BCG games where the whole PC Squad takes on a solo Superboss ended up being way more common than I expected, and Capstones are the only mechanic that lets Bosses keep up with 3+ PCs of a PL higher than 1 right out of the gate. They still need a little bit of help from things like additional Grunts, going for PLs 6 and above, or Component Rivals to combine with, but of these three options the only one that doesn't involve the creation of additional NPCs is going for a higher PL and granting them more Capstones.
With only 6 Capstones in the core rules, that's going to get repetitive fast. Fight a Boss with Energy Drain or Possession once and it's a challenging, different encounter from the norm. Fight a Boss with Energy Drain and Possession every Operation... And it's going to cross the line into being an annoying experience.
In BCZ I tried to add just enough Capstones to improve variety while including more GM advice and premade Grunt/Rival builds meant for accompanying Bosses without stealing the spotlight from them.
While the system is clearly not meant for a constant stream of 4v1 boss fights (or 3v1, 5v1, etc), I think that all the additions should be enough to run 10-15 operations that manage to stay fresh the whole way. What if you want more than 20? Probably not going to happen. The system is clearly not meant for Boss rushes and it can only be stretched so much.
Anyway, on to the capstones themselves!
All Becomes Dust
This ability is meant to represent some kind of entropic energy-draining aura, so in hindsight it should've also created Anti-Air versions of the Withering and Extreme Terrain to go with the default Anti-Ground ones. That would've made it way more powerful, yes, but it costs a ton of Energy to hit multiple PCs and touching a sniper with it is just plain unrealistic. Maybe I could tweak the Energy cost to rebalance the stronger version around it. Anyway, other than that slight flavor fail, I think it's a pretty solid Capstone that forces PCs to stay away or get wrecked, which is how I think close quarters Capstones should work.
My Final Masterpiece
The best and most known example I can think of for this ability is the third Lavos fight from Crono Trigger, but I'm sure you've seen this idea executed in other games as well. One interesting difference from the way this kind of Boss usually goes in BCG from videogames is that, while you'd think that the ability encourages aggressive Bosses protected by a tanky Grunt, it actually works better if you create a glass cannon Grunt and use the Boss to buff and heal them constantly. Without even trying to get creative, it is trivial to make a unit with Might 10 that spams a Hyper Launcher with You are in my Sights and gets resurrected every time you bring it down. If you focus the Boss, the Grunt gets more buffs and if you focus the Grunt it gets revived anyway! I think it makes more sense in-world for the big bad to beef up their pet and let it do the carrying, even if that isn't how the trope usually goes.
The Ultimate Shield
Grunts and Rivals are expected to have Active Defenses, but Bosses don't have those. This can end up making builds that rely on abilities that ignore Active Defenses (instead of attack bonuses) weaker than usual, so I opted to make Boss Upgrades like Adaptive Morphology and Afterimages count as Active Defenses. As I've already said, one of the problems with the Active Defenses that Bosses get is that they're only active after they've already taken a beating... And they're only at their best when they're near death. The Ultimate Shield solves this problem by being a Capstone and thus being active for the entire fight, making barrier-piercing attacks that much more valuable. I may have gone overboard, honestly, because +10 Defense is kind of a lot to punch through the old fashioned way. It's one of the most effective and easy to use Capstones in the game, forcing PCs to either ignore barriers or cause direct Damage if they want to win.
Tyrant of Lost Souls
Lastly, we have I Accept your Offering but as a passive ability. Usually the best way to deal with a Boss and its minions is to ignore the tanky Boss until you've dealt with the massed firepower of its allies. This punishes PCs that ignore the Boss with a bunch of free Damage. It is also one of the few abilities in the game that references Power Ratings directly, as it is the one variable that gives me (and GMs) the most control over how hard PCs get punished for ignoring the Boss. You set the number down and it never changes, no matter what happens in the middle of the Operation.
How effective is it, though? Well, assuming a Squad of 4 PCs of PL5, with two of them being equivalent to a Boss, that leaves a Power Rating of 24 to be distributed around other Grunts, Rivals and Bosses. Does 24 free Damage hurt a PL5 PC? Yes, but it's probably not punishing enough to force all of them to change their strategy, and a single PC with Threshold 7 can facetank it. Should the effect be 2x Power Rating? Power Rating + Tension? Well, either of these risks making the Boss undefeatable unless the PCs focus fire them immediately... But that's kind of the point, isn't it? And yet, arguably the ability is better off being too weak than too strong. See, a version that is too strong would force PCs to play exactly one way to beat the Boss, while the current and weaker version gives them a choice, and helps preserve a sense of agency. It's a complicated issue, basically, so I'm not going to call it a success but I don't think it is a total failure either.
And That's All For Now
And that's it, not just for Bosses but also all of Chapter 1! Woo! I hope that was enlightening. It certainly helped me take notice of a few issues that I hadn't noticed before. They say that you don't really understand something until you can explain it, and that is something I agree with.
I'm going to take a break from the weekly posts for a while. I may do Chapter 2 later, but I want to talk about some other things first. I'll be back with something substantial in the near future, hopefully before the end of the month.
Gimmick Out
Showing posts with label BCZ Retrospective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BCZ Retrospective. Show all posts
Jul 8, 2018
Jul 1, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XXV: New Boss Weapons
One of the problems with Boss Weapons in BCG was repetitiveness. Between having a small armory, many Boss Weapons being engineered for very specific purposes and being unmaimable, most Bosses would stick to spamming the same attacks over and over. BCZ obviously expands the armory and adds a few general use Weapons that can slot into most Boss builds, but it is the addition of the Slow drawback that really changes everything.
Slow Weapons encourage Bosses to change things up, (or take turns off defending and the like, I guess) but also they're even stronger than regular Boss Weapons, which means that PCs have to play around them to avoid getting blasted to bits. So let's see how good they are:
Terrifying Attack
The more Units on your side, the more Tension bonuses you get, and the stronger your team will be the longer the battle goes. Terrifying Attack helps Bosses keep up with PCs by both denying Tension for one of them and doing extra Damage based on the current Tension, making it sort of like a Technique. It's very strong but needs to pass the Might Test in order to do anything, so it should be paired up with Caustic Touch.
Whirling Death
Tentacle Lash was already one of the better Boss Weapons. This is Tentacle Lash but better, making it arguably the best Boss Weapon in BCZ. Combining both of the Long Range Melee Bursts with Caustic Touch is like the most braindead easy way to make a threatening Boss and I don't think that is a bad thing. Sometimes you need to have stuff in your game that any GM can use to challenge their PCs with.
Corrosive Sting
I think this is the only Systems debuff in the entire game that you can inflict on someone else. The other Systems debuffs in the game are all negative effects from abilities that the PCs choose for themselves, such as Power Suit. Anyway, it doesn't hit super hard and only targets one PC with each attack, but it neuters many of the game's most powerful builds when it does connect. Works well with Boss builds that like to duel with (or Duel with, as in the rules term) one PC at a time.
Sonic Blades
The Threshold destruction effect is very hard to be on the receiving end of, and because this Weapon is a Beam it is going to land more often than most other Weapons of its ilk. Costs a lot of Energy, though. It's kind of crazy with Power of Despair and, if ignored in favor of other Enemies, the Boss might end up cleaving through the PCs and become unstoppable once the combo gets going.
Shadow Fist
The evil version of Radiant Fist! If Radiant Fist is the Shining Finger, then this is the Darkness Finger. A Darkness Finger that upgrades to Darkness Finger Sekiha Tenkyoken when Boosted, at that. It is absurdly powerful, so it is also Slow. I think this was only Slow when Boosted at first, but that made the unboosted version too good, so now there's more of a choice to using it. You will want to spend the 4 Energy the majority of the time, but not always, and not doing so doesn't make the Weapon useless because it still ignores Active Defenses. Probably my favorite in this batch.
Antimatter Shot
I needed a Slow non-Beam Shooting Weapon and was struggling to think of a buff that went well with Caustic Touch but wasn't overpowering. I settled on a gun that autorolled 10 because it technically doesn't increase the maximum Damage all that much, it only adds +2 or +4 (depending on how many Advantages are now being converted to Might bonuses) and removes the element of chance. Playtesting showed that it was okay, but didn't feel as good to use as other Slow Weapons, so it gained the bonus Damage. It might be a little too strong now, honestly, but it only attacks single targets and the range isn't that great, so it's not overpowering.
Magic Bullet
The way it is currently written, it is basically a worse Burst. On the plus side, because it is a worse Burst, I don't have to give it any drawbacks! With that said, I think this could have been a little bit stronger. Maybe just a bonus Advantage or Tension as a bonus to Damage or something. In flavor terms, this is directly taken from Hellsing. Is it in-genre? No, but it is cool. Little bit of trivia: The Clarke Foundation mini-setting was going to a lot more obviously based on Hellsing until I realized that it didn't have enough giant robots to justify doing that.
Gravity Blast
Ugh, this is so badly written that it has confused me when giving out rulings about how it is supposed to work. It is supposed to be a Blast with an effect like Ensnaring Trap, but you could interpret the text to say that it only affects abilities that grant flight for one Round which... It's just Antigravity, you goof! Also the spacing in the first sentence after the comma is wrong. Gah! This makes me mad! Which sucks because it's a pretty nifty ability otherwise. Good concept, bad templating.
Ultrabeam Cannon
Lines are cool, but what if you could make them... Wider? This Weapon behaves more like a Blast, because it will probably hit most (if not all) of the PCs. I've grown fond of these Wide Lines, I think they capture the feeling of something like a wave motion cannon or dragon breath better than Lines or Blasts do. It's strong, doesn't cost too much Energy and feels pretty cool, so I quite like it.
Assimilation Sweep
The last one of the ten to get made, because I had a really hard time trying to think of a big effect that deserved a high Energy cost and Slow without just doing tons of Damage from very far away. Could I have ignored one, two or all three of those tenets? Kinda. I wanted a gun that could be paired with Shadow Fist, I wanted Bosses to be able to alternate between one and the other, which meant making it Slow and the same Boost cost. Shadow Fist was already very strong though! Hence my apprehension at making a gun that was just "Shadow Fist but from 10+ Zones away." The idea I came up with was a healing effect, something that is fairly rare in the game (even for Bosses) and a debuff that would make it much harder for PCs to focus fire down the Boss. I wish I could remember the flavor inspiration, though.
The problem of repetitiveness was a big deal for Bosses in BCG, so while Powers and Upgrades only had six new abilities each (and Capstones only get four), the Boss Armory got doubled in size with ten new Weapons in total. Overall I'm very happy with how much the BCZ Boss Weapons add to the game.
Next: New Boss Capstones
Gimmick Out
Slow Weapons encourage Bosses to change things up, (or take turns off defending and the like, I guess) but also they're even stronger than regular Boss Weapons, which means that PCs have to play around them to avoid getting blasted to bits. So let's see how good they are:
Terrifying Attack
The more Units on your side, the more Tension bonuses you get, and the stronger your team will be the longer the battle goes. Terrifying Attack helps Bosses keep up with PCs by both denying Tension for one of them and doing extra Damage based on the current Tension, making it sort of like a Technique. It's very strong but needs to pass the Might Test in order to do anything, so it should be paired up with Caustic Touch.
Whirling Death
Tentacle Lash was already one of the better Boss Weapons. This is Tentacle Lash but better, making it arguably the best Boss Weapon in BCZ. Combining both of the Long Range Melee Bursts with Caustic Touch is like the most braindead easy way to make a threatening Boss and I don't think that is a bad thing. Sometimes you need to have stuff in your game that any GM can use to challenge their PCs with.
Corrosive Sting
I think this is the only Systems debuff in the entire game that you can inflict on someone else. The other Systems debuffs in the game are all negative effects from abilities that the PCs choose for themselves, such as Power Suit. Anyway, it doesn't hit super hard and only targets one PC with each attack, but it neuters many of the game's most powerful builds when it does connect. Works well with Boss builds that like to duel with (or Duel with, as in the rules term) one PC at a time.
Sonic Blades
The Threshold destruction effect is very hard to be on the receiving end of, and because this Weapon is a Beam it is going to land more often than most other Weapons of its ilk. Costs a lot of Energy, though. It's kind of crazy with Power of Despair and, if ignored in favor of other Enemies, the Boss might end up cleaving through the PCs and become unstoppable once the combo gets going.
Shadow Fist
The evil version of Radiant Fist! If Radiant Fist is the Shining Finger, then this is the Darkness Finger. A Darkness Finger that upgrades to Darkness Finger Sekiha Tenkyoken when Boosted, at that. It is absurdly powerful, so it is also Slow. I think this was only Slow when Boosted at first, but that made the unboosted version too good, so now there's more of a choice to using it. You will want to spend the 4 Energy the majority of the time, but not always, and not doing so doesn't make the Weapon useless because it still ignores Active Defenses. Probably my favorite in this batch.
Antimatter Shot
I needed a Slow non-Beam Shooting Weapon and was struggling to think of a buff that went well with Caustic Touch but wasn't overpowering. I settled on a gun that autorolled 10 because it technically doesn't increase the maximum Damage all that much, it only adds +2 or +4 (depending on how many Advantages are now being converted to Might bonuses) and removes the element of chance. Playtesting showed that it was okay, but didn't feel as good to use as other Slow Weapons, so it gained the bonus Damage. It might be a little too strong now, honestly, but it only attacks single targets and the range isn't that great, so it's not overpowering.
Magic Bullet
The way it is currently written, it is basically a worse Burst. On the plus side, because it is a worse Burst, I don't have to give it any drawbacks! With that said, I think this could have been a little bit stronger. Maybe just a bonus Advantage or Tension as a bonus to Damage or something. In flavor terms, this is directly taken from Hellsing. Is it in-genre? No, but it is cool. Little bit of trivia: The Clarke Foundation mini-setting was going to a lot more obviously based on Hellsing until I realized that it didn't have enough giant robots to justify doing that.
Gravity Blast
Ugh, this is so badly written that it has confused me when giving out rulings about how it is supposed to work. It is supposed to be a Blast with an effect like Ensnaring Trap, but you could interpret the text to say that it only affects abilities that grant flight for one Round which... It's just Antigravity, you goof! Also the spacing in the first sentence after the comma is wrong. Gah! This makes me mad! Which sucks because it's a pretty nifty ability otherwise. Good concept, bad templating.
Ultrabeam Cannon
Lines are cool, but what if you could make them... Wider? This Weapon behaves more like a Blast, because it will probably hit most (if not all) of the PCs. I've grown fond of these Wide Lines, I think they capture the feeling of something like a wave motion cannon or dragon breath better than Lines or Blasts do. It's strong, doesn't cost too much Energy and feels pretty cool, so I quite like it.
Assimilation Sweep
The last one of the ten to get made, because I had a really hard time trying to think of a big effect that deserved a high Energy cost and Slow without just doing tons of Damage from very far away. Could I have ignored one, two or all three of those tenets? Kinda. I wanted a gun that could be paired with Shadow Fist, I wanted Bosses to be able to alternate between one and the other, which meant making it Slow and the same Boost cost. Shadow Fist was already very strong though! Hence my apprehension at making a gun that was just "Shadow Fist but from 10+ Zones away." The idea I came up with was a healing effect, something that is fairly rare in the game (even for Bosses) and a debuff that would make it much harder for PCs to focus fire down the Boss. I wish I could remember the flavor inspiration, though.
The problem of repetitiveness was a big deal for Bosses in BCG, so while Powers and Upgrades only had six new abilities each (and Capstones only get four), the Boss Armory got doubled in size with ten new Weapons in total. Overall I'm very happy with how much the BCZ Boss Weapons add to the game.
Next: New Boss Capstones
Gimmick Out
Jun 24, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XXIV: New Boss Upgrades
BCG's Boss Upgrades were a good way to make fights more dynamic than the usual TRPG fashion where people blow their best powers at the beginning then clean up from there. At least on paper, mostly. The execution of Boss Upgrades had some issues. In particular, many of them could only trigger their effects after getting a Turn when they had already lost at least one Level of Threshold. Depending on the Initiative order and the rest of their kit, they may or may not explode violently without ever getting to use the defensive abilities that are supposed to keep them alive.
To help alleviate this issue, BCZ has Boss Upgrades with more instantaneous effects and offensive buffs, guaranteeing that Bosses will at least take out one of the PCs even if they can't withstand the focus fire of 2+ units targeting them. The last time I did this, I kept count of the number of defensive abilities that could come online too late to matter (The total was 5). I'll do the same this time. Let's jump in!
Aura of Dark Majesty
This amounts to autocasting 6 Genre Powers. Of these 6, 5 can do Damage to PCs, and Your Fate is Sealed stops healing to potentially doom the targeted PC to an imminent explosive fate. The Upgrade needs a decent amount of Systems (because it uses Die for Me!) and the effects only happen once, so it's not very good against Squads with long-term survivability. Fortunately, the allure of glass cannons is so strong in the system that this won't be the case for most GMs, making it a fairly effective Upgrade. Fun Fact: Your Fate is Sealed was Crush the Insect once upon a time. Looking back, I still think that it is a lot more fitting... Just a lot less fair to play against too.
Caustic Touch
PCs get tons of Upgrades that encourage them to build around the use of specific Weapons. Bosses didn't really have that... Not until the expansion, at least. I tried to pick effects that would be universally useful and were more interesting than a simple bonus to Might/extra Damage. If the effects were also things that Boss Weapons in BCG couldn't already do, that was a bonus. This Upgrade was co-designed at the same time as the Boss Weapons in BCZ to help make them compatible with each other. The effects are very powerful and getting hit by something like Tentacle Lash or Magic Bullet when this is at Level 4 will wreck multiple PCs. All in all, it's pretty great!
Overheating Field
The least harmful part of Electromagnetic Detonator, but weaponized in an area so large that it is potentially devastating. The passive Damage is in the PC's control, and they could simply choose to not spend any Energy, but if they do then it is going to add up fast. I think this went straight from its first version to print without any changes. It's... Largely okay, really. Not a lot more to say about it.
Portable Battlefield
It is a somewhat common trope that the heroes sometimes fight a monster that draws them into a zone that is under their control. At first its area of effect also counted as Extreme Terrain... But that was way too good, so it got nerfed to Difficult + Defensive Terrain only instead. The end result is that it is kind of weak. Flavorful - but weak. Now don't get me wrong, a +4 to Defense to the Boss and all of its Grunt buddies at Level 4 can be brutally effective... Except for the part where all the NPCs must bunch up and make themselves super vulnerable to Blasts and Bursts. Delayed Defensive Upgrade Count: 1. On top of all its problems, its likely that the Grunts will die long before the Boss hits Level 3-4. Sheesh, I should've put more thought into this one.
Power of Despair
The Beam-based counterpart to Caustic Touch. The idea with this one is that it lets the Boss mix and match Beam Weapons of different Boost values however they see fit, plus it also provides a viable sink for Behold my True Power. The first Turn or two (or however long until you hit Threshold Level 2) may be a little awkward as you're probably going to have trouble utilizing your Weapons and Powers effectively, but after that the Boss is a total murderbeast. Delayed Defensive Upgrade Count: 2. The Defense bonus counts as an Active Defense, so there's plenty of counterplay options against this, but because it's half an offensive buff and half a defensive buff it does not suffer from coming online in the middle of battle like Adaptive Morphology or Afterimages do.
Rules of Nature
The last of the six Boss Upgrades in BCZ is specifically designed for single-target specialists that overpower the PCs taking them out one at a time. The debuff + buff combo is strong, and the autodamage + healing even gives the Boss an element of inevitability that makes it trivial to overpower PCs in a 1v1 situation. Delayed Defensive Upgrade Count: 3. Much like Power of Despair, this isn't entirely a defensive Upgrade, so there's a lower risk of a single round of focus fire removing most of the value this Upgrade could grant.
So while BCG has 5 Upgrades that are supposedly there to help Bosses survive attacks from the PCs, BCZ has 3. None of these three of them are purely defensive. Also, except for Portable Battlefield, all of BCZ's Boss Upgrades have very direct and impactful effects. I'd say that 5 of 6 is a good score and that BCZ makes it a lot easier for Bosses to keep up with 2 PCs.
Next: New Boss Weapons.
Gimmick Out
To help alleviate this issue, BCZ has Boss Upgrades with more instantaneous effects and offensive buffs, guaranteeing that Bosses will at least take out one of the PCs even if they can't withstand the focus fire of 2+ units targeting them. The last time I did this, I kept count of the number of defensive abilities that could come online too late to matter (The total was 5). I'll do the same this time. Let's jump in!
Aura of Dark Majesty
This amounts to autocasting 6 Genre Powers. Of these 6, 5 can do Damage to PCs, and Your Fate is Sealed stops healing to potentially doom the targeted PC to an imminent explosive fate. The Upgrade needs a decent amount of Systems (because it uses Die for Me!) and the effects only happen once, so it's not very good against Squads with long-term survivability. Fortunately, the allure of glass cannons is so strong in the system that this won't be the case for most GMs, making it a fairly effective Upgrade. Fun Fact: Your Fate is Sealed was Crush the Insect once upon a time. Looking back, I still think that it is a lot more fitting... Just a lot less fair to play against too.
Caustic Touch
PCs get tons of Upgrades that encourage them to build around the use of specific Weapons. Bosses didn't really have that... Not until the expansion, at least. I tried to pick effects that would be universally useful and were more interesting than a simple bonus to Might/extra Damage. If the effects were also things that Boss Weapons in BCG couldn't already do, that was a bonus. This Upgrade was co-designed at the same time as the Boss Weapons in BCZ to help make them compatible with each other. The effects are very powerful and getting hit by something like Tentacle Lash or Magic Bullet when this is at Level 4 will wreck multiple PCs. All in all, it's pretty great!
Overheating Field
The least harmful part of Electromagnetic Detonator, but weaponized in an area so large that it is potentially devastating. The passive Damage is in the PC's control, and they could simply choose to not spend any Energy, but if they do then it is going to add up fast. I think this went straight from its first version to print without any changes. It's... Largely okay, really. Not a lot more to say about it.
Portable Battlefield
It is a somewhat common trope that the heroes sometimes fight a monster that draws them into a zone that is under their control. At first its area of effect also counted as Extreme Terrain... But that was way too good, so it got nerfed to Difficult + Defensive Terrain only instead. The end result is that it is kind of weak. Flavorful - but weak. Now don't get me wrong, a +4 to Defense to the Boss and all of its Grunt buddies at Level 4 can be brutally effective... Except for the part where all the NPCs must bunch up and make themselves super vulnerable to Blasts and Bursts. Delayed Defensive Upgrade Count: 1. On top of all its problems, its likely that the Grunts will die long before the Boss hits Level 3-4. Sheesh, I should've put more thought into this one.
Power of Despair
The Beam-based counterpart to Caustic Touch. The idea with this one is that it lets the Boss mix and match Beam Weapons of different Boost values however they see fit, plus it also provides a viable sink for Behold my True Power. The first Turn or two (or however long until you hit Threshold Level 2) may be a little awkward as you're probably going to have trouble utilizing your Weapons and Powers effectively, but after that the Boss is a total murderbeast. Delayed Defensive Upgrade Count: 2. The Defense bonus counts as an Active Defense, so there's plenty of counterplay options against this, but because it's half an offensive buff and half a defensive buff it does not suffer from coming online in the middle of battle like Adaptive Morphology or Afterimages do.
Rules of Nature
The last of the six Boss Upgrades in BCZ is specifically designed for single-target specialists that overpower the PCs taking them out one at a time. The debuff + buff combo is strong, and the autodamage + healing even gives the Boss an element of inevitability that makes it trivial to overpower PCs in a 1v1 situation. Delayed Defensive Upgrade Count: 3. Much like Power of Despair, this isn't entirely a defensive Upgrade, so there's a lower risk of a single round of focus fire removing most of the value this Upgrade could grant.
So while BCG has 5 Upgrades that are supposedly there to help Bosses survive attacks from the PCs, BCZ has 3. None of these three of them are purely defensive. Also, except for Portable Battlefield, all of BCZ's Boss Upgrades have very direct and impactful effects. I'd say that 5 of 6 is a good score and that BCZ makes it a lot easier for Bosses to keep up with 2 PCs.
Next: New Boss Weapons.
Gimmick Out
Jun 17, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XXIII: New Boss Powers.
The Boss Powers in BCG are primarily defensive, with some Powers that do Direct Damage for offensive purposes. I largely tried to avoid direct attack and defense buffs, because Bosses could end up being unbeatable when you stack those with the buffs they can get at Threshold Levels 3 and 4. In BCZ the PCs have many more ways to buff themselve and also have access to all sorts of new utility powers, upgrades and weapons... So I figured I would give Bosses the same utility toolset plus the simple attack and defense buffs that BCG didn't give them.
Much like I did for the original set of BCG Boss Powers, I'll be grading these on how much they let you ham it up as GM by calling them out loud. Without further ado, let's begin!
Catch me if you Can
This gives Bosses access to something that they would otherwise not be able to do: Teleport. It's not amazing, but if your Boss depends a lot on positioning and already has most of its kit, then this is a pretty decent pick. Ham Rating: Medium. The name fits pretty well and it's a pretty okay taunt, but it's the least bombastic thing in the world.
Crush the Insect
This is a very, very nasty surprise to pull on PCs with low Systems. Everything I said about Invasive in the BCG Retrospective applies to this Power: It's a cheap trick that can be very frustrating and unfun, so it more than does its job but it should be used sparingly... Or with parties that are ready for and expect Plot Armor Damage. Ham Rating: Good. This really should've been called "Crush you like an Insect", then it would've been Great.
I Can Read Your Every Move
I set out to adapt Combat Profiling, specifically by making the rules as similar as possible, and the results are... Mixed. On one hand, it's pretty simple and flavorful. On the other hand, it doesn't really do a lot. The buff only occurs during your next Turn, and the PC has control over whether it happens or not. Arguably, this could've been better as a pseudo mind control power, where the Boss 'predicts' what is going to happen and/or sets up a trap and forces the PC into it. My other problem with it is that the buff is only relevant to Bosses that specialize in direct combat, and this is the kind of power that you give to NPC tricksters and tacticians who should have Systems higher than Might. Ham Rating: Great. The callout is very flavorful and threatening, so at least we end on a high note!
Marked for Death
This is one of those straightforward attack and defense buffs I mentioned... And it's a pretty good one! +4 Attack and Defense, even if it is only against a single target, shoudl let you down a PC in 3 attacks instead of 4 and possibly negate some debuffs that need to meet your Defense to have an effect. Probably my favorite of this whole bunch, in mechanical terms, because it goes on so many builds. Ham Rating: Medium. A simple change like "Mark you for Death" would increase the rating to Good. It's easy enough to make the change and make yourself understood, so it's not bad.
Souls Bound by Gravity
I don't remember what came first, the idea of naming a power after Char's phrase or making a debuff that removes Flight. Whatever the case, the result is inarguably flavorful. It originally didn't have a range limit, which made it kind of bullshit as all Extreme Terrain anywhere forever would wreck your shit until the Boss died. At least now the Boss has to be close to the PCs and can't spend its Turns running away while forcing them to suffer Extreme + Difficult + Withering Terrain hell combos. Ham Rating: Meh. This depends entirely on whether you get the reference or not and, even then, it's not a particularly menacing line. Bump this to Great if you're Shuuichi Ikeda.
You are in my Sights
Aiming is a pretty good and simple buff, but it's too good to make it easily accessible to PCs without jumping through a hoop por two. With that said, there's no reason that Bosses can't have it, and if I'm going to do that then might as well let them use it to buff Grunts and Rivals as well. Ham Rating: Good, but would be Great if it was "Sniping the Targets" or even "I've Got you in my Sights."
So I think the BCZ Boss Powers average out to good, if not spectacular. Two are solid, two are conditional, one is meh and the last one is PTSD-inducing on munchkins without systems. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't pick out better names for them, but from a mechanical standpoint there's only one dud among them. And, er, that's it! I really don't have much more to say here. There's no big essay or profound realization to be had here. Sometimes stuff is just okay and that's fine!
Next: New Boss Upgrades
Gimmick Out
Much like I did for the original set of BCG Boss Powers, I'll be grading these on how much they let you ham it up as GM by calling them out loud. Without further ado, let's begin!
Catch me if you Can
This gives Bosses access to something that they would otherwise not be able to do: Teleport. It's not amazing, but if your Boss depends a lot on positioning and already has most of its kit, then this is a pretty decent pick. Ham Rating: Medium. The name fits pretty well and it's a pretty okay taunt, but it's the least bombastic thing in the world.
Crush the Insect
This is a very, very nasty surprise to pull on PCs with low Systems. Everything I said about Invasive in the BCG Retrospective applies to this Power: It's a cheap trick that can be very frustrating and unfun, so it more than does its job but it should be used sparingly... Or with parties that are ready for and expect Plot Armor Damage. Ham Rating: Good. This really should've been called "Crush you like an Insect", then it would've been Great.
I Can Read Your Every Move
I set out to adapt Combat Profiling, specifically by making the rules as similar as possible, and the results are... Mixed. On one hand, it's pretty simple and flavorful. On the other hand, it doesn't really do a lot. The buff only occurs during your next Turn, and the PC has control over whether it happens or not. Arguably, this could've been better as a pseudo mind control power, where the Boss 'predicts' what is going to happen and/or sets up a trap and forces the PC into it. My other problem with it is that the buff is only relevant to Bosses that specialize in direct combat, and this is the kind of power that you give to NPC tricksters and tacticians who should have Systems higher than Might. Ham Rating: Great. The callout is very flavorful and threatening, so at least we end on a high note!
Marked for Death
This is one of those straightforward attack and defense buffs I mentioned... And it's a pretty good one! +4 Attack and Defense, even if it is only against a single target, shoudl let you down a PC in 3 attacks instead of 4 and possibly negate some debuffs that need to meet your Defense to have an effect. Probably my favorite of this whole bunch, in mechanical terms, because it goes on so many builds. Ham Rating: Medium. A simple change like "Mark you for Death" would increase the rating to Good. It's easy enough to make the change and make yourself understood, so it's not bad.
Souls Bound by Gravity
I don't remember what came first, the idea of naming a power after Char's phrase or making a debuff that removes Flight. Whatever the case, the result is inarguably flavorful. It originally didn't have a range limit, which made it kind of bullshit as all Extreme Terrain anywhere forever would wreck your shit until the Boss died. At least now the Boss has to be close to the PCs and can't spend its Turns running away while forcing them to suffer Extreme + Difficult + Withering Terrain hell combos. Ham Rating: Meh. This depends entirely on whether you get the reference or not and, even then, it's not a particularly menacing line. Bump this to Great if you're Shuuichi Ikeda.
You are in my Sights
Aiming is a pretty good and simple buff, but it's too good to make it easily accessible to PCs without jumping through a hoop por two. With that said, there's no reason that Bosses can't have it, and if I'm going to do that then might as well let them use it to buff Grunts and Rivals as well. Ham Rating: Good, but would be Great if it was "Sniping the Targets" or even "I've Got you in my Sights."
So I think the BCZ Boss Powers average out to good, if not spectacular. Two are solid, two are conditional, one is meh and the last one is PTSD-inducing on munchkins without systems. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't pick out better names for them, but from a mechanical standpoint there's only one dud among them. And, er, that's it! I really don't have much more to say here. There's no big essay or profound realization to be had here. Sometimes stuff is just okay and that's fine!
Next: New Boss Upgrades
Gimmick Out
Jun 10, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XXII: New Beam Weapons.
If Melee Weapons needed more utility/aoe potential and Shooting Weapons needed more generalist tools, then Beam Weapons needed to complement existing builds using similar Energy costs. This may seem like a sort of OCD-ish quirk, more than a legitimate requirement concerning game balance, but it doesn't matter how powerful your gun is if it's too expensive or its drawbacks are too impractical for your build. Likewise, if it is too weak and cheap, then it won't slot into builds that are already made with higher costs in mind. So I deliberately looked for abilities that could make sense at costs 2, 3 and 4. My original idea was to focus primarily on 2 and 3, but most of the ideas I could think of were too powerful and thus leaning towards 4. Here's how it all ended up:
Boost 1: 2 Weapons.
Boost 2: 6 Weapons.
Boost 3: 4 Weapons.
Boost 4: 8 Weapons.
I'm not super happy with the Boost 4 glut there, but it's sort of how things turned out. I think that if I'd had the opportunity to do all 20 Beam Weapons at once (instead of doing them in two waves for two books), I could've figured out a way to make half the Boost 4 Weapons into Boost 3 and reshuffled some other abilities to make them more consistent. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and I had to keep the new Weapons balanced not just with each other but also with the older options. With this in mind, their Boost cost will be an important metric for my judging.
And about that balance... Well, I guess it's time to get started on the individual entries:
Magneburst
It's a Weapon that works as a Defense, and is better than Maneuvering if your Systems/Speed are super low. This used to be able to gain Long Range and it was ridiculous. It is still kind of obnoxious, specially since a ton of Grunts can spam this to make a Rival or Boss immune to everything but AoEs. While we could argue whether this is balanced or not, I'll just say that creating a cloud of Interference Terrain is not a Boost 2 effect.
Burnout Edge
A handy debuff, but suffers from not having an effect that lasts a whole Round. This way, they still refresh their Energy, so all it really does is stop Active Defenses and possibly Boost Powers. This would've been better as a Boost 2.
Fangs
Fangs are the only Remotes optimized for tanking. The idea is that you use them to Engage while staying away, that's why they have a Guard of 10. With some Active Defenses like Shielding Aura, they can pull off the feat of fully dodging some Weapons and only being weak to automatic Damage and lucky rolls of 8+. I think this merits its Boost 3.
Gravity Knuckle
Gravity Knuckle used to push for 5 Zones doing an added 5 bonus Damage. That was kind of insane, so I toned that down to 3 Zones and 3 bonus Damage. It's an okay utility Weapon for Melee or Beam specialists, but the Boost 4 really hurts. It's a decent pick, but you rarely want to spend that much Energy on anything but a finisher, so I wonder if I could've tweaked with the numbers until making it balanced for Boost 3.
Ground Zero
It is with a deep and heavy sigh that I admit I screwed up with this one. Ground Zero is worth using without Boosting, and if you do Boost it, then it probably murders the fuck out of the battlefield. This used to gain Long Range when Boosted, which was the most insane thing ever and allowed optimized glass cannons to make a 21x21 square of absolute death that didn't hurt allies. The only easy fix I can think of would be a flavor fail: It would be only an aoe, without a longer Range than 1, when Boosted. Then it would be good, but not as ridiculous as it currently is. It's definitely a Boost 4 Weapon, I got that part right at least.
Graviton Gun
A pure utility gun. It's not a big effect though. At first it pushed or pulled the target towards either end of the line, but that was a little bit much when it sent multiple baddies crashing in one direction. It's handy, but not super exciting, so I guess it is okay at Boost 2. Not super proud of it but at least it isn't awful.
Point Singularity Projector
This was a commission from the Kickstarter. The idea was to have a Weapon that wants to be used withthe Assist Action much like other Weapons want to be used with Aim or Suppress. It's got a good rate on Advantages to Energy spent, encourages teamwork and brings a new kind of build to the game. It's really good! It was, in fact, so good that I completely forgot I was supposed to get back to the creator about it because all the other commissions were so much harder to get right. After like a year of our last contact, I got back to them again and things were fine. Boost 2 is maybe a bit too generous but it's not a noticeable balance concern.
Bits
Ah,Funnels Dragoons Aerods Flying Shooty Things Bits, a Mecha staple. Now, at last, people can actually use them as a Weapon and not as a Support Upgrade. You can either protect them with a combination of Range, Crippling and Active Defenses or just send it to the other end of the battlefield so that Enemies won't be able to blast it and you at the same time. Boost 3 is perfect.
Lux Cannon
This was a Weapon that I tried out in BCG but it was too good. So what changed? Well, now there's more ways to build shooty beam dudes than to make them glass cannons and there's more ways to build tanky characters meant to withstand punishment than to hope your Absolute Barrier holds. It's still quite strong, so it's worth the Boost 4.
Oblivion Buster
It's the strongest single-target Weapon in the game, and it shows. While the ability to destroy Threshold Levels instantly is great for keeping super tanky PC/Rival builds in line, this Weapon shows how much of a problem it can be when Bosses are vulnerable to it. Bosses are at their most threatening for a very brief window of like 1 Turn, which Oblivion Buster can bypass. Even if you give them things like Oldtype, it's taking out at least 2 Levels. Buff it enough, and it's going to be 3. It's appropriate, but probably a bit much, and shows that destroying Levels as a Weapon effect is a worse idea than just bypassing Active Defenses. Definitely earns that Boost 4, though, and all its other drawbacks too.
So, Beam Weapons. Some are good, some are meh, and some are exceedingly exploitable. I'm a lot less happy about them than I am about the rest of the armory. I also think I screwed up with the Boost costs in general but that would've needed a rework of a bunch of BCG Weapons to do it properly, so it's not as much of a problem to me on a personal level.
But that's just me being a perfectionist! Feel free to tell me how wrong I am, how much the 'meh' Weapons are really cool and good, how the exploitable guns are fine and I'm just an overreacting whiny baby. I'd make a poll but it looks like Blogger removed the option to add those for some reason. What the crap, Blogger.
Next: Boss Powers.
Gimmick Out.
Boost 1: 2 Weapons.
Boost 2: 6 Weapons.
Boost 3: 4 Weapons.
Boost 4: 8 Weapons.
I'm not super happy with the Boost 4 glut there, but it's sort of how things turned out. I think that if I'd had the opportunity to do all 20 Beam Weapons at once (instead of doing them in two waves for two books), I could've figured out a way to make half the Boost 4 Weapons into Boost 3 and reshuffled some other abilities to make them more consistent. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and I had to keep the new Weapons balanced not just with each other but also with the older options. With this in mind, their Boost cost will be an important metric for my judging.
And about that balance... Well, I guess it's time to get started on the individual entries:
Magneburst
It's a Weapon that works as a Defense, and is better than Maneuvering if your Systems/Speed are super low. This used to be able to gain Long Range and it was ridiculous. It is still kind of obnoxious, specially since a ton of Grunts can spam this to make a Rival or Boss immune to everything but AoEs. While we could argue whether this is balanced or not, I'll just say that creating a cloud of Interference Terrain is not a Boost 2 effect.
Burnout Edge
A handy debuff, but suffers from not having an effect that lasts a whole Round. This way, they still refresh their Energy, so all it really does is stop Active Defenses and possibly Boost Powers. This would've been better as a Boost 2.
Fangs
Fangs are the only Remotes optimized for tanking. The idea is that you use them to Engage while staying away, that's why they have a Guard of 10. With some Active Defenses like Shielding Aura, they can pull off the feat of fully dodging some Weapons and only being weak to automatic Damage and lucky rolls of 8+. I think this merits its Boost 3.
Gravity Knuckle
Gravity Knuckle used to push for 5 Zones doing an added 5 bonus Damage. That was kind of insane, so I toned that down to 3 Zones and 3 bonus Damage. It's an okay utility Weapon for Melee or Beam specialists, but the Boost 4 really hurts. It's a decent pick, but you rarely want to spend that much Energy on anything but a finisher, so I wonder if I could've tweaked with the numbers until making it balanced for Boost 3.
Ground Zero
It is with a deep and heavy sigh that I admit I screwed up with this one. Ground Zero is worth using without Boosting, and if you do Boost it, then it probably murders the fuck out of the battlefield. This used to gain Long Range when Boosted, which was the most insane thing ever and allowed optimized glass cannons to make a 21x21 square of absolute death that didn't hurt allies. The only easy fix I can think of would be a flavor fail: It would be only an aoe, without a longer Range than 1, when Boosted. Then it would be good, but not as ridiculous as it currently is. It's definitely a Boost 4 Weapon, I got that part right at least.
Graviton Gun
A pure utility gun. It's not a big effect though. At first it pushed or pulled the target towards either end of the line, but that was a little bit much when it sent multiple baddies crashing in one direction. It's handy, but not super exciting, so I guess it is okay at Boost 2. Not super proud of it but at least it isn't awful.
Point Singularity Projector
This was a commission from the Kickstarter. The idea was to have a Weapon that wants to be used withthe Assist Action much like other Weapons want to be used with Aim or Suppress. It's got a good rate on Advantages to Energy spent, encourages teamwork and brings a new kind of build to the game. It's really good! It was, in fact, so good that I completely forgot I was supposed to get back to the creator about it because all the other commissions were so much harder to get right. After like a year of our last contact, I got back to them again and things were fine. Boost 2 is maybe a bit too generous but it's not a noticeable balance concern.
Bits
Ah,
Lux Cannon
This was a Weapon that I tried out in BCG but it was too good. So what changed? Well, now there's more ways to build shooty beam dudes than to make them glass cannons and there's more ways to build tanky characters meant to withstand punishment than to hope your Absolute Barrier holds. It's still quite strong, so it's worth the Boost 4.
Oblivion Buster
It's the strongest single-target Weapon in the game, and it shows. While the ability to destroy Threshold Levels instantly is great for keeping super tanky PC/Rival builds in line, this Weapon shows how much of a problem it can be when Bosses are vulnerable to it. Bosses are at their most threatening for a very brief window of like 1 Turn, which Oblivion Buster can bypass. Even if you give them things like Oldtype, it's taking out at least 2 Levels. Buff it enough, and it's going to be 3. It's appropriate, but probably a bit much, and shows that destroying Levels as a Weapon effect is a worse idea than just bypassing Active Defenses. Definitely earns that Boost 4, though, and all its other drawbacks too.
So, Beam Weapons. Some are good, some are meh, and some are exceedingly exploitable. I'm a lot less happy about them than I am about the rest of the armory. I also think I screwed up with the Boost costs in general but that would've needed a rework of a bunch of BCG Weapons to do it properly, so it's not as much of a problem to me on a personal level.
But that's just me being a perfectionist! Feel free to tell me how wrong I am, how much the 'meh' Weapons are really cool and good, how the exploitable guns are fine and I'm just an overreacting whiny baby. I'd make a poll but it looks like Blogger removed the option to add those for some reason. What the crap, Blogger.
Next: Boss Powers.
Gimmick Out.
Jun 3, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XXI: Shooting Weapons
Shooting Weapons have a higher power ceiling than Melee Weapons and they can also attack from longer distances. BCG had, in my opinion, too many niche or utility Shooting Weapons and not enough generalist options. This led to the creation of a metagame where most of the optimized Shooting specialist builds were of the glass cannon variety, built around using one or two specific guns and sacrificing everything else. My goal with BCZ was to add some variety and make it easier for more generalist builds to compete with the specialists. So let's see how they turned out, on with the show!
Anti-Mecha Cannon
Crippling is a pretty good debuff and with Long Range you could potentially 1v1 harass someone the entire fight with impunity. I considered making this Slow instead of One Shot, but it was still too good. As a One Shot you can build around it (and other One Shots) to keep the most dangerous threat Crippled every turn while you shoot from safety. It's not something you can pull off at low PLs though, so this is a niche weapon with secondary use as an utility/finisher.
Hyper Launcher
Blast 3 is HUGE and Unreliable doesn't hurt artillery builds as much as other drawbacks like Slow and One Shot. You can use this any turn, every turn, to wipe low Threshold Grunts with all but the worst of rolls. It lacks Long Range, but it's a great pick if you want to spam Blasts without having to perform shenaniganry with Slows and One Shots.
Lockdown Missile
Would you believe me if I told you that this used to be a Support Upgrade? The original idea simply surrounded one zone with barriers and let you lock out someone out of the battle forever, unless they had the appropriate Upgrades or enough friends to beat you up and stop trolling them. This was waaaay too good as a 5 MP Support and still uncomfortably griefy as a 10 MP Support, so it became a One Shot Weapon with a decent Blast radius instead. With a way to resupply One Shots you can still murder someone while keeping them out of the fight the entire time, but you have to be close to them and have to be careful about not trapping yourself in there too... And they could still fly over or teleport through your barriers, so it's not as easy to abuse. Still good though. Just make sure you're not making the GM/CoPCs miserable while you're laughing your way to victory.
Macrowave Cannon
A commissioned Weapon. It was inspired by an old design from when this game was called GGG, which only survived to BCG in the form of a Boss Weapon. It may read as a Beam Weapon, but it's just plain Shooting. Which is good for it, because otherwise it'd be even more difficult to use properly. Because it is so strong and has such a huge aoe, the recharging time isn't as much of a drawback as you may think, since it is likely to end or make unloseable the battle when you use it with some buffs.
Mounted Blaster
A long, long while ago, Shooting Weapons granted an Advantage for standing still while using them, rather than granting two for Aiming with them. While I think the current version of the Shooting Keyword plays a lot better, the simplicity of having a guaranteed Advantage that you could gain just by losing some mobility was nice to have. This is a callback to those days, allowing most types of gunners to trade in the Movement that they may or may not even be using for attack parity with Meleeists.
Radiation Bomb
This is Bombardment's evil twin. Or, well, eviler twin. While Bombardment is a ruthless, efficient killer. Radiation Bomb will either tickle you or hurt you way more than Bombardment could, making it the cruel sadist of the relationship. While Bombardment is a great Weapon, it does feel like a flavor miss sometimes when you try to use it to represent particularly nasty weaponry like napalm, nerve agents or, well, radiation bombs. So I made Radiation Bomb because there clearly just weren't enough ways to create huge explosions and destroy everything everywhere forever in this game already.
Rapidfire Machinecannon
Another simple gun. Shooting Weapons in BCG had more roles to cover (short range, long range, area, debuff, etc....) than Melee ones, so as a consequence they were generally more complicated and had more drawbacks to use. This is why there's so many more Shooting Weapons that just grant one Advantage (or inflict a Disadvantage) in a specific sitaution in BCZ.
Sentry Turret
It's the only non-Beam Remote! The flavor is that you're planting down an aimbot that has a wide reach and hits hard but is fragile and immobile. In a previous version, it got an automatic roll of 10 to the Might Test. In another, it was Crippling. The autorolling 10 was weird because it arguably did reduced Damage compared to weaker guns when they rolled highly, which led to some moments where it felt bad to use. Crippling from Long Range is, as I have already said, way too good. The final version is nothing amazing, but if you shield it with your body and Engage baddies that would snipe it then it will provide a reliable source of damage every Turn.
Torpedoes
This Weapon is so niche that it's way more likely to be used by specialized NPCs than by most PCs. But it also serves another function in that it is an example of how homebrewers might want to balance their own custom Weapons. This might not seem like a big reason, but given that I wasn't sure whether I was going to end up making a Custom Weapons system or not (and I didn't) I wanted to put it in BCZ to at least provide a little guidance by example.
Tracer Rifle
It's a focus fire Weapon that, while weak, grants a +2 to every other friendly that coordinates with you. This makes it very powerful, particularly if you've got a low Might build and don't really care all that much about doing Damage yourself. It is a very nice side gun for support oriented builds.
Other than the griefing potential of the Lockdown Missile (Which has been described ''legitimately the funniest thing i've seen in a game" by one of its live witnesses and as "the full spicy meme experience" by another, so I think of it as more of a feature than a bug) I don't have any significant issues with most of these. Even the ones that look difficult to use properly, like the Anti-Mecha and Macrowave Cannons have a unique role that works for them, without being overpowered. All in all, a very nice set.
Next is... Oh, it's Beam Weapons. :sweating_emoji: Oooh boy.
Gimmick Out.
Anti-Mecha Cannon
Crippling is a pretty good debuff and with Long Range you could potentially 1v1 harass someone the entire fight with impunity. I considered making this Slow instead of One Shot, but it was still too good. As a One Shot you can build around it (and other One Shots) to keep the most dangerous threat Crippled every turn while you shoot from safety. It's not something you can pull off at low PLs though, so this is a niche weapon with secondary use as an utility/finisher.
Hyper Launcher
Blast 3 is HUGE and Unreliable doesn't hurt artillery builds as much as other drawbacks like Slow and One Shot. You can use this any turn, every turn, to wipe low Threshold Grunts with all but the worst of rolls. It lacks Long Range, but it's a great pick if you want to spam Blasts without having to perform shenaniganry with Slows and One Shots.
Lockdown Missile
Would you believe me if I told you that this used to be a Support Upgrade? The original idea simply surrounded one zone with barriers and let you lock out someone out of the battle forever, unless they had the appropriate Upgrades or enough friends to beat you up and stop trolling them. This was waaaay too good as a 5 MP Support and still uncomfortably griefy as a 10 MP Support, so it became a One Shot Weapon with a decent Blast radius instead. With a way to resupply One Shots you can still murder someone while keeping them out of the fight the entire time, but you have to be close to them and have to be careful about not trapping yourself in there too... And they could still fly over or teleport through your barriers, so it's not as easy to abuse. Still good though. Just make sure you're not making the GM/CoPCs miserable while you're laughing your way to victory.
Macrowave Cannon
A commissioned Weapon. It was inspired by an old design from when this game was called GGG, which only survived to BCG in the form of a Boss Weapon. It may read as a Beam Weapon, but it's just plain Shooting. Which is good for it, because otherwise it'd be even more difficult to use properly. Because it is so strong and has such a huge aoe, the recharging time isn't as much of a drawback as you may think, since it is likely to end or make unloseable the battle when you use it with some buffs.
Mounted Blaster
A long, long while ago, Shooting Weapons granted an Advantage for standing still while using them, rather than granting two for Aiming with them. While I think the current version of the Shooting Keyword plays a lot better, the simplicity of having a guaranteed Advantage that you could gain just by losing some mobility was nice to have. This is a callback to those days, allowing most types of gunners to trade in the Movement that they may or may not even be using for attack parity with Meleeists.
Radiation Bomb
This is Bombardment's evil twin. Or, well, eviler twin. While Bombardment is a ruthless, efficient killer. Radiation Bomb will either tickle you or hurt you way more than Bombardment could, making it the cruel sadist of the relationship. While Bombardment is a great Weapon, it does feel like a flavor miss sometimes when you try to use it to represent particularly nasty weaponry like napalm, nerve agents or, well, radiation bombs. So I made Radiation Bomb because there clearly just weren't enough ways to create huge explosions and destroy everything everywhere forever in this game already.
Rapidfire Machinecannon
Another simple gun. Shooting Weapons in BCG had more roles to cover (short range, long range, area, debuff, etc....) than Melee ones, so as a consequence they were generally more complicated and had more drawbacks to use. This is why there's so many more Shooting Weapons that just grant one Advantage (or inflict a Disadvantage) in a specific sitaution in BCZ.
Sentry Turret
It's the only non-Beam Remote! The flavor is that you're planting down an aimbot that has a wide reach and hits hard but is fragile and immobile. In a previous version, it got an automatic roll of 10 to the Might Test. In another, it was Crippling. The autorolling 10 was weird because it arguably did reduced Damage compared to weaker guns when they rolled highly, which led to some moments where it felt bad to use. Crippling from Long Range is, as I have already said, way too good. The final version is nothing amazing, but if you shield it with your body and Engage baddies that would snipe it then it will provide a reliable source of damage every Turn.
Torpedoes
This Weapon is so niche that it's way more likely to be used by specialized NPCs than by most PCs. But it also serves another function in that it is an example of how homebrewers might want to balance their own custom Weapons. This might not seem like a big reason, but given that I wasn't sure whether I was going to end up making a Custom Weapons system or not (and I didn't) I wanted to put it in BCZ to at least provide a little guidance by example.
Tracer Rifle
It's a focus fire Weapon that, while weak, grants a +2 to every other friendly that coordinates with you. This makes it very powerful, particularly if you've got a low Might build and don't really care all that much about doing Damage yourself. It is a very nice side gun for support oriented builds.
Other than the griefing potential of the Lockdown Missile (Which has been described ''legitimately the funniest thing i've seen in a game" by one of its live witnesses and as "the full spicy meme experience" by another, so I think of it as more of a feature than a bug) I don't have any significant issues with most of these. Even the ones that look difficult to use properly, like the Anti-Mecha and Macrowave Cannons have a unique role that works for them, without being overpowered. All in all, a very nice set.
Next is... Oh, it's Beam Weapons. :sweating_emoji: Oooh boy.
Gimmick Out.
May 27, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XX: Melee Weapons
Before we get to Melee Weapons proper, I should probably spare a few words on the expansions' only new Weapon keyword: Remote. Originally I had planned for things like the funnels from gundam or other attack drone-esque weapons to be represented by Support Upgrades, but players reported back that it wasn't scratching their Remote Weapons itch. The game needed to have Remote Weapons that used your Might stat and could be shot down to disable them. So I did just that. There's not much else of a story to them, really, I gave them fairly low defensive stats to compensate for the fact that disabling them requires one enemy to spend a turn not actually shooting you. Like I said back when I wrote about "Go, Funnels!", these don't have a passive Upgrade for balance reasons... But in hindsight I suppose I could've given them an Advantage to attacks and some other bonus, it didn't have to be an extra attack each turn.
So, Melee Weapons! I said a long while ago that what the Melee Weapons in BCG lacked wasn't attack power but versatility and utility value. My goal with BCZ's Melee armory was to add a few options for raw damage while trying to make viable options for attacking at range, crowd control or niche options for specialized builds.
Assassin Blade
Assassin Blade is one of the straightforward damage options, though it is best suited to groups with multiple meleeists rather than a single dedicated duelist. It's also quite effective in the hands of Grunt swarms focus firing a single PC. It draws inspiration from the flanking and sneak attack mechanics found in D&D and other RPGs that encourage having multiple PCs ganging up on the same target.
Countersword
This is a Technique for tanks. With a Pulling Field build, it is somewhat tricky to use but is very rewarding when you do pull it off. It can lead to wasted turns the rest of the time, however, and that's what makes this a very conditional and meta-dependent Weapon... Unless you take I Am Your Opponent, in which case you can force an Enemy to trigger your Countersword, swinging with a fairly strong attack that can potentially Maim or even destroy the offending Enemy before they get to finish their own attack. It's not a straightforward Weapon, but I think it fulfills its purpose.
Great Crusher
This is our first new area of effect Melee Weapon, it either murders tightly packed Grunt squads or debuffs them to the point where they pose much less of a threat. The Range isn't particularly amazing, though. Great Crusher draws an obvious inspiration from the Goldion Crusher of GaoGaiGar, though less on the whole "reducing things to light with a planet-sized weapon" part and more on the way it usually appears in videogames.
Hook Launcher
Positioning-based strategies, particularly those using Guardian of Steel, can be very hard to defeat. That's why BCZ includes more forced movement to disrupt those strategies and add an element of counterplay. It is not a hard counter, because it is a One Shot, so you have to focus fire the hooked target or you'll barely get any value out of it. The forced Dueling can buy you some time to help with this, assuming the target doesn't have Slippery Chassis.
Kamaitachi
Another area of effect Melee Weapon. This one needs a sizable Systems investment to reliably hit more than one Enemy, but it doesn't suffer from in-built drawbacks like Slow or One Shot. You could even use it without any Systems as a counter against enemies with an Active Defense like ECS. One of the best of this bunch.
Magnet Rod
Remember when I mentioned Weapons for niche builds? This one is for PCs with low Energy. You can get by at low PLs without an Energy of 1 or 2, making it a solid pick. And at high PLs, nearly everybody has 5+ Energy so this will always trigger if you choose to stay at 3-4 Energy. It's not amazing, because Energy is kind of a really important stat, but if it's a low priority for you then this is worth taking.
Pressure Point Attack
It's a Resonance Cannon but even more flavorful. It trades Range and repeatability for Crippling and, um, non-Unreliability. It's a solid pick for Duelist builds that need a finisher but don't want to use Techniques.
Rocket Sword
A secondary Weapon for the Boosted Lance builds that are, otherwise, really bad at dealing with mobs and have little reason to do anything but spam Boosted Lance every single bloody Turn (and maybe use Lightspeed Assault once). It's basically Bombardment for Melee PCs, otherwise. Good stuff.
Shocking Swordwhip
This used to be a ranged tanking Weapon, penalizing attacks that didn't target you. After the change, it simply has Crippling (which is a much more effective and straightforward debuff) but is Unreliable so you need to stack Advantages or get lucky to make it hit. It is handy for the right build, if not spectacular.
Stumbling Fists Style
Very flavorful. The combination of keywords makes perfect sense given the name and what the Weapon does. It's very good for Support PCs with 0 in Might, assuming they don't have Unarmed. If you want to make a battlemage build with Tacticool Approach, this is a great primary Weapon to use while building up to Electro-Sapper Pods.
And that's it. I have very little negative to say about most of these, which shows how much of a better handle I've got on the power level of Melee Weapons as a whole. If I absolutely had to tear them down, I'd say that Shocking Swordwhip, Great Crusher and Hook Launcher could take more trouble setting up than they're worth, and that you need to be PL2 or 3 at least for them to be viable, but that's it really.
Next: New Shooting Weapons.
Gimmick Out.
So, Melee Weapons! I said a long while ago that what the Melee Weapons in BCG lacked wasn't attack power but versatility and utility value. My goal with BCZ's Melee armory was to add a few options for raw damage while trying to make viable options for attacking at range, crowd control or niche options for specialized builds.
Assassin Blade
Assassin Blade is one of the straightforward damage options, though it is best suited to groups with multiple meleeists rather than a single dedicated duelist. It's also quite effective in the hands of Grunt swarms focus firing a single PC. It draws inspiration from the flanking and sneak attack mechanics found in D&D and other RPGs that encourage having multiple PCs ganging up on the same target.
Countersword
This is a Technique for tanks. With a Pulling Field build, it is somewhat tricky to use but is very rewarding when you do pull it off. It can lead to wasted turns the rest of the time, however, and that's what makes this a very conditional and meta-dependent Weapon... Unless you take I Am Your Opponent, in which case you can force an Enemy to trigger your Countersword, swinging with a fairly strong attack that can potentially Maim or even destroy the offending Enemy before they get to finish their own attack. It's not a straightforward Weapon, but I think it fulfills its purpose.
Great Crusher
This is our first new area of effect Melee Weapon, it either murders tightly packed Grunt squads or debuffs them to the point where they pose much less of a threat. The Range isn't particularly amazing, though. Great Crusher draws an obvious inspiration from the Goldion Crusher of GaoGaiGar, though less on the whole "reducing things to light with a planet-sized weapon" part and more on the way it usually appears in videogames.
Hook Launcher
Positioning-based strategies, particularly those using Guardian of Steel, can be very hard to defeat. That's why BCZ includes more forced movement to disrupt those strategies and add an element of counterplay. It is not a hard counter, because it is a One Shot, so you have to focus fire the hooked target or you'll barely get any value out of it. The forced Dueling can buy you some time to help with this, assuming the target doesn't have Slippery Chassis.
Kamaitachi
Another area of effect Melee Weapon. This one needs a sizable Systems investment to reliably hit more than one Enemy, but it doesn't suffer from in-built drawbacks like Slow or One Shot. You could even use it without any Systems as a counter against enemies with an Active Defense like ECS. One of the best of this bunch.
Magnet Rod
Remember when I mentioned Weapons for niche builds? This one is for PCs with low Energy. You can get by at low PLs without an Energy of 1 or 2, making it a solid pick. And at high PLs, nearly everybody has 5+ Energy so this will always trigger if you choose to stay at 3-4 Energy. It's not amazing, because Energy is kind of a really important stat, but if it's a low priority for you then this is worth taking.
Pressure Point Attack
It's a Resonance Cannon but even more flavorful. It trades Range and repeatability for Crippling and, um, non-Unreliability. It's a solid pick for Duelist builds that need a finisher but don't want to use Techniques.
Rocket Sword
A secondary Weapon for the Boosted Lance builds that are, otherwise, really bad at dealing with mobs and have little reason to do anything but spam Boosted Lance every single bloody Turn (and maybe use Lightspeed Assault once). It's basically Bombardment for Melee PCs, otherwise. Good stuff.
Shocking Swordwhip
This used to be a ranged tanking Weapon, penalizing attacks that didn't target you. After the change, it simply has Crippling (which is a much more effective and straightforward debuff) but is Unreliable so you need to stack Advantages or get lucky to make it hit. It is handy for the right build, if not spectacular.
Stumbling Fists Style
Very flavorful. The combination of keywords makes perfect sense given the name and what the Weapon does. It's very good for Support PCs with 0 in Might, assuming they don't have Unarmed. If you want to make a battlemage build with Tacticool Approach, this is a great primary Weapon to use while building up to Electro-Sapper Pods.
And that's it. I have very little negative to say about most of these, which shows how much of a better handle I've got on the power level of Melee Weapons as a whole. If I absolutely had to tear them down, I'd say that Shocking Swordwhip, Great Crusher and Hook Launcher could take more trouble setting up than they're worth, and that you need to be PL2 or 3 at least for them to be viable, but that's it really.
Next: New Shooting Weapons.
Gimmick Out.
May 20, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XIX: Features
We're almost to the end of the PC section, with the last set of Upgrades in this update. Most of the Features in BCZ were the result of months of me playing BCG, watching giant robot anime or playing videogames and going "You know, that's something that BCG doesn't have. I wonder if I can adapt it..."Sadly, my notes are lost to time, but I believe one or two of them were actually commissioned by Kickstarter backers.
Oldtype
Oldtype
Oldtype was designed as a sort of balance patch for Bosses and Rivals that were having trouble staying alive against PCs optimized for offense. It was so effective that I ended up taking the defensive ability and making it a General Upgrade. That's right, first came Oldtype then Internal Fortification, not the other way around! BCZ goes at length about the utility value of Oldtype and how it is a very powerful buff 90% of the time with a negligible drawback, so I don't have much else to say about it mechanically. I'll just note that I really like how it basically turns your Bosses and Rivals into the tabletop equivalent of videogame damage sponges with tons more HP than the PCs who have only a tiny fraction of their skillset. Easily one of my favorite additions to the rules in this entire book.
Omnienvironmental
This is a commission, and it was originally going to be a Mobility Upgrade, but giving it an activation cost made it basically "Like most Mobility Upgrades except better" so it ended up becoming a Feature. I'm not 100% happy with it, because if you use it for its intended purpose it is a very harsh penalty to Energy just so you can ignore a handful of Terrain penalties that may or may not ever happen in your game (when was the last time you fought underwater? RIP Getter-3.) but if you attach it to one of your Transformations then it is a very efficient way to give most Terrain in the game a middle finger while you don't have to suffer the penalties the rest of the time. Still, it is worth taking, and that's a victory.
Remora Frame
Oh boy, this one is kind of busted. Docking makes you very hard to kill, and you can optimize towards aggression then latch on to the party tank. Throw Dispersion Aura on top and it becomes kind of gross. Oh, and remember how I said Miniature Model was messed up by the rules-as-written because of the order of operations from the core book? That also applies to Remora Frame. Overall Rating: Yuck.
Sibling Model
Sibling Model is what happens when I sit down and try to boil down the gimmick of units that specialize in team attacks to a simple mechanic. Do you want a party of coordinated units with great teamwork? Everyone gets Sibling Model and when it happens it's a guaranteed 30+ Damage attack once per Operation. Do you want two or three units with a specific team attack that only they can pull off? Give them Sibling Model. Finding a buff to it that wasn't overwhelmingly powerful was the toughest part, and I think it was tweaked a handful of times until I went with the smallest possible numerical increase. It's okay, but not all that exciting. I wonder if I should've instead gone with something flashier, like "It turns your Synchro Attack into a Technique" or something along those lines.
Unstable Reactor
I genuinely can't remember if Unstable Reactor was a commission or my own idea, and that sucks, because I really want to take credit for it but I can't do so with a honest conscience. Unstable Reactor is probably the most flavorful Feature in the expansion, if not the whole game, and it is extremely powerful to boot. Originally all it did was turn your mech into a bomb. That is to say, it didn't give an Energy bonus, it simply made you explode when defeated. The Energy bonus was added later for flavor reasons. Yes, dear readers, I actually made this extremely powerful Feature even stronger just for flavor! Originally, the explosion was supposed to be both the good and the bad thing about the Feature. The idea is that, to most optimizers, the explosion isn't even a negative, because they either don't care about what happens after they've already lost or plan to never actually let that happen. No, the real negative isn't for them, but for their teammates and the GM that now has to deal with a potential teamwipe where everyone dies horribly. All Features are subject to GM approval, but Unstable Reactor gets its own sidebar explaining when and when not to allow it. Even then, I still sometimes get questions about how to deal with PCs that picked it from GMs that weren't ready to deal with the walking nuclear bomb PC. C'est la vie. My official stance is that Unstable Reactor is so much fun and causes so much drama when it goes off that it is worth all of the unintentional headaches it can invite.
And that's all for Upgrades... At least for PCs. We still have a bunch of NPC Upgrades to do after we do PC Weapons. This thing isn't ending yet!
Next: Melee Weapons.
Gimmick Out.
May 13, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XVIII: Design Flaws
Flaws, Drawbacks, Negative Traits, whatever you want to call them, point-buy systems usually include negative abilities to go with the positive ones, which give extra XP instead of having a XP cost. There are two reasons that I didn't do them until BCZ:
1) Most of the time, the builds that take these builds are the ones that don't care about the penalty. This is the equivalent of putting all your points in Might and dumping Systems to 0, except you're doing it multiple times per PC instead of just once. While I think that BCG is a game that encourages a degree of system mastery, I didn't want to give people 60+ points of free stuff by handing out half a dozen easily ignorable drawbacks.
2) The other type of character that takes negative traits are the ones who want to use them for roleplaying, usually for plot or social drawbacks like being hunted down by ninjas or having to take care of a little brother. I do not like this approach, because getting your own subplot about having to deal with assassins or your baby brother isn't a drawback, it is a reward. Every character is supposed to have personal subplots, one or two of them shouldn't be getting free XP for them. For these characters we already have Genre Themes. This way, everybody gets GP from actually roleplaying those so-called flaws, instead of free XP that is only as much of a problem as the GM is willing to make it.
For those reasons, I decided not to have any negative abilities until BCZ, where I could add a sidebar explaining when and where to allow them. By hiding Design Flaws behind these two layers (putting it in an expansion + the aforementioned sidebar), instead of putting them in the core book, it minimizes the odds of them ruining games having one or two characters that are leaps and bounds more powerful than all the others.
Even then, there are only six of them. Turns out that writing Design Flaws that aren't 100% free points is pretty hard! Let' see how well they turned out:
Unarmed
...Okay, this isn't the best start. Unarmed is almost free points for one kind of PC: Full Support builds that don't care about Weapons and Might Tests. For everyone else, it is a serious building challenge. The only problem that the Full Support builds suffer is they can't contribute to Synchro Attacks, which is probably worth 5 MP, not 10, but it's better than nothing. Still, it is only fair that Full Support builds get one Design Flaw they can work with when Meleeists get their own.
Berserker
I quite like Berserker, as it presents difficult tactical circumstances on you, which you can play around by carefully choosing your Weapons and mobility options. This is easier for a GM to exploit by deliberately placing annoying damage sponges in front of the Berserker, which I consider a good thing as otherwise it is basically free 10 MP when you're a Duelist build. Arguably, this could be worth +100 MP because it lets the GM place the closest enemy unit behind fifty instances of Extreme Terrain, but then the Berserker's problem isn't the Flaw, but the dickishly murderous GM.
Miniature Model
There are two issues with Miniature Model. The first ist that, like with Berserker, if you carefully balance your mobility and range options, this is a free +20 MP. I think 10 MP is a small enough amount that I can afford to give it to people willing to jump through some hoops. But 20? That's a little too much. In hindsight, this shouldn't round up the Weapon Ranges. The second issue is that Page 8 of BCG says that, when you have to do multiple operations on the same statistic, you should always first halve then add or substract further modifiers. This means that Miniature Model doesn't affect the extra movement from Overbooster or the extra range from Long Range. Note to self: In the future, always halve at the end instead of at the beginning.
Limited Battery Time
This is a common mecha genre convention, which is good for it because it went through like 5-6 different versions and I would have scrapped it if the trope wasn't so ubiquitous. Some of the versions include: Rolling Systems or taking Damage equal to Tension, spending Energy equal to Tension or taking that much Damage and deactivating after a fixed Tension number. They were all very wordy, super unfun to play with, and some of them could be easily built around to give free 20 MP. This version is much harder to exploit, as Tension is a very significant bonus after Turns 1-2 and losing a fixed Level of Threshold each Turn is simply brutal. It makes you want to try really hard to use those 20 MP to end battles ASAP, but it is hard to blitz enemies without using Tension buffs, so it provides a decent buildaround challenge.
Precious Snowflake
According to some, this is 30 Free MP, because you don't need Antimaims to play the game. Others would say that this is a trap because there's no way 30 MP can compensate for the inherent randomness in losing all your important stuff by Turn 2. Perhaps the truth lies... Somewhere in the middle. *Jumps down a chasm*
Walking Coffin
Would you believe me if I said this used to grant 60 MP? The reasoning was that, even if you you could spend all of it on Defense/Threshold, you would only be a very strong unit at low PLs but you'd still be very vulnerable at high PLs. To be fair, it didn't have the Active Defenses clause at the time, so not even Absolute Barrier could save you. At some point one of my playtesters made me see reason and this was a terrible enabler for glass cannons with a billion ways to kill everything and everyone in Turn 1. The final version of Walking Coffin is a lot better at representing the type of unit that it is named after (ATs from Votoms), because you have to bust your butt to avoid taking Damage basically ever.
I started writing this thinking I'd be a lot more down on these, but I actually rather like them. There's only one real dud (Miniature Model) and arguably Unarmed could be a little bit harsher, but I think all the others are in a pretty good place where you have to get creative to play around the drawbacks and even if you do success is not guaranteed.
Next: New Features
Gimmick Out.
1) Most of the time, the builds that take these builds are the ones that don't care about the penalty. This is the equivalent of putting all your points in Might and dumping Systems to 0, except you're doing it multiple times per PC instead of just once. While I think that BCG is a game that encourages a degree of system mastery, I didn't want to give people 60+ points of free stuff by handing out half a dozen easily ignorable drawbacks.
2) The other type of character that takes negative traits are the ones who want to use them for roleplaying, usually for plot or social drawbacks like being hunted down by ninjas or having to take care of a little brother. I do not like this approach, because getting your own subplot about having to deal with assassins or your baby brother isn't a drawback, it is a reward. Every character is supposed to have personal subplots, one or two of them shouldn't be getting free XP for them. For these characters we already have Genre Themes. This way, everybody gets GP from actually roleplaying those so-called flaws, instead of free XP that is only as much of a problem as the GM is willing to make it.
For those reasons, I decided not to have any negative abilities until BCZ, where I could add a sidebar explaining when and where to allow them. By hiding Design Flaws behind these two layers (putting it in an expansion + the aforementioned sidebar), instead of putting them in the core book, it minimizes the odds of them ruining games having one or two characters that are leaps and bounds more powerful than all the others.
Even then, there are only six of them. Turns out that writing Design Flaws that aren't 100% free points is pretty hard! Let' see how well they turned out:
Unarmed
...Okay, this isn't the best start. Unarmed is almost free points for one kind of PC: Full Support builds that don't care about Weapons and Might Tests. For everyone else, it is a serious building challenge. The only problem that the Full Support builds suffer is they can't contribute to Synchro Attacks, which is probably worth 5 MP, not 10, but it's better than nothing. Still, it is only fair that Full Support builds get one Design Flaw they can work with when Meleeists get their own.
Berserker
I quite like Berserker, as it presents difficult tactical circumstances on you, which you can play around by carefully choosing your Weapons and mobility options. This is easier for a GM to exploit by deliberately placing annoying damage sponges in front of the Berserker, which I consider a good thing as otherwise it is basically free 10 MP when you're a Duelist build. Arguably, this could be worth +100 MP because it lets the GM place the closest enemy unit behind fifty instances of Extreme Terrain, but then the Berserker's problem isn't the Flaw, but the dickishly murderous GM.
Miniature Model
There are two issues with Miniature Model. The first ist that, like with Berserker, if you carefully balance your mobility and range options, this is a free +20 MP. I think 10 MP is a small enough amount that I can afford to give it to people willing to jump through some hoops. But 20? That's a little too much. In hindsight, this shouldn't round up the Weapon Ranges. The second issue is that Page 8 of BCG says that, when you have to do multiple operations on the same statistic, you should always first halve then add or substract further modifiers. This means that Miniature Model doesn't affect the extra movement from Overbooster or the extra range from Long Range. Note to self: In the future, always halve at the end instead of at the beginning.
Limited Battery Time
This is a common mecha genre convention, which is good for it because it went through like 5-6 different versions and I would have scrapped it if the trope wasn't so ubiquitous. Some of the versions include: Rolling Systems or taking Damage equal to Tension, spending Energy equal to Tension or taking that much Damage and deactivating after a fixed Tension number. They were all very wordy, super unfun to play with, and some of them could be easily built around to give free 20 MP. This version is much harder to exploit, as Tension is a very significant bonus after Turns 1-2 and losing a fixed Level of Threshold each Turn is simply brutal. It makes you want to try really hard to use those 20 MP to end battles ASAP, but it is hard to blitz enemies without using Tension buffs, so it provides a decent buildaround challenge.
Precious Snowflake
According to some, this is 30 Free MP, because you don't need Antimaims to play the game. Others would say that this is a trap because there's no way 30 MP can compensate for the inherent randomness in losing all your important stuff by Turn 2. Perhaps the truth lies... Somewhere in the middle. *Jumps down a chasm*
Walking Coffin
Would you believe me if I said this used to grant 60 MP? The reasoning was that, even if you you could spend all of it on Defense/Threshold, you would only be a very strong unit at low PLs but you'd still be very vulnerable at high PLs. To be fair, it didn't have the Active Defenses clause at the time, so not even Absolute Barrier could save you. At some point one of my playtesters made me see reason and this was a terrible enabler for glass cannons with a billion ways to kill everything and everyone in Turn 1. The final version of Walking Coffin is a lot better at representing the type of unit that it is named after (ATs from Votoms), because you have to bust your butt to avoid taking Damage basically ever.
I started writing this thinking I'd be a lot more down on these, but I actually rather like them. There's only one real dud (Miniature Model) and arguably Unarmed could be a little bit harsher, but I think all the others are in a pretty good place where you have to get creative to play around the drawbacks and even if you do success is not guaranteed.
Next: New Features
Gimmick Out.
May 6, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XVII: New Combination Upgrades
BCZ didn't introduce any new Extra Areas or Alternate Forms, so we're skipping straight to Combinations. I I tried to make new Extra Areas and new Transformation Upgrades, by the way, but they were kind of... Broken. That's a topic for another day, though.
So,Combiner Mecha. One of the many thorns in my side when trying to write a game that is both fun and also simple. I mentioned last time that the BCG version of the Combiner rules is very powerful and very flavorful, it was only missing mid-battle Combinations as a genre convention. This is where we pick up today.
Invincible Super Combination
Very, very late into the BCG development process (late enough that I knew we were going to be late in delivering the Kickstarter rewards), Super Combination was still the subject of much discussion. We kept going back and forth on whether it was worth it to sacrifice multiple HP pools and multiple attacks per round to make one super unit. The argument boiled down to two things: Whether your super robot army could replenish their resources by combining and the final Attributes of the Combined Unit.
This first issue was the trickiest one. Replenishing your Threshold, Oneshots, etc. is extremely powerful. If I balanced Super Combiners around, then I was stealth nerfing anyone who deployed precombined. I figured that many groups would rather simply do that, jumping straight to the payoff of their combined super robot than have to do the whole song and dance of battle in their weaker mechs while risking that one of them might explode. I didn't want to force that playstyle on them.
The second issue was simply a matter of numbers. Every time something about Super Combination changed, it was either too cheap at high Levels for the massive Attribute boost it granted or too expensive for the tiny Attribute bonus it granted at low Levels. This was just a matter of numbers though, so while it was certainly difficult, it wasn't a playstyle problem. Eventually one playtester suggested adding a "Tax" to Super Combination that scaled according to the Level of the PCs to fix this problem, and I decided to make said "Tax" an Upgrade in itself... For the expansion.
There was a nonzero chance that baking this Tax into the core Super Combination rules would have unintended consequences and could break something. With only a few days until the final pdf files had to be sent to the printer to check for printing errors, I made the call to leave Combiners relatively underpowered (Yes, they were considered underpowered back then) and made a mental note to properly playtest Super Combiners with these additions in the expansion.
The story does not end here yet, however. ISC went through a few different versions, the stupidest being the one in which every Subpilot choose one of Might, Guard, Systems or Speed then gave that Attribute from their mech to the lead, resulting in a very flavorful insanely overpowered mess. The idea was that you could make the legs grant a Speed boost, the Torso a Guard boost, etc. But even when limiting this to 1 Area/Attribute per Subpilot and 4 Subpilots total, it still gave us Mechs with 20+ in every Attribute. We settled on a flat +1 to those four stats per Subpilot not long after the first few builds and never looked back.
And that is the story of ISC.
Universal Component
Universal Component (UC) had similar issues to ISC. We knew it was going to give Upgrades and Weapons, but we had to figure out if it healed both partners and if it granted any Attribute bonuses. The answer, by the way, was yes - sorta. The UC restores anything they've spent, but the lead doesn't. This encourages the UC to take risks and do combat on their own if they want to maximize the value they can get from their mech, but since they can combine with any PC (and if they go down the squad only lost 1 PC, not the whole Combiner) the risk of things going catastrophically wrong is much lower. You can still make a UC build that is pure support and deploys precombined, of course. It is probably weaker, but much safer as well as more generally useful.
That's it for both Combinations in BCZ. I'm okay with how they turned out, overall. There are some issues with Combiners where obviously the lead has the most fun out of everyone, but I don't think you can really fix that without giving each Subpilot loads of options and probably an element of chance, which would overly complicate a series of Upgrades that are already the most complex in the game. Ultimately, playing a Subpilot is for people who actually want to be a Subpilot, much like playing Healers is for people who enjoy playing them, not a role that people should be forced into.
As an anecdotical observation, I think that by now I've seen more NPC Combiners as Superbosses instead of actual parties with Combiner PCs. I'd be interested in hearing any experiences you may have with them!
Next: Design Flaws. Hooo boy.
Gimmick Out.
So,Combiner Mecha. One of the many thorns in my side when trying to write a game that is both fun and also simple. I mentioned last time that the BCG version of the Combiner rules is very powerful and very flavorful, it was only missing mid-battle Combinations as a genre convention. This is where we pick up today.
Invincible Super Combination
Very, very late into the BCG development process (late enough that I knew we were going to be late in delivering the Kickstarter rewards), Super Combination was still the subject of much discussion. We kept going back and forth on whether it was worth it to sacrifice multiple HP pools and multiple attacks per round to make one super unit. The argument boiled down to two things: Whether your super robot army could replenish their resources by combining and the final Attributes of the Combined Unit.
This first issue was the trickiest one. Replenishing your Threshold, Oneshots, etc. is extremely powerful. If I balanced Super Combiners around, then I was stealth nerfing anyone who deployed precombined. I figured that many groups would rather simply do that, jumping straight to the payoff of their combined super robot than have to do the whole song and dance of battle in their weaker mechs while risking that one of them might explode. I didn't want to force that playstyle on them.
The second issue was simply a matter of numbers. Every time something about Super Combination changed, it was either too cheap at high Levels for the massive Attribute boost it granted or too expensive for the tiny Attribute bonus it granted at low Levels. This was just a matter of numbers though, so while it was certainly difficult, it wasn't a playstyle problem. Eventually one playtester suggested adding a "Tax" to Super Combination that scaled according to the Level of the PCs to fix this problem, and I decided to make said "Tax" an Upgrade in itself... For the expansion.
There was a nonzero chance that baking this Tax into the core Super Combination rules would have unintended consequences and could break something. With only a few days until the final pdf files had to be sent to the printer to check for printing errors, I made the call to leave Combiners relatively underpowered (Yes, they were considered underpowered back then) and made a mental note to properly playtest Super Combiners with these additions in the expansion.
The story does not end here yet, however. ISC went through a few different versions, the stupidest being the one in which every Subpilot choose one of Might, Guard, Systems or Speed then gave that Attribute from their mech to the lead, resulting in a very flavorful insanely overpowered mess. The idea was that you could make the legs grant a Speed boost, the Torso a Guard boost, etc. But even when limiting this to 1 Area/Attribute per Subpilot and 4 Subpilots total, it still gave us Mechs with 20+ in every Attribute. We settled on a flat +1 to those four stats per Subpilot not long after the first few builds and never looked back.
And that is the story of ISC.
Universal Component
Universal Component (UC) had similar issues to ISC. We knew it was going to give Upgrades and Weapons, but we had to figure out if it healed both partners and if it granted any Attribute bonuses. The answer, by the way, was yes - sorta. The UC restores anything they've spent, but the lead doesn't. This encourages the UC to take risks and do combat on their own if they want to maximize the value they can get from their mech, but since they can combine with any PC (and if they go down the squad only lost 1 PC, not the whole Combiner) the risk of things going catastrophically wrong is much lower. You can still make a UC build that is pure support and deploys precombined, of course. It is probably weaker, but much safer as well as more generally useful.
That's it for both Combinations in BCZ. I'm okay with how they turned out, overall. There are some issues with Combiners where obviously the lead has the most fun out of everyone, but I don't think you can really fix that without giving each Subpilot loads of options and probably an element of chance, which would overly complicate a series of Upgrades that are already the most complex in the game. Ultimately, playing a Subpilot is for people who actually want to be a Subpilot, much like playing Healers is for people who enjoy playing them, not a role that people should be forced into.
As an anecdotical observation, I think that by now I've seen more NPC Combiners as Superbosses instead of actual parties with Combiner PCs. I'd be interested in hearing any experiences you may have with them!
Next: Design Flaws. Hooo boy.
Gimmick Out.
Apr 29, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XVI: New Support Upgrades
Support Upgrades were a little on the underpowered side in BCG, however this wasn't so much because the Upgrades themselves were bad, rather it was because the Action economy didn't favor them. The bulk of the work in improving them was from General Upgrades which meant I had to be careful not to make the next set of Support Upgrades too powerful - or else they'd go from slightly underpowered to flat-out overpowered. That's why the six new Support Upgrades in BCZ provide utility value instead of doing, preventing or amplifying Damage.
Dividing Field
One of my favorite things about the expansion was that it opened the floodgates to many new abilities using all sorts of wacky space tech that might as well be magic. The Dividing Field is inspired by the Dividing Driver from GaoGaiGar, it is more or less what the flavor text describes. The big difference between the Dividing Driver and the Dividing Field is that the former was used to create a battlefield where the mechs can go wild without causing collateral damage while the latter is used to get rid of annoying Terrain properties. It is useful, but not too powerful due to its reactive nature.
Remote Hotfix
I believe this was a Restoration back in an early BCG draft, but it was a very lackluster one - for reasons that should be obvious considering it is now back as a 5 MP Support Upgrade. It's not an efficient Antimaim by any stretch of the imagination but it's a nice option to have as part of a Support suite. You really want to have 4-6 Support Upgrades, and if you're not going for a build with a secondary tank or healer role, this could come in handy.
Targeting Disruption
Speaking of secondary roles, this lets you do work as the party's off-tank! You can now let the main tank breathe while they heal or defend by tanking yourself! From a long distance too! With that said, 5 Energy (or your whole Action) for just a -4 attack penalty to a single target isn't really all that punishing and the Enemy might as well ignore you just because you got the worse part of the trade. Maybe the penalty should be equal to your Systems? Or should this have instead been able to target multiple enemies? It is a little underpowered, but it is not terrible.
Blue Screen Virus
Speaking of trades that aren't very good, trading one of your Actions for that of a Grunt is, on paper, a terrible idea. However, depending on the specific kind of Grunt this can turn a battle by shutting down a Guardian of Steel, Jury-Rigger or another key Unit. It's not amazing, but it's a solid pick if you expect to fight intelligent Grunts often.
Cryogenic Blast
This is one of the few ways for PCs to create Withering Terrain and it comes with a patch of Difficult Terrain to make it stick. It's not amazing, but it is very annoying. Anything that can drain Energy is, in general, very good. The area effect is simultaneously a good and bad thing, because it can hit multiple enemies but you also have to be careful not to hit your allies as well. This is probably the worst result you can get with Transpatial Randomizer if your Systems stat is low, as it will hit you... And probably hit your friends as well.
Gravity Manipulators
There are many abilities that let you push people around as a secondary effect, but this is the only one whose entire point is repositioning Enemies. It can also reposition Allies or even yourself if your team is desperate for movement. It used to cost 5 MP but that made Support users the absolute rulers of battlefield positioning and let them do a bunch of free Damage every Round by knocking Enemies into walls or each other, so it got a cost increase. It is a lot less useful now, as moving someone 1-5 Zones is rarely worth an Action, so I'm not super happy about the change. I'd be less happy with the overpowered version, though.
That's all! Support users are amazing now and the new Upgrades give them some additional utility without bumping up their raw power to obnoxious degrees. The one thing I'm not entirely satisfied with about Support Upgrades is that most of their value comes from spamming 5 MP Supports to the point where some builds ignore the 10 MP Supports entirely. I wonder if the more expensive ones could have instead been cheaper so that they would be compatible with EWAC. For Upgrades like Electromagnetic Detonator or Fire at Will some tweaking would've probably done the trick, but for Blue Screen Virus and Gravity Manipulators it would be a lot harder to figure out how to rework them.
Next: New Combination Upgrades.
Gimmick Out.
Dividing Field
One of my favorite things about the expansion was that it opened the floodgates to many new abilities using all sorts of wacky space tech that might as well be magic. The Dividing Field is inspired by the Dividing Driver from GaoGaiGar, it is more or less what the flavor text describes. The big difference between the Dividing Driver and the Dividing Field is that the former was used to create a battlefield where the mechs can go wild without causing collateral damage while the latter is used to get rid of annoying Terrain properties. It is useful, but not too powerful due to its reactive nature.
Remote Hotfix
I believe this was a Restoration back in an early BCG draft, but it was a very lackluster one - for reasons that should be obvious considering it is now back as a 5 MP Support Upgrade. It's not an efficient Antimaim by any stretch of the imagination but it's a nice option to have as part of a Support suite. You really want to have 4-6 Support Upgrades, and if you're not going for a build with a secondary tank or healer role, this could come in handy.
Targeting Disruption
Speaking of secondary roles, this lets you do work as the party's off-tank! You can now let the main tank breathe while they heal or defend by tanking yourself! From a long distance too! With that said, 5 Energy (or your whole Action) for just a -4 attack penalty to a single target isn't really all that punishing and the Enemy might as well ignore you just because you got the worse part of the trade. Maybe the penalty should be equal to your Systems? Or should this have instead been able to target multiple enemies? It is a little underpowered, but it is not terrible.
Blue Screen Virus
Speaking of trades that aren't very good, trading one of your Actions for that of a Grunt is, on paper, a terrible idea. However, depending on the specific kind of Grunt this can turn a battle by shutting down a Guardian of Steel, Jury-Rigger or another key Unit. It's not amazing, but it's a solid pick if you expect to fight intelligent Grunts often.
Cryogenic Blast
This is one of the few ways for PCs to create Withering Terrain and it comes with a patch of Difficult Terrain to make it stick. It's not amazing, but it is very annoying. Anything that can drain Energy is, in general, very good. The area effect is simultaneously a good and bad thing, because it can hit multiple enemies but you also have to be careful not to hit your allies as well. This is probably the worst result you can get with Transpatial Randomizer if your Systems stat is low, as it will hit you... And probably hit your friends as well.
Gravity Manipulators
There are many abilities that let you push people around as a secondary effect, but this is the only one whose entire point is repositioning Enemies. It can also reposition Allies or even yourself if your team is desperate for movement. It used to cost 5 MP but that made Support users the absolute rulers of battlefield positioning and let them do a bunch of free Damage every Round by knocking Enemies into walls or each other, so it got a cost increase. It is a lot less useful now, as moving someone 1-5 Zones is rarely worth an Action, so I'm not super happy about the change. I'd be less happy with the overpowered version, though.
That's all! Support users are amazing now and the new Upgrades give them some additional utility without bumping up their raw power to obnoxious degrees. The one thing I'm not entirely satisfied with about Support Upgrades is that most of their value comes from spamming 5 MP Supports to the point where some builds ignore the 10 MP Supports entirely. I wonder if the more expensive ones could have instead been cheaper so that they would be compatible with EWAC. For Upgrades like Electromagnetic Detonator or Fire at Will some tweaking would've probably done the trick, but for Blue Screen Virus and Gravity Manipulators it would be a lot harder to figure out how to rework them.
Next: New Combination Upgrades.
Gimmick Out.
Apr 22, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XV: New Mobility Upgrades.
This entry also has just another two Upgrades and they're honestly pretty basic. They have a shared history in that I knew I was going to make them from the first day of making BCG, but figured their niche nature should keep them to an expansion book. And that's
Maritime Module
The underwater version of Antigravity, for those times when Terrain Specialist (Underwater) isn't enough. Maritime Module is secretly one of the most powerful Upgrades in the game because it makes you immune to deep sea pressure and also to phase through underwater walls. The wording is the same as Antigravity except for it only working underwater, and Antigravity can fly over Impassable Terrain, so... Yeah, another thing to keep in mind for the future. It turns out that making a deliberate effort to keep text the same (I thought it would help people memorize it easier and minimize confusion) for abilities that work in very different contexts isn't the best idea.
Zero-G Module
It's Antigravity but in spaaace. The things I pointed out with MM above also apply to Zero-G Module, except it is even stronger because (unlike underwater) space settings are expected to have space stations and asteroid fields and weaponized meteors. Hell, you can even no-sell a black hole with this thing, if you go by the rules as written. What was I even thinking? Obviously, these things won't happen in a remotely serious game and the GM will raise an eyebrow anytime someone even brings them up, but the purpose of good rules is to minimize the amount of rulings that GMs have to make. I'd be embarrassed but, frankly, the sheer absurdity of what this Upgrade enables is way too funny to me.
And that's both Mobility Upgrades! I knew there weren't going to be many of them in the expansion, as they are basically "General Upgrades that I want to be Maimable for balance reasons (and themed around making you more mobile)" and the list of things that apply to that criteria is quite tiny.
Next: Support Upgrades
Gimmick Out
Apr 15, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XIV: New Restoration Upgrades.
There are only two Restoration Upgrades in BCZ and they come with a sidebar that explains their function: They're mostly meant for Combiner Subpilots. Combiners in BCG were already very powerful, but the Subpilots of the 3rd Component and beyond didn't have many options to use. The lead would attack, one of the subs would Maneuver, and everyone else would, like, maybe Boost or use a Support? It wasn't an exciting job to have. Now they have two more options which, while not particularly powerful, do succeed at making them more versatile.
G-Charger
The G-Charger was originally either a Restoration in the core book or a Support Upgrade, I forget which, and it was extremely niche. Cranking up your Energy output is, as I've pointed out last time, very exploitable. The part that wasn't good at all about the G-Charger was that it used up your Turn to do so, making it largely useless to anyone except Subpilots. Worse, it was confusing, people would pick it and expect to get an Energy boost for one Turn, then be disappointed when they learned that wasn't the case and scratch their heads or fume at what a waste of points this thing was. I brought it back for the expansion because A) Extremely niche and potentially confusing abilities are the expansion's thing. B) I realized I could write sidebars to explain the purpose of particularly quirky things. Anyway, the G-Charger is ok. It's not amazing, because there aren't that many ways to abuse having tons of Energy, but it's very handy with Boost Powers and against Energy debuffs.
Reload
The Resupply Upgrade used to be cheaper, had a Range of 1 and only spent one use at a time. Much like G-Charger, that wasn't very good. Though at least it did something for single-pilot Units, unlike G-Charger. When Resupply was made more powerful (and also more expensive), I figured that the expansion could have a weaker Resupply exclusively for Subpilots that had the old functionality. Like G-Charger, this is the kind of ability that was saved by the expansion being much more okay with extremely niche abilities that need their own sidebar to explain them. Again, like G-Charger, it's not super duper good or anything, but it is almost always better than Resupply for the purposes of a Combiner and that's all it needs to be.
And that's all for today! A part of me wanted to have more Restoration Upgrades in BCZ, but there wasn't a lot of design space left for them (G-Charger is already pushing it, to be honest) and if I was only going to come up with mediocre abilities then I figured it would be better to not force more into the game at all.
Next: A similar story for Mobility Upgrades!
Gimmick Out.
G-Charger
The G-Charger was originally either a Restoration in the core book or a Support Upgrade, I forget which, and it was extremely niche. Cranking up your Energy output is, as I've pointed out last time, very exploitable. The part that wasn't good at all about the G-Charger was that it used up your Turn to do so, making it largely useless to anyone except Subpilots. Worse, it was confusing, people would pick it and expect to get an Energy boost for one Turn, then be disappointed when they learned that wasn't the case and scratch their heads or fume at what a waste of points this thing was. I brought it back for the expansion because A) Extremely niche and potentially confusing abilities are the expansion's thing. B) I realized I could write sidebars to explain the purpose of particularly quirky things. Anyway, the G-Charger is ok. It's not amazing, because there aren't that many ways to abuse having tons of Energy, but it's very handy with Boost Powers and against Energy debuffs.
Reload
The Resupply Upgrade used to be cheaper, had a Range of 1 and only spent one use at a time. Much like G-Charger, that wasn't very good. Though at least it did something for single-pilot Units, unlike G-Charger. When Resupply was made more powerful (and also more expensive), I figured that the expansion could have a weaker Resupply exclusively for Subpilots that had the old functionality. Like G-Charger, this is the kind of ability that was saved by the expansion being much more okay with extremely niche abilities that need their own sidebar to explain them. Again, like G-Charger, it's not super duper good or anything, but it is almost always better than Resupply for the purposes of a Combiner and that's all it needs to be.
And that's all for today! A part of me wanted to have more Restoration Upgrades in BCZ, but there wasn't a lot of design space left for them (G-Charger is already pushing it, to be honest) and if I was only going to come up with mediocre abilities then I figured it would be better to not force more into the game at all.
Next: A similar story for Mobility Upgrades!
Gimmick Out.
Apr 8, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XIII: New Active Defenses.
The Active Defenses (ADs) in the core book are good enough to cover the needs of most PCs. That meant I had to come up with new niches for them to explore in the expansion. I sat down and took note of things that they were good or not great at, both from a conceptual and mechanics standpoint, and made a conscious effort to shore up those weaknesses. The results are below:
Learning Computer
When I was writing BCG I knew that I didn't want an Active Defense that denied Tension. Tension is the backbone of many of the game's coolest mechanics and denying Tension would make the game less fun for everyone. With that said, the idea of an AD that got better with time stuck with me, so instead of denying Tension I figured I could make Tension be the Defense bonus in the expansion. The result is Learning Computer, an Upgrade that is probably a little underpowered (spending 2 Energy as a reaction without the ability to cut down the cost to 1 for a weaker version is harsh). It sits in the awkward place where it would be too good at 1 Energy but at 2 Energy it takes way too long to get better than Custom Defense. It is a good idea, just needs some tweaking and fine-tuning.
Reflecting Barrier and Repulsion Field
When I first wrote Custom Defense, it let you choose between Melee and Shooting and Absorbing Armor was for Beams and non-Beams. They got changed to let you choose between all four options for gameplay reasons. I wasn't able to come up with a good Beam/non-Beam AD for the expansion, but I had some ideas for Anti-Melee and Anti-Shooting ADs. Both of these are a bit lacking on the defensive side, but the utility value is pretty great. Repulsion Field is generally more useful, but spending 1 Energy to do 3 Damage is a very good deal.
Attack Absorbers
This was the last of the ADs in the expansion that I wrote. I was short on ideas for defensive abilities, so I flipped the idea on its head and thought of making an AD that granted an offensive benefit instead. It doesn't have much of a story because it... Was always okay. It does what it sets out to do. I think it could afford to be a little more generous and make it grant an Advantage against all Enemies. There's the possibility of stacking Advantages for an absurdly strong attack after surviving a round of focus fire, but it's quite expensive in Energy terms and the mediocre Defense bonus it gives doesn't help you actually survive that round of focus fire, so it should be okay.
Dispersion Aura
The first version of this Upgrade was called Aegis Barrier, costed a flat 5 Energy and provided a 10 Damage shield like that of Absolute Barrier in a Range equal to your Systems. The idea was that it was an Absolute Barrier that you could share with the team but was less flexible due to the static Energy cost. You know, because Absolute Barrier is a totally balanced ability that everyone should have access to at all times. As you may be able to guess from the previous sentence, this was extremely broken. One playtester made a graph showing how you could space out units in a defense matrix formation to make all participants provide 10 extra HP to each other, basically giving all of them 40 HP on demand and it made me scream on the inside. Now, I'll admit was actually trying to add some counters for artillery and artillery + technique builds in the expansion, but this was the wrong kind of counter - the kind that made the game unplayable. The new Dispersion Aura grants a powerful, effective Defense boost against multitarget attacks and lets a designated shieldbearer unit protect its allies with it, but doesn't do anything about the other 75% of Weapons. It is a perfect partner to ECS from the core book as well.
Organic Barrier
I like this, it provides great utility value for healers and other support-oriented units, even if it is a very dangerous design. Organic Barrier lets you stockpile your resources from one turn towards the next, which is extremely exploitable in the majority of games that have such mechanics. If I was aware of this, why did it go to print, then? Well, I thought I'd keep it in check by not having any energy sinks that could be used offensively in the game. What were people going to do, put up an Absolute Barrier for 30 bonus HP every other Turn? Psshhh. It was a good idea, except that I forgot Chain Explosion was a thing in the game... Ooops! To be honest, I still think the problem here is Chain Explosion rather than Organic Barrier, and would rather do away with the former than the latter.
I quite like the new ADs in general, the worst thing I can say about them is that Learning Computer is underpowered and Organic Barrier lets people pull off crazy Chain Explosion combos. Reflecting Barrier and Repulsion Field are some of my favorite AD designs and the kind of thing I'd like to do more of in the future. Organic Barrier is another one I'm very fond of, but I understand better now just how careful I have to be with that kind of mechanic.
Next: New Restoration Upgrades
Gimmick Out!
Learning Computer
When I was writing BCG I knew that I didn't want an Active Defense that denied Tension. Tension is the backbone of many of the game's coolest mechanics and denying Tension would make the game less fun for everyone. With that said, the idea of an AD that got better with time stuck with me, so instead of denying Tension I figured I could make Tension be the Defense bonus in the expansion. The result is Learning Computer, an Upgrade that is probably a little underpowered (spending 2 Energy as a reaction without the ability to cut down the cost to 1 for a weaker version is harsh). It sits in the awkward place where it would be too good at 1 Energy but at 2 Energy it takes way too long to get better than Custom Defense. It is a good idea, just needs some tweaking and fine-tuning.
Reflecting Barrier and Repulsion Field
When I first wrote Custom Defense, it let you choose between Melee and Shooting and Absorbing Armor was for Beams and non-Beams. They got changed to let you choose between all four options for gameplay reasons. I wasn't able to come up with a good Beam/non-Beam AD for the expansion, but I had some ideas for Anti-Melee and Anti-Shooting ADs. Both of these are a bit lacking on the defensive side, but the utility value is pretty great. Repulsion Field is generally more useful, but spending 1 Energy to do 3 Damage is a very good deal.
Attack Absorbers
This was the last of the ADs in the expansion that I wrote. I was short on ideas for defensive abilities, so I flipped the idea on its head and thought of making an AD that granted an offensive benefit instead. It doesn't have much of a story because it... Was always okay. It does what it sets out to do. I think it could afford to be a little more generous and make it grant an Advantage against all Enemies. There's the possibility of stacking Advantages for an absurdly strong attack after surviving a round of focus fire, but it's quite expensive in Energy terms and the mediocre Defense bonus it gives doesn't help you actually survive that round of focus fire, so it should be okay.
Dispersion Aura
The first version of this Upgrade was called Aegis Barrier, costed a flat 5 Energy and provided a 10 Damage shield like that of Absolute Barrier in a Range equal to your Systems. The idea was that it was an Absolute Barrier that you could share with the team but was less flexible due to the static Energy cost. You know, because Absolute Barrier is a totally balanced ability that everyone should have access to at all times. As you may be able to guess from the previous sentence, this was extremely broken. One playtester made a graph showing how you could space out units in a defense matrix formation to make all participants provide 10 extra HP to each other, basically giving all of them 40 HP on demand and it made me scream on the inside. Now, I'll admit was actually trying to add some counters for artillery and artillery + technique builds in the expansion, but this was the wrong kind of counter - the kind that made the game unplayable. The new Dispersion Aura grants a powerful, effective Defense boost against multitarget attacks and lets a designated shieldbearer unit protect its allies with it, but doesn't do anything about the other 75% of Weapons. It is a perfect partner to ECS from the core book as well.
Organic Barrier
I like this, it provides great utility value for healers and other support-oriented units, even if it is a very dangerous design. Organic Barrier lets you stockpile your resources from one turn towards the next, which is extremely exploitable in the majority of games that have such mechanics. If I was aware of this, why did it go to print, then? Well, I thought I'd keep it in check by not having any energy sinks that could be used offensively in the game. What were people going to do, put up an Absolute Barrier for 30 bonus HP every other Turn? Psshhh. It was a good idea, except that I forgot Chain Explosion was a thing in the game... Ooops! To be honest, I still think the problem here is Chain Explosion rather than Organic Barrier, and would rather do away with the former than the latter.
I quite like the new ADs in general, the worst thing I can say about them is that Learning Computer is underpowered and Organic Barrier lets people pull off crazy Chain Explosion combos. Reflecting Barrier and Repulsion Field are some of my favorite AD designs and the kind of thing I'd like to do more of in the future. Organic Barrier is another one I'm very fond of, but I understand better now just how careful I have to be with that kind of mechanic.
Next: New Restoration Upgrades
Gimmick Out!
Mar 25, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XII: New General Upgrades.
Boy, it was a good thing I took that break. You wouldn't believe how much of a trash fire February was if I told you. Before we start with today's business and resume the retrospective, let's play a game! Guess which of all these PC components burned out or broke down during the last 30 days and needed to be replaced:
If your answer was "All of the above", then congratulations! You guessed right!
This time of the year is, almost always, a miserable experience. I cannot describe how much summer hates me, only that the feelings are mutual. Fortunately, now it is March and the Season of Suffering is over. The odds of my computer imploding when the power goes out are dramatically reduced and I can actually sleep more than 3 hours at night. I have upgraded from feeling constantly fatigued, anxious and uncomfortable to the mere existential despair of a meaningless and short stay in this crapsack world. It's great! I'm pumped to write about nerdy game design stuff!
- Motherboard
- Power Supply Unit
- Hard Drive
- Monitor
- Keyboard
If your answer was "All of the above", then congratulations! You guessed right!
This time of the year is, almost always, a miserable experience. I cannot describe how much summer hates me, only that the feelings are mutual. Fortunately, now it is March and the Season of Suffering is over. The odds of my computer imploding when the power goes out are dramatically reduced and I can actually sleep more than 3 hours at night. I have upgraded from feeling constantly fatigued, anxious and uncomfortable to the mere existential despair of a meaningless and short stay in this crapsack world. It's great! I'm pumped to write about nerdy game design stuff!
So, we begin BCZ's Mecha chapter with General Upgrades. I said a while ago that Chapter 1 of BCZ had three main goals: To give more tools for the less powerful PC builds, to allow for a greater variety of PC builds and, lastly, to mechanically represent PC concepts that didn't have rules support in the core book. I believe that the General Upgrades are the clearest example for all three of these things. Let's have a look at them:
Defensive Technician and Master Technician
The story of these two can be summarized in four acts:
Not all Techniques are on an equal level, and it was pretty hard to come up with upgrades that would moderately buff Zweihander and Missile Massacre ones without breaking the game when combined with Ground Zero and Reactor Overdrive. It may seem obvious in hindsight, but it actually took me two or three passes until I realized I could simply take away the drawbacks of Zweihander and Missile Massacre. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it is a practical one. Should there be further supplements, expect more abilities that synergize specifically well with underpowered Upgrades and Weapons, calling them out by name.
- Problem #1: Most Techniques are underpowered.
- Solution #1: Create an Upgrade line that makes Techniques stronger.
- Problem #2: This makes the few Techniques that are already decently powerful into absolute monsters.
- Solution #2: Make the Upgrades more generally weaker but stronger if used with the weakest of all Techniques.
Not all Techniques are on an equal level, and it was pretty hard to come up with upgrades that would moderately buff Zweihander and Missile Massacre ones without breaking the game when combined with Ground Zero and Reactor Overdrive. It may seem obvious in hindsight, but it actually took me two or three passes until I realized I could simply take away the drawbacks of Zweihander and Missile Massacre. It may not be the most elegant solution, but it is a practical one. Should there be further supplements, expect more abilities that synergize specifically well with underpowered Upgrades and Weapons, calling them out by name.
Portal Generator
In my first list of "Things I want in the game" that I made during the early planning stages of the expansion, portals and teleportation were near the top. The very first version used to cost very little Energy (1 or 2) and had a Range equal to your Systems. It was hilariously broken, increasing the range of all your weapons by your Systems and letting you have the perfect positioning for all of your area of effect weapons, most notably: Bursts and Lines. It took a few passes until the current version, which is still very useful even though it is something like ten times more expensive.
Power Conversion
Support specialists were weak in the core book. They were very versatile and could trivialize fights with Boss enemies, but they struggled to keep up with all the other PCs in most non-Boss scenarios. There were many reasons for this, but eventually I noticed that one of their big problems was that they didn't get any benefit from Tension, a free resource that every other build could make use of. Power Conversion was my first attempt at solving this issue and it went to print without any changes. It makes it a lot easier to play a Support specialist, who are very hungry for Energy, and lets them take other Upgrades and Powers that suit their role such as Jury-Rig or I Have Control. This may be my favorite General Upgrade in the expansion.
Versatile Model
Versatile Model
One of the problems with point-buy systems is that they encourage you to get very good at doing one thing and only that one thing. In the case of BCG, that means the system wants you to use always the same one weapon in the same circumstances. You can be very good at melee brawls, an amazing sniper, or... Mediocre at everything else. I didn't like that. Versatile Model is an attempt to encourage PCs to diversify a little and to make a niche for medium-range units that don't depend entirely on duels or sniping. It also helps represent generalist units with many weapons, like most protagonist suits in anime series where everyone else has a specialty. It is not a very flashy Upgrade, but it's just strong enough to get the job done without risking being overpowered. I like it a lot.
Extreme Body
I was making custom Upgrades and Weapons for a game I was running, and in this game one of the PCs could transform into a wereshark with powers based on various sea creatures - echolocation like a dolphin's, electricity like an eel's, ink like a squid's, etc. I think you can guess where this is going from that introduction. I wrote an Upgrade that could be used to represent electrified skin and I liked it enough that I decided to make it part of the expansion later. I think the only thing that changed from the first version to the one that went to print were the Energy cost and the "you can't fly to avoid this ability" reminder text, because it was underpowered in all but the most all-in duelist builds.
Maneuverable Transformer
In core BCG, you Transformed either to adapt to your current Terrain or to switch stats from a mobility/defense form to an attack/range form. Either way, once you made the change, you rarely had much reason to go back to the other one. Maneuverable Transformer encourages Transforming units to behave more like Valkyries, changing forms constantly just to outmaneuver and throw off enemies. It used to grant both an offensive Advantage and a defensive Disadvantage at the same time with every activation, but that was a little too good for builds that arguably already could get Terrain specialist and Flight at no Energy cost. The offensive and defensive bonus were worth around 10 MP each, and the flexibility of having the one you need most is juuuust good enough to make it worth the 15 MP cost.
Nanopaste Skeleton and Superior Integration
I have written at length about how the Antimaims (the abilities that mitigate or heal the effects of Maiming) were the hardest part of the game to balance. It should come to the surprise of absolutely no one that the expansion needed to include a few extra ones to fix the weaknesses of the ones in the core book. Nanopaste Skeleton is a weaker Invincible Alloy that PCs can use until they can afford the stronger antimaim. Superior Integration is the opposite, a stronger Integrated Weapons that PCs can take once they've outgrown it and picked up a few extra Weapons to make use of it.
Pulling Field
The lack of tanking mechanics was a common complaint in BCG. You could Duel enemies to draw the attention of one of them and after that the best you could do was pray they didn't have a way to Disengage without using an Action. Pulling Field jumps on the gravity manipulation train flavor text of many of the new abilities in the expansion to justify punishing Enemies that attack your allies with Disadvantages. This is, arguably, much more useful than the free Attack you get from being ignored in a Duel, because it actually protects your allies where free Attacks just punish enemies after they've already hit your backline. Moreover, it doesn't force you to split your MP between offense and defense just so you can punish enemies effectively. I like it.
Skirmisher Frame
This used to give you an offensive Advantage and a defensive Disadvantage for each 5 Zones moved during your Turn. To put it politely, this was bananas. Boosted Lance already has a reputation of being nigh-unstoppable in games with large battlefields, no special Terrain, and no enemies with Speed debuffs. Imagine if it had +2 to +4 to each Might Test and +2 to +4 Defense on top of that! The new version works well for units built around maximized Speed but also goes well with any build that likes to stay at medium range while moving around the battlefield. Like Versatile Model, this helps to represent anime conventions that don't fit the usual RPG molds of "stay in one spot and swing sword" or "stay in one spot and fling projectiles".
Internal Fortification
I've said before that BCG can suffer from being a bit too close to a game of rocket tag. This Upgrade helps mitigate that issue and enables proper defensive builds to withstand as much as double the amount of punishment when at sufficiently high PL. This ability is so handy to have around after PLs 2 and 3, that it was baked into the Oldtype Feature to make it easier for NPCs to access it.
Limit Engine
Probably the coolest Upgrade in the entire book. It is very strong and comes with a hefty MP price tag and dangerous conditions for making the most of its power. Limit Engine was originally called Spiral Engine and was created as part of a short Gurren Lagann blog-only supplement. Because it grants both Energy and Tension, which are used to power up all sorts of Super Robot hijinx, it is a perfect fusion of flavor and gameplay. This is my other favorite General Upgrade in the expansion and the competition within my heart between this and Power Conversion is a fierce one.
Warp Step
Warp Step
Would you believe me if I told you that my first idea for a teleportation upgrade was to let people use Systems in place of Speed ON TOP of all the extra effects that this thing already gives you? It was a very good pick for a sniper or a build with Artillery Frame. You could teleport anywhere you wanted and blow up everything with perfect positioning, like Zeorymer. In that way, the Upgrade was very true to its flavor, but the idea of replacing one stat with another was terrible and I was told as much until I removed that part from the Upgrade.
Transpatial Randomizer
I think that Transpatial Randomizer was a commission, but I can't find the design notes to confirm. The way I remember it, the request was worded in such a way that it made me think of a Rod of Wonder from D&D. I wish I could recall the specific details, but when I thought "Make something random happen" I immediately thought "Oooh, tables of randomly-activated unique effects! Or tables of randomly activated Powers! Or Support Upgrades! There's so much potential here!" I ended up going with a table of random Support Upgrades, as they're the single most varied category of abilitise in the game and using all of them would make for a sufficiently complex and wacky table with plenty of results. It is a really cool Upgrade... But, unfortunately, it is too good. All Support Upgrades are balanced so that they're worth spending an Action. That means Transpatial Randomizer gives you a free Action every Turn for 2 Energy and 20 MP. I bet on the inherent randomness of the Upgrade to balance it. In theory, one third of the time it would give you something useless (or a hindrance), one third of the time it would be mildly useful, and the last third of the time it would be a huge boon. In practice, you only felt like you were wasting your Energy with one of every five activations or so, while the other four were half good and half great. This should probably cost 2 more Energy to make it more of an investment. Some games would balance something like this by adding results that punish the user, but that's not how I roll. Other than that, I quite like Transpatial Randomizer, it's a pretty elegant take on the idea of making something random but fun happen.
Whew, that's two thousand words about the General Upgrades of Battle Century Z. I did say this would probably be the longest post in the series! At any rate, it's good to be back.
Next: Active Defenses.
Gimmick Out.
I think that Transpatial Randomizer was a commission, but I can't find the design notes to confirm. The way I remember it, the request was worded in such a way that it made me think of a Rod of Wonder from D&D. I wish I could recall the specific details, but when I thought "Make something random happen" I immediately thought "Oooh, tables of randomly-activated unique effects! Or tables of randomly activated Powers! Or Support Upgrades! There's so much potential here!" I ended up going with a table of random Support Upgrades, as they're the single most varied category of abilitise in the game and using all of them would make for a sufficiently complex and wacky table with plenty of results. It is a really cool Upgrade... But, unfortunately, it is too good. All Support Upgrades are balanced so that they're worth spending an Action. That means Transpatial Randomizer gives you a free Action every Turn for 2 Energy and 20 MP. I bet on the inherent randomness of the Upgrade to balance it. In theory, one third of the time it would give you something useless (or a hindrance), one third of the time it would be mildly useful, and the last third of the time it would be a huge boon. In practice, you only felt like you were wasting your Energy with one of every five activations or so, while the other four were half good and half great. This should probably cost 2 more Energy to make it more of an investment. Some games would balance something like this by adding results that punish the user, but that's not how I roll. Other than that, I quite like Transpatial Randomizer, it's a pretty elegant take on the idea of making something random but fun happen.
Whew, that's two thousand words about the General Upgrades of Battle Century Z. I did say this would probably be the longest post in the series! At any rate, it's good to be back.
Next: Active Defenses.
Gimmick Out.
Jan 14, 2018
BCZ Retrospective XI: Limit Powers.
This is the last category of new Genre Powers and it has slightly more history than the others. A long, long time ago I wrote a series of blog posts about adapting anime to the BCG rules. The two series I picked for this were G Gundam and Gurren Lagann. For Gurren Lagann I decided the game should care about Tension more than the usual, and among the results were the prototype versions of these Powers. You can read more about them here. See if you can spot what else from that post made it into the expansion!
A small bit of trivia: In the early drafts of the BCZ, these were called Spiral Powers and the Rush Powers were called Limit Powers instead. I needed a new, setting-agnostic name for these, and 'Limit' sounded just right. I think Rush Powers got the short end of the stick in the end, but "Limit" fits these three much better than the other trio.
I Am Helping!
We begin with a Power that was commissioned very early on, it came in the form of the name plus its flavor text, meaning the mechanics were up to me. The idea of a Power that makes things easier while also making them harder is very amusing, but it took some effort to make it fun to play with and not just fun to read. This went through many iterations, during which it was a General Power most of the time. Sometimes it did bonus Damage but caused a Blast, other times it created Extreme Terrain under the enemy and you. It was an okay flavor fit, but it felt a bit forced. The final version is very weak on paper, especially under Tension 5, but the mechanics click together in a way that makes them larger than the sum of their individual parts. Suppressing the toughest enemy around is one of the easiest ways for anyone to contribute to the fight, but also makes it harder to move. Using this when Tension is 5 or higher means that forcing the enemy in place hurts a lot more than usual. Even if you only get the second effect by using Tension boosters, it is still a nice extra chunk of Damage. Of course, the problem is that Extreme Terrain doesn't distinguish between friend and foe, and one of the most effective ways to lock an enemy in place is to Duel them. This means that this Power is often going to hurt a friend (or yourself, if you're the duelist) on top of causing a nice chunk of collateral Damage. With this final version the flavor felt more natural and less forced, which I rather like.
Jinxed!
I really like the idea of making your enemy's Weapons carry the Overheating/Unreliable drawbacks as a defensive ability. Unfortunately, doing that in place of just boosting up your Defense or punching the enemy harder is a bit weak. Luckily, I had to make three Powers that had very weak base effects but got considerably stronger after Tension 5. Coincidentally, they both hurt much more when Tension is high than when it is low. This all together meant I had to give a Power like this a try. Sadly, while it is conceptually cool, it suffers from a fatal flaw that is obvious in hindsight: It is a Defensive Power that needs you to survive to Tension 5 in order to get full benefit from it. If everyone is packing Limit Engines or spamming Tension-boosting Powers then it is great... Otherwise it comes online a little too late to be reliable, which is what you want from your Defensive Powers. Whoops!
Pierce the Heavens
This one is a straight up copy and paste from the Gurren Lagann post. I feel it is the best of the original bunch (that's why it has the best name!), embodying everything that the mechanic is good at: Punching things very hard. I don't have much else to say about it, it is easily the most straightforward to use and probably the one that makes you feel the most like a badass.
And that's the last of the Character abilities from Chapter 1. You are now entering Robot Land, Population: All The Animes.
Next: General Upgrades.
Gimmick Out.
A small bit of trivia: In the early drafts of the BCZ, these were called Spiral Powers and the Rush Powers were called Limit Powers instead. I needed a new, setting-agnostic name for these, and 'Limit' sounded just right. I think Rush Powers got the short end of the stick in the end, but "Limit" fits these three much better than the other trio.
I Am Helping!
We begin with a Power that was commissioned very early on, it came in the form of the name plus its flavor text, meaning the mechanics were up to me. The idea of a Power that makes things easier while also making them harder is very amusing, but it took some effort to make it fun to play with and not just fun to read. This went through many iterations, during which it was a General Power most of the time. Sometimes it did bonus Damage but caused a Blast, other times it created Extreme Terrain under the enemy and you. It was an okay flavor fit, but it felt a bit forced. The final version is very weak on paper, especially under Tension 5, but the mechanics click together in a way that makes them larger than the sum of their individual parts. Suppressing the toughest enemy around is one of the easiest ways for anyone to contribute to the fight, but also makes it harder to move. Using this when Tension is 5 or higher means that forcing the enemy in place hurts a lot more than usual. Even if you only get the second effect by using Tension boosters, it is still a nice extra chunk of Damage. Of course, the problem is that Extreme Terrain doesn't distinguish between friend and foe, and one of the most effective ways to lock an enemy in place is to Duel them. This means that this Power is often going to hurt a friend (or yourself, if you're the duelist) on top of causing a nice chunk of collateral Damage. With this final version the flavor felt more natural and less forced, which I rather like.
Jinxed!
I really like the idea of making your enemy's Weapons carry the Overheating/Unreliable drawbacks as a defensive ability. Unfortunately, doing that in place of just boosting up your Defense or punching the enemy harder is a bit weak. Luckily, I had to make three Powers that had very weak base effects but got considerably stronger after Tension 5. Coincidentally, they both hurt much more when Tension is high than when it is low. This all together meant I had to give a Power like this a try. Sadly, while it is conceptually cool, it suffers from a fatal flaw that is obvious in hindsight: It is a Defensive Power that needs you to survive to Tension 5 in order to get full benefit from it. If everyone is packing Limit Engines or spamming Tension-boosting Powers then it is great... Otherwise it comes online a little too late to be reliable, which is what you want from your Defensive Powers. Whoops!
Pierce the Heavens
This one is a straight up copy and paste from the Gurren Lagann post. I feel it is the best of the original bunch (that's why it has the best name!), embodying everything that the mechanic is good at: Punching things very hard. I don't have much else to say about it, it is easily the most straightforward to use and probably the one that makes you feel the most like a badass.
And that's the last of the Character abilities from Chapter 1. You are now entering Robot Land, Population: All The Animes.
Next: General Upgrades.
Gimmick Out.
Jan 7, 2018
BCZ Retrospective X: Boost Powers.
One of the things I wanted to do with BCG's regenerating Energy stat was encouraging people to take a variety of Upgrades and Weapons with different Energy costs that would be used differently each turn. If you had 4 Energy, you could Boost your Beam finisher, use a cheaper Beam and Antigravity or use an Overbooster and leave some open for an active Defense. It is a neat idea but it is almost always more efficient to buy exactly the things you need and use them every turn.
But I wasn't going to give up. In the expansion, I thought of another way to encourage using Energy differently every few turns, in the form of Boost Powers.
Chain Explosion
And we start with a Power that is exceedingly exploitable. Limit Engine gives extra Energy and Tension. Power Conversion transforms Tension into Energy. Organic Barrier lets you stockpile Energy from one Turn to another. Make a Support Build with 8 base Energy. So you have (8 + Tension + 2 per Threshold Levels lost) x 2 Energy at your disposal. Let's say you lose a single Threshold Level in Turn 1 and then stockpile a bunch of Energy during Turn 2 for Turn 3. That's 24 Energy total. This Power does 51 Damage in a Blast (4). Yeah, it's kind of broken. This needs a Damage cap, like say... 10? Or maybe 15? On the plus side, I'm glad that the Chain Explosion Strat is impossible to run into by accident, you have to deliberately be trying to break the game with it, so everyone can agree to just not use it. It is also 100% useless against solo Superbosses, so it is not like it is invincible.
Shoot it Down
This one is a lot more balanced than Chain Explosion, and while it is not necessarily bad, it is the weakest of these three. Maybe it should've been repeatable. At least that would make this something you can build around, though that might make it exploitable by making high-Energy builds with a bunch of Assistants. Or it could keep the current use limitation and cause two Disadvantages per point of Energy spent, which would be less risky. Alternate buff idea: Have you noticed this doesn't say 'an Enemy's Might Test' and instead says 'a Might Test'? This is a typo. You can technically use it on your own stuff, which is largely pointless as all it does is weaken the attack, but it gives me the idea that this could apply to your own attacks in the form of extra advantages instead. The flavor text would still work! Beam Confuse makes about as much sense offensively as it does defensively.
I Have Control
This is extremely powerful, though it is limited by the enemy's team composition which you don't have any control around. At first, you didn't have to pay Tension in Energy to use this Power. The cost was added later to give it a time limit duration and keep it from being an autocast that would happen at the beginning of every appropriate battle. The name isn't the best fit, but there weren't many options for it so it ended up sticking around.
I like these three. One is largely okay, another slightly overpowered and the last one is gamebreakingly powerful. All three make people use Energy differently depending on the circumstances (except Chain Explosion in the broken build, but that's not the most common use of the Power... Or at least I hope it isn't.), so I'm calling them a success. Balance could be a little bit better, but when isn't that the case?
Next: Limit Powers.
Gimmick Out.
But I wasn't going to give up. In the expansion, I thought of another way to encourage using Energy differently every few turns, in the form of Boost Powers.
Chain Explosion
And we start with a Power that is exceedingly exploitable. Limit Engine gives extra Energy and Tension. Power Conversion transforms Tension into Energy. Organic Barrier lets you stockpile Energy from one Turn to another. Make a Support Build with 8 base Energy. So you have (8 + Tension + 2 per Threshold Levels lost) x 2 Energy at your disposal. Let's say you lose a single Threshold Level in Turn 1 and then stockpile a bunch of Energy during Turn 2 for Turn 3. That's 24 Energy total. This Power does 51 Damage in a Blast (4). Yeah, it's kind of broken. This needs a Damage cap, like say... 10? Or maybe 15? On the plus side, I'm glad that the Chain Explosion Strat is impossible to run into by accident, you have to deliberately be trying to break the game with it, so everyone can agree to just not use it. It is also 100% useless against solo Superbosses, so it is not like it is invincible.
Shoot it Down
This one is a lot more balanced than Chain Explosion, and while it is not necessarily bad, it is the weakest of these three. Maybe it should've been repeatable. At least that would make this something you can build around, though that might make it exploitable by making high-Energy builds with a bunch of Assistants. Or it could keep the current use limitation and cause two Disadvantages per point of Energy spent, which would be less risky. Alternate buff idea: Have you noticed this doesn't say 'an Enemy's Might Test' and instead says 'a Might Test'? This is a typo. You can technically use it on your own stuff, which is largely pointless as all it does is weaken the attack, but it gives me the idea that this could apply to your own attacks in the form of extra advantages instead. The flavor text would still work! Beam Confuse makes about as much sense offensively as it does defensively.
I Have Control
This is extremely powerful, though it is limited by the enemy's team composition which you don't have any control around. At first, you didn't have to pay Tension in Energy to use this Power. The cost was added later to give it a time limit duration and keep it from being an autocast that would happen at the beginning of every appropriate battle. The name isn't the best fit, but there weren't many options for it so it ended up sticking around.
I like these three. One is largely okay, another slightly overpowered and the last one is gamebreakingly powerful. All three make people use Energy differently depending on the circumstances (except Chain Explosion in the broken build, but that's not the most common use of the Power... Or at least I hope it isn't.), so I'm calling them a success. Balance could be a little bit better, but when isn't that the case?
Next: Limit Powers.
Gimmick Out.
Dec 31, 2017
BCZ Retrospective IX: Restoration Powers.
Last week I explained how Rush, Restoration, Boost and Limit Powers became their own categories and then went over the three Rush Powers. This week I'm going to cover Restoration Powers.
So! During the BCG Retrospective I explained why and how Restoration Upgrades ended up being weak in comparison to Active Defenses. To fix that issue, Restoration Powers were deliberately created to make them competitive defensive options, being stronger than most Powers but only being usable through underpowered Upgrades. I think it is a clever solution - not actually changing any old rules, but making up new stuff that fixes most of its problems.
I’ll Patch You Up
First things first: This should be a Setup Power. Making it a Reaction is just plain confusing, since it is not like you can use Jury Rig as a Reaction to anything. With that bit of criticism out of the way, this Power is great. Turns out that doubling the amount of healing you can do with Jury Rig was all it needed to go from underpowered to borderline overpowered. It makes healer builds viable by its lonesome, granting them the burst healing they previously lacked. Fortunately, it's still tied to your Restorations (consuming double the usual amount) and, more importantly, your Genre Points. Those factors keep it in check and let us have a kickass Power that feels great to use.
My Last Stand
One problem I ran into when making this Power is that buffing Regenerative through Genre Powers isn't all that useful when you can already use other Powers to heal without using Regenerative first. This meant that I had to be aggressive with the benefits that My Last Stand granted, in order to make the MP and Energy cost worth your while. The result is a Power that reads almost strictly better than I'll Patch You Up. It doubles your healing and gives you an antimaim and stops attribute halving debuffs and you can use it multiple times per battle! In hindsight, I was probably a little too generous, but I've yet to hear from anyone complaining that this Power broke the game for them, so I'm calling it a win.
Who the Hell do you Think I am?
The last of the three was designed at the same time as the G-Charger exclusively as an option for combiners. G-Charger and Reload both have a sidebar right below them explicitly stating that they're too limited for normal units. It represents a power boost that also heals the unit, saving it from certain death while granting it enough extra juice to use its strongest weapon and turn a battle. It is the kind of thing you see combiners like Gurren Lagann and Getter Robo do all the time. It is not amazing but I'd say it gets the job done. More on that when we talk about the G-Charger itself.
Healing abilities work best when they're a big effect with a big cost, making them feel like a decisive tide-turning moment in the battle. I'm not a fan of weak, spammy heals in TRPGs, as I think they draw things out too much and risk turning combat into an attrition slugfest that only ever ends because someone rolls a bunch of critical hits in a row. In a game like BCG, it would mean battles end when Tension gets high enough to overpower all defenses and healing.
These Powers do just that and, as a bonus, they lift up some of the game's weaker abilities to make them competitive. From my perspective, it doesn't get much better than that.
Next: Boost Powers.
Gimmick Out.
So! During the BCG Retrospective I explained why and how Restoration Upgrades ended up being weak in comparison to Active Defenses. To fix that issue, Restoration Powers were deliberately created to make them competitive defensive options, being stronger than most Powers but only being usable through underpowered Upgrades. I think it is a clever solution - not actually changing any old rules, but making up new stuff that fixes most of its problems.
I’ll Patch You Up
First things first: This should be a Setup Power. Making it a Reaction is just plain confusing, since it is not like you can use Jury Rig as a Reaction to anything. With that bit of criticism out of the way, this Power is great. Turns out that doubling the amount of healing you can do with Jury Rig was all it needed to go from underpowered to borderline overpowered. It makes healer builds viable by its lonesome, granting them the burst healing they previously lacked. Fortunately, it's still tied to your Restorations (consuming double the usual amount) and, more importantly, your Genre Points. Those factors keep it in check and let us have a kickass Power that feels great to use.
My Last Stand
One problem I ran into when making this Power is that buffing Regenerative through Genre Powers isn't all that useful when you can already use other Powers to heal without using Regenerative first. This meant that I had to be aggressive with the benefits that My Last Stand granted, in order to make the MP and Energy cost worth your while. The result is a Power that reads almost strictly better than I'll Patch You Up. It doubles your healing and gives you an antimaim and stops attribute halving debuffs and you can use it multiple times per battle! In hindsight, I was probably a little too generous, but I've yet to hear from anyone complaining that this Power broke the game for them, so I'm calling it a win.
Who the Hell do you Think I am?
The last of the three was designed at the same time as the G-Charger exclusively as an option for combiners. G-Charger and Reload both have a sidebar right below them explicitly stating that they're too limited for normal units. It represents a power boost that also heals the unit, saving it from certain death while granting it enough extra juice to use its strongest weapon and turn a battle. It is the kind of thing you see combiners like Gurren Lagann and Getter Robo do all the time. It is not amazing but I'd say it gets the job done. More on that when we talk about the G-Charger itself.
Healing abilities work best when they're a big effect with a big cost, making them feel like a decisive tide-turning moment in the battle. I'm not a fan of weak, spammy heals in TRPGs, as I think they draw things out too much and risk turning combat into an attrition slugfest that only ever ends because someone rolls a bunch of critical hits in a row. In a game like BCG, it would mean battles end when Tension gets high enough to overpower all defenses and healing.
These Powers do just that and, as a bonus, they lift up some of the game's weaker abilities to make them competitive. From my perspective, it doesn't get much better than that.
Next: Boost Powers.
Gimmick Out.
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