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||The two real obstacles are, I think, fairness and elegance. Anyone can
||make an arbitrary decision that the NPC gets the first shot, and gets a
||hit. I don't think anyone here does that to their players (with the
||rare exception of a player who is REALLY asking for it), so that's not
||too much of a problem.
||
||The peace-through-superior-firepower solution is one that I generally
||have to rely on. You have to be careful, though; unless you simply want
||to make certain things totally off limits to a group of characters, you
||can only make your NPCs a little more powerful than they are. (Yes,
The "PTSF" metheod can be used quite well, even without actually using it
but through threat. In one 2300 session I wanted two of my players to get
captured by some anarchists so that they could get useful information out
of it. One was a "mostly harmless" administrator/field agent with little
in the way of combat skills. The other was a ground military/space military
(aka. ground pounder) type. The big problem was that the GP player always
walked around in combat plate with an assult rifle. So the session went
like this ("Mike" is the administrator, "Andy" is the military man, other
names are assorted characters and "Me" is my narration)
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Me: Well, you spend the last 15 minutes putting the fuel in the cargo area
of your tram when you hear a deep voice behind you say "Don't Move".
Mike: I put my hands up and turn around slowly.
Andy: I dive to the side and look at who it is.
Mike: Who doe sit look like?
Me: A real big guy in rigid breastplate and inertial armor carying a
12-81 magnum.
Andy: So, I have combat plate.
Mike: How can he carry that? That can only be fired from a tripod?
Me: He's from King.
Mike: Oh. Okay, we surrender. Andy, put your gun down before you get killed.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With andy walking around armed and armored to the max, I needed a weapon that
could penetrate his armor. A 12-81 is a VERY BIG GUN, about 1.5 meters long
that fires a 12mm by 81mm round. In the 2300 armor system, a 1 DP gun can
penetrate 1 cm of steel. Combat plate is rated at AV 1. The 12-81 has a
penetration of DP 4. True, it is NORMALLY only fired from a bipod mount.
So I made the guy come from King, a world where the people are DNA modified
to handle the 3 gees of gravity (Imagine a Jinxian, but of normal height).
Mike and Andy were sufficiently cowed so that I could have them brought before
the head anarchist so he could, like all good villians, leak some parts of
his plans to his helpless captives. In the long run, this "spur of the moment"
character became a major thorn in the side of all the players. I would
have loved to have him get away to be a future annoyance to them, but they
were too persistant in hunting him down later on and he bought it.
I guess things are just easier in the 2300 world to balance out tough PCs.
Even with the best armor, a shaped grenade or FTE-10 gaus sniper rifle will
still blow your head off, and no matter how many life points you have, a shot
to the head with a .22 pistol can still kill you if you are unarmored.
- -============================================================================-
Burton Choinski [email removed]
Prime Computer, Inc. [phone removed]
Framingham, Ma. 01701
Disclaimer: Down! Down! Down! Out! Out! Out! Mine! Mine! Mine!
- -============================================================================-
- -============================================================================-
Burton Choinski [email removed]
Prime Computer, Inc. [phone removed]
Framingham, Ma. 01701
- -============================================================================-
Disclaimer: Hey, not me man ... musta been my evil twin!
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