Balketh

@balketh

Eggbug was here. Eggbug mattered.

he/him
tinyurl.com/MorrowindAmbience

Goblin Party @ My Brain 24/7 | A week shy of 33 before Cohost closed. Cis, ACAB forever, Trans Rights Are Human Rights forever.

RIP Cohost 2024. You were the best social media site to have ever been done. Long live eggbug. If you're seeing this in the future, on some archive, be kind to others. It's the only way things get better.

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Balketh @balketh2/19/2024, 4:51 AM

@Asukapaper

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:09 PM

exec continues to be fun. i neglected my company driver so frequently that i ended up leaving him in the car while my pc was having dinner out. there's a -4 penalty for forgetting a Team Members' contributions, so that was soundly logged. that npc is more the property of the gm, so this is a bit by design. Chisato's bodyguard is a character played by myself since that's necessary for keeping the gm from rolling against himself in combat, but the driver is the gm's npc and i have to actually get into his head and figure out how he ticks, so failure is part of the point

#asuka RED

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 3:45 AM

also, having more turns in the initiative queue is kind of addicting. i've gotten to the point where i've made sure my moves are plotted out before turn start and can be uttered as quickly as "move here. attack (* makes the die roll *). move again. end turn." get it down to no more than a minute. not exciting, but every minute you take on your turn is a minute everyone has to wait through, especially if you have to make two or even three turns in a round

#asuka RED

Balketh @balketh2/19/2024, 4:51 AM

me when I realised how broken glyph of warding is in 5e D&D if you have the gold and time to set them up.

sorry what's that? Concentration? Never heard of them.

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in reply to @Asukapaper's post:

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:31 PM

also Vivi is getting a linear frame implanted. she's now able to fire man portable weapons (which isn't much due to her being locked into pistols, but a skill chip can make things like the Hurricane shotgun or the Cowboy grenade launcher feasible should i find one in the wild)

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:47 PM

i've made peace with the gm being irritable by just not seeing what he posts on the tal server anymore. the fact of the matter is Chisato is over-minmaxed, but she's over-minmaxed as a martial arts character in a game that bars bullet dodging. she's a jagen anticipating other pcs growing into their abilities, and that has already happened

though weirdly this includes vivi, ig. I remember breaking her down in an overly long and overcorrected rant, but basically the Company Bodyguard isn't supposed to be this strong. very few of their statlines permit a reflexes of 8, and their statlines with an 8 reflex tend to nerf their abilities with brawling. Vivi is operating off a statline with 7 ref and dex, so she's quite balanced and the former is easily amendable to let her hit pistol range brackets with full accuracy. the fact the bodyguard's evasion base of 10-12 doesn't come into play for ranged combat means Vivi's defences are on par with any PC and so is her offensive potential

I don't think it's Chisato who's all that powerful, it's actually Vivi who's as close to a juggernaut she can be short of making a rifle PC with the means to smuggle their longarm. the gm then made a mistake and enabled a houserule item that allows pistols to fire on the rifle range brackets (basically a carbine stock, which i understand why gun heads would homebrew that in, but pistols have a limited range table for a reason, and that's the tradeoff for their lower profile).

this is a mistake because Vivi's sole limiting factor is her mediocre move tied to a weapon that's accurate up to six squares of distance. when you have the rifle range table, move isn't as big of a deal (though it can help if your gamemaster makes large maps, like my sunday gm does)

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:51 PM

gms also like to houserule that the exec picks their team members' statline. i don't like this since i think the fun of team members is working with what you have, even if it isn't always the most optimal in their bases. team members have such a wide skill distribution that often even if they're not great at the primary things you want from them, they'll be a pitch hit for certain skills you then don't have to worry about. that's how people undersell the importance of the covert operative, whose stats aren't optimal, but all their skills are things the exec can decide are their responsibility or are able to be rolled as assistance actions

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:53 PM

now that I’ve played exec, the hardest thing about them is consistently knowing how the game master will handle teammates and such. But that’s not really a weakness of RED. Each class has a set of core elements the gm is going to bring in sharper or duller focus

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:54 PM

Like, for example. If the game master wants to control my company bodyguard, I will not get a company bodyguard. That way leads frustration for everyone involved

@Asukapaper2/18/2024, 3:59 PM

But let’s say the gm doesn’t let me monkey with my Team Members’ gear and chrome? That’s okay. One of the community’s prime theorycrafters is an LC player rolling a combination solo, exec, nomad (which is kind of like saying, they’re an LC player), and they can get their head too much in the reeds, but they can also point out what modifiers can be stacked on team members and thus far they’ve pointed out Team Members aren’t too hard to optimize for, regardless of what hand you’re dealt. Given the game master is frustrated with my PC, that’s not always a good thing

Now my gm was frustrated with my pc before Vivi really came online, so yknow

in reply to @Asukapaper's post:

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 3:47 AM

i've also enjoyed using a /em in the roll20 chat if narration is happening but i want my pc to keep lively or people are discussing things and i want to make sure i've declared something like a held action without throttling the pace of play

though sometimes the gm gets to me and i say "hey, my action was upthread in that emote. continue progressing along the scene"

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 4:07 AM

session times are super short, so whatever respects the time of everyone there is a boon.

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 5:29 AM

This is helped by RED’s turn economy being super efficient once you find its rhythms. You’d think the three second turn and the limits that places on action economy is a bad thing, but that also speeds up play as well. “Okay you’re attacking and moved here; you did your move then spent an action to make a check; okay…” Add the fact that modifiers are nil to zero and you’re always tracking your character’s skill base? It becomes very efficient to put your rolls out there through /roll messages

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 5:29 AM

By that token, I feel like RED is a completely different game in person. As a matter of fact, I haven’t ran it in person once. I kind of wonder if so much as the physical action of rolling dice is too slow for the pace it wants

in reply to @balketh's post:

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 5:07 AM

It’s kind of like the gamemaster came up with a constellation of houserules that made Glyph of Warding super op, ig. I’m not much of a 5e head so if I miss your comparison I apologise in advance

Balketh @balketh2/19/2024, 8:33 AM

Naw you're good; I didn't realise your extra actions were tied to homebrew/houserules. In by-the-book RAI 5e, Glyph of Warding takes an hour to cast, two spell slots, and creates a spell trap that doesn't have a timeout, and if it's a concentration spell (can't have more than 1 running at a time normally), it just runs until it's done.

So if you prepare, it's like being able to do several if not dozens of actions in a turn. XD

@Asukapaper2/19/2024, 2:52 PM

Ah. Yeah fr. It’s liberating.

I get what you mean now. When I mean a constellation of stuff making it op, I mean like that the Team Members RAW are providing separate turns, but usually they’re not supposed to punch at the weight of a PC (they can’t bullet dodge, they’re restricted to point blank range weapons and possess low Move). The GM took bullet dodging away and introduced handguns that can fire downrange, so now my bodyguard is simply carrying like any other PC. RAW I’m orchestrating 2-3 turns a combat, but at this point Vivi is graduated to a second PC I happen to sink resources into to be able to control

Saturday GM once complained on the Tal server that Team Members were super strong when my brother in Christ bridged their power gap

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