Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",

[Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net>]

At 09:09 AM 6/22/2018, Rick wrote:
> Subject: "More of Steve
> Jacksonâ??s greatest mistakes", and 
> Subject: "Who Is this Steve Jackson person anyway?â??
>
> ItL page 16 Steve Jackson wrote (on forgetting studies):
>
> "? 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.â??
>
> Expert players RARELY take the wrong studies, so this rule 
> just brutally punishes new players.  Iâ??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?)


I was 12 years old and it looked obviously wrong to me. I didn't have a
great solution in mind as I lacked the House Rule talent at that point,
but I decided it was extra-double-wrong that you could get the Wizard's
guild to erase a learned talent but not a studied one, so I just added
that to the Wizard's guild telepathic services. 

I didn't much like the IQ cap at age 12 either, but I wasn't sure how it
SHOULD work, though the players were trying logical ways to learn new
things (buying books, practicing, studying, trying to figure out ways to
earn EP through practice & study & teachers, etc).

PCs ended up using the Wizard's Guild talent-erasing services too to
"make room" for other talents, which I regretted but didn't
have an alternate way to handle it.



> Under current rules, gunpowder
> weapons have no minimum ST, 
> if you have Gunâ??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???

At least it takes 4 turns to ready and uses a stand (so presumably you
can't just carry it around ready), there's a 1/6 chance the gun doesn't
even fire, costs $500 plus $100 per powder charge, and explodes on an
18.

It seems to me the main errors there actually come from the scalability
of the basic system, both in terms of adding cumulative modifiers, the
3d6 to-hit roll, and the ranged to-hit rules that let high skill reduce
miss chances so much.



> Iâ??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 donâ??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 wonâ??t be using it in my
> campaign.

I agree with your lack of enthusiasm for that spell as written. I don't
think any of the examples represent drunkenness but think it's lack of
consideration of the implications. I don't mind SJ's first-shot healing
spell so much if you have it count as "treating" the wound as
if a physicker did it, and not be able to heal treated wounds (so you
can't stack spell-healing with physicking or other castings) and if there
is a fairly low cap on how much you can put into a casting (since
otherwise people can jack up the caster on Aid spells to heal a ton of
injury).

I wouldn't use it without such limits either.

I'm hopeful Steve will adjust it before publication, considering his
suggestion did create like 26+ forum pages (and counting) of
arguments.

PvK