Braden Campbell wrote:Rogue_Scientist wrote:I'd be very interested in hearing solid reasons for introducing auto-dodge. From either a thematic or game designer point of view.
In my
personal opinion, Master and Secondary Vamps (perhaps not wild Vampires) should get such an upgrade for several easons. Firstly, it reflects the vampire's traditional above-superhuman agility and speed. Secondly, while there are many ways for mortal characters to get it (drugs, magic, hand-to-hand forms, suits of powered armour), there are almost no monsters in the entire game that can dodge without burning up an attack - thus, giving it to vampires only makes them a more unique threat to face off against in combat.
From a Game Master perspective, vampires cease to be the pant-wetting type of danger that they ought to be when a single Player Character can have twice the number of melee actions as they. If a vampire hunter with 7 actions (quite possible by even 3rd level) goes toe to toe against a vampire with only 4 attacks, the hunter has to only force the vamp to burn up four dodges... then hit him with impunity. And if the same vampire is jumped by a small party of PC's, then he often gets to do nothing at all because he is swarmed by attacks, and gets dropped within 15 seconds, not even having time to escape. Wasn't that a fun and nail biting encounter? Hoever, if the vampire gets to dodge for free, the odds go further in the monster's direction, the danger level goes up, and the Player's satisfaction at actually staking a vamp through the heart likewise increases.
Let me ask you this: why shouldn't they get auto-dodge?
First, I'll preface that I'm not against vampires getting auto-dodge. Since it became an ability that an unmodified human could train for (Hand to Hand: Commando), I can grudgingly accept a vampire having it.
However, vampires are already super humanly fast.
An unmodified secondary vampire has five attacks right out of the box. No combat training, just raw natural ability. Untrained human from RUE has three attacks, sorry no, actions out of the box. They only get two
attacks for living. Which means a vampire is two and a half times faster than a base line human. With seven attacks, the gulf between the regular human and the super human vampire just grows.
A regular Coalition grunt who is trained for combat only gets four attacks. So bringing regular vampires up to RUE standards and giving them seven total attacks (without any combat training!) still sets them apart as super humanly fast.
The fact that vampires compare to Juicers, power armor and robot pilots, borgs, crazies and the such with thier number of attacks per melee only
proves that they possess super human speed already. Don't forget that one of the major themes of Rifts is the creation of augmented humans with
superhuman abilities. Therefore vampires do not need auto-dodge to be superhuman. They achieve that with having their attacks raised to the RUE level parity. And I know that the Juicers I mentioned above get auto-dodge but they're the only one of the superhumans that I rattled off the top of my head that do. Yes, others do as well, but many more don't and remain
superhuman.Again, I'm not inherently against auto-dodge for vampires, but what you're hoping to achieve already exists for them. They already have demonstratable superhuman speed.
Finally, when attempting to add an ability to something in a game such as Rifts, "Why not?" is not a justification. As the person wanting to make the change, it is up to you to justify that change. It is not up to those supporting the status quo to provide reasons not to change until you've done that. In other words, if you wish to champion the cause for auto-dodge you really should do better than,
Why shouldn't they get auto-dodge?
The obvious answer is, "Because they don't have it already and there is no justification for them to have it."
Until you actually provide that justification.
I was raised to beleive if you can't say something nice about a person, say nothing at all. This has led to living a very quiet life.
Someone who tells you what to think is trying to control you. Someone who teaches you how to think is trying to free you.
WWVLD?