BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Systems => A Time of War => Topic started by: Wombat on 02 June 2011, 16:08:39
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Lets suppose someone, who shall rename nameless (but has really great hair), was fully stuck on the old 2nd Ed MW:RPG system and never bothered to move to 3rd Ed because...well she was quite comfortable with the simplicity of MW2ED. Now that ATOW has come out, one wonders if this is a compliment to 3rd Ed or (effectively) 4th Ed MW:RPG?
In other words, do I need to buy 3rd Ed to make use of ATOW or not?
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In other words, do I need to buy 3rd Ed to make use of ATOW or not?
No, AToW is stand-alone system and you don't need other roleplaying rules to play with.
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MW3rd changed the system to a d10 based rule set. A Time of War went back to a d6 based rule set. You do not need MW3rd to use ATOW.
You can use it to get general ideas for character build, story hooks, etc.
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AToW is 4th edition. I still use a lot of the old MW3 stuff....mainly because my group converted the 2d6 AToW back to a 2d10.
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No, AToW is stand-alone system and you don't need other roleplaying rules to play with.
Thats what I needed to know! Thanks. :)
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AToW is 4th edition. I still use a lot of the old MW3 stuff....mainly because my group converted the 2d6 AToW back to a 2d10.
I haven't been able to read the book I picked up last weekend yet, but what little I have been able to peruse make's me think I might be converting characters one way or another.
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Color me stubborn as well, but I too always find the 2E of MW:RPG to be the most flexible when it comes to running a campaign. I never cared for 3E much, and 2E feels like it frees up a lot of the game towards the 'mechs.
Still I'd like to pick up a copy and see how it differs from 3E. :)
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Color me stubborn as well, but I too always find the 2E of MW:RPG to be the most flexible when it comes to running a campaign. I never cared for 3E much, and 2E feels like it frees up a lot of the game towards the 'mechs.
It really depends on what you do with the system. 2E was more of an adjunt to the BT game than a seperate rpg and if all you want is a little more detail about who's piloting the mechs on the table it's ok as long as the GM is careful to moderate the players' ability to extremely min/max the system. OTOH, MW2ed sucks donkey phallus when you try to use it to run a fully fleshed out RPG with any depth to it. If you want to give your BT game a little something extra stick with 2nd, if you want a real RPG go with ATOW.
-Jackmc
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MW:RPG 2E was always just an add-on to fluff out the game on a running 'mech campaign for me. The only issue I'd run into is a certain player managed to dump a lot of points into gunnery and I foolishly let him run away with it before getting a saddle on that pony. He was pretty much Errol Flynn in a 'mech. :P
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That's part of the reason I embraced 3rd ed so much. But then I found that the reverse of it were true. You just about couldn't make an Elite character unless said toon was about 90 something.
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Give and take for both I suppose. ;D
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mechwarrior 1st edition was primitive in a lot of ways and attributes were all about 6 being the baseline and you can retrieve xp by lowering stats, and spend to get better stats
mw 2nd edition went to a psudo shadowrun style priority system, where you choose what is important to the char concept and then work around that
because of the limited range of attributes 1-6 ( 7 with exceptional attribute) and phenotype adjustments for clan chars it is possible to min/max the char fairly easy if the gm doesn't pay attention
mw 3rd was an overreaction to the issue of min/maxing
atow is the 4th edition and goes back to in some ways closer to mw 2nd edition than 3rd edition but with a few tweeks to reduce min/max issues
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That's part of the reason I embraced 3rd ed so much. But then I found that the reverse of it were true. You just about couldn't make an Elite character unless said toon was about 90 something.
It's more a case of being knowlegable about all life path options and rolling well/burining EDG thresh. If you knew what LP's to take and were willing to burn a bit of EDG thresh, you could end up with a +8 in a skill w/o too much trouble and only a little luck.
-Jackmc
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It's more a case of being knowlegable about all life path options and rolling well/burining EDG thresh. If you knew what LP's to take and were willing to burn a bit of EDG thresh, you could end up with a +8 in a skill w/o too much trouble and only a little luck.
-Jackmc
I found that to be correct only if you were making up a clan character.
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mechwarrior 1st edition was primitive in a lot of ways and attributes were all about 6 being the baseline and you can retrieve xp by lowering stats, and spend to get better stats
mw 2nd edition went to a psudo shadowrun style priority system, where you choose what is important to the char concept and then work around that
because of the limited range of attributes 1-6 ( 7 with exceptional attribute) and phenotype adjustments for clan chars it is possible to min/max the char fairly easy if the gm doesn't pay attention
mw 3rd was an overreaction to the issue of min/maxing
atow is the 4th edition and goes back to in some ways closer to mw 2nd edition than 3rd edition but with a few tweeks to reduce min/max issues
I found that to be true but I felt a little of MW1 in that nearly any character can be fixed with XP more easily than MW2. But ATOW character building is a lot like doing my taxes. MW3 LP and I never got along well. MW3 also needed almost as much work behind the scene as MW2 to get it to play as smoothly as MW1 or 2. MW4 out of mech lethality is something my group is looking at right now to make the out of mech fights last longer than zap zap your dead.
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Our group has pretty well adopted the reduced lethality rules as presented in AToW.
It makes wearing armor important but not so much so that if you're of the wrong faction and/or have too low of an equipped to get the better armors your character winds up getting screwed. Sure they can be screwed for not being of the correct faction and/or having too low of an equipped to get the better armors but that is usually more of a case of the GM being a dick than poor game/character design.
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I found that to be correct only if you were making up a clan character.
Had a Lyran Fighter Jock with an 8 in Piloting until the GM forced me to reduce the skill down to a 5 and spend the left over points to raise my Leadership and Strategy scores. He was not an aberration by any means, though my normally lousy die rolling meant that 7's were a lot easier to get.
In all fairness though, I loved the LP system(well the concept anyway, not always the execution) and therefore have probably made over 500 characters (I've got 6 large notebooks that hold ~75 characters and then I've got many more scattered across other gaming notebooks that aren't dedicated to any one game system).
-Jackmc
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5000 XP for a character (6000 if 31) - life paths leaves about 2700. Can I assume this is used to buy extra attribues and skills? going from a level 4 to level 5 BOD, for example, should cost me 500 XP right? Whats the cost for skills? How does traits factor in? And what does the TN factor off of?
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in atow attributes and traits are 100 xp/level
so going from a 4 bld to a 5 bld costs 100xp
its like this
bld 1 = 100xp
bld 2 costs 100 + 100 xp total 200
bld 3 costs 200 + 100 xp total 300
etc
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5000 XP for a character (6000 if 31) - life paths leaves about 2700. Can I assume this is used to buy extra attribues and skills? going from a level 4 to level 5 BOD, for example, should cost me 500 XP right? Whats the cost for skills? How does traits factor in? And what does the TN factor off of?
The skills have a set TN based on their complexity rating. The TN will be 7, 8, or 9 then the skill level is a modifier to the die roll. all traits have a trait point value, abreviatted as TP. for each level of TP it costs 100 xp, just like the attributes do.
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Um...lemme ask the question differently. "Standard" gunnery is 4/5 while in MW2/BT, but you could get a higher skill in Piloting and Gunner to lower these numbers, therefore giving you a base of 3 or 2 (or 0 if your Natasha Kerensky). I assume putting more in to each skill lowers the TN?
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Closer.
To determine Total Warfare Gunnery and Piloting ratings you subtract the character's Gunnery and Pilot ratings from their Target Numbers. As such the actual Target Numbers don't change but the Base To Hit numbers do.
For example a character with 5 ranks of Gunnery/Mech and 4 ranks of Piloting/Mech would work out to be a 3/4 in Total Warfare terms.
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So the attibutes don't factor into this? ???
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there are modifiers based on the numbers. I don't have the book in front of me right now but I know that a 7 = +1 while a 4 = -1
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I'm sure Jimbo has it figured out already, I was just going through the book trying to figure it out for myself. :)
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kewl, I left him a pm.
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kewl, I left him a pm.
...which he'll either completely miss for another two days or I'll log into his account and send it to him in a text. :D
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So the attibutes don't factor into this? ???
Well according to Paul they don't. Which I can understand in a way. It is wonky enough that negative Total Warfare Gunnery and Piloting ratings are possible even without them.
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I never actually got an answer in the rules questions forum
but according to paul like monbvol said they don't apply, and yet he also said in his own games he does apply them
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In a word...odd. :D
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I don't have the book in front of me right now but I know that a 7 = +1 while a 4 = -1
You're a little off. Att <=3 is a -1. An Att in the 7 -9 is a +1 while a 10 is a +2.
Another modifier is that Clan characters with the appropriate phenotype get a -1 to all relevant skills. So a Jade Falcon trueborn asf would have say a 3/4 skill level while a Ghost Bear fighter jock would be a 4/5 (assuming the same number of skill points) since the Bears don't have the asf phenotype.
-Jackmc
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Attributes not calculating into BT gunnery and piliting is why my group just doesn't bother converting back. We use AToW skill checks for company on company (or more) sized 'Mech fights.
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Well according to Paul they don't. Which I can understand in a way. It is wonky enough that negative Total Warfare Gunnery and Piloting ratings are possible even without them.
Can you point me to where he said that? I scanned the rules forum and didn't see it this morning.
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There are a few posts by him in the thread where this (http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,4531.msg101087.html#msg101087) comes from but that particular post I've linked to is probably the most relevant.
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Thanks! I totally missed that thread when it was active.
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No problem.
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Yeah, the concern was that it'd be too easy to skip past a net 0, between skill, attribute modifiers, and the base TN.
Of course, the people who actually have attributes to gain positive modifiers are rare in the universe, and the system is intended to create exceptional people, not average people. Most any player characters *should* be serious problems right out of the gate, with a high propensity towards natural talent.
It's a game about heroes. Not about joe randoms. If you want to make those, you can, just make sure to drop the starting XP, and invest poorly in attributes.
Paul
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...or take the Guerrilla warfare lifepath with a specialization for Free Rasalhague Republic and you automatically are missing a limb!
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Seems to me that if the combination of high skill and high attributes is considered a-ok in the RPG, it should be allowed to work just as well in the boardgame, too. After all, it's still the same character and at that level of abstraction the precise nature of all the various factors that go into determining his or her overall performance at a given task should if anything matter even less than in the RPG.
But if that's not the official stance, well, that's what GM's discretion is for. ;)
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and the system is intended to create exceptional people, not average people.
Out of curiosity, was that why the attribute system is designed so that it's literally impossible to have an average Att or are you guys just dealing with the legacy of 3rd ed?
-Jackmc
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Out of curiosity, was that why the attribute system is designed so that it's literally impossible to have an average Att or are you guys just dealing with the legacy of 3rd ed?
Not quite following the parameters there. What would you consider average, and why is it impossible?
Paul
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Not quite following the parameters there. What would you consider average, and why is it impossible?
Somewhere there's a table that benchmarks the traits levels and a 4 is considered "above average" while a 3 is listed as "Fair" (IIRC) and imposes a -1 penalty so it would be below average. Ergo the true average is between the two numbers and since you can't buy a fractional Att, you end up with characters that are either above or below average by default. Like you said, PC's are exceptional.
-Jackmc
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Somewhere there's a table that benchmarks the traits levels and a 4 is considered "above average" while a 3 is listed as "Fair" (IIRC) and imposes a -1 penalty so it would be below average. Ergo the true average is between the two numbers and since you can't buy a fractional Att, you end up with characters that are either above or below average by default. Like you said, PC's are exceptional.
Well, there's page 35.
"For human characters, Attribute scores tend to fall in a range from 1 (feeble) to 8 (excellent), although truly exceptional specimens may possess Attributes as high as 10. An Attribute score of 4 defines the level an “average†person may expect."
Also note the Thug NPC on p. 337; those examples used the archetypes as their comparison.
I tried finding the table you mentioned, it does sound familiar. No luck did a text search for "fair" even.
Paul
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Well, there's page 35.
"For human characters, Attribute scores tend to fall in a range from 1 (feeble) to 8 (excellent), although truly exceptional specimens may possess Attributes as high as 10. An Attribute score of 4 defines the level an “average†person may expect."
Also note the Thug NPC on p. 337; those examples used the archetypes as their comparison.
I tried finding the table you mentioned, it does sound familiar. No luck did a text search for "fair" even.
Paul
I looked too without any luck, it may actually be in 3rd ed. now that I think about it.
-Jackmc
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Might I suggest An Attribute score of 4 defines the level ATOW is built around. 4+ skill also seems to be a turning point as well.
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Might I suggest An Attribute score of 4 defines the level ATOW is built around. 4+ skill also seems to be a turning point as well.
Definitely the case, just wanted to back that up with stuff that's actually in print, rather than my (or Herb's) head.
Paul
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I probably missed it. Is there a chart that shows what the base TN are for each skill are (before any attribute or skill level adjustments are made)? What page?
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Is there a chart that shows what the base TN are for each skill are (before any attribute or skill level adjustments are made)? What page?
p. 142 and again on 397.
Paul
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Thanks! :D