, if there are any rules projects being played today for inquisitor-type games?
Well, first of all, the traditional Big Yellow WelcomeTM

WELCOME TO THE CONCLAVE!

As far as the actual question, although the project is a bit sporadic, it is still active, and I have actually been working on it recently. (Particularly as there's been a tentative suggestion of using it for an upcoming event).

There will be a V 0.4 update at some point, but it will be relatively minor from the perspective of the core mechanics. IRE has grown to become a pretty robust system between the experience of the people who've contributed and many long hours carefully working out how to explain those mechanics on the page. Any major hiccups with the core mechanisms have been ironed out at this point, and future changes to the system will be more about fine-tuning modifiers or adding new sections rather than large changes.

Most of the remaining work on the core book is more about filling in those sections that have been largely left to be filled in by the original book, and thus flesh out IRE to a fully self-contained rulebook in its own right.

As a project, it's not yet quite done, but I'm pretty proud of it so far.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on February 29, 2020, 08:57:55 PM
Coming back to IRE's Awareness section... in the Inquisitor games I've played, awareness is one area of the rules that is generally very heavily fudged compared to the original rulebook. Sort of:

Player: "I look around the corner"
GM: "Roll awareness"
Player: "Pass by 42"
GM: "Although they're well concealed enough that you can't make out specific details, you can clearly see that two figures are trying to hide in the woods ahead. However, because of the light mist, you don't manage to see the sniper on the second level of the watch tower"


This is obviously a lot quicker than in the rulebook, where you have to roll for each specific character you might see, working out modifiers for distance, number concealed locations, etc... which is obviously why it usually gets used instead. It is not however something that can really be put down into rules.

I'm wondering if it may be simplest to have a system that plays off degrees of success somehow - for a rough example, Inquisitor Shyloque gets 4 degrees of success. He can "spend" those to work out what he can actually see in front of him.

Tyrus is out in the open, so he doesn't need any DoS spent to actually be aware someone is there, but if Shyloque wants to look more closely and work out who it is, or what he's up to, then each DoS spent gets him more detail.
Because Sgt Stone is some distance away, and also in partial cover, then Shyloque must spend two of his Degrees of Success to become aware someone is there, and more if he wants to work out who specifically.
However, if he wants to see Barbaretta whose entire body is behind smoke in the distance, he'll have to spend all of his DoS and miss out on other details.

Becoming aware of easily visible characters is relatively simple, but actually knowing who they are and what they're doing takes more of your time and attention when trying to quickly glance around a corner.

Thoughts? Alternative suggestions? Etc?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on March 03, 2020, 12:04:53 AM
I'm playing around with whether I can turn the above idea into something viable, and I think I possibly can.

However, possibly radical suggestion: Should characters automatically get a free awareness test at the start of their turn?

Often the GM has to throw in awareness tests anyway because of "Did I see that happen?" (and it feeling odd that a character has to use up actions to actually take in new information, even if they were looking that way when it happened) - and, as it is, one of the things that often holds up the progression of play is characters having to use up their actions failing to see what's going on.

Actively using awareness will remain an option (a free test doesn't guarantee they'll see things, so characters may still spend their time bewildered) but it does solve the question of whether the character is aware of what's happened since their last turn, and may mean more time actually in the action of the game.

(Note that this is a free awareness test, not a free Pause for Breath, so actively using a Pause for Breath still provides those benefits).
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on June 02, 2020, 08:08:04 PM
After a bit of a ramble on Facebook, it's time to look at the issue of blast weapons...

Blast weapons are an issue in Inquisitor. Admittedly, detailed blast weapons are just difficult in general. Partly that is because they're often just slow to resolve, but because the two natural ways to harm them both have odd side effects:

1) Like Inquisitor, you can have a blast weapon doing multiple hits. However, this naturally skews them towards being ineffective versus armour - because they do multiple hits, blast weapons need to do less damage per hit to not be hugely overpowered, and once they do less damage per hit, and armour is applying against each hit, armour easily absorbs a lot of the damage.

Krak grenades in Inquisitor are lethal against light armoured targets, and functionally fairly useless against well armoured targets. Not what they're supposed to be lore-wise.

2) Something like Dark Heresy, where you still only do one hit and thus the weapon can still have similar damage stats... but it's kind of odd having the large blast hit ONLY your arm.

~~~~~

I think IRE needs to stick with the first approach, as neither is a flawless system, and at least this way we're sticking with the established rules.

However, as far as improving on the fact that it's so skewed by armour, I'm struggling for a solution better than having blast weapons automatically halve armour (representing the spray of shrapnel/plasma/etc being likely to find gaps or weaknesses in armour).

That's not necessarily a terrible idea, as theoretically, flak armour could ignore that if not directly hit; that would be in keeping with the lore about it being mostly intended to protect against indirect hits.

Any thoughts?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Mike712 on September 27, 2020, 10:44:24 PM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on June 02, 2020, 08:08:04 PM
After a bit of a ramble on Facebook, it's time to look at the issue of bast weapons...

Blast weapons are an issue in Inquisitor. Admittedly, detailed blast weapons are just difficult in general. Partly that is because they're often just slow to resolve, but because the two natural ways to harm them both have odd side effects:

1) Like Inquisitor, you can have a blast weapon doing multiple hits. However, this naturally skews them towards being ineffective versus armour - because they do multiple hits, blast weapons need to do less damage per hit to not be hugely overpowered, and once they do less damage per hit, and armour is applying against each hit, armour easily absorbs a lot of the damage.

Krak grenades in Inquisitor are lethal against light armoured targets, and functionally fairly useless against well armoured targets. Not what they're supposed to be lore-wise.

2) Something like Dark Heresy, where you still only do one hit and thus the weapon can still have similar damage stats... but it's kind of odd having the large blast hit ONLY your arm.

~~~~~

I think IRE needs to stick with the first approach, as neither is a flawless system, and at least this way we're sticking with the established rules.

However, as far as improving on the fact that it's so skewed by armour, I'm struggling for a solution better than having blast weapons automatically halve armour (representing the spray of shrapnel/plasma/etc being likely to find gaps or weaknesses in armour).

That's not necessarily a terrible idea, as theoretically, flak armour could ignore that if not directly hit; that would be in keeping with the lore about it being mostly intended to protect against indirect hits.

Any thoughts?

Hi new here, but I thought I'd contribute.

The explosion should get weaker, instead of do less hits as it projects from point of detonation.

It does indeed make sense that multiple locations of the body are hit, so using a blast number to limit number of hits does make some sense, as having all locations hit at once is going to be overwhelming damage for almost any character to sustain.

Personally I would scale the damage numbers, so an explosion is very lethal at the point of detonation, but damage that is likely to only cause a light injury or be mitigated by armour the thinnest of armour as the explosion radiates outwards.

So damage rather than number of hits drops off with range.

Personally I would use another method to work out the number of hits. A roll against an updated blast number with modifiers for smaller locations of the body,  e.g. no modifier for legs, abdomen, chest +1 for arms +2 for head. Could even add an additional +1 in the outer radius of the blast if it needed further balancing.

A typical blast number could range from 4-6, a D6 result higher than the blast number plus modifiers, that location avoids being hit.

This does give the possibility for all locations to potentially be hit, but it would be rare event.

I would rework the blast radius of some explosives too.

Happy to set aside some time to mathhammer/playtest if you wanted any assistance.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on September 29, 2020, 10:49:16 PM
Apologies for the slightly slow reply and welcome - I've been somewhat occupied of late, including an unplanned computer reinstall after it went wibbly last week.

Quote from: Mike712 on September 27, 2020, 10:44:24 PMThe explosion should get weaker, instead of do less hits as it projects from point of detonation.
It has some potential as an idea, depending on exactly how it's handled.

I'm wary of having blast weapons continue to do a large number of hits at all radii, as working out multiple hits is time consuming; the falling off on the number of hits does at least naturally limit that.

(I once had a discussion to this effect with PrecinctOmega about the auto fire rules in his version of Inquisitor 2 - although the rolling to hit was much faster, you then were likely to get many more hits than the existing rules, and working out the damage for that could make the whole process much slower as a result. That said, I did use something similar for IRE's flame weapon rules, but with different underlying numbers, so it didn't result in quite so many hits).

Still, a mechanism that resulted in fewer hits on average, but scaling the damage instead could potentially be an approach to go with; working out a damage modifier only needs to be done once for each character, but each additional hit is multiplicative.

QuotePersonally I would use another method to work out the number of hits. A roll against an updated blast number with modifiers for smaller locations of the body,  e.g. no modifier for legs, abdomen, chest +1 for arms +2 for head. Could even add an additional +1 in the outer radius of the blast if it needed further balancing.
Hmm. If I'm interpreting you right, that immediately calls for eight rolls (2x legs, 2x arms, chest, abdomen, groin, head) with varying modifiers each time a character is hit, and the order is important, so they can't just be rolled as one. Even if they're just D6 rolls, that's still going to be somewhat time consuming. Of course, the trade off is that does remove any need for location rolls, so possibly it's even on time.

The fact that it creates an exception within the rules with a unique way of choosing hit location, I'm a bit less happy about; IRE has tried to remove such "special cases" where possible (for example, "Close up" and "Arm's Reach" are gone from IRE's melee rules, as the new way Reach works naturally represents those).

The other concern I have is that I want to maximise compatibility with first edition; I don't want having to maintain more than one character sheet to be a barrier to IRE. (As is, although IRE has added a couple of melee weapon characteristics and Psy Rating, IRE character sheets are mostly back compatible into 1stE, and with a couple of exceptions like psychic powers, a 1stE character sheet is usually quick to update).

However, complaints aside, I do see potential in the idea. My first thought is that if possible, I'd want to preserve the existing profiles, instead trying to see if it was feasible to choose modifiers that had you rolling under existing blast values. (Rather than over an updated one).

I'll need to do some numbers and tests to see how well it can be made to work, but I'll take a look at those as suggestions. I suspect I may also still need to do something about the way blast interacts with armour for the reasons noted above, but we'll see what the numbers say...
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Mentirius on September 30, 2020, 11:22:37 PM
I'm afraid I'm far too rusty on the original rules to contribute anything useful here, and ad-hoc house rules were rife in my old gaming group, but I'd be in favour of the free awareness test.  I also like the sound of a melee rework - one day when people can safely congregate again, I think I'd enjoy trying out your Revised Edition.  It seems like a monumental amount of work must have gone into it over the years.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 07, 2022, 02:10:17 PM
Right, I've slowly over the last week or three been trying to write up something regarding Awareness tests.

The "Simple" awareness test is intended to be broadly equivalent to the fudged tests most GMs use for events. "Yeah, that's a decent roll, you see X, Y and Z".
The "Detailed" awareness test tries to provide more structure for when it's necessary, but without rolling independently for any given thing a character might see or a complete list of complicated modifiers. (For the most part, a minor complicating or easing factor affects the difficulty of spotting a character by one level, a major factor by two levels, so the difficulty of spotting a character can usually be ballparked in a second or two).

QuoteThere are two versions of the awareness test - the Simple test, and the Detailed test.

As throughout the course of a game, characters will end up testing awareness dozens of times between them, it is recommended that the Gamesmaster normally have them make the simple test in order to maintain the momentum of the game, and reserve the detailed test when it is important to more carefully define what the character may have seen.

SIMPLE TEST
To make a simple awareness test, a character simply rolls Initiative. The GM then narrates exactly what the character becomes aware of in front of them.

On a straight success, the testing character should become aware of characters ahead of them that are nearby and in the open.
On two degrees of success, the character should notice more details or things that are less obvious, such as that such as that the character in front of them is wearing Arbites armour or that there is a silhouette skulking in the shadows of the building ahead.
On four degrees of success, the character should get a strong grasp of the scene ahead, excepting extremely obscure details - the shape skulking in the shadows moves in accordance with Imperial guard scouting doctrine.
On six or more degrees of success, the character will probably spot nearly anything, such as the sniper on the nearby rooftop who thought he was hidden by his chameleoline cloak...

On a failure, then the character may still notice some things, but the worse their failure, the more they will miss.
On a straight failure, they might miscount the number of characters they think they saw.
On two degrees of failure, they might become fixated on only the most obvious character and miss everything else.
On four degrees of failure, they may not work out what they've seen at all, or even misinterpret it completely.

DETAILED TEST
If a character needs to make a detailed awareness test, then they instead spend their degrees of success to spot things in front of them.

By default, spotting another character (or similarly sized object of interest) nearby and in the open has a Difficulty of 0, and can be spotted for no cost. However, by default, this only provides vague details - that there is someone/something there and roughly how they are moving; the character has seen something, but they have not closely examined it.

However, not every character is equally easy to spot.

a)   If a character is lightly concealed (with at least three locations hidden) spotting them is at +1 Difficulty. A character who is heavily concealed (no more than two locations visible) instead has +2 Difficulty.
Note that if a character is fully concealed, they cannot usually be spotted by sight.

b)   A character who is further away is harder to notice. Each full 10 yards over 20 yards adds +1 Difficulty.

c)   Dim lighting conditions will increase the difficulty by +1, but dark conditions may add +2 Difficulty or more.

d)   A small object or character (servo skull sized or similar) is also at +1 Difficulty. (Ratlings and Cybermastiffs are not small enough to have this penalty).

e)   Objects outside the character's front 90 degree arc, but still within their 180 degree peripheral vision, are at +1 Difficulty.

Some situations may instead make a character easier to spot. Note, however that these will never reduce the Difficulty below zero - spotting a character is never so easy to award additional degrees of success.

f)   A walking character is at -1 difficulty to be spotted. A character that is weaving, running, sprinting or fighting in melee is at -2 difficulty. The GM may choose to reduce this further in the event something is moving even faster (such as a fast moving vehicle or flying character).

g)   A larger character or object is easier to spot. An subject that is Space Marine sized is at -1 Difficulty, an Ogryn sized one is at -2, and correspondingly more for larger subjects; a Sentinel walker might be -3, and a Chimera -4.
Note that buildings are usually sufficiently large that their overall difficulty will be 0 under almost all circumstances and therefore characters will usually not need to spend degrees of success to become aware of the approximate layout of the area in front of them.

h)   If there's other reasons it would be hard to miss something (such as a ganger noisily emptying a heavy stubber on full-auto) the GM may choose to further reduce the difficulty as appropriate.

More detail:
Once they've spent degrees of success sufficient to spot something, the testing character may spend additional degrees of success to become aware of additional information about what they have spotted, such as a basic description of who/what they have seen, working out exactly what they are doing, how they are armed, and the like. Generally, for each new piece of information the character would like, one additional degree of success must be spent.

Note that even if the testing character has spotted something with a previous test, to get more information about it, the base difficulty must first be spent out of the current test; working out what exact weapon someone fifty metres away is carrying is hard even if you've previously spotted them.

Focusing:
A character may elect to focus their attention more specifically. They may nominate an area which has their attention. If they choose an 8 yard diameter, they gain one bonus degree of success against each individual target within, or if they choose a 4 yard diameter, they gain two bonus degrees of success against each target.
These degrees may be spent on either initially spotting and/or further scrutinising a target (and may be spent differently for each target).

However, anything outside this area has its difficulty increased by a corresponding amount; the more a character focuses their attention in one place, the more they are likely to miss other things.

Note that a character chooses whether they will focus after making their test.

Designer's Notes:
The first edition of Inquisitor required that a character had a specific justification to focus in a given area. This requirement has been removed from IRE; Most characters in Inquisitor have years, decades or even centuries of experience, so it's reasonable that they can make judgements about the most likely angles of attack, which direction an escaping heretic is likely to be running or sometimes simply have their attention grabbed by that cloaked figure who's skulking around in the shadows for no good reason.

This is balanced out in the IRE rules by enacting a drawback to choosing to focus a character's attention.


Failure:
Even if a character fails their awareness test, they may still become aware of some things, but it will become much more limited in nature. If they fail their test, and for each additional degree of failure, the Difficulty of spotting anything becomes one level higher.

Obviously, they have no base degrees of success to spend, but may still be able to spot more obvious targets, such as those that are moving, or choose to focus on a specific area in order to gain enough degrees of success to spot something.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Inquisitor_Snarf on April 12, 2022, 04:23:38 PM
NEAT!

What is the timeframe for integrating these rules into the revised edition?
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on April 13, 2022, 03:22:47 PM
People can obviously start to make use of them whenever they like, but as far as them becoming "official", that's going to depend on things like what feedback I get from the community and ideally some playtesting.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Manny Calavera on July 14, 2023, 10:25:26 PM
Congratulations on the work done over the years in creating IRE.
I am still a novice with Inquisitor, but after quickly browsing through the rules of IRE, I would like to give it a try. I noticed that the latest version dates back about 5 years ago, and that V0.3.1 still has parts to be edited and integrated (various traits and ranged weapons).
While browsing the forum, I also discovered the "Revised Armoury".

I would like to know which version is currently the most "complete" and "updated" to fill in the missing parts of IRE in order to play it. Would V0.3.1 + Revised Armoury be a good compromise? Additionally, are there any other parts that I might have missed and need to be integrated, and if so, how?

Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: MarcoSkoll on July 16, 2023, 06:09:41 AM
The Revised Edition and Revised Armoury are separate, and by no means mandatory to use together - although they certainly can be.

The intention is that IRE is something like 95% compatible with first edition character sheets, and most of the changes that do need to be made are very minor; first edition ranged weapons will certainly *work* in IRE, the main thing is that I may want to rebalance some of them (The armoury proper in IRE will be slightly less extensive than RIA, as I don't want to burden the core rules with quite that much detail, but there are some weapons that need to be made more interesting - either with buffs, or drawbacks that stop them being too obvious a choice).

Melee weapons will need a bit more tweaking, but that section is definitely complete enough to act as a guide for people on how to update their sheets for IRE.
Title: Re: IRE - Inquisitor Revised Edition project
Post by: Manny Calavera on July 17, 2023, 07:08:05 AM
Quote from: MarcoSkoll on July 16, 2023, 06:09:41 AMThe Revised Edition and Revised Armoury are separate, and by no means mandatory to use together - although they certainly can be.

The intention is that IRE is something like 95% compatible with first edition character sheets, and most of the changes that do need to be made are very minor; first edition ranged weapons will certainly *work* in IRE, the main thing is that I may want to rebalance some of them (The armoury proper in IRE will be slightly less extensive than RIA, as I don't want to burden the core rules with quite that much detail, but there are some weapons that need to be made more interesting - either with buffs, or drawbacks that stop them being too obvious a choice).

Melee weapons will need a bit more tweaking, but that section is definitely complete enough to act as a guide for people on how to update their sheets for IRE.

Thank you Marco, me and my group will definitely try IRE before summer ends.