Donovan Morningfire said:

I think this would be one of the easiest solutions to Autofire.  It also seems to make sense, when you're spraying blasterfire everywhere, there's a good chance you'll hit something you're not supposed to.   Consider this 'yoinked'

Hey guys,

I am new to the beta, and have not tested it in-game yet (and won't before the beta end… too late to the party), but I read with interest the debate over auto-fire in the past couple weeks.

In a futuristic universe, there are bound to be infantry weapons that kill one man (PC or NPC) with a one shot multiple hit., despite better armors. Looking at what weapons have auto fire, it seems either those are tripod-mounted weapons (light and heavy repeating blaster) or the heavy blaster rifle (often bipod mounted). So, truly the later is the only one weapon a group of moving PCs or moving Opponents would have. The tripod mounted weapons are going to be met when attacking previously set-up defenses

Doesn't it makes sense than a nearly 6 foot heavy energy weapon that can multi-fire kill you in one turn if you don't duck down and take precaution to take it out before it fires? If I was seeing this guy, I would make sure to concentrate my fire on him until he is dead.

And no, it should'nt be that easy to pick up that weapon and start using it. It is heavy, it often needs energy packs, and when that guy die and the weapon falls hard on the ground, what's to say it will work afterwards and not explode?

If the devs nerd autofire too much, then the feeling of "They got an heavy blaster rifle! duck, run *blast *blast* *blast*… shit" will be gone. As a GM, don't we want such weapons in the game? I do want want my PCs to fear the heavy weapon carrying Stormtrooper. Obviously, if a PC can get his hand on such a weapon, and keep it, and move about with it without being questioned (right…), then by all mean, he ought to be able to take the Nemesis NPC who is dumb enough to not duck down, and back out of the fire behind his minions.

Azalain's suggestion is pretty sweet in any case. When we play WFRP3, we often take 3 or 4 Banes/Threats to be equivalent to a Chaos Star/Despair, and the GM is free to invent anything about those, not sticking by the rules of what 1 or 2 threats do.

Cheers
Ceodryn

I've got questions about "Canceled" successes…

I made the assumption that a roll  of 3 success meant that the 1st, 2 success were "cancled" by connecting with the attack, (overcoming the 2 purple diff.) then the one extra success adds 1 point of damage, with any weapon/attack.

Most of the examples sighted are saying/implying that all 3 success deal 1 more damage each.

Which is correct?

Please, could the following issues be clarified?

- Is a human with a cybernetic hand considered a "cyborg"?

- Does a cyborg take Stress damage both from Stun weapons and Ion weapons?

- A human with a cybernetic arm and a cybernetic leg who is hit by a Ion weapon will have both devices turned off for one scene?

- A droid with a cybernetic enhanced arm and a cybernetic enhanced leg who is hit by a Ion weapon will have both devices turned off for one scene only when he deactivates because of too much Strees ?

- Can an NPC add the bonus of the Adversary talent to that of Defensuve Stance/Side Step talent?
 

Gamerunner said:

The way I've been interpretting it is that when you roll, you tally up the number of successes you have, subtract any failures you rolled, and what's left is your total successes.  The "cancelled" successes in this case would be those counterd by any failure symbols you got on your difficulty or challenge dice.

So for a Hired Gun/Merc with Agiltiy 3, Ranged (Heavy) 2, shooting a heavy blaster rifle using autofire at an NPC with Adversary 1 at Medium Range, with a Boost Die from an allied PC, so you'd build your dice pool as normal (2 Proficiency, 1 Ability, 1 Challenge, 2 Difficulty), and we'll just presume the following results:

3 Successes, 3 Advantage, 2 Threat, 1 Failure (yeah, it's a pretty good roll, but it'll work for the example)

So after accounting for the Threat and Failure rolled, the Merc has a net of 2 'uncancelled' Successes and 1 'uncancelled' Advantage.  From there, he can spend that Advantage to active the Autofire quality, and then decide which of the two hits he wants to apply his extra success to, as one success was effectively spent to hit the NPC in the first place, who is now having a very bad day.

Hope this helps.

LukeZZ said:

I got a feeling if those are going to be addressed at all, it'll be in the final version of the book, not the final rules update.  Which in the meantime, will leave things in the hands of the GM to decide, unless FFG decides to have an official Q&A thread or sub-forum much how Pinnacle does with folks' questions being answered by Clint Black.

You may also want to consider, if you haven't arleady, e-mailing these to FFG directly via the e-mail address on the product page for the EotE Beta.  You're not likely to get a direct response, but it might highlight them as things to be addressed.

LethalDose said:

Thats no moon…

And yes, This has been a truly impressive expierince and I feel the game has been improved significantly since the beginning of the beta.

Ceodryn said:

You raise some good points, but the bedrock of your argument to leave it alone seems to be "there should be weapons that one-hit kill PCs", which I think is flawed.

It's flawed because it isn't fun.  And it isn't fun because it isn't balanced. 

Jay Little recently wrote an article about balance, and in the comments section mentioned how balance relates to the social contract at gaming tables.  I think it'd be a violation of that social contract for GM's to use weapons that can one-shot kill PCs.

Beyond that, increasing the activation cost of AF to 2 Adv is not "nerfing autofire too much".  it's still really, really damned good at that level.  I'd recommend you play test it with players, and see how a semi-competent henchman with an HBR can kill a PC on a roll of net 1 success and 4 adv under the current RAW.  This isn't a an uncommon result when a boost die or two is added.

I think your HBR example is flawed, as well, there is no text in the Beta book, or that I am aware of elsewhere, that supports that they are "often bipod mounted".  Surprisingly, the book does list Light repeaters as a tripod mounted weapon.  This is a pretty substantial break from what has been presented in previous iterations of the RPGs, where they've been long weapons.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

To be fair, topping out your wound threshold won't kill a PC. the only way I know of to die is to take a 151+ critical hit. The rest of your argument is sound. I still think that a one-hit out-of-the-fight is lame. Auto fire needs to be nerfed bad.

-EF

This hit can be fatal, repeat FATAL, because of how the multiple hits score increasingly dangerous critical hits.  With 4 adv, you can score 5 hits.  These hits are handled as separate hits, which can cause separate crits.

If the first hit (and with 10 damage, is likely, but not guaranteed) exceeds your wound threshold, it causes a critical injury.  Then each subsequent you cause four more hits,  at +10, +20, +30, and +40.

Okay, so I'm… a hit or two shy? Regardless, the demonstration illustrates my point, that these completely plausible, if not frequent, roll results will cause players to get absolutely f***ed!   A player with most of their wound and one or two minor critical injuries from earlier in the combat could die, and will certainly be in a very, very bad way.

This is why I think AF's current state is broken.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

Huh, I was thinking each attack [roll], not each hit. That makes me rescind my previous statement. Ouch!

-EF

Regarding Autofire (and by extension Linked), a question came up in another thread about if the target's Soak Value would be applied to each individual hit from an Autofire attack.

While it won't save a squishy character (Soak Value 2 or less, Wound Threshold 12 or less), having Soak Value explicitly apply to each hit (right now, it's not stated one way or the other) against an individual target might help a bit, at least for beefier heroes (Soak Value 4 or more, Wound Threshold 13 or better).  It's probably one of those "strongly implied" rules, but maybe it should be expressly clarified.

Still, doesn't really alleviate the potential issue of the GM getting 5 or more Advantage on a single attack roll and using them to murder a PC, but that's less of a mechanics issue and more an issue of the GM being an asshole by spending all that Advantage to brutalize the PC for no real reason other than he could.

I'm not quite as worried about a PC doing to an NPC, since most NPCs are only there for the one scene and afterwards are largely forgotten about.  Would be annoying for a major NPC villain to get gunned down so ruthlessly, but that's an issue with most any RPG (pre-4e D&D and fights against solo monsters, particularly 3rd edition, though 4e had it's problems too in that regard).  Maybe the GM could just spend a Destiny Point to have said major NPC suffer a Disney Death or have a brief case of Joker Immunity?  It sure looked like that guy got obliterated, but they somehow managed to survive, perhaps now with one or more obvious cybernetic enhancements?  This isn't something that would need to be codified in the rules per se, but it's one possible method keeping plot-centric NPCs from getting whacked quite so easily, in addition to the issues that I know Cyril has raised about PCs walking around with Autofire-capable weapons raising a lot of eyebrows and probably drawing a lot of unwanted attention in the process.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yeah don't think there's much question that soak applies multiple times in an autofire attack.  Each separate "hit" should considered a separate and mutually external source of damage, therefore soak should be applied to the damage from each "hit".  DM's right, this is surprisingly not made explicit in the rules.  I searched the Autofire, soak, combat action resolution, and damage sections and couldn't find salient text.

I don't like playing games of "F*ck the players", thats not what RPG's are about, and its not how I design my encounters. But I also want to be able to design appropriate encounters, so if I feel a henchmen should have a autofire weapon, I want to be able to give the henchman an autofire weapon without concern that I will frequently have to pull punches.  DM's comment about the GM being an asshole is the exact reason I feel this is an issue.  Every GM has to decide on how to play hostile NPCs on a spectrum that ranges between the two extremes:

• Playing the NPC's soft, pulling punches, making sure the PC's don't get hurt 'too bad'
• Playing the NPC's Hard and to hilt, maximizing NPC advantage, and making tactically sound decisions

I prefer to design encounters where I can play the NPCs much closer to the "hard" end than the "soft" end because playing in this way:

• Allows the NPCs to act consistently, which I feel improves story-telling.  I have a tactical combat goal the NPCs pursue, which allows for easy decision making about what actions to have the NPCs act
• Provides a more rewarding encounter for the players.  Besting a incompetent, underpowered, or otherwise poorly matched foe doesn't lead to a sense of accomplishment.
• Prevents subjective and inconsistent application of the rules.

The current AF design forces the GM to either not use these weapons, even in encounters where they would be appropriate OR use these weapons, but play closer the "soft" end of the spectrum, and "pull punches" (what DM describes as not being an asshole).  If I have to decide as a GM whether or not to spend advantage to activate autofire on roll, the ONLY factor I should have to consider is whether or not it would be consistent for the NPC to do so.

This speaks directly to the mechanical balance issue of AF:  the value of one adv on an AF attack roll is so radically increased in relation the value of an adv in other rolls that it creates a strong feeling of inconsistency and makes any other use of adv on these AF rolls seems a waste of resources.

Say what you want, but I think its clear this is a mechanical issue, not a Your-GM-is-a-prick-and-brutalizing-your-character-because-he-can issue.  This can and should be fixed in beta instead of putting the burden on GMs to make the decisions for years after the games release.

-WJL

I just had a thought for a mechanic tweak that might 'nerf' auto-fire into the territory of incredibly dangerous, rather than innately lethal.

Instead of each Advantage granting an extra hit, have each Advantage allow a Success to be treated as an additional hit.  It's a subtle, but distinct difference.

Instead of a 2 Success, 3 Advantage roll giving you 3 hits +1 damage, it gives you 2 hits and a stray advantage for other use.  It's still incredibly dangerous, because the potential is there for, say, a 4 Success, 4 advantage roll, but it provides a secondary limiting factor in that you can't get more *hits* than Successes.

As long as each Hit is Soaked separately, this puts a 'solid, but not spectacular' auto-fire roll into the territory of a nearly deadly burst into a single target or a spray of shots which hit a few targets.  A roll which is actually spectacular still has the opportunity to be just as nasty, but the odds of it decrease significantly.

Thoughts?

Voice said:

As I see it, there's no problem, per se, but it makes the mechanic work substantially differently than any other weapon quality or two-weapon fighting, which isn't needed.  Lots of people have posted total reworkings of the mechanic, or involved modifications as it stands, and I've shared the same opinion.  Mainly because they never show that a simpler solution doesn't fix it.

Increasing the cost to 2 adv keeps it in line with every other weapon quality (runs on adv), controls the damage, but still allows for a ton of damage and crit output, and places it in line with the linked quality and two-weapon fighting (2 adv = add'l hit).

A net of one success and 4 advantage on a roll with this result does triple damage, almost certainly downs a PC, and almost certainly inflicts one (probably 2, the second gettng a +10 bonus) crits.  Thats simple and pretty good I'd say.  

Compare to a non AF weapon, with 4 (probably 5) adv you could probably activate a crit, do normal damage, and give someone a boost die (I'm willing to concede you'd pribably have an additional adv on the roll from fewer purple dice).  So… I think the AF still provides obviously superior results.  It's just not bat-$#!t crazy damage and crits.

Really, just show me, either absolutely or conditionally, where that change just fundamentally doesn't work, and I'll support some other solution and shut up about the whole thing.

-WJL

PS: a one adv situation doesn't count as a situation where the change "doesn't work", because it essentially gives the decision of "recover one strain", "give the next guy a boost" or "Double my damage on this attack".  One of those options is so much better than the others it's just stupid and that's the problem!