In one of the adventure PDFs (Chain Reaction, I believe), I have seen a character with Initiative 1d10 + 12, which can potentially get to 22, which is greater than 20, so a straight subtraction formula doesn't always work (you can always imagine more Advantages and bonuses and stuff that will raise the roll above the artificial threshold you subtract from). I would prefer the "stagger characters by 1 tick in Initiative order" approach, because: - It requires less arithmetic; and - Combined with the scheduling system, it gives an immediate advantage to the high-speed characters, which they should get even if they lose the initiative roll. In my scheduling system the Initiative roll isn't modified by speed. So you can get a normal-speed character who takes their [i]first[/i] action before a high-speed character... but then the high-speed character takes their [i]second[/i] action before the normal-speed character can take theirs... and then they take one action each until the 20% or 40% efficiency boost kicks in again and the high-speed character takes another bonus action. I think that's the most balanced situation, because as a high-speed character you know you have an average advantage, and as a normal-speed character you know that you can still do something if you're lucky with the Initiative roll. But this is just my opinion. Also, you have to balance it carefully with the number of ticks between actions. The problem is that if you have very many characters acting in the combat (say, 13 characters), you might end up in a situation where the last character in Initiative order hasn't even taken their first action when the fastest character takes their second one! Of course combat situations with that many characters should be avoided, or handled differently... I'm not too familiar with the Exalted system but from what Skimble is describing it should be quite similar.

If you're lazy you could just say that each extra speed action in combat is delegated to the equivalent of half an aim action and half a full defense dodge action (each normally giving +30 in the game system). So each speed increase gives a flat +15 aiming bonus and +15 fray bonus. EDIT: And thats it, no extra actual attack rolls. EDIT2: This implies you could use freerunning instead of fray if you had a speed of 2 if you wished. I'm okay with that (and SOM instead of REF is an possible optimization advantage route for high speed characters)

I'm a pretty hardcore simulationist and I think genius (reasoning, musical, kinesthetic, or otherwise) is far more about inborn aptitude than skill. Boot camp is like 13 weeks. Sniper school is 5 weeks. My wife pulled an Olympic level of trap shooting very quickly - we're talking after maybe 500 shells fired total over a period of about 5 weeks. Eclipse Phase doesn't model that kind of thing remotely realistically. Most "skill based" RPGs don't for that matter.

Obviously I can't speak to intellectual genius (ironically I have to think about it every time I try to spell that word.) I'm not being argumentative... well, I am about this point. Which sniper school is 5 weeks? I know the US Marine's is 8 weeks followed by advance courses and a lead course if you go on... (also, out of curiosity, you are from the US right, Newton?) Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is that from my perspective EP does a fair job of modeling both those situations you mention. In the case of basic vs. sniper school--in EP terms--a Marine spends 13 weeks learning all of the dozen active and knowledge skills that are needed to be a Marine then spends 8 weeks getting a specialization to the Kinetics skill in the M40 and the M82. As well as learning the stealth skill with a camouflage specialization. In the case of your wife being an olympic level shooter I was going to make a case about high initial aptitude with skill traits and specializations and what not but it occurred to me that your Lady has MAD Moxie. Sounds to me like you better just be walkin the line bro. Cause it sounds like she never looses when she doesn't want to. :D I don't think that trap shooting is a very good example of what the speed mechanic represents, since it really only requires the use of half of one compelx action. When I say that training is important to speed I have in mind complex activities like Action Pistol shooting, any combat sport, football (or rugby), and basketball. Activities that require; Observation, Perception, Planning, Initiation of a complex set of moves, and Reaction based on results at a very fast pace. People with more training will be faster than people with less and natural ability really only makes a difference between equally skilled competitors at the high and low ends of the spectrum.

OneTrikPony wrote:

I'm not being argumentative... well, I am about this point. Which sniper school is 5 weeks? I know the US Marine's is 8 weeks followed by advance courses and a lead course if you go on...

US Army. You're right that the Marines are more rigorous.

OneTrikPony wrote:

(also, out of curiosity, you are from the US right, Newton?)

Yup

OneTrikpony wrote:

Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is that from my perspective EP does a fair job of modeling both those situations you mention. In the case of basic vs. sniper school--in EP terms--a Marine spends 13 weeks learning all of the dozen active and knowledge skills that are needed to be a Marine then spends 8 weeks getting a specialization to the Kinetics skill in the M40 and the M82. As well as learning the stealth skill with a camouflage specialization.

I definitely wasn't trying to pick on Eclipse Phase in particular, which is way better than many alternatives.

OneTrikPony wrote:

In the case of your wife being an olympic level shooter I was going to make a case about high initial aptitude with skill traits and specializations and what not but it occurred to me that your Lady has MAD Moxie. Sounds to me like you better just be walkin the line bro. Cause it sounds like she never looses when she doesn't want to. :D

Admittedly, she's kind of a freak of nature. For example, she pulled less than a second less than the days best time when driving on a go-kart course for the first time. The day's best time was set by an employee of 10+ years that drives that track multiple times every day they're there. And you know that trick where you drop a dollar and the other person tries to catch it? Looks easy but nobody can do it? She can catch it. And she's also a great dancer and can hoola hoop like mad, but is the kind of person who will *always* hit the corner of the bed with her shin if it is possible.

OneTrikPony wrote:

I don't think that trap shooting is a very good example of what the speed mechanic represents, since it really only requires the use of half of one compelx action.

Very fair point.

OneTrikPony wrote:

When I say that training is important to speed I have in mind complex activities like Action Pistol shooting, any combat sport, football (or rugby), and basketball. Activities that require; Observation, Perception, Planning, Initiation of a complex set of moves, and Reaction based on results at a very fast pace. People with more training will be faster than people with less and natural ability really only makes a difference between equally skilled competitors at the high and low ends of the spectrum.

True, and once again my wife probably isn't a fair data point :)

Speed is unbalanced. Therefore it is bad and should be removed. You might object. Say that reality isn't balanced. That knives aren't balanced to guns, which aren't balanced to assault rifles - why then should Speed be balanced? Well, perhaps no balance is needed in the [i]setting[/i]. Real life certainly isn't balanced, and many games allow characters of different levels of power to be played. Games with levels, like [i]Dungeons & Dragons[/i], certainly do; a 5th-level character and a 1st-level character have different levels of power, and are both playable. But in terms of [i]being a game[/i], things like "levels" or "starting CP" are supposed to provide a framework, and boundaries, for power levels. To generalize, [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw]nobody wants to play the BMX Bandit when other people get to play the Angel Summoner[/url], and from the same pool of character generation points, you don't want a novice player to end up making Captain Metropolis when another player makes Dr Manhattan. In [i]Dungeons & Dragons[/i], Level One characters aren't meant to play alongside Level Twenty characters. In [i]Exalted[/i], Solars aren't mean to play alongside Dragon-Blooded. A friend of mine, who I'm mostly copying all I'm writing here from, put it thusly: "In any Metal Gear game, souped-up cyborg PCs like Raiden would presumably be kept separate, in character creation, from PCs like Solid Snake, or else have their augmentations made so costly that only high-powered PCs could play them, giving non-cyborgs a colossal number of points to sink into social interaction, mental skills, or owning a nuclear mecha." Speed is a particularly bad type of unbalance, therefore it should be removed. It's the kind of unbalance that, unless you're an experienced player, can suddenly come out of nowhere and make you realize that you thought you were making Angel Summoner, but you were actually making the BMX Bandit. The reason for this is simple and twofold: [list] [*]There is not a sidebar in the game that says "Speed if the dominant stat in combat, so if you want to fight against anyone competent, you need to max out Speed." [*]Morphs that are expected to be in combat do not have Speed augmentations. I'm thinking specifically of the Olympian and Ghost, which are the kind of morphs that can be expected to enter into combat on a regular basis, be it because you're a bodyguard, or because your infiltration went awry. [/list] And, actually, to add a third and fourth reason: [list] [*] The Fury and Reaper don't come default with Speed 4, despite being top-of-the-line combat morphs. [*] TITANs and Exurgents don't have Speed 4. [/list] A real and pressing issue with the way Speed works with regards to its low cost, high versatility, and low importance is that you can [i]expect[/i] a player to decide to build a powerful soldier, and find that her Fury is being shot to a Swiss cheese by an drug-addicted asynch hacker sleeved in an flat, because the asynch player in the flat took an addiction to Kick and Unconscious Lead for flavour reasons. And, from a meta-social perspective, a character with Speed 2 will take up twice as much time at the table as a character with Speed 1. A character with Speed 4 may take as much time to resolve in combat as the [i]entire rest of the party[/i]. Ah, but the "party face" or the "party scientist" may take time to resolve during social or scientific situations, you might object! And if social situations and science were given the same mechanical and narrative weight that combat was, this would be a good argument. Sadly, the mechanics for social interaction and science, in [i]Eclipse Phase[/i], are rather limited. Combat is given an entire chapter, and there page upon page of fluff and stats for the tools of deliberately murdering people to death in increasingly more creative ways. The mechanics for combat are more complex and more comprehensive, and for narrative reasons, climaxes tend to be combat, not science or talking to people. To be pretentious and quote Clausewitz, "War is the continuation of politics by other means"; combat is what happens when you meet someone who can't be talked out of doing the things you don't want them to - and TITANs and Exurgents certainly can't be talked out of eating your face. Combat dominates, and, accordingly, combat mechanics dominate. Hacking is a Task Action, so it doesn't benefit from extra Speed. Trying to convince someone to do something is also usually a Task Action - so again, it won't benefit from extra Speed. And there's no stat for giving you extra hacking actions or Networking actions or building raygun actions - and usually you don't even need them, since these kinds of tests usually aren't as time-limited as Shooting People in the Face Before They Can Shoot You in the Face tends to be. The quickest fix I can imagine is to make Speed 3 the default, and increase the maximum Speed to 6, or some other numbers that reduce the impact of Speed. This way, Neurachem, Kick and Reflex Boosters still have their fluff of making you act faster, without being so powerful they warp the game around themselves, like a giant black hole of One True Build-ness.

Baalbamoth wrote:

ToGtFO

I'm sure all the women on the board feel included by such comments. I know I do.

What about making your speed stat the number of d10s you roll for initiative? So if I have 3 speed and initiative 7, I roll (3d10+7). Then you go through an action phase like normal and subtract 10 from everyone's score. If anyone has a positive initiative left, then get another phase. Repeat until nobody has a positive initiative. For example, say I roll (3d10+7) for 22. I would get my first phase with initiative 22, then a second phase with initiative 12, then a final phase with initiative 2. Another character with speed 1 rolls (1d10+6) for 15. They would get 2 phases (15 and 5). This makes it so characters with higher speed aren't guaranteed extra phases, and character with only speed 1 can possibly get multiple phases if they are lucky. This helps smooth out the curve between high and low speed characters and the math is pretty easy. This is similar to the system that was used in Shadowrun 3rd edition which I thought worked pretty well.

I can see the argument for reducing the effect of speed but I'm not too concerned - it isn't like EP uses a class system and restricts the implants available to each. The current system is easy to use and I wouldn't want to lose that.

NewtonPulsifer wrote:

Boot camp is like 13 weeks

I don't think recruits are meant to be fully trained by the end of that, just ready for further training.

Baalbamoth wrote:

ToGtFO

Grow up or go away.

bblonski wrote:

What about making your speed stat the number of d10s you roll for initiative? So if I have 3 speed and initiative 7, I roll (3d10+7). Then you go through an action phase like normal and subtract 10 from everyone's score. If anyone has a positive initiative left, then get another phase. Repeat until nobody has a positive initiative.

I knew there was something out there I had run across before that would work pretty well for physical actions. but what about spending a point of moxie?

let's say you roll 3d10+7 for 22 and i roll 1d10+5 for 9. i decide to spend a point of moxie to go first. does that make my initiative 23 now? where would that put my initiative for the rest of the round if we are taking 10 from our initiative?