FASA Games, Inc.

Hello everyone,

For the past 3 months or so, I'm running a Fading Suns campaign, using the rules of the revised edition. As I've mentioned before, I really like a lot of the changes that were made since the Revised 2nd ed.(I think?), specially around combat. The story is wonderful, and my party and I are having a great time with the game, so good job there

I would like to address a couple of issues we've had with the mechanics. First, one of the players play an Eskatonic Provost. During combat he resorts to using his church rites and spells. The problem is, the mechanics feels not engaging or not exciting enough for a spell caster in combat. I mean, in physical combat, there's a roll to be made against the target's defense, and then rolling of damage against armor, etc. Lots of rolling and uncertainty which leads to some excitement and some sort of deadly, edgy feeling I would say. This is pretty great, all in all. It almost completely lacks in spell casting. This turns out to be quite a downer for said player after a couple of rounds of combat. Do you have any suggestions about how to make it more interesting?

Second, we've had serious issues with shields in combat. We tried it a couple of times in melee, and the problem is that it was near impossible to cause damage, even when "holding the punches". Both combatants were pretty even in their abilities, so it took about 5-6 rounds till I made the NPCs disgracefully give up because the PCs "drew first blood". The combat became pretty sluggish very quickly, and it took way to long to get any result (i.e. some clear indication, at least, that some party in the fight is getting the upper hand in a manner that would justify the other party forfeiting). Personally I feel that the rules for shields fits very well when used in duels, but makes "real" fights feel really unbalanced and long.
We decided to simply leave shields out of this campaign. Do you have any better solution? Did anyone else experience shields as a hindrance? Also, do you think that removing shields from the game hurts the mechanic in a considerable way that we should reconsider?
By the way, we're playing a campaign across the Vuldrok borders, so not using shields kind of fits the story. We're not really interested in melee duels in this campaign.

Thanks!

re: Shields. I've found the same thing - it seems to take a lot of finesse to slip under a shield and it isn't very reliable. In convention play my default suggestion is to go all out and try to overwhelm shields as it seems to be more effective, and I do use the shield burnout option so the shields go down for a couple of rounds giving a chance for player and NPC alike to tack on some real damage. It generally comes to Brother Zekeel going full auto with his battle rifle, burning out a shield, and letting the rest of the cadre get in there and mop it up.

I'll see if I can think of a cool option for slipping shields.

The downside to your duel, is that is how I "envisioned" it thematically with skilled duelists parrying back and forth and seeking an advantage. Unfortunately on the table it doesn't quite get that cinematic excitement when it ends up with two people just rolling dice back and forth. I'll think about this scenario a bit too.

re: Casting in combat. That one is trickier, especially Theurgy as it doesn't have as much of the variability that is available in Psychism. I'll give this some thought and carefully re-read everything to see if I can get some ideas for you.

Thanks!
For now, the solutions that work for us is to forget about shields altogether, and to have that theurgist use a combatant NPC that joined the party to satisfy the player's want for interest in combat.

The thing about the shields though, is that shields are intertwined into the mechanics. Dropping them completely have at least some impact, and at the moment, we're not really making up for that loss. The first thing that comes to mind, is that the weapons' damage is designed with shields in mind, and dropping the shields from the campaign means weapons are that much more powerful. In the last session it became quite evident as the party fought some Purple Wurm (a lesser form, statistically speaking, of the Ice Wyrm in the GM's guide), and the variation in damage output was quite staggering. An average roll for the Wurm could potentially bite off 6 or 7 points of vit (happened twice I think), while lower or higher values were in fact not uncommon. Same goes for the party's weapons. It might be the result of a single combat, but the feeling around the table was that the results of a combat roll is very random; a not-so-bad a roll by me, the GM, could take out a character, while the same roll might end up being a minor flesh wound (after armor that is). That is not necessarily a bad thing. The combat ends up being very thrilling, for everybody, and intense. It makes the players, almost, think twice of entering dangerous zones and combat. As a GM, I feel it makes encounter building a tad more difficult because it's hard to tell exactly how strong I need the enemies to be. I really ought to check the statistics of hitting and damaging targets.
I'm digressing, my point was that removing shields from play has drastic effects, albeit interesting ones, and I'm not entirely sure it's the best solution

A couple of my friends are play testing not allowing shields to stack with ANY armor. You wear armor that won't interfere with a shield as a backup when the shield burns out, or if you wear armor, you don't bother with a shield. They say it makes combat much more tactical and exciting. Might be worth thinking about. I do get very tired of every wealthy party member having an energy shield and synth silk.

That is definitely a good solution to the problem as well. During the playtest/design phase we had bounced back and forth on that. Eventually deciding to put the "stacking" option in for shields.

In my games I generally let the characters have synthsilk and shields only for the reason that I tend to run my games pretty "high action". Also my gaming group is the type that tends to make a lot of enemies quickly. Without armor or shields combat seems to be quite deadly (which I like).

Depending on the ruleset you're using there are rituals that front-load combat power that your theurgist should use but if you have a manifest-light style character they should be using the kung-fu. The Easchatons know all that cool stuff about how light passes through the body they'd surely know a few cool pressure-strikes and limb locks.

Shields are Godly on the battlefield and when your PCs know they're facing an enemy with shields they come prepared. Have their enemies do the same. Throw a grenade at a shielded PC, may not scratch him but it will still knock him across the street. Shoot him with a taffy gun, shield does nothing. Dowse him in Ka Oil and have have someone with a torch threaten him. That shield can go off all it wants when he's burning to a crisp. Have an enemy pull out a frap-stick and do some cool martial art's moves, watch your shielded players expressions go grim.

Other than that make combats more exciting by making them more exciting. Don't get hung up on the tactics, have PCs fight on an airship that's out of control and crashing, have them fight on the battlements of a castle that's being barraged by catapult fire, have their fight interrupted by a downpour of frogs making footing slippery and pummeling anyone who steps out into the open.