I have a similar question, so rather than clutter up the board with repetitive threads I thought I'd add to the end of this one. New GM, running EP for the first time (like OP). I generally have a feel for the combat and how it will run with our group. It will essentially be fast and loose, no maps or minis with huge swathes of cinematic glory (simplified or narrative modifiers, p116 come to mind). This approach fits the group. So, everything runs fine in my head until the combat gets to AP and DV stats for armour and weapons. I understand the process, and how it allows for a fine grained differentiation between armour, morphs and weapon types. However, I cannot grasp how this information can be weaved into a game without explicitly "breaking the 4th wall" and have all concerned start grumbling over who has a particular statistic and what it all means. The example cited on p192 of the EP core rule book helps clarify the exact nature of a combat encounter, but I can only imagine the round playing out in a very explicit non-narrative fashion with players and GMs being fully aware of who has what equipment etc. Is there an approach that can be used that does not screw up the combat rules? Can the armour penetration stat from weapons be 'forgotten about' so that the protagonists (excuse the terminology here): roll initiative, roll to hit/defend, roll damage and apply damage/wounds in its simplest form? Are there any examples of tips that make the DV issue I have seem less daunting?

Decivre wrote:

Don't be afraid to use damage averages (in parentheses on each weapons info section). While it does oversimplify the game for some, it also speeds up the flow of play, because you cut what was two rolls (attack roll then damage roll) down to one (attack roll, use average damage). From there, our group actually did come up with a way to simplify combat. On your sheet where it says "damage" for weapons, you need to put two different values separated by a slash: on the left you'll have the average damage for the attack, and on the right you'll have the average damage minus it's armor pierce (armor pierce is usually a negative, and since subtracting a negative is the same as adding, you'll usually be adding in this case). For instance, a sniper rifle's damage will be listed as 21/33 (-12 armor pierce, so I added 12), while a light pistol with hollow point rounds will be listed as 16/14 (+2 armor pierce, so I subtracted 2). From there, whenever you successfully attack, simply compare the number on the left to the number on the right minus the target's armor. Whichever one is lowest is the final damage. The exception to this is when you bypass armor, or shoot an unarmored target; in those cases simply use the left value.

That is genius. I am slightly over tired, but a penny has dropped in my head. I have been looking at how other percentile systems have dealt with combat, and I have been able to note some similarities. Which is helpful for moving the group onto EP as a system. Coupling it with this single piece of advice has made all the difference. Thank you!

Quincey Forder wrote:

if the figure on the right side of the dash (33 in the exemple) is the average MINUS the armor, how come it's 21 higher than the left figure, the "raw" damage average? A question of my own: are the damages cumulative and lasting? or are they "reset" after each round/fight scene ?

Simple: because armor pierce is usually represented as a negative number. What happens when you subtract a negative? The average damage for the weapon in question was 21, and the armor pierce is -12. By subtracting the value, you actually add, creating a score of 21/33. This is actually intentional for how this damage system works: You can never do more damage than the left value (as it is the actual damage your weapon causes), but the right value is used when comparing to armor for figuring out damage. However, if you happen to use weapons that have positive armor pierce, as one type of special ammunition has, then your number on the left will be smaller. In this case, use the smaller number in every instance [i]other than when hitting an unarmored target[/i].

Quincey Forder wrote:

can you give a practical exemple, please? that's how I learn best, by getting grit and dirty about thing, see how it works About my question on dammages lasting or not?

Sure. This is Bob. Bob has two weapons he'll be using in this demonstration: a standard sniper rifle (2d10+10 damage, -12 AP: 21/33) and a light pistol with hollow-point rounds (3d10 damage, +2 AP: 16/14). He's being attacked by two fast-moving exsurgent zombies: one has very heavy armor (18 ballistic armor) while the other has very little armor (1 ballistic armor). He will now proceed to fire at each of them from each of his weapons before a much larger swarm of exsurgent zombies encroaches on his position and begins to enact horrors upon his face and genitals. First, he fires his sniper rifle at the heavily armored zombie and hits. He takes the right value, his armor pierce value (33), and subtracts the zombie's armor (18). He comes up with 15 (33-18=15) total damage. Since 15 is not greater than the left value (21), he does the full amount of damage, dealing a fairly devastating 15 damage to the heavily armored zombie. Next, he fires twice at the lightly armored zombie and hits. He again takes the armor pierce value (33) and subtracts the zombies armor (1), for a total of 32 damage. However, the left value is only 21, so he cannot do more than 21 damage in any given attack. He therefore only does 21 damage with the first shot. However, the second shot had an excellent success, which grants a +5 bonus to damage. The initial damage is still reduced from 32 to 21, but the bonus damage is still added and unaffected, so he does a total of 26 damage with the second shot. Uh oh! Bob ran out of sniper rifle ammo. He switches to his light pistol instead and fires at the heavily armored zombie, scoring a critical hit (though with a very low MoS). This means that his attack counts as if it is going against an unarmored target, and the zombie has an armor value of 0 to the attack. His pistol does 16 damage straight, as any attack against an unarmored target deals the left damage value. Next, he fires on the lightly armored zombie and scores a hit. He takes the right value (a 14, lower than the 16 because of his hollow-point rounds) and subtracts the zombie's armor (1). The end value is 13, and he deals it all because the value is not higher than the left value. "I hope that helps", says Bob as the armored zombie tears his arm off, and he emergency farcasts off location just as a beacon goes out to a nearby erasure squad. As for your question, we do healing and recovery normally, using average rates to decide how much a person heals based on the standard intervals. Page 208 has the charts, and the average rates are in parentheses as always.

Quincey Forder wrote:

I see. I think it'll be faster to just throw the dies and remove the armor and apply the AP the exemple was really helpful. thanks!

I run three different campaigns, and of them only one group utilizes this system. It isn't going to be for everyone, and is only really functional for groups who just want much faster combat with less dice rolling. My other groups would never use it, and one of them would probably say it was too "gamist". I only offered it as an option for someone asking to have an option. It will suit some, and definitely not others.

Quincey Forder wrote:

Too gamist in a role playing GAME, that's pretty rich! lol I'll offer the same curtesy to my players, and see which they prefer. I'm already planning to make them the offer I mentioned in the "Not the metaplot!" thread, so one more offer won't hurt. Can you tell me (in mp if needed) about your campaign? I like to hear stuff like that and AP from other GMs I've reread the health rule over the weekend, and now I get them much better. Not a good idea to read a new game while sick, you miss a lot of important details question, have you used hacking in combat scene yet? if so, how did it work?

To be fair, some RPGs are made with Gamism in mind. The Munchkin RPG, and certain playstyles of Paranoia are the ones that come immediately to mind. However, in this case it's just a cheap shot inferring hate for some mechanic that somebody doesn't like. It happens, and as somebody who volunteers at a game shop I hear it all the time about virtually every game. Of the three campaigns I run, one is a pick-up game that I run at the shop for anyone to jump into. I have about 3 regulars, and most other players come when they can. It's a standard campaign where the players are Firewall agents, and I often run the two existing adventures and story hooks I find on these boards. We use standard rules in that one (mainly because it's to promote the game, so I generally let people play with standard rules so they aren't freaked by the differences when they purchase the core book). The second one is an action-based game, largely inspired by Shadowrun. In it, the players are for-hire mercenaries that basically do whatever they are paid to do. This is the game where we use average damage calculations, and it serves largely to speed up the numerous combat situations that the players run into. This is the one where the meatiest combat occurs, and I have some info from the combat hacker in this group that might help you later in this post. The third one is a cerebral setting where three people are trapped within what has been revealed to be a complex simulspace, where they are put through mind grueling tests of survival and psychological fortitude. It is heavily inspired by books like [i]I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream[/i], and shows like [i]The Prisoner[/i]. People who have been playing my campaigns for a while call this one my "first grimdark campaign", and it's become rather popular for people to come and watch even if its my smallest playgroup. Especially fun is the fact that simulated realities do not need to play by the rules of true reality, so the players have been thrust into scenarios where they must deal with fantastic organisms and devices , travel in impossible locations, and even fend with alternative physics (like a version of Earth where gravity is inverted, and stepping outside means being flung into the reaches of space). As for hacking, I have seen it become very useful in combat, especially once people get a hang of the setting. In many ways it has the same problems as hacking in Shadowrun; you really have to get to know it before you can really make a call on how bad or useful it can be. Now for advice, I talked to the resident combat hacker in one of my groups, and he gave me some advice to pass onto you along with some advice I already have, and that should help to make combat hacking more effective in your group: [list][*]With software, go for quality; with hardware, go for quantity: This adage is just as true in Eclipse Phase as it is in real life: parallel processing is king. With software, you only need a single copy in order to get as much use out of it as possible. Your best bet is to get the best quality software, either by purchasing it or coding it yourself, and loading it to every computer you ever use. On the other hand, hardware has to be manufactured, and even with fabrication that puts limitations. Six standard ectos are better than a single top-of-the-line ecto anyday. To that end, now that computers are fairly small, you should be carrying more ectos than a whore carries condoms... stock up on them. 1 set of every program suite in the game, and 1 Kaos AI can be ran on every ecto you purchase, essentially giving you a hacker army to help you out. Since it takes you a full minute to brute force a single system, you're better off having an army do that part for you, breaking into the systems of every enemy they can, then take over hacking once they've broken in. [*]Box a fighter, fight a boxer: Your average soldier can put a bullet into anything they're ordered to, but fuck if they'll know what to do if a hacker starts breaching their system. In that same vein, a hacker might be able to trade metaphorical blows with any codeslinger, but he's probably not going to fare well against a veteran combatant in an actual gunfight. Take this to heart and make your enemies fight outside of their element; have the guys with guns pump a few rounds into an enemy hacker, while you use the mesh to give his security detail digital hell. [*]AR is your friend and enemy: while screwing with someone's software or crashing their system will put a hacker in a pickle, it's not bound to do much to someone slinging a gun... they'll lose the advantages that tactical software provides, but still have all their skills and ammo. However, augmented reality provides a whole new field through which hackers can mess with someone: AR illusions. Make your opponents think they are fighting more people than they actually are, drop illusory grenades on their location to force them out of cover, and just generally make their senses betray them. Every round they waste shooting a phantom is one less round they can put in your torso, and that's always a good thing.[/list]

Quincey Forder wrote:

thanks for the info! love the third campaign, I have something of that vein in mind Somewhere between Shutter Island and the Doctor Who episode Quiet In The Librairy (and also that season 6 episode of Smallville, when one of the Phantom Zone Wraith trapped Clark in his mind illusion of an asylum) on hacking, you actually answered a question i was about to ask; can a player character do a basilisk hack what I have in mind is something akin to the Rowling Virus used in Innenin that nearly killed a younger Takeshi Kovacs. Deep bass like infrasounds touch sensory overload and vivid daydreaming of crawling insect under the skin resulting resultin in...well you get the picture. AR version of the german horror low budged flick "Tears of Kali". pure horror now, can ecto take the form of a tatoo? nanochips in the ink of the tatoo, glowing when in use

Yeah, the third campaign is rather fun. Most interesting is the fact that the group has a psychologist who treats their minds when they aren't being put in some horrible test... but she's unfortunately starting to go insane with no one left to treat her. One of the other characters is rushing to find a means to learn psychotherapy as a means to help her, but he may not make it in time to do anything. Current basilisk hack technology is only created by exsurgents, so short of recording them there's really no way to produce them. Even if you did record them, however, all you'd do is spread the exsurgent virus infection... which is anything but productive. :D As for ecto tattoos, they are not quite possible. An ecto is the opposite of mesh inserts; whereas mesh inserts are computers implanted in the body, ectos are external computers that you carry with you (like cell phones today). They are very small (it's often shaped like jewelry, and can be as small as a bracelet) and easily portable, but not a part of your body. The advantage is that unlike mesh inserts, you can carry them to whatever morph you happen to jump into. It's more economical to purchase multiple ectos and swap them from body to body than to purchase a horde of mesh inserts for every body you enter.

Quincey Forder wrote:

now, that's weird, I could have sworn I posted a reply to this is there a way for transhuman hacker to emulate the effect of a Basilisk hack? There is a good exemple of ectos in Appleseed Ex Machina, and what looks like an exsurgent attack too! I though about something, today if a Sentinel loose his or her marbles during a combat, can his Muse continue the fight (provided that the Sentinel has implants (would a Neurachem suffice?), or is he or she a goner and the poor Muse can do anything to save him or her?

I already answered the first one in my last post: basilisk hack technology is outside of human means right now, so currently the only way to reproduce a basilisk hack is to record one... but those are all designed by Exsurgents, and likely to spread the virus. Take of that what you will. As for the second one, it depends. One of my players uses a synth with a ghostrider module, where he rides within the ghostrider module while his muse runs the synth itself. At any time, he has the ability to jam his synth and take over, but under most circumstances his muse is in full control. In such a scenario, the muse can very much continue to fight (though you will need something other than a stock muse... since they don't have combat skills). You could also do so if you had a puppet sock and gave your muse access to it (which would allow your muse to pilot your body after you drop). Remember that the first option is only viable if you have a cyberbrain installed, the latter only if you have a puppet sock.