 June 7, 2010 - 5:07pm | this sort of goes along with the working tech skills in thread as the idea there was the exploring of a wrecked ship in the desert The regular GM cancelled for our D&D game to night so I'm stepping in with the SF game that has been dragging along. They're about to explore the bottom deck that is partially filled with sand and is now the home of a burrower snake or two that have burrowed in through a rent in the hull. The thing is that we'll be using miniatures and no one has IR so they have to rely on the flashlights from the survival kits. so I've cut some 5 inch by 1 in wide wedge shaped light beams. If a character is holding a flashlight during combat he gets to point it in one direction during a combat turn if the light beam is on the burrower snake I'll put the snake on the battle map. and the only firing penalty will be small target. other wise if a light beam is close I'll put a dice down in the general vincinity and then shooting penalty is small target and soft cover for darkness. Each turn the snake will move away from the light but he's rates as slow so he wont have a tremendous advantage and its a small deck but I'm placing a bunch of sci-fi resin terrain furniture. Things will be complicated with the fact that the snake is poisonous so I'm expecting that the "you can only really see whats in the light beam" factor to seriously complicate this for the players- the players will have to direct the light beams for the robot and the NPC. I've also cut some 3" and 2" long light beams in case we have light beam directed in the direction of a terrain/furniture piece. I'll be sure to take pics for posting and report back on how this technique of combat in darkness goes. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
June 8, 2010 - 9:01am | Ok play tested this idea with the "flashlite beam" with the group last night having burrower snakes that could strike from total darkness made this animal a serious pain for the party. When they attacked I had them stop next to the PC and if for some reason they were not killed on the PC's turn when he swung the flashlight on it and shot or chopped as the case was with individual weapons; I had it flee into darkness only to attack on a following turn. This stretched out a combat with a mated pair of burrower snakes that only had 15 STA far longer than it would have taken in full daylight. I used a Warhammer scatterdice with its arrow to point direction that the snake fled when it left the light beam to give the player an idea where it went though they never managed to put a light beam on it until after it struck partly because they were nervous and playing it cautious with one player keeping his light on the burrow since they could not be sure if there were more snakes. critique- Need to use larger area than the engineering deck of a small pirate craft with more room to manuever would be better. with the minis and the light beams and the sci fi furniture it was too crouded. Players thought it was an interesting idea and one player specifically said the snake was fustrating to deal with. This technique would break down if one person had IR so it might be more suited to Call of Cthulu or SteamPunk or even fantasy genres but again there are numerous elements built into the average fantasy game that will break this. I dont think you'd want to incorporate this with a major boss monster/animal because if the animal is already seriously deadly then the edge of being able to strike from darkness might be too much. Instead it works well with small and easily killed (low STA) animals giving them just enough of an edge to really inconvience the PCs when they be little more of a speed bump otherwise. I think that this would be more ideal with a horror game than sci fi; especially if there was low or limited magic and technology so that the players are forced to rely on just a torch (circle template) or flashlight or bullseye lantern. below are some blurry pic but you can get an idea from them sorry about the quality   I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 June 8, 2010 - 6:45pm | Genius. Per our phone call, BETTER PICS! And make the setup as you suggested, larger area. I wonder if maptool has a flashlight setting? (I know it does fog of war) Jedion, what's your home on the Internet? twitter, facebook, blog, other? I'm pimp'in this. |
June 8, 2010 - 8:39pm | Genius. Per our phone call, BETTER PICS! And make the setup as you suggested, larger area. I wonder if maptool has a flashlight setting? (I know it does fog of war) Jedion, what's your home on the Internet? twitter, facebook, blog, other? I'm pimp'in this. Hah I participate in facebook but I'm not to sweet on it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
