Quote from: Corolinth on December 15, 2022, 03:42:48 AM
I have recent experience with new players and Savage Worlds, and unfortunately it's not quite as new player friendly as I would like to believe.

The concept of exploding dice is tricky for some people to get their heads wrapped around.

If you roll the highest number on a die, you roll again and add it to the total? What's hard about that? This isn't some original die-mechanic. Warhammer, WEG d6, L5R, Ars Magica etc. all use the exploding die mechanic. Are your players strictly D&D/PF players? In which case, I get it. It's new.

Quote from: Corolinth on December 15, 2022, 03:42:48 AMThe system is inconsistent. Sometimes you roll several dice and take the highest. Sometimes you roll several dice and add them all together. Sometimes you do a mix where you roll these two dice and take the highest but then you add that to these other two dice.

95% of the time you only ever roll two dice. One is you Trait die, the other is the Wild Die. Pick the highest of the roll. The Wild Die is *only* used on Trait Rolls (Stat or Skill rolls). The only times you regularly roll multiple dice are on damage rolls where the weapon might be 2dX+Str or whatever. THE only exceptions to this is if you're using a weapon/spell with a high rate of fire. You simply add that RoF in dice to your action, but you only use 1 Wild Die per action. So if you're Gnomish Crossbow is RoF 3, you roll 3 Shooting Skill dice and your Wild Die. And you can assign success/miss as you see fit.

Quote from: Corolinth on December 15, 2022, 03:42:48 AMIn all of the WotC editions of D&D, you add up all your dice and then add some other modifier. The number and size of the dice might change, but the basic mechanic stays the same. You roll dice and add. Every time.

A dozen or so sessions later, our new guy still gets tripped up by trait checks vs damage rolls, and when he takes the highest die versus adding all his dice together. I ran the group through Castle Ravenloft in 5E, and he had those rules nailed down after two or three rolls.

Except the rules bloat of d20 means there's tons of modifiers and the only way to trim down the maths is on the back end with monsters having gigantic HP pools. Coming over from D&D where you've achieved a certain level of system-mastery will always trip you up in a new system. Especially if it's a setting you're using as a mechanical translation. Savage Worlds has a bazillion ways to resolve things - it's not about system-mastery as much as it is about your players doing what feels right to you as the GM. Encounters don't always have to be about combat (though obviously SW excels at that) - but you can do Dramatic Tasks, and let your players describe how they want to use their skills (including combat skills) to resolve issues and give everyone a chance to pitch in. Like anything else it takes time to get used to, both as a GM and as a player.

How is everything going otherwise?

To be clear, I quite like Savage Worlds. I wouldn't have gone in for the leatherbound, autographed copy of the SWADE otherwise.

The guys who have experience with D&D, Deadlands Classic, WoD, L5R, Shadowrun, and other systems have no problem. The brand spanking new guy still gets mixed up on when he's supposed to do what.

I would have thought exploding dice would be easy to wrap your head around, too. But it trips up new players.

Trait rolls, you roll two dice and take the highest. That seems easy enough. However damage rolls involve rolling a set of dice (usually two) and adding. If your damage roll involves strength, you make a trait roll with your wild die, take the highest, and then add that to some other dice total. This is confusing to new players. It amounts to, "You always roll the die on your sheet plus your wild die and take the highest, except when you don't." This begs the question: "When do I don't?"

Trait rolls aren't all the same, either. Sometimes your trait roll is d4 + wild die. Sometimes your trait roll is d8 + wild die. That doesn't seem hard, but for the new player they're constantly rolling different dice. By comparison, a new player at a D&D player already has their d20 in hand when their turn comes up. They may not know shit else, but they know they're rolling that d20.

Hence my opening statement. It's not as friendly to new players as I'd like to believe. It may be a simpler game overall, but there is no simpler core mechanic than, "This is my d20. There are many like it, but this one is mine."

So overall, how is it holding up for you and your group?

Quote from: Corolinth on December 15, 2022, 11:14:00 AMIf your damage roll involves strength, you make a trait roll with your wild die, take the highest, and then add that to some other dice total. This is confusing to new players.

Actually, you don't get a Wild Die on damage rolls, even if they are strength based. The book is explicit on this point. (SWADE p94 and Savage Pathfinder p125)

I'll be damned. They changed that in Explorer Edition and I never noticed.

Quote from: tenbones on December 16, 2022, 07:02:45 AM
So overall, how is it holding up for you and your group?

I missed Deluxe completely, so I hadn't played Savage Worlds since Explorer. It feels like they've really improved the game in a big way with SWADE.

I was running Rise of the Runelords in Pathfinder. We tried converting characters for giggles after I got my PDFs, but the druid wasn't real wild about it. It's awkward going from a prepared spellcaster to SWADE. You feel like you lose 90% of your stuff. Meanwhile the warpriest was jazzed.

We're playing Deadlands, and the same guy who didn't like converting a D&D druid is having a ball playing a huckster. They did a fantastic job of recreating the feel of Deadlands Classic when it comes to Dealing with the Devil. He does it every session. I've been playing a mad scientist. The power modifiers are a lot of fun to play with and add a lot of depth to play.

The adventure deck is fun. We started using that to mimic awarding fate chips at the end of a Deadlands session, since bennies don't carry over. They're not for every group, but they do spice up a game. On the whole, I like Pinnacle's approach to having more physical objects for the players to interact with than just dice. Lots of other games have a mechanic like bennies, but there's something satisfying about poker chips flying across the table. The adventure deck adds to that. It brings back that "ace up your sleeve" feel the old Deadlands Classic initiative system had.

Tests and support are interesting mechanics. We tried those out when our gunslinger got into a duel. I like how it gives noncombatant characters something to do. I think you could actually have a character with no fighting, no shooting, and no combat spells. As in, the character would be fun to play and wouldn't drag the rest of the group down.

Next year, I think we're doing Savage Ravenloft for Halloween. Our druid/huckster has been converting I6 to Savage Worlds.

Oh yeah man, SWADE has updated a *ton* of little oddities. I got it at the tail-end of Deluxe, there were lots of little screwy things in there, but not enough for me to really mind.

SWADE shows how much Pinnacle has put a ton of thought into their system, and they're really good about feedback from the players. It helps they're good with third-party products too, where a lot of innovation has come out of.

SW for pathfinder is SWADE, eh?

Ok time to track down books. It was not on my radar of late.

Quote from: tenbones on December 17, 2022, 10:19:50 AM
Oh yeah man, SWADE has updated a *ton* of little oddities. I got it at the tail-end of Deluxe, there were lots of little screwy things in there, but not enough for me to really mind.

SWADE shows how much Pinnacle has put a ton of thought into their system, and they're really good about feedback from the players. It helps they're good with third-party products too, where a lot of innovation has come out of.

It's really a well-thought out system. Though I still say that it reads like a train wreck. Once you play it though...amazing.

I just started running SWADE for one of my groups (17th Century French Swashbuckling). So far, so good.

Barring this thread, where is a good place for rules questions and such?

The Discord channel is excellent.

My main issue with SWADE is it probably needs a few extra notches on its wound cap setting rules in terms of genre emulation.

I've been playing quite a bit and recently had the opportunity to guest run some sessions, specifically SWTOR era Star Wars.

Now, in general the increased swinginess of SWADE works really well for Star Wars... heroes suffer reverses and fail at things they should succeed at (or succeed at things they probably had no real chance at) all the time. Except the damnable damage math kept sucking all the drama out of things because 4d6 (3d6 with a raise) just needs one or two aces to routinely turn into "shaken + 4 wounds."

I swear a result of s+4w came up at least once a fight even when we scaled the damage down to 2d8. The acing rules just make damage very volatile and it's landed on what was supposed to be a boss fight (oops it's down in one shot... so dramatic) or dropped a player out of the fight (soak to make it s+3w... base TN 7 because of the wound penalties basically mean you're done unless you've got some instant healing both in the setting and available).

I may as well not have even bothered with Resilient Extras to be some elite mooks; even with 12 Toughness the number of times a 20+ came up was enough to make that extra wound meaningless and you can only soak so many times and enemies soaking just rubs a lot of players raw as it feels like the GM is arbitrarily undoing their successes.

The result was I fought the system like hell for a long time to try and find damage expressions that would both match the armor levels expected of the setting and yet not explode all over the place and remove all dramatic tension.

Only after I did all that work did I realize where the mechanical problem actually lay.

The problem is that SWADE still treats damage as different than other mechanical resolutions. For most actions a raise is the best result possible. You don't get extra benefit when the dice luck their way up to a 23 result instead of you scoring an 8 result. This prevents idiocy like 3e D&D's "I rolled a 42 Diplomacy check so the monsters we were about to fight are instead fanatically loyal to me."

But this isn't the default for damage. The default for damage is unlimited raises, each causing a wound. The wound cap setting rule limits it to four wounds, bit that's still "fight over" and even a normal soak will only drop it to "may as well be over because a -3 penalty is so crippling as to be essentially useless."

The problem I figured out is that wound cap is set way too high for a lot of genres. I liken it to the difference between a gritty modern western (four wound cap; one shot and someone is bleeding out in the dirt) and the classic silver age western where the most a hero might take on the first hit is a shoulder graze and even the main villain needs a couple of hits to actually put down.

Basically, I think the system would benefit greatly from some lower wound cap options and a discussion of what each causes to happen.

Like, let's look at it if the limit is one raise just like most other actions.

For Extras there's no change. One wound knocks them out regardless.

For a resilient Extra though, that extra wound now always matters. You always need a second successful damage roll (if shaken it doesn't even have to be a raise) to actually put them completely down.

And for a Wild Card, a first hit can wound them. A second shot before they unshake can wound them 1-2 more times (so -2 to -3 penalty) and a third shot for 1-2 more wounds wound be needed to actually drop them to incapacitated. It also means Wild Card enemies aren't just going to be obviated because someone's damage dice happened to explode into a 34 (which I did see happen and other results in the high 20's and low 30's also more than once).

That feels a lot more like the Star Wars genre (and more high fantasy settings in general) to me way more than the regular wound cap and having to fight with weapon mechanics until 1d8+5 became the standard blaster rifle damage expression because the odds of single die acing were low enough that a Sith Lord Wild Card with toughness 14 (6) vs. energy was extremely unlikely to be insta-ganked by a PC allied extra and a lucky damage roll (which I also saw happen).

Having it happen once is funny. Having it happen repeatedly just had me feeling like I was watching Ryan Johnson's Sequel Trilogy home campaign.

Back in the earlier days of Savage Worlds, someone on the forums, perhaps even the line developer, put together a list of various options for handling damage to simulate certain genres of styles of play. One of them--I think they called it "Cinematic Damage"--was that no attack ever does more than one wound, regardless of the difficulty to Soak it.

SWADE has snuck this back into the Fantasy Companion through the back door, with the Unstoppable monster trait, which does the same thing--and which is, IIRC, available to PCs as a Legendary Edge.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 03, 2023, 12:36:45 PMLike, let's look at it if the limit is one raise just like most other actions.
...
for a Wild Card, a first hit can wound them. A second shot before they unshake can wound them 1-2 more times (so -2 to -3 penalty)

Sounds like you are playing the rules slightly wrong there. A Raise only does one wound, even if the target is shaken. You need two raises to do two wounds, RAW in SWADE. P94 makes this clear in the example table.

There is no reason, in fact they're pretty emphatic about it at PEG - that if something rubs you wrong - *change it*.

I actually am not a big fan of Wound caps *at all*. I play with the Grim and Gritty Setting rule (Wounds produce injuries boys. Better wear a cup). And right now in Rifts, we're playing with Megadamage weapons, so it's really nasty.

THAT SAID... I'm only doing that to have a specific 'tone' of play. Bloody and ruthless. If I want more cinematic swashbuckling - absolutely Wound Caps, Born a Hero etc. The beauty of the system is it's designed at its most atomic level to produce the feel and tone of your setting as you see fit without breaking.

@Chris24601 - you got me thinking about the Wounds track. There's already rules adjacent to granting more wounds - you can get them with Size modifiers. But! something that might be interesting is granting an extra Wound per Rank. Might be something to try.

Overall I'm in agreement. The wound track is just a little too short, wound modifiers are just a little too burdensome too fast, and soak rolls are just a little too unreliable.

This could probably be resolved by spreading raises out to increments of 5 rather than 4, but I think that would create problems elsewhere in the system.

You could give characters an extra wound with no penalty or a +1 penalty.

You could use what's already been suggested, which is to limit attacks to causing 1 round regardless of the damage roll. Maybe you allow up to 2 wounds if the attack hit with a raise.

Maybe bennies automatically negate wounds, no roll required. Like how fate chips worked in Deadlands Classic.

My ample gut reaction is that 1 Hit = 1 Wound has some potential downstream incentives that are not good.

1) First incentive - definitely going to go for the multi-hand/Ambidexterity melee route. There is little incentive to swing hard and big, if we're talking 1 Hit = 1 Wound.
2) Fuck melee altogether. Go rapid-fire bows, crossbows, guns etc. At minimum in cases 1 and 2 you're going to devour those Bennies for soaking.
3) What about explosives and heavy weapons etc? Just assign Wound values?

Personally I haven't had any problems with the swinginess. Yes, I've certainly had the One-Shot Kill from the Depths of Hell. But they have been mostly rare, and entertaining when they occur. Mostly. (I had a player in my Beasts and Barbarians game - who was built to take on scary shit *die* of a heartattack while being jumpscared by a rat. FREAKY).

You have a LOT of options by playing around with the Bennies in terms of what they do. They've already encoded a lot of optional uses: Extra d6's, Extra Damage/Hit, Soaks, etc. Nothing says you can't make it a hard currency to do explicit things other than a chance to Soak.