Subject: "More of Steve Jackson’s greatest mistakes", and Subject: "Who Is this Steve Jackson person anyway?” Hi Jeffrey, Here are two examples... "… they may do so, but there is a penalty: loss of half the experience points he/she has at the moment or 1,000 experience points, which ever is higher.” Expert players RARELY take the wrong studies, so this rule just brutally punishes new players. I’m a newbie who has written up a new character and have taken a bunch of dumb studies (UC 1 thru 3), and then I figure out I really should have taken Missile Weapons instead. I lose 1,000 exp??? That mistake cost me over 6 attributes for my new character!!! What was SJ thinking??? (Is there a GM anywhere that actually enforced this?) Under current rules, gunpowder weapons have no minimum ST, if you have Gun’s talent Arqubuses get +4 DX to use (page 24 AM), are very long range (400 meters!?!, see page 24 AM), and Arqubuses do 3d+3 damage. So this character is legal… Goblin: ST 4, DX 15, IQ 9, Talents Guns (2), Knife (1), Missile Weapons (3) Equipment: Arquebus 3d+3, Knife 1d-1. 15 DX, +4 for using an Arquebus, +3 for Mis. Weapons gives this goblin a 22 adjusted DX!!! Using the long range missile fire rules (AM page 25), it could shoot someone at 250 meters at -8 DX (hits on a 14 or less), and if the goblin misses, it will have time to reload that gun before the enemy can close with him. If it starts shooting at 400 meters, the goblin can aim for 2 turns, and still gets 3 shots. What was SJ thinking??? I’m feeling the same way about his fast, 3:1 healing spell. On the TFT forums there have been 5 or 6 better spells suggested, but he is going with the first thing he thought of. A dull, industrial magic, spell. (To be fair, I don’t think that the healing spell is not as bone headed as the above two examples. But it will have a MASSIVELY greater impact on the typical campaign.) Ugh. Oh well, I won’t be using it in my campaign. Rick
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