The Remaster's v1.4 rules update has a whole bunch of mechanical changes, which are mostly explained in the accompanying changelog, but I never really sat down to explain the underlying philosophy of the changes as a whole.
I want the Remaster to feel like an upgrade that seamlessly improves the experience for as many players as possible. Obviously, pleasing everyone is an impossible goal, but I think most of the changes work as intended. But more on that in a bit. Going back to the philosophy of the Remaster, most of the changes fall under the following categories:
- Streamlining rules or abilities that were unnecessarily complex.
- Buffing abilities that were too weak.
- Nerfing only for the most blatantly overpowered abilities or adding limitations to the most easily exploitable of them.
- Removing or changing rules that weren't being used as written to how they were supposed to work.
So if I made a recurring joke of repeating the reasons for some of the comments in the changelog, it's because the underlying logic is very consistent and it's (presumably) a better read than having me say "This was unnecessarily complicated and also weak so now it's simpler and stronger." a couple dozen times. The one big exception to these principles are the Allied Reinforcement rules, which got a major rewrite. I considered these safe to rewrite because they're an optional rule that only comes up at the GM's whim during specific battles.
Now let's look at the negative side of the v1.4 update: The way the Tension cap affects all the builds designed around Tension buffs.
The Tension cap hurts basically everyone who uses Techniques and outright makes the hyper-specialized builds designed around one big attack unplayable. On one hand, it's impossible to balance the absurdity of these latter "all or nothing" builds without making them unplayable. On the other hand, many of the Tension buffers feel like a gamble that you may not get the full (or any) benefit out of, depending on how the mission goes. I Am a Loose Cannon, in particular, will semi-regularly hit the Tension cap while doing a whole lotta additional damage to themselves for no extra benefit. That feels awful to play with and not even in a way you can play around since it's a luck-based Power.
Something's gotta change there.
Below is my current idea for how to further tweak the Tension cap and its associated problem abilities.
Tension Cap: Techniques can raise the cap to 20.
For the more casual Technique users, this is basically the same as having no Tension cap, so it's a considerable buff to them. 20 is a pretty big number, to the point it still allows all-in hyper-focused builds to exist, but they won't be hitting 30+ Tension in Turn 1 like it was theoretically possible to get before. So overall this is potentially dangerous but still balanced by the existence of Genre Powers like Impregnable Defense and Take Cover!
I Am a Loose Cannon: It now rolls 1d5, dealing twice that much self Damage and gaining the result in Tension until the user's next Turn.
This change works on multiple angles. First, it most obviously halves the total Damage taken and dealt. Second, it works not just for one attack but until the user's next Turn. (Also the 1d5 is just a shortand, it's a 1d10 but halved) The first bit means it's useful for builds that want to inflict a bit of self damage but don't want to potentially kill themselves. The second bit means it can be used to boost multiple attacks, trigger secret equipment and is compatible with things like learning computer and lightspeed assault. That gives it more of a niche than just being another GP on the big pile of buffs for Technicians that make a single big attack.
So that's two of the things I'm thinking of changing. As usual, I'd like to hear opinions of this before running forward with it.
Gimmick Out.
