cheeplives wrote:
Are you serious? Can't tell with the wink included. The Skill Bundles are basically the same thing as using the Attributes as Prime, I just divorced them from the attributes and gave them more defined roles. So a character with Combat Expertise as a Prime is basically the same as a Strength Prime character but what he can do with it is more rigidly defined. I basically encoded the attribute primes and class abilities into the Skill Bundles and then let you pick and choose the Skill Bundles you wanted. And you can remove the actual "specialites" and just run with "experience level" and basically have a classed based system.
Moreover, I really think you'd like the equipment creation rules, cause you can make just about anything you want with it, from a flashlight to a star destroyer. It scales up with what you're making...
Oh well, to each his own, I guess.
As far as the "blaster being a blaster" there's not much I can say there... you can build in special effects and such to customize things some... I might need to see if I can come up with some rules to re-tooling eqiupment after it's been purchased. Hrrrm...
Skill bundles just don't sound appealing. Especially with the breakdown you've got there. All too often I see in skills systems a set that is just too rigid.
Like ,d20's Diplomacy and Intimidate for example. Now if I describe my character diplomatically intimidating someone I force a call from the Ref as to which skill is being used (or possibly making two rolls). And why couldn't a Ref based character intimidate someone just as well as a Str based? Remember the scene in Raising Arizona where the bounty hunter catches a fly mere inches from the nose of Mr. Arizona? All before Mr. Arizona could blink. Ref based intimidation. Or Bruce Lee spinning nunchaku around too fast for the eye to follow. Not exactly a strength or charisma feat there.
I see a lot of potential there for skill blurring (which leads me to believe there will be redundant skills). Lore and faith. Combat Expertise and athletics. Mechanics and Technology. With a blur in what skills can do in scenarios I (as a Ref) will have to make calls like "Okay, you can wire the keypad to explode using Technology. But if you have had Mechanics you would have a bonus, too." (assuming this is the rogue type endeavor)
Have you ever seen GDW's Dark Conspiracy? A character got to pick from different career paths that each came with skill bundles. It was kind of fun rolling up a farmer who enlisted in the military, got out and became a lawyer. But you still encountered a bit of skill blur. Like, persuade and bluff. When is it that you "persuaded" someone to look the other way and not "bluffed" them?
The quipment part does sound great. I forget which game it was (Paranoia?) where all equipment had the same stats, just some were 0 or n/a. So a blaster rifle did X for damage at Y range, but had a movement of 0 (you carried it) while a blaster drone had all those plus movement and armor rating and so forth. Whatever game had that system I couldn't get enough of it. My team and I made piles of gear. So much we never used it all. Paranoia is also where I "borrowed" the idea of different colored lasers having different effects. Except that there it merely represented the damage scale. Why not have green lasers be "sleep rays" and orange ones be "blister beams" that effect exposed skin?
Also, no equipment is fully 3D (or that bigger word people like to use now, verisimilitude) without rules to break them.
_________________
The Rock says ...
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