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Re: "Steve Jackson's greatest mistakes",

At 05:27 PM 6/22/2018, Rick wrote:

> 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 didnâ??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 don't disagree. I don't know why SJ thought +4 made sense, but I think he seems to have had some different ideas about it - the one-paragraph rule on it says it's due to using the "stand, sights, etc." so it seems he thought that they were fairly accurate if you did have a stand and set it up for four turns. One could retcon that Cidri arquebusses are actually fairly accurate, due to the setting's weird history that includes some technology fallen into disuse rather than just being invented.
SJ admitted that his idea of the blunderbuss was based on a goofy idea (I forget exactly what he wrote), so I expect he just didn't know any better.
I agree that from a realistic accuracy perspective it's basically a mistake that it gets a +4 DX.
However this seems mainly sloppy rather than terrible, and as I wrote before, I think your example actually points to other weaknesses in the system (i.e. the way you can stack modifiers and get really high to-hit chances with enough DX + modifiers). 




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.


Sounds reasonable.




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 enemiesâ?? body &
then trigger it.  (Which is what people would sometimes do with ancient
guns.)


Yeah, I completely agree. So do some GURPS smoothbore rules.
Last time I thought about this, I spitballed to write "a smoothbore arquebuss should probably have a major inaccuracy/scatter problem that cannot be compensated for by skill - that could be represented by saying that your maximum effective adjDX is 11 minus the range in megahexes, or something."
I think that it should probably drop to 9 or less at some point. Basically, there are two factors - one is did you aim it right, and the other is what is the scatter. Your aim is important up close, but at some point the scatter is more than any error you'd ever do, and that means the chance of hitting gets vanishingly small no matter what your skill is. So you really need a mechanic that keeps getting smaller and smaller and ignores your skill at some point (as long as you don't crit fail). The chance would even go below a 3 on 3 dice before too long, just due to the size of the scatter cone. 





>> 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

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.


Not sure exactly how you mean.
SJ mentioned in his original suggestion that, "Perhaps a Master Physicker who knows this spell would restore lost hits at only 2 ST each? I like synergies between Master Physicker and other kinds of healing."
There's also a rule in GURPS Magic where non-magical medical skills can help reduce the risk of the worst critical failure results from using healing spells.
I recently suggested that the new spell might have a cap at 2-3 points healed, plus 1 if the wizard knows physicker, plus 2 for master physicker, and of course the limits I mentioned on already-treated wounds. That basically just makes the healing spell an alternative to Physicker, which can exceed physicker's ability by a couple of points if someone learns the spell and physicker (which of course has a significant cost to get). I'm fine with that... but it probably doesn't make fast-healing fans happy. Though combined with my way of allowing physicking per wound (not per "combat"), it would actually mean not a lot of lasting injuries in many cases. 




I liked Anthonyâ??s spell which causes you to regenerate at one point per
hour.  It is simpler than my healing spells certainly.
It's better than SJ's _without_ having my "treated" limits (because of what Aid and rest can do). But the rate per day is pretty huge: 1 per hour per patient, no limit.