LeperColony

2 hours ago, WWHSD said:

Arcane Shield is a single point of reduction on a master that has a low enough Df value that he’s going to get hit by anything killy that wants to hit him.

Arcane Shield is a decent protection against things like Black Blood and the aura on Sorrows. For anything else it’s nice to have but it’s not a very strong defensive ability. Sandeep’s abilities make him a short to mid range master. He needs a bit more than Arcane Sheild and soulstones.

I don’t think that giving a model ItW lessens the impact of deciding when to activate and lose Arcane Shield any more than any other always on defensive ability does.

I probably shouldn't have said "significantly reduces," just reduces.  My point is as a matter of design, I don't like stacking permanent abilities along with conditional ones in that way, unless it's the core mechanic of the model.

It's not the only fix, or even necessarily a fix, but I feel the Impossible to Wound and Arcane Shield are not only too effective together, they are counter-decision, which is not good.

An ability like Arcane Shield puts the question as to when the player should expose themselves to greater risk.  But ItW significantly reduces the consequences of that decision, which makes for a dynamic that is unattractive from a design standpoint.

When multiple abilities compliment each other, that synergy is generally to be encouraged, imo.  But when the synergy is really just a matter of negating drawbacks, you have to be sure you're not reducing the importance of decisions.

On 5/15/2018 at 2:09 PM, WWHSD said:

The easiest way to “split the difference” would have just been to use similar wording to what is on Obey:

”A model which performed an Attack due to Prompt may not be targeted by Prompt again during the same activation”.

This gives a little more flexibility to Prompt and removes the lockout that Prompt has if you fail the first flip.

As a Collette main, I would have preferred raising the TN on subsequent uses (or, less favorably, adding a suit).  I'm not sure why Wyrd doesn't take more advantage of TN increase as a balancing mechanic, because I think it's a potential way of adding decision points to play, rather than heavy handed prohibitions.

Or, if they wanted to push theme more (which I think generally they should, as a rule), they could have allowed Colette to Prompt again if the target was a Showgirl (so if you Prompt only Showgirls, you could still do 3x, but if you Prompt another model, it ends the Prompt opportunity).  Though I think there you may start to run into text length issues on the card.

The thing about Command abilities that makes balancing them difficult is that they essentially it is really a two-tiered process.  Both the Command ability itself, but then the range of obedient models have to be considered as well.

Seconding the hope that Miss Fire's Webstore issues are fixed and that she's made available again soon.  I know the Easter sale ends today, so it seems unlikely things will get sorted in time.  

The players in my group are mostly one-tricks (we all stick to a pretty narrow range of masters).  One guy plays Misaki almost exclusively, usually with a gun line.  

I agree you're going to want Ramos no matter who else you play.  Other than that, pick a Master whose aesthetic appeals to you and try a few games.  You're already an old hat at Malifaux, so it's more about finding a playstyle within the faction that matches what you're looking for.

Sandeep Desai may work perfectly for you.  He's a summoner who can also lend his Ca actions to his crew.  Plus, he's newer, so fewer people have his style down.

Quote

To be straight forward about it, you don't add the Ht value of a terrain feature to the Ht of a model to determine line of sight.  There isn't actually any effect on the Ht2 model's line of sight caused by standing on a Ht1 terrain piece.

Once a model stands on a Ht2 (or more) terrain piece, the vantage point rules apply, but you still don't add terrain Ht to model Ht for anything.

Is this a side effect of using top down LoS rather than true LoS?

Every time I think I understand the height rules, I come to the forums and become confused again.

45 minutes ago, amanwing said:

One big question just came up. Do you need to run it with miniatures? Will you miss a lot if you don't?

I agree with Aaron that miniatures are in no sense necessary.  However, the more combat features in your sessions, the better off you are with miniatures.  The combat system shares many similarities with Malifaux (using Malifaux for combat is even an optional rule), and the concepts are typically expressed in terms easier to render with clear tracking of everyone's positioning.

8 minutes ago, Omenbringer said:

In regards to the cards versus dice comments, well it is best to just say that it is a very, very different experience than DnD. Just saying the probability curve is different is not enough, the probability curve is tuned for a specific encounter level, and much longer wave (read as memory). Because of this combats in TtB are much different than you will find in DnD.

Omenbringer is correct here, 100%.  The savvier your players, the more you have to understand the implications of the card system.  There are other threads about this, though.

1 hour ago, mythicFOX said:

<modhat> 

As a pointer:  if you have to explain that you weren't trying to be uncivil then at the very least you could have worded your posts better.

</modhat>

To be fair, I didn't explain I wasn't trying to be uncivil, I was asserting that I was in fact not lacking in civility.  I definitively addressed a negative personal assertion without resulting to insult, so I think I'm fair in my evaluation.

1 hour ago, Aaron said:

In terms of the OP, your breakdown makes sense, but I would definitely encourage you to consider a Coincidence having a Pursuit advance. There are a lot of fun Pursuits out there, and it's more meaningful of a choice when you know at the end you're "leveling up" in a certain Pursuit. But, I suppose it depends how up front you are at the beginning about what type of session it is.

I'm just not sure what you are gaining out of slowing down Pursuit advancement, other than a weaker party.

I am open to making more Pursuit steps available.  My concern was that the players would advance through too many Pursuit steps if one were always awarded. 

Since I'm looking for a more open-ended experience, one downside is that I don't know how many sessions there will be.  This makes it difficult to estimate the ratio between the three types of sessions, and to properly gauge the scale of the game.  I don't want to end up with characters who have 100 Pursuit steps, for instance.

Oh, and by the way imo, Into the Steam is the best book in TtB, so please keep it up!

1 hour ago, Mason said:

the game is designed with lots of steampunk and horror elements

The nice part about this is that it's relatively easy to give even people entirely new to Malifaux a good sense of the world.

The models are out?  Didn't know that.

They still have the avatars to update too.

You could always see the almost identically named thread (except you abbreviated Through the Breach) that is still on the first page of the TTB forums...

I don't think you can go wrong with Ulix.  Trampling people with pigs seems like a lot of fun, and if you lose, well, at least there's plenty of bacon.

I mean, I'm certainly open to being shown how describing what I am doing in my own game is somehow arrogant or wrong.

I don't think anything I've said qualifies as uncivil.  All I did was respond to an inaccurate characterization by completely dismantling it.  Civilly!

7 minutes ago, solkan said:

This is the part where it becomes difficult to take seriously.

In that response to that perceived arrogance, you propose your own system, committing the same crime you accuse the author of committing.

 

It's clear you're very committed to the a lock-step interpretation of Through the Breach, which is fine for you.  But you may want to consider reading more closely before you accuse anyone of arrogance, because I was very clear that I was describing the system I am using in my own game.

21 hours ago, LeperColony said:

So in my current campaign, I am designing adventures to fit one of three general molds:

What part of "in my current campaign" represents the same arrogance of telling other people how to play?  Can you explain that? 

Which is why my system is still superior.  Prefer the format out of the book?  You can still do it by just making every session a Destiny.

Malifaux is a wonderful world, and Through the Breach is generally very well written.  But as Omenbringer and others have pointed out, it comes with a lot of baggage from its original writing staff, who seemed to have very particular opinions on how games should be played, and an intention to ensure everyone else conforms to it.  But I think you will find that gamers are a largely nonconforming lot.

About TNs, it really, really is.  Fortunately, the fix is very easy.  But there's already a long thread filled with super long posts on this issue, so I'll leave it.

Regarding advancement, I get what they were going for originally.  But it just feels too much like I'm being told how to play.  Like yours, my group is longer term, our plots are on a slower burn, and sometimes people just want to monkey around.  A campaign where you have five sessions per character (assuming none of the Fated resolve a step in the same session as a companion) just isn't going to provide for that.

In a world where magic has always been real, is coming back from the dead so miraculous?  Because so little has been printed about Earth in the Malifaux universe, we are forced to assume that it is more or less analogous to our own reality in those ways that are not otherwise elaborated upon.  So I think it makes sense to assume that the world's major religions all exist in Malifaux, that the major political or ideological movements have at least some proponents (witches unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!) and that most prevailing social and culture conventions persist.

But I personally think that given the profound implications of magic, we could definitely benefit from a book that focused solely on what Earth is like.

I have just started an online Through the Breach campaign, and it's going pretty well so far.  There are things about TtB that are pretty silly, like Fixed TNs, but they are also easily improved (by making contested flips, for instance).  However, as I read through the materials, I am getting an increasing sense that the game has been strongly centered around a very particular style of play favored by the original writer.  Several sections of various books read like his polemic against particular styles of gaming (re: his section on Fudging or, as he calls it, "cheating"), but it is the built in expiration date of campaigns that I find most troublesome.

On page 208 of the Fate Master's Almanac, it says that campaigns are only intended to last five sessions per Fated, plus whatever set up and wrap up sessions are required for narrative purposes.  Put another way, they are to last until all the Destiny Steps of each Fated are exhausted.  Aside from the sheer arrogance of being told how long I'm supposed to play an RPG, I find this format needlessly limiting.  Omenbringer has linked Mack talking about how he only enjoys D&D up until level 5-6, and so he has written TtB to end at a similar point.  That may be fine for him, but I, like many other gamers, enjoy RPGs for the freedom of opportunity inherent in the genre. 

However, the very model of advancement in TtB assumes you will be using his race to the bottom system.  So in my current campaign, I am designing adventures to fit one of three general molds:

A Coincidence is a session designed mostly tangential to a Destiny Step.  In D&D terms, they are the run-of-the-mill adventures, not necessarily designed to focus on or advance any of the Fated's Destiny Steps.  These are good for setting up plots, following side quests or blowing off some steam.  Wyrd's Penny Dreadfuls fit well into a Coincidence session.  The standard award for these games is an Experience Point.

A Foreshadow is a session that involves a Fated's destiny, but does not necessarily resolve it.  These are more clearly custom tailored to the specifics of the current campaign and the Fated (singular or plural) being Spotlighted, but the events are more preliminary in nature.  The standard reward for a Foreshadow session is an advance along the Pursuit track (and an XP).

A Destiny is a session that resolves a Fated's Destiny Step.  As the culmination of several game sessions, an existing plot line typically be resolved.  This allows for another to be introduced, either as a follow up to the last or as an entirely new dilemma.  The standard reward for a Destiny is the same as resolving a Destiny Step (and an advance, and an XP).

The three session types are, to a certain extent, interchangeable.  The Fate Master could have planned and prepared for a lighter Coincidence, only to have what he thought was a diversion turn out to have serious implications, as a result of the Fated's choices.  It is then an easy matter to award the session on the basis of a Foreshadow or a Destiny.  And vice versa. 

Ultimately, I feel that a Through the Breach campaign should grow in a more organic manner than originally foreseen in the printed materials.    

14 minutes ago, CloudFang said:

Hmm.  Really like the idea that most all models are a lot more viable and masters are less critical in terms of power.  Has everyone else found this to be true?  It's so boring seeing the same squad compositions over and over.  Does M2e allow for a myriad of viable options?  I definitely like the sound of that.

 

thanks Fetid.

 

Thanks big for the avatar update and thanks to everyone who keeps adding in here.

I never played 1E, so I can't compare the game now to how it was back then.  That being said, the current system does allow for a lot of options.  Malifaux is one of the better balanced miniature systems out there, and most masters support more than one, if not several, play styles.

You will find on these forums some people who advance the idea that everything is equal and there are no OP units or superior masters.  In my opinion these people are wrong.  However, that does not detract from the overall strong state of the current game.

What exactly constitutes magic use?  I doubt the definition is so narrow as to only include pulling out your grimoire and casting a Magia.  But what else does it include?

For instance:

Is animating a construct magic use?  Note that this is distinct from having an animated construct, because even if animating one is forbidden, it is possible for someone to acquire one legally animated, like from some guild sanctioned source.

What about a manifested power (though I'm sure here the answer is "it depends")?  For instance, to use an example from the book, a pistol attack infused with some kind of spiritual/magical essence?