Reducing MDC

[jedi078]

Yes the mecha have too much MDC, as a result of power creep. Most players don't like the idea of reducing MDC levels even though we can see that when you watch Robotech mecha get blown up left and right as if they were roman candles. So yes getting hit should be significant. Gettign hit by a natural 20 should be down right catastrophic.

[ZINO]

that why you need a very high P.p and lots of skills

[jedi078]

Cutting MDC in half speeds up combat, but it also may make character deaths skyrocket. If your players can and don't mind generating characters often, go for it. If your players get attached to their characters... then don't.

People die in war, if your players don't recognize this they shouldn’t be playing in an RPG set during a war. They should instead play in an RPG such as My Little Pony or Care Bears.

The simple fact is if you don’t have PC death in an RPG set during a war then it’s not real enough.
Look at Robotech. Roy, and Ben were both killed, and they were for all intents and purposes part of the ‘player group’. Rick got banged up a few times (i.e. crashed/shot down twice). In fact the only ‘player character’ in the Macross saga that was a VT pilot and was never shot down was Max. So you had four VT pilots, two were killed and of the two left one was shot down twice. So you’re looking at 50% PC deaths, 25% PC’s shot down and 25% of the PC’s surviving a campaign.

Just as an example, in my own 3 year running PBP Macross era game I’ve killed 16 PC’s, and 13 characters (both alive and dead) have been shot down to survive and fight again. At the moment I currently have 14 active PC’s.

[Tiree]

I just did a simulation of an Alpha Pilot versus 16 Invid. He was against 8 Scouts, 4 Armored Scouts, and 4 Shock Troopers. The Alpha was a VF/A-6Z - Level 5 Pilot.

The pilot used 2 missiles apiece at the Scouts... All 8 died. I was using HEAP rounds - 2d6x10, and nat 20 (by RAW) is x3 damage. Within 2 melee's all the Invid were dead. I did use 60 missiles in the encounter. Range is your friend.

I can not say what it is like in Macross - it is much much different, with the Auto Dodge, and different damage levels. But I think TSC is balanced within itself. Even with the power creep. Alpha's no longer are laser resistant, and neither are the Masters Mecha. So yes the mecha should be able to be brought over into Rifts easily.

[Lt. Holmes]

I did use 60 missiles in the encounter. Range is your friend.

A true graduate of the Scott Bernard School of Missle Aiming I bet your Alpha pilot could really use that rearming Horizon-T

[Lt Gargoyle]

I agree with Robot Urchin, to many pc kills is gonna lose to emotion impact that it should have. The PC in any setting is ment to be that over the top hero type that stands out compared to the other people in the world. As a GM I am not gonna hold back the intelligence of my villians, nor will i pull punches for the players. But I am not out to kill them either.

If you like the idea of halving the stats and your players are good with it then by all means, as long as you keep it balanced. If you are doing it for faster combat, then i think you should have your players apply to the Scott Bernard School of Missle Aiming. And have a horizont resupply shuttle standing by.

[glitterboy2098]

Most players don't like the idea of reducing MDC levels even though we can see that when you watch Robotech mecha get blown up left and right as if they were roman candles. So yes getting hit should be significant. Gettign hit by a natural 20 should be down right catastrophic.

and in every case of that, those are nameless, faceless extra's in background mecha. heck, if it wasn't for the fact they fly the same VF's as the main charaters, you wouldn't even know they had pilots in them!

the main character's mecha all take lots of damage before having trouble. a zent that fires at one of those extra's, the extra dies. the same enemy fires at Roy Fokker or rick hunter, and the hit barely scatches the VF.


why is this? well in RPG terms, those background guys are redshirts, mooks, NPC's. they only exist to show how deadly the situation is for the named characters.

the main characters, they're the player characters. they get the benefit of full stats and actual plot. thus they can take more damage, and only die when the plot calls for drama..


how can you duplicate this experiance in your games? simple. Fudge. don't track NPC's that aren't directly involved with your PC's, just describe the carnage going on around you. forget to give the enemy full bonuses or capabilities unless the plot calls for the players to have a signifigant challenge. basically do all the normal gamemastery tricks.

[jedi078]

Most players don't like the idea of reducing MDC levels even though we can see that when you watch Robotech mecha get blown up left and right as if they were roman candles. So yes getting hit should be significant. Gettign hit by a natural 20 should be down right catastrophic.

and in every case of that, those are nameless, faceless extra's in background mecha. heck, if it wasn't for the fact they fly the same VF's as the main charaters, you wouldn't even know they had pilots in them!

the main character's mecha all take lots of damage before having trouble. a zent that fires at one of those extra's, the extra dies. the same enemy fires at Roy Fokker or rick hunter, and the hit barely scatches the VF.

why is this? well in RPG terms, those background guys are redshirts, mooks, NPC's. they only exist to show how deadly the situation is for the named characters.

the main characters, they're the player characters. they get the benefit of full stats and actual plot. thus they can take more damage, and only die when the plot calls for drama..

how can you duplicate this experiance in your games? simple. Fudge. don't track NPC's that aren't directly involved with your PC's, just describe the carnage going on around you. forget to give the enemy full bonuses or capabilities unless the plot calls for the players to have a signifigant challenge. basically do all the normal gamemastery tricks.

In my games I don't pull punches, fudge rolls or treat the majority of bad guys like NPC mooks.

In my games, the bad guys are as good (if not better) then the PC’s. The bad guys have full bonuses, they shoot, they dodge, they parry, just like the PC’s do.

If I roll a nat 20 and blow a PC away in the first melee of combat well poop happens. But inversely if a player does the same to an enemy of Khyron’s caliber and one of them gets in a lucky shot and blows him away, well so be it, and as the GM I gotta roll with the punches.
Those game mastery tricks you mentioned, are IMO just a tool for some GM’s to use so as way to retain their players because they fear that their gaming table (or PBP/chat game) will be empty the next session due to the fact that the players themselves can’t stand the loss of a character every now and then.

My players know this and since I have successfully ran several PBP games for over three years they seem to not mind it, otherwise they would have left my games long ago.

[Kagashi]

I personally think the ratio between the various mecha are more proportional to the show. Zents got a significant increase compared to the rest of the mecha, yet are still "flimsy" for 50 foot mecha. I thought the Invid mecha were flat out over inflated. Still, I enjoy the ratio.

I enjoyed seeing cyclones getting REDUCED, except the battler which raised in MDC. That being said, I thought it was cool that one cyclone is NOT the same as the next. I was appalled by the MDC of the CRV-3. That is WAY too high.

While the ratios between Earth mecha and alien mecha seem to have been evened out from what we have seen in the show, the overall increase can be blamed on Rifts. Pure and simple. At least now when you drop your RT character into Rifts, you don't have to do any converting this time to be on the same playing field. However, I never thought that was an issue really. I rather enjoyed playing a 200 MDC power armor with auto dodge in Rifts.

But to the main point of the thread. Yes, while armor went up, ratios or not, damages did NOT for the most part. Missiles did, which was cool. But you are still left with a lot of plinking. With the extra attacks of "starts with 4" as opposed to the original "starts with 2", the game time of combat shouldnt be effected much, but I personally do not like rolling dice for an hour of a big battle and it will take more attacks to take down the same foe now.

Trying the half MDC thing may be the way to go. Im kicking it around myself. Let me know what you find. This may be the perfect fix now that the ratios have been fixed for the most part.

[Jefffar]

Well in last week session it took 3 melee actions to take a player character's veritech fighter form the new, higher MDC numbers to being totally and utterly destroyed, including the reinforced pilot's compartment and it's fragile contents.

Likewise, only 1 of the enemy battle pods required a second hit to take it out.

I want to emphasize again these are the new "tougher" mecha.

MDC has gone up, but so has the firepower.