Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",

[Rick <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>]

> On Jun 22, 2018, at 3:00 PM, Peter von Kleinsmid <pvk@oz.net> wrote:
> 
> 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.

I was not so smart.  The first time this came up I said, “I remember
there is some sort of rule about this!”  I found the rule and enforced it. 
 (In those days I played things as written.)  Paul thought it was a 
stupid rule, and just worked with that talent slot wasted with a talent 
he decided he didn’t want.  

Eventually I decided I could change the rules after all, and it was never 
enforced again.



> 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.

As to the stand, the metal barrel was so long and so heavy, that the 
stand was to help hold the end up.  You had to move your whole 
hand to move the trigger so you didn’t have two hands steadying the 
weapon the way you do with modern rifles.  (Altho some late period
arquebus did have a short trigger like we are used to, which allowed 
both hands to steady the gun.  These gradually took over, except  
in France for some reason.)

But even if the thing was aimed like a modern rifle, +4 DX seems 
really steep.  If you brace and aim a crossbow, you only get +2 DX
in TFT.

I agree with you about the gunpowder (misfires and explosions).  One 
thing that could be done to tone down guns in TFT is insist that 
misfires be extracted from the barrel.  This was a tedious and tricky 
job.


Given the basic inaccuracy of this type of smoothbore weapon firing a 
round, unrifled ball, it would not bother me to say that the maximum DX 
that you could get with the weapon was 13 from 1 to 3 hexes, a max
DX 11 from 4 to 7 hexes and a max DX of 9 for ranges of 8 hexes and 
beyond.  (Based on the fact that you were likely to be missed by a 
Napoleonic smooth bore at 10 yards or more.

(If you wanted to be generous and make these ranges: 1 to 4 hexes; 
5 to 10 hexes; and 11+ hexes I would not mind much.  But the -1 DX 
per 2 Mega-hexes is just far too slow a fall off of accuracy for these 
primitive weapons.)

This penalty is ignored if you stick the gun against the enemies’ body & 
then trigger it.  (Which is what people would sometimes do with ancient 
guns.)


As for the modifiers for Long Range Missile Fire for people with Missile 
Weapon’s talent... I was never sure if those were realistic.  I’ve used 
those rules for years, but if someone were to tell me, “Nope, these are 
far too generous, use this table instead!”, I would have no problem 
believing that the rules should be changed. 


>> Ugh.  Oh well, I won™ 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

LOL, you mean there is hope?

Was it you who suggested no stacking healing with physicker talents?  
I rather thought that was a clever limitation to fast heal spells.

I liked Anthony’s spell which causes you to regenerate at one point per 
hour.  It is simpler than my healing spells certainly.

Warm regards, Rick.