Do you think six bullets is more dangerous than 3d10+20 with -8 AP, plus setting people on fire for an additional 2d10 per round?

It's pesky, that's certainly true. I've found the best way to balance out combat-overpowered players is to write your story in such a way that it necessitates a LOT of egocasting. Give them one or two good firefights at home, then send them to re-sleeve half way across the system where it's legitimately hard to get military-grade ordnance and exotic morphs. That's what I do at least. Every two or three games, my players are reset to using un-modded exalts with light pistols. They get cred or rep for selling their old gear before they egocast, but replacing a plasma rifle or a rare morph is just too much of a black-market headache for my players to do every mission. A few other ideas to keep in mind. 1. Regardless of how many limbs a character has, don't let them use multiple Two-handed weapons. 2. An octomorph needs some of its legs for standing. You can judge for yourself, but somewhere between 2-5 of those limbs can't reasonably be holding weapons. 3. If you force your players to go through security checkpoints to get to an objective, they'll need to acquire weapons on the spot. It's less likely that a combat heavy character will have the odds stacked so far in his favor. 4. You can give the other players Bots to control, until they've got a rate of fire that's up there with what the octomorph can dish out.

He can't use 3 pistols with no penalties. He paid a penalty of 20cp to do what he's doing.

Warning: Off topic The hollow-points are trully silly in EP, aren't they? I mean, you take a -2 to AP, but an average of +5.5 to damage. Its a net gain for penetration! Anyway, I double armor vs. hollow points in my house rules. They're still great if you get an armor penetrating shot.

This could be a whole long rant about bullet types and effects. But I appreciate that each different round doesn't come with its own special case rule to bog down combat.

I thought it was clarified somewhere that plasma rifles don't get the benefits of sweeping/concentrated fire? 'Cuz I remember getting stoked about the potential there until it was pointed out that wasn't applicable to plasma. Unless I'm just remembering things wrong again, which is bloody likely.

I'm the GM for my players and one player has a steel morph with an internal weapons mount in his arm of a plasma rifle. So it gets mileage. But when I do weapons legality I clamp down on the high splash damage weapons first. So shredders and seekers first. Then heavy full auto guns. Then beam weapons. And then light kinetics. I don't really hammer down hard on the plasma rifle because the player wanted it and spent 20 CP to have it. As for the 3 or 4 or even 6 pistol Octomorph I figure if a player wants to spend the CP why should I punish him. It's like when building a super hacker character who tries to hack opponents tacnets, smartlinks and safeties. But as for the 3 pistol or SMG guys I'd just counter with more firepower being sent their way. But I tend to balance my fights based on fire power rather then bodies. So if in an extreme case 4 PCs armed with 10 pistols got into a gunfight. I'd eyeball a challenge at 8 one pistol guys. But when one PC goes down they'd be loosing 20-30% of their firepower where as the opponents would be losing 12.5% per loss. I think my long rambling point is that instead of nerfing specific pieces of gear or combinations of gear traits and morphs I just let it go and let things balance out on my end. Another thing is that my players have vastly different skills. So while there is one kill-bot with the Mega Man arm and 30+ armor. The other 3 PCs on the battlefield are 10-15 armor and carry "light" guns. Course my previous full auto pistol fact of 6d10+2ish damage kind of makes a very low differentiation between light and heavy on the first round of combat. But having to reload when most combats last 2-3 initiative passes is a serious drawback in a combat system where Initiative is the most important factor to survival.

For a GM this really isn't a problem of a deadly character killing opponents easily. Nerfing multiple wielding or speed boosting ware is, (in my opinion), a lazy way out for a GM 1. More bodies is better than more guns. a single character with 4 actions and 6 attacks per action is vastly inferior to 6 NPC's with 1 action and 2 attacks per action. Why? Compare the Durability of each side of the equation. Consider also the penalty for shooting at multiple opponents. 2. Shooting people in the EP setting has *extremely* limited utility. EP is not a setting that rewards 'hack n slash' in any way. The player that sinks so many resources into multiple wielding will be a 'One-Trick-Pony' and, honestly, how many scenarios can you write in this setting where that character's strengths will realistically solve a problem that might earn Rez points? The real problem is Face time. A player with 12 attack rolls per Action Phase is a Fucking Pain IN the ASS at the game table. Resolving all of those attacks takes time that can be spent telling the story and allowing other players with more realistic characters to do their jobs. [u]Demand[/u] that the player of that character have his shit together and the play skills to do what he want's to do without monopolizing table time. In game time, the gun bunny's actions don't take anymore time than any other character's. That should also be the case with the player's actions. Make sure that player understands that he's asking for an increased amount of response from the GM during battles and must do everything in his power to ensure that play flows quickly and smoothly so other players get a turn. Finaly; (in my opinion) if you're going to nerf anything you'd do best to nerf the Octomorph. Tentacles wielding pistols designed for hands with no penalty is a fuqtard concept. Your octomorph is going to need to own prints for modified hardware and good luck getting those printed on a public fabber in all but the most liberal habitats. Your octomorph is also going to need to spend lots of points on G-rep and networking. I admit, as presented, I hate the octomorph and uplifts in general but my point is; instead of penalizing any character concept that might use tools that the octomorph makes St0pid, just penalize the St0pid concept. Remember kids; the there's only one right way to play an octomorph in EP. Tentacle Hentai. "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle."

After a few games it became pretty clear to our group that kinetic weapons were really a lot better than most other things. I think the reason for this is pretty obvious: burst fire and fully automatic fire add directly onto damage, which mean that rate of fire means more than almost anything else. Sure, you could take a plasma gun, but if you actually want to deal a lot of damage, just shoot someone with a full auto kinetic weapon. Hard to come up with a change that isn't very complicated and doesn't end up with you rolling damage dice loads of times. Perhaps some sort of system robbed from Dark Heresy where weapons have rates of fire, you can fire fully automatic or in a burst, and get more hits based on how well you roll past a base success? Regardless, the straight up damage bonus seems a bit clumsy to me.

Solar wrote:

After a few games it became pretty clear to our group that kinetic weapons were really a lot better than most other things. I think the reason for this is pretty obvious: burst fire and fully automatic fire add directly onto damage, which mean that rate of fire means more than almost anything else. Sure, you could take a plasma gun, but if you actually want to deal a lot of damage, just shoot someone with a full auto kinetic weapon. Hard to come up with a change that isn't very complicated and doesn't end up with you rolling damage dice loads of times. Perhaps some sort of system robbed from Dark Heresy where weapons have rates of fire, you can fire fully automatic or in a burst, and get more hits based on how well you roll past a base success? Regardless, the straight up damage bonus seems a bit clumsy to me.

I have been considering having a number of rounds per 3 seconds rating but since a modern M-16 is throttled to 42.5 rounds every 3 seconds on Full Auto I figured that the guns of Eclipse Phase would have no problem dumping out 40 rounds in 3 seconds which is coincidentally the max a Speed 4 character can dump from a single gun.

I'd say take a die out of the pistol's base damages but then punches are doing more damage then pistols. And the rationale is that since modern highly engineered weapons are nearly recoil-less (like that drum fed auto shotgun on future weapons) that all guns made in a fabber should be equally as engineered. However there is nothing wrong with giving a -5 to bursts and -10 to FA for weapons that are poorly designed. I think what we really need is a list of crappy weapon design traits from those people who hacked together weapons on the side.

I've been giving this issue some thought occasionally in regards to my own game and I've pretty much fallen back on the availability of weapons AND limiting specific firing modes. SA weapons are easily acquired through black market and legal channels, but burst and full auto will require a large favor, military permits, or a task action with an armorer check to make modifications. Keep in mind my game has been strictly inner system, so unrestricted fabber access is not something I have to worry about at the moment.

NewtonPulsifer wrote:

So honestly the black market weapons are all going to be FA if thats what the buyers want. You're already on the hook for the crime, so why bother half-assing it?

Ha, I had not thought of it this way. This makes sense! I am going to have to come up with better reasoning to limit things. Also, the bit about garage gun building, I'd definitely allow a player with the appropriate skills and materials/tools to create weapons, so I'm not making it impossible.

Well lets look at what the rules actually say in case we are just all misinterpreting them [code]AMBIDEXTROUS Cost: 10 CP The character can use and manipulate objects equally well with both hands (they do not suffer the off-hand modifier, as noted under Wielding Two or More Weapons, p. 206). If the character has other prehensile limbs (feet, tail, tentacles, etc.), this trait may be applied to a limb other than the hand. This trait may be taken multiple times for multiple limbs. WIELDING TWO OR MORE WEAPONS It is possible for a character to wield two weapons in combat or even more if they are an octomorph or multi-limbed synthmorph. In this case, each weapon that is held in an off-hand suffers a –20 off-hand weapon modifier. This modifier may be offset with the Ambidextrous trait (p. 145). EXTRA RANGED WEAPONS Similarly, an attacker can wield a pistol in each hand for ranged combat, or larger weapons if they have more limbs (an eight-limbed octomorph, for example, could conceivably hold four assault rifles). These weapons may all be fired at once towards the same target. In this case, each weapon is handled as a separate attack, with each off-hand weapon suffering a cumulative off-hand weapon modifier (no modifier for the first attack, –20 for the second, –40 for the third, and –60 for the fourth), offset by the Ambidextrous trait (p. 145) as usual. [/code] One thing that should be noted is that for an octomorph opening up with [b]Four[/b] Assault Rifles costs an extra 30 CP. Opening up with [b]Eight[/B] Pistols with cost an extra 70CP. Also Ambidexterity isn't something that is normally picked up during play. Even with Rez expenditure I'd insist on some psychosurgery or deep simulspace training and probably require a WIL*3 test to avoid stress from the fundamental change to the deep brain rewiring. Or even give PTSD that needs to be overcome because of the strain of forced ambidexterity training. However the Octomorph super gunner example or Reaper or Biomorph with extra cyber limbs all require special bodies to take advantage of their bonuses so they are betting CP on ambidexterity versus the availability of their chosen morphs and implants. I think we are ignoring the effects of pistol clips/magazine sizes on play, especially when Speed boosts are taken into consideration. A player may build a character that is horrifically deadly on the first action phase of the first turn of combat. Able to unleash 3d10+4 twice per gun for six bullets from a heavy pistol. However on their second action they only have 4 bullets to work with and if they have a third action they might have been wise to have used SA mode for their two shots per action. My point is that there is a trade off for players to choose from. And while a hyper effective killbot character is possible. It will require the majority of the 300 spend on anything CP that a character has. So they may find themselves over specialized when compared to a player who decides to have more then 1 or 3 points of Moxie and some extra skills at 60 instead of 40 and cheaper morph/implant options. And don't forget the social and legal repercussions that come from being a known kill-bot not to mention being on everyone's target first list in combat. Another thought is that recently I've been watching a lot of Leverage. Which has characters that have really been made with a player group mindset in mind. And a large part of their story drama revolves around characters being out of their preferred situation and learning how to have more then one function. A story structure that is easy to use when faced with a group of players with focused and specialized characters.

When I run games, I caution players that combat will not necessarily feature in every session, and may very well be rare in some cases. That said, I don't limit or nerf anything. I've had several players want to remake characters when they realized they were useless in a conversation. If anything the combat monster is the [i]least[/i] worrisome powergamer style in EP. What you really want to look out for is the social monstrosity with 90 Persuasion, able to call in Major favors from three different factions able to convince the head of a hypercorp that the [i]safest[/i] way to store all their assets is by letting him take care of it. Maxed out Persuasion/Deception/Rep can accomplish truly ridiculous feats. It's also all a feature of the ego and is harder to take away than equipment/morphs. By comparison all you have to do handle a combat munchkin is to throw something big at him every once in a while.

Glenstryder wrote:

I know there are other important things in combat other than pure power, but it seems to me that it's really imbalanced and can add a lot of frustration to some characters that didn't take the ambidextrous trait.

I do not think that is imbalanced at all. Given the overall game setting, I think that is doing something very right (or at least interesting). There is a minor detail that keeps getting missed in discussions like this: NPCs can do the same thing. Or better. Or just different. Try throwing a tactical security squad at the character in question. The squad is comprised of several forks of the same security officer that fought through the Fall and lived. Each is sleeved in a flexbot and all are connected with a private tacnet, so they can coordinate with each other in realtime. They are all the same person, essentially, so they have worked out unique small unit tactics that they employ in the field. Try a combat hacker who specializes in AR illusions (remember Batou in [u]Ghost In the Shell: Innocence[/u]?) or infiltrating tactical networks to subvert situational awareness. Try the PMC Eight Trigrams, which trains its field personnel in a variant of fieldrunning (or capoeira) that incorporates firearms and issues muses that have gunnery skillsofts. Or a mercenary Neo-octopode that studied bujinkan before the Fall. Can the PCs trust the fabbers (or manufacturers) they got their kit from? What if the processors in some of them were subverted while on the assembly line (or just after) and backdoored? PCs are nice, but they are not the only special, shiny snowflakes in Eclipse Phase. If they had the right combination of traits to survive the Fall (not necessarily in one piece), then so did most of the other characters in the setting... be just as devious and creative as your players can be when running combat scenes.

Smokeskin wrote:

Erenthia wrote:

What you really want to look out for is the social monstrosity with 90 Persuasion, able to call in Major favors from three different factions able to convince the head of a hypercorp that the [i]safest[/i] way to store all their assets is by letting him take care of it. Maxed out Persuasion/Deception/Rep can accomplish truly ridiculous feats. It's also all a feature of the ego and is harder to take away than equipment/morphs.

Don't play it like that. Persuasion is only skill, and that will take you only so far. A combat monster with only a rifle won't take out a destroyer, and a social engineer without an EXTREMELY strong bargaining position won't get the better of a hypercorp CEO.

The problem is that with high Rep (or even just high Deception) the player is in a position to [i]have[/i] extremely strong bargaining positions. Further, 90 in any skill is beyond anything a normal human could ever reach. With 90 Deception I could probably convince you that your entire life is a dream. That's not to say that this can't be handled (indeed it's handled the same way you handle combat monsters - equally monstrous NPCs). The point is that there's nothing [i]special[/i] about a combat monster. You can also have a Tech monster who can initiate the singularity given nothing but a protean swarm. Players in Eclipse Phase should by all rights be very power. Nerfing just changes EP into something it isn't.

I actually wrote up a new set of weapon systems in EP which are what I use in my games, as well as tinkering with auto and burst fire. I'll post them in homebrew and if anyone's interested they can take a look.

Decimator wrote:

Castlereagh wrote:

Then again, I come from that old camp of GMs who judges much of the likelyhood of a diplomancer's success from the actual words that the player uses.

Do you base their success in combat by their proficiency at a firing range?

I agree, it shouldn't be based on player eloquence. However, like players have to come up with a good combat strategy, they should come up with a good negotiation strategy or con scheme to succeed.