Latest / Sessions Canceled / What To Do When PCs Get TOO POWERFUL?: Ep. 184

Transcript

What To Do When PCs Get TOO POWERFUL?: Ep. 184 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Hey everybody, We were going to run today.
• 0:17
  But then the GM had a bright idea and he brought Shadow Run.
• 0:20
  And everything was going well until I tried to roll an attack
• 0:23
  and then I had to confirm four different dice just to make sure
• 0:26
  I could get the attack through. And then by the 4th attack I'm,
• 0:29
  I'm going to be real, I was just done with it.
• 0:31
  And I just kind of packed up and went home.
• 0:34
  It was nothing cancelled. And the GM said something about
• 0:38
  sniffing them grapers and everyone got a little
• 0:40
  uncomfortable too. So that didn't help.
• 0:42
  And you know, I hate you. I hate you so much.
• 0:52
  I had to bring you back so much. I had to bring it back up.
• 0:55
  And you know, nobody heard that conversation prior to recording,
• 0:58
  so it's just going to be a mystery about sniffing them.
• 1:00
  I don't. Know why you had to do this to
• 1:04
  me? I don't know.
• 1:07
  Because it's fun and it does a lot of damage.
• 1:11
  It. Yes, I literally it's, it's it's
• 1:15
  adjusted A psychic damage that I didn't break into laughing.
• 1:18
  I just, I just shuddered. I just was like fuck no.
• 1:24
  Also, I like that you will never let the Shadowrun thing die
• 1:28
  because we're OK. I I was going to say either one
• 1:31
  of two things. I was going to do the Shadowrun
• 1:33
  thing or I was going to say the GM brought the Warhammer 10th
• 1:36
  edition to get ready for the 11th and you have to roll 3
• 1:39
  separate dice to confirm damage on any fucking attack roll and
• 1:42
  it drives me nuts. I've played like an, oh, I've
• 1:46
  played like 5 or 6 matches of five of, of, of 10th edition
• 1:50
  Warhammer and nothing makes me more mad than when I roll a fuck
• 1:55
  ton of attacks and like 3/4 that they like, right?
• 1:59
  I'll roll like 15 attacks and like 9 or 10 of them will hit
• 2:03
  and then I have to roll to confirm and not a single one
• 2:05
  actually confirms damage and I'm there like chewing through my
• 2:10
  fucking codex. Yeah, that's kind of sort of
• 2:15
  what my complaint with Shadowrun or not Shadowrun with it's not
• 2:20
  exactly the same, but that's that's kind of sort of what I
• 2:22
  was getting at with Daggerhart about the like gate to the
• 2:26
  damage often can make the damage feel unsatisfying.
• 2:30
  You know, yes. Again, not really a great
• 2:33
  example because it's not the same problem, but it that that
• 2:37
  was kind of my thing with Daggerheart about that that
• 2:38
  feeling. Right.
• 2:40
  Well, so even when we were talking about Daggerheart, I
• 2:42
  didn't disagree with you on that.
• 2:43
  And I was like, Oh yeah, that reminds me of Warhammer.
• 2:45
  That shit sucks. But did you bring up Warhammer?
• 2:48
  You might have, I don't remember either way.
• 2:51
  Yeah, it was. Yeah.
• 2:56
  The other joke I thought about, the other potential joke there
• 2:59
  is you're playing Pathfinder and you have to confirm you're 36
• 3:03
  different instances of flat footed.
• 3:05
  Oh my God. Yeah, because that game, bro, I
• 3:09
  love flat footed. The crit rules for Pathfinder
• 3:12
  when you're so dog shit. I hate that.
• 3:15
  I hate that. It's like, oh cool, I rolled the
• 3:17
  ability to crit and now I have to roll and beat this again to
• 3:21
  crit. Why?
• 3:24
  And like, yes, I know that there are things people do to like,
• 3:27
  damn, you're guaranteed crits 3/4 of the time, but that's a
• 3:31
  lot of shit I don't want to have to do today.
• 3:33
  Right. But like, they just, they didn't
• 3:35
  have to design the they didn't have to design in such a fashion
• 3:39
  where the characters can confirm with crits 3/4 of the time.
• 3:42
  You know what I mean? Like, they designed a problem.
• 3:44
  Like they they caused the problem and then fixed the
• 3:46
  problem, which is like, what? Maybe just don't make the
• 3:49
  problem, you know? Yeah, just don't make the
• 3:51
  problem. Yeah, yeah, but someone reminds
• 3:54
  me of the I mean, they took it out of second edition as far as
• 3:56
  I'm aware. So, you know, it reminds me of a
• 3:59
  certain role play system. You could say.
• 4:05
  It's a Ogent. You can't bully coach.
• 4:14
  That game's not even like an actual game.
• 4:16
  It's like a fucking alpha. It is an alpha that never got
• 4:20
  released. It's an alpha concept.
• 4:21
  It's not even like a thing. Look, did you just hold up?
• 4:27
  All right? We we we can't do this.
• 4:29
  We can't do this for too long. We're getting a little too
• 4:31
  inside baseball. But did you watch the video?
• 4:35
  Did you watch the video of him talking about?
• 4:36
  I did watch the Crispy's Tavern. Did you notice that at the end
• 4:39
  of the video he said exactly what I said?
• 4:43
  Yeah, No, absolutely. He was like, this feels like a
• 4:46
  game for someone that only, that feels like a game made by
• 4:49
  someone that only played D&D and that they were reinventing the
• 4:52
  wheel cause they've only played one game.
• 4:53
  And I was like, yeah, OK, glad I'm not the only one who picked
• 4:56
  up on that. No, a lot of people say the same
• 4:59
  thing. I'm glad I'm not the and I've
• 5:01
  read I've read other games that give me a similar feeling for
• 5:06
  sure. That DC 20 game was giving me a
• 5:13
  little bit of that vibe, although I didn't look at that
• 5:15
  thoroughly into that. So I that that that was just
• 5:18
  initial vibes. I may be off base with that and
• 5:21
  I don't know. Oh, that's what were you talking
• 5:24
  about? That's that's another Youtubers
• 5:27
  game. I can't remember.
• 5:29
  I I yes, I'm trying to remember what it was called.
• 5:31
  It's literally called DC 20. The game is called DC 20.
• 5:36
  The game is called DC 20. Yeah.
• 5:38
  What was the one that it was like who who was the one that
• 5:42
  made the game had like a cobalt on the front and it like was
• 5:46
  supposed to be kind of piratey themed and then it was just more
• 5:49
  5 E Are you talking about Tales of the Valiant?
• 5:52
  Yes, that's a very that's not that's not a simple that's a
• 5:55
  very different situation. Tales of the Valiants, made by
• 5:59
  Cobalt Press, right? They made right, right, right,
• 6:03
  right, right. Which is a very well established
• 6:05
  design studio. And they weren't, they weren't
• 6:07
  trying to reinvent the wheel. They created Tales of the
• 6:11
  Valley. Well, originally it wasn't
• 6:13
  actually a pirate thing. People just thought it was going
• 6:15
  to be a pirate thing because they called it Project Black
• 6:17
  Flag before it had its official name, right?
• 6:20
  People just assumed fucking Project Black Flag.
• 6:22
  It was never fair. That's a very fair assumption.
• 6:25
  Yeah. I mean, sure, Yeah.
• 6:26
  But it was never originally intended to be that it.
• 6:29
  That was just the working name. It was called Project Black Flag
• 6:32
  because they were they were pirating because they were like
• 6:37
  resisting the man by making their own D&D with blackjack and
• 6:40
  hookers, right? Because the reason that Tales of
• 6:42
  the Valiant got Tales of the Valiant being what the game
• 6:45
  became, right? The reason that Tales of the
• 6:46
  Valiant got made is because that was when the OGL hit Cobalt
• 6:50
  Press was like, Oh no, we're fucked.
• 6:52
  We need our own game. So they made Tales of the
• 6:55
  Valiant and they called it Project Black Flag because it
• 6:58
  was like, you know, Yahar, fuck the man type energy in in the
• 7:02
  same vein, if you named your working title Project Bushido
• 7:05
  and your people are like, oh, samurai and it's like actually
• 7:07
  medieval fantasy and you're like, yeah, yeah.
• 7:09
  What the fuck? Yes, it was a little bit of a
• 7:12
  weird choice, and a lot of people preferred the name Black
• 7:14
  Flag, which, you know, fair. I almost feel like they owe it
• 7:20
  to people to make a pirate game. A pirate game.
• 7:22
  Yeah, like it has to be a whole game.
• 7:24
  Just make a pirate expansion for Tales of the Valiant.
• 7:28
  I think the yeah, the, the, the, the license they put it under,
• 7:34
  they call or the system they call Black Flag role-playing.
• 7:38
  So they kind of sort of kept the name.
• 7:41
  But yes, the game proper is Tales of the Valiant, but that's
• 7:45
  a that game wasn't trying to be not DND.
• 7:48
  That game was trying to be, we're making our our own version
• 7:52
  of DND, but we still want it to feel mostly 5E esque.
• 7:55
  And in that regard, I think mission accomplished.
• 7:59
  I think there is a lot of good fun ideas in Tales of the
• 8:02
  Valiant. And it's definitely Tales of the
• 8:05
  Valiant is definitely the kind of game where if you have
• 8:08
  players who you really want to convince them to play something
• 8:12
  other than 5V, but you know, it's going to be a tall order,
• 8:16
  you can give them Tales of the Valiant.
• 8:18
  Because it's just different enough that they're going to be
• 8:21
  like, oh, new toy. But it's similar enough that
• 8:24
  they're not going to feel like, you know, they have to reread
• 8:27
  the Bible to learn a whole new thing or whatever.
• 8:31
  So it's one of those games. Now, is that what I personally
• 8:35
  wanted? Fuck no.
• 8:36
  But do I get why they did it? I mean, yeah.
• 8:39
  So no DC 20 specifically. The YouTube by the way is the
• 8:45
  Dungeon Coach is his name. I popped open the PDF to find it
• 8:49
  'cause I couldn't remember. No, DC 20 was around the same
• 8:54
  time and it was meant to be I guess.
• 9:00
  I guess his core objective was to make like a more modernized 5
• 9:04
  E that doesn't have the baggage of old DND to worry about, which
• 9:10
  is kind of what Draw Steel does, right?
• 9:15
  Like Draw Steel is a very similar idea.
• 9:17
  We want to make a modern kind of heroic fantasy game, but without
• 9:21
  the baggage that DND as a company and as a brand has to
• 9:24
  deal with. I think DC 20 was kind of a
• 9:26
  similar idea. They were like, I want to make
• 9:29
  AD and D thing, but like I want it to be unshackled by its past.
• 9:35
  But again, I don't know how successful that was with DC-20
• 9:39
  in particular. I looked at it very early on
• 9:42
  with some play test preview shit and that was kind of it.
• 9:44
  But there were definitely some fun ideas in there, like a
• 9:46
  mechanic for wizard battles. I remember that being an
• 9:49
  interesting premise. Well, that's cool.
• 9:51
  Yeah. Like basically you could
• 9:53
  basically the idea was you're you would declare like if
• 9:56
  someone cast, rather than having like a counterspell in the game,
• 10:00
  It's like if somebody casts a spell and you're a spell casting
• 10:04
  character, you could declare how you counter the spell with your
• 10:09
  own spell. And it had this like wizard duel
• 10:11
  thing going on. So like if the enemy was casting
• 10:16
  fireball, you'd be like, I'm going to wizard duel him and I'm
• 10:19
  going to cast, you know, mold Earth to create a Rockwall to
• 10:21
  block the fireball or something like that.
• 10:25
  I don't know how successful the mechanic was, you know, in play
• 10:27
  or anything like that, but it was an interesting concept for
• 10:30
  sure. But yeah, so yes, Long story
• 10:37
  short, yes, Cogent role play had that weird energy of I'm going
• 10:42
  to, you know, reinvent the entire universe.
• 10:45
  And then all the stuff they tried to do, it's like, well,
• 10:47
  everybody, somebody else has already done this.
• 10:50
  I'm finally met Cogent decided it didn't.
• 10:53
  And then it didn't go anywhere to finish.
• 10:54
  So, well, it didn't finish, but also, like, didn't actually do
• 10:59
  much. It didn't.
• 11:01
  No. Yeah, I, I think it was.
• 11:04
  I think it was, I think the intention was for it to
• 11:08
  eventually do more and it just never got to that place.
• 11:10
  And I'm sure some of that is probably affected by, you know,
• 11:14
  the two brothers arguing, maybe arguing being a nice word.
• 11:20
  But yeah, again, though, we're getting very inside baseball
• 11:24
  here, so let's no, we are. And to go off of our our usual
• 11:28
  intro, I got I, I can't say that I got a bone to pick.
• 11:35
  All right, wait, that's not true.
• 11:36
  I got a bone to pick with you for forgetting something.
• 11:39
  But. To tell everyone to read the
• 11:42
  Bible and go to tither shoot, wait, no, not that to follow and
• 11:46
  subscribe on their podcast platform.
• 11:48
  I would they'd really never tell someone to read the Bible.
• 11:53
  I mean, it might be an interesting read just as like a,
• 11:56
  you know, read it like a novel. Basically, I would just, yeah,
• 12:01
  no, I, I can't see myself ever being like, you know what, you
• 12:03
  should read the Bible. I don't know, Listen, here's the
• 12:08
  thing. I hate organized religion by
• 12:09
  default. So this is a hard sell.
• 12:11
  I know, I know, but like, you know, you could, but some people
• 12:13
  just read it as like a, what's the word like a moral framework
• 12:18
  kind of book, almost like a some people read the Bible kind of
• 12:20
  like a self help book. And in that context, I think
• 12:23
  it's fine. You know what I mean?
• 12:26
  I I see what you're saying. We're not going to talk about
• 12:29
  the Bible, however, I'm just saying, which is the Lancer core
• 12:36
  rule book. Damn.
• 12:37
  He's just, he's just ignore me. That's crazy.
• 12:39
  Oh, yes. Follow us on your who's.
• 12:43
  Follow us on the who's it in the what's it?
• 12:45
  The who's it in the what's? Yeah, yeah.
• 12:47
  Mailed it. Yeah.
• 12:49
  I got a bone to pick kind of with my game right now.
• 12:53
  So where do I even start now that I am back into the swing of
• 13:02
  things truly with Lancer, right? We're running weekly.
• 13:06
  I'm sort of getting back into the swing of running that sort
• 13:09
  of headspace you have to be in. We're running combats again,
• 13:12
  we're doing the downtime stuff and all that fun shit.
• 13:17
  I am starting to realize that I am either fast approaching or
• 13:24
  currently within the early stages of the point where the
• 13:28
  game's combat mechanics are beginning to buckle under their
• 13:32
  own weight and straight up buckle, not fully buckle.
• 13:40
  It's beginning, It's knees are wobbling.
• 13:45
  It's it's like we're right at three quarter of of it's like
• 13:48
  Max out Rep. And I don't know if I gotta if I
• 13:51
  gotta be there to to hit it with that, that fucking spot.
• 13:55
  You know what I'm saying? The game's on 0 Rirs.
• 13:58
  Yeah. You don't know what that means.
• 14:00
  I don't either. No, I'm saying I said you don't
• 14:05
  know what that means. Oh, no, you know, I have no
• 14:07
  idea. RAR is reps in reserve.
• 14:10
  It means like if, if, if you do, if you do an exercise and you
• 14:14
  say you have two RAR, it means like you did 10 reps, but you
• 14:17
  could have done 12, but you chose not to do 12 on purpose.
• 14:21
  Gotcha. It's.
• 14:22
  Yeah, it's on 0 Rirs. Yeah, it's dude bro, you know,
• 14:28
  lifting science. Gotcha.
• 14:31
  To give a little bit more of an explanation, I'm currently
• 14:35
  running a series of back-to-back combat encounters in the form of
• 14:39
  a mech fighting tournament. I've talked about it a couple
• 14:41
  times on podcast. We all know what it is, The
• 14:44
  winner of which is going to get a huge cash prize.
• 14:48
  As a part of this, I am straying from the norm and using a
• 14:53
  standardized 3V3 encounter system that varies in its maps
• 14:58
  and environmental hazard rules, the latter of which are ripped
• 15:01
  straight from the core rule. This is important because this
• 15:10
  is not how standard combat in Lancer works.
• 15:14
  Well, I'll wait. What's the non standard here
• 15:17
  3V3? I'm I'm sort of prefacing by
• 15:21
  saying I know this is not how combat works typically.
• 15:25
  Typically in Lancer you have a force, an opposing force with a
• 15:31
  total structure count equal to the players.
• 15:36
  Which is to say if there's three players you would have there
• 15:40
  should be about 12 enemies, 12 tier 11 structure enemies.
• 15:46
  Wait, what? Hey, what so structure one,
• 15:51
  which is to say like when they lose their structure, they just
• 15:53
  oh, no, sorry, no, no, I got that mixed up.
• 15:57
  There should be. What was it?
• 16:01
  No, no, no. Yeah.
• 16:04
  There should be as much structure as the our enemies as
• 16:06
  the average structures that would be like 5 or 6 or three.
• 16:10
  You have like one or two big guys and then like, you know, 3
• 16:13
  or 4 little guys. OK, so wait, so so structure
• 16:18
  kind of being your CR style, like ranking of enemy strength
• 16:22
  thing? Yeah, OK.
• 16:24
  And so you're saying the enemies should have a lower structure
• 16:30
  number than the players, so you can put more enemies on the on
• 16:35
  the board as it were, against the players?
• 16:37
  Oh, wait, no, no, I'm sorry. I I'm remembering it right now.
• 16:41
  There needs to be a total structure for the enemies
• 16:44
  equaling the amount of players there are.
• 16:47
  So if there's five players, there should be 5 structure
• 16:50
  worth of enemies on the field at any given time.
• 16:53
  So not every enemy is a structure value of 1 is what you
• 16:57
  were saying here. Early on, yes, Later on, no, it
• 17:03
  goes down. Later it goes up.
• 17:05
  Later goes up later. Well, so let me it goes down in
• 17:09
  so far as you could have one like elite unit with structure
• 17:13
  two or three and then like one or two little goobers to keep
• 17:17
  them busy. No, no, no.
• 17:19
  So it goes up. The structure values go up.
• 17:21
  That's the yeah, sorry, the structure values go up.
• 17:23
  Right, right. OK.
• 17:24
  So all of this to say is that I am running a typical combat and
• 17:28
  I am aware that that is introducing a little bit of
• 17:32
  weird into the system. How is 3V3A typical if you have
• 17:35
  three players and then three enemies?
• 17:38
  Because the enemies have less structure.
• 17:41
  Elite enemies. When a when an enemy's an an
• 17:44
  elite, which is to say they have the elite tag, the elite
• 17:46
  template, they are given one extra structure and one extra
• 17:50
  reactor count, so they effectively have two health bars
• 17:54
  as opposed to 1. The players, no matter what,
• 17:57
  have four, and while the enemies can do a lot of damage, they
• 18:01
  can't typically output enough damage to drop a character one
• 18:05
  full structure per attack, unless they've got some sort of
• 18:09
  thing that should let them do that.
• 18:11
  So you're putting the players up against challenges slightly
• 18:16
  above their punching weight? Slightly below, slightly below?
• 18:21
  How is it slightly below? Because the the the.
• 18:25
  Players have an easier time killing the enemies and the
• 18:27
  enemies have than the enemies have killing them.
• 18:30
  But, and I'm if you have three enemies of structure 2, that
• 18:34
  would mean the enemy structure count is 6 and the player is
• 18:37
  only player side is only three player side is 4 per character.
• 18:43
  Well, total. Oh, it's oh, it's 4 per.
• 18:45
  Oh, you didn't tell you. OK, you didn't say that part.
• 18:47
  Yeah. OK, so you're so under cranking
• 18:52
  the fights a little bit. I am under cranking the fights
• 18:56
  and then balancing it out by making the enemy stronger.
• 18:59
  So like when you give a character a template, typically
• 19:04
  that means you can give them one maybe 2 abilities from that
• 19:08
  template and one, maybe 2 abilities from their base class.
• 19:13
  Because every, every NPC starts off with one or two base
• 19:16
  abilities and four or five extra ones in case you want to throw
• 19:20
  some variation in there. I'm just giving them flat 2 each
• 19:24
  so they get 4 extra abilities, which is really important.
• 19:27
  OK, it it, the math gets a little weird.
• 19:31
  I'm not going to get into it that much, but know that four
• 19:33
  extra abilities per character is really good and I am cranking
• 19:39
  their numbers. I'm giving them a little bit
• 19:41
  more health. I'm generally like bumping their
• 19:42
  stats one or two points across the board and doing some stuff
• 19:45
  all over again. All of this to just say the
• 19:49
  fights are atypical and I was expecting a little jank a little
• 19:53
  bit OK. The issue is is that I the the
• 19:58
  jank that I was expecting versus the jank I am experiencing so.
• 20:05
  Very different. If we can do the compare it to 5
• 20:08
  E, as we often do for the sake of making it make sense, you're
• 20:13
  taking the wizard enemies and giving them like twice the
• 20:17
  number of spells they normally have.
• 20:21
  Yeah, pretty much. I'm giving them like, you know,
• 20:24
  two or three spells and maybe 2 spell slots above what they
• 20:27
  should be able to have, right? Which means they have quite a
• 20:31
  bit more potential things they can throw out, which means
• 20:33
  there's more potential things for you to keep track of.
• 20:36
  Yes. OK.
• 20:40
  And. Like, like I said, well, to
• 20:43
  preface the jank that I was expecting, right, is, you know,
• 20:49
  having a couple passives up at once that I have to juggle and
• 20:54
  being aware that, you know, the players have invisibility and
• 20:57
  some of them just can't be targeted by attacks like things
• 21:01
  that I've dealt with in the past.
• 21:05
  But I'm starting to see that the layers are overlapping more
• 21:13
  consistently and creating more buffer zones in between
• 21:18
  declaring attack and confirming damage as I than I would like,
• 21:23
  basically. And it's getting to the point
• 21:25
  where I am actually forgetting all of the steps that go into an
• 21:31
  attack. And I've like written them down
• 21:33
  before. And yeah, I can't, I guess I can
• 21:38
  do that every time, but like I'd have to write over a dozen
• 21:43
  different scenarios for fast tracking attack to damage.
• 21:47
  You know what I mean? It would be very difficult.
• 21:54
  Wait, wait, what? What's the difficulty
• 21:57
  specifically? The difficulty is I was
• 22:00
  expecting a certain number of overlapping effects that I have
• 22:02
  to keep track of. I'm realizing that there are
• 22:06
  more and they are affecting things in different ways than I
• 22:11
  was expecting. And I guess I could, like I
• 22:14
  said, in theory, write out some like fast track, you know,
• 22:19
  graphs to go OK, if X then Y. But I'd have to make well over a
• 22:25
  dozen flow charts for that to be a viable basically.
• 22:32
  I see. And I literally did write out a
• 22:35
  flow chart in these notes. I see.
• 22:39
  OK, and it's for it's 1234567891011121314 different
• 22:48
  steps and several of them have sub steps in them to confirm one
• 22:55
  attack. OK, and it's it's it's going
• 23:04
  both ways, right? If it's annoying enough that I
• 23:06
  have to worry about, you know, how my attacks are affecting the
• 23:11
  players, but I'm also now thinking about how players
• 23:14
  attacks affect me because this what, what, what these
• 23:18
  characters are right now, they are strong Tier 2 units.
• 23:22
  Players are licensed level 6. They have the capability of
• 23:25
  jumping up to licensed level 9 because we're using the, the
• 23:29
  expansion rules where you use money to level up and not
• 23:31
  mission completion. And they're really good at
• 23:35
  solving side missions within missions.
• 23:37
  So they're getting extra pay and that extra pay is building up
• 23:42
  and it builds up to because I, I saw them level up from three to
• 23:46
  six in one mission and was like, OK, I have to hard cap that
• 23:49
  because they're going to hit level 12 before I know it.
• 23:51
  And I don't really know how to run Tier 3 combat yet.
• 23:54
  So I had to cap them. And now that we're at arc the,
• 24:00
  the, you know, three, you intentionally slowed them down a
• 24:03
  little bit. I slowed them down to keep them
• 24:07
  at the right leveling because they could have hit Tier 9 by
• 24:10
  level 5, which is not what it's supposed to be.
• 24:15
  What? What sentence did you just say
• 24:16
  to me? Not Tier 9.
• 24:19
  They could hit license level 9 by mission 5 or 6.
• 24:24
  OK, that OK, that previous sentence was not You said they
• 24:27
  could hit Tier 9 by level 5. I was like, wait, what?
• 24:31
  My back? Yes, they can hit.
• 24:32
  They could in theory hit license levels or 9 by mission 6, level
• 24:38
  8 or 9 by mission 6 when it's supposed to be a one to one kind
• 24:41
  of thing Yes. So I had to cap them at 3 levels
• 24:44
  per act and that way they can build their strength to whatever
• 24:49
  they think they need. But now I have the ability to
• 24:52
  build up to meet them, but it's capped.
• 24:58
  I don't have to like go super far overboard.
• 25:01
  OK, and is certainly sounding self-imposed some of this
• 25:08
  struggle. I mean well, so that's the crazy
• 25:12
  thing. The the the struggle.
• 25:15
  It is variant rules, but it is official rules, right.
• 25:18
  I'm not running some weird home brew shit.
• 25:22
  I, I wanted the game to feel more about risk and reward.
• 25:27
  My players are just generally good at going for the side
• 25:31
  quests and completing them. And I'm not even making them
• 25:34
  easy. They're just pretty good at
• 25:36
  doing it. So I'm not like the only, I
• 25:42
  think the only real home rule that I've implemented across the
• 25:45
  board is I change the way critical hits work in the game.
• 25:49
  Because rules is written you just roll the die.
• 25:51
  Like roll whatever your your damage number is twice and take
• 25:54
  the higher one. That fucks over about half of
• 25:57
  the weapons in the game that just do static damage.
• 26:00
  So rather than having it re roll I just said that critical damage
• 26:04
  can roll what, like one extra D6?
• 26:07
  You might think that that feels anemic.
• 26:08
  It really really really really isn't.
• 26:11
  There's not base rules for crits on flat damage weapons.
• 26:16
  Nope. That's odd.
• 26:19
  I know that's why I changed them.
• 26:21
  I looked it up, did everything. They were just like no static
• 26:23
  weapons just kind of get boned on this.
• 26:25
  And I was like, well, that's that feels shitty.
• 26:27
  So no, it's very weird. So I but OK, yeah, so I just
• 26:32
  made it so that crits rolled an additional D6 no matter what the
• 26:36
  weapon is OK, and it's strong, but it's it's not like, you
• 26:41
  know, it's the only homebrew and it's only accounting for a small
• 26:47
  chunk of the problem. Very, very small.
• 26:49
  And like I said before. It's compounded by some
• 26:51
  characters having abilities that effectively make them in like
• 26:54
  untargetable, others have more health than every member in the
• 26:57
  party combined, and other ones have damn near 20 evasion which
• 27:01
  is really hard to hit for NPCS unless they're ultras, which is
• 27:04
  to say bosses. To.
• 27:08
  Note save for the first issue, I can work around the others.
• 27:15
  With little difficulty talking. About the ones I was just
• 27:17
  talking about not counting the rear, the other random
• 27:19
  overlapping bullshit, I'll talk about that in a second.
• 27:22
  Uh huh. Like Snubby's character just
• 27:24
  being able to go into another dimension.
• 27:26
  Like she basically gets a free plane shift from DND every round
• 27:30
  except she pops back at the start of her next turn.
• 27:33
  OK. And that's annoying.
• 27:35
  It's very annoying. I was gonna say, how do you ever
• 27:38
  hit her? You basically have to have any
• 27:42
  NPC that wants to target her hold their action for her to pop
• 27:46
  back into reality and then just blow her the fuck up before she
• 27:50
  gets to do anything on her turn. And this is a base game rule.
• 27:53
  She didn't do any shenanigan re Nope.
• 27:55
  This is a base game rule because she's running the Colandula and
• 27:58
  the Colandula's base fucking ability is.
• 28:02
  Hold on, I have to look it up because it's name is absolutely
• 28:05
  ridiculous and. Base ability is.
• 28:09
  Called Where are you, you son of a bitch?
• 28:16
  Is it my dumb? What the fuck is it?
• 28:29
  What the fuck? Oh.
• 28:30
  My God, I don't know. Oh wait, no, it's part.
• 28:35
  Of the man score right? It's ability is called
• 28:39
  execration of. The names.
• 28:41
  Of the unworthy dead, it's. A long day for.
• 28:45
  Teleporting, yes, she just gets to move into the firmament,
• 28:50
  which is another dimension as part of the sub ability
• 28:53
  grammaton mantle. And yeah, she just, she's
• 28:57
  intangible, which means that she cannot be targeted by anything
• 29:02
  except by another, a creature that is also intangible.
• 29:08
  And that's very hard. For an NPC.
• 29:11
  To have generally. I think only two.
• 29:15
  Or three other NPC types in the game of like the standard well.
• 29:19
  I think without the. Expansions I think only one
• 29:21
  other enemy can do intangible shit, but the.
• 29:25
  Other add on packs. That they've made there are
• 29:26
  more, but still very, very little and.
• 29:29
  Is is. This a.
• 29:35
  Is this a mech that she? Shouldn't have access to but you
• 29:38
  are nice and let her have or no? It's like a standard 1.
• 29:44
  That's she got it the default way, yeah.
• 29:48
  OK, yeah, the the game basically.
• 29:50
  Says if there are. Several.
• 29:53
  If there are are is more than one mech on one mech license.
• 29:56
  So for example, the Minotaur can, when you hit license level
• 29:59
  2, you can take the Minotaur frame or the Colandula frame.
• 30:03
  You get to pick one of those MEC frames and you're stuck with it.
• 30:06
  You can't like go back to the Minotaur.
• 30:08
  You've. Picked the colandula.
• 30:09
  You are stuck with the colandula now.
• 30:12
  OK. And the?
• 30:14
  Colandula is part of. The Carrick and trade baronies
• 30:16
  expansion, but it is still a base game thing, she doesn't
• 30:19
  have to do any extra work for it.
• 30:23
  Yeah, the. Only way to really hit her is.
• 30:24
  To have something else intangible very difficult to do.
• 30:26
  Or to have a bunch of NPCS hold their turn for her to start her
• 30:29
  turn and then blow her up at the start of her turn and
• 30:32
  potentially kill her before she can even make a single move the
• 30:36
  other. Option.
• 30:36
  Is to damage her friends and and.
• 30:41
  Assume. That she is going to lose
• 30:43
  intangibility, right? She's going to actively not
• 30:45
  choose that passive for the round to eat some damage for her
• 30:48
  friends. The old flying in D&D, bro.
• 30:53
  Yeah, she doesn't do that. She just says Nah, y'all
• 30:58
  motherfuckers. Can die unless they literally
• 31:00
  beg and are like I'm going to die, I need you to eat an attack
• 31:02
  for me. She'll be like OK, I'll eat an
• 31:04
  attack and then eat 1 and almost.
• 31:05
  And she only has 12 HP on a structure, which is not a lot
• 31:08
  but like she'll go down to like 1 HP in the structure and go OK
• 31:12
  goodbye. I'm leaving again and just and
• 31:13
  she's gone. OK, so that like I said, that's
• 31:20
  one. Ability I have to work around
• 31:22
  and the other. Ones are.
• 31:25
  Frustrating, but they're they're they're less bad right?
• 31:27
  If a character has high evasion, target their E defense.
• 31:30
  Just hack the shit out of them. If a character has a lot of
• 31:33
  health or get their heat build up, they probably don't have a
• 31:36
  big reactor capacity. The problem now is.
• 31:40
  That all of these problems are compounding together.
• 31:47
  And it's becoming. Really, really annoying because
• 31:52
  it's. It's becoming.
• 31:53
  A. A.
• 31:53
  Situation where I don't know what to do anymore because
• 31:58
  anything I do has a high likelihood of not doing much
• 32:05
  because two of my players also have invisibility or a.
• 32:10
  Means to. Replicate the invisibility
• 32:12
  effect, making even any NPC encounters with a high number a
• 32:18
  sort. Of waste of time.
• 32:20
  Because the way. Invisibility works.
• 32:23
  Is that it? It creates a hit confirm
• 32:25
  condition. You have to see if you can hit
• 32:28
  by rolling 1D2 and rolling odds on odds you can you can make the
• 32:33
  attempt to hit on evens. The hit is missed, the attack is
• 32:38
  wasted, and nothing else is done.
• 32:44
  I see. Yeah, that's.
• 32:46
  OK. Yeah, a little much so.
• 32:50
  That leaves That's three characters who have that right,
• 32:53
  Snubby. Becomes intangible.
• 32:55
  Moon and Moon and Siffy can become invisible or basically
• 33:01
  invisible, and Paladin has 30 HP, 31 HP per structure for 120
• 33:09
  HP total. That's more health than every.
• 33:13
  Other character combined I. See, it's just.
• 33:17
  A walking sack of meat, yes. And then Brett has an ability
• 33:22
  that lets him build armor which reduces damage that that.
• 33:27
  Is. Incoming to a maximum.
• 33:30
  Of like. Plus 10.
• 33:32
  So and he can't do. That immediately, that takes a
• 33:35
  little bit of prep time, but when he has really, really high
• 33:39
  armor and then he braces, which halves all incoming damage for
• 33:43
  the round because it works like Guard and Fabula, except you
• 33:47
  can't brace somebody else. I would have to deal.
• 33:53
  At least 20 damage a hit, which NPCS don't do to actually hurt
• 33:59
  him and I don't know what. Is this really an issue of
• 34:08
  crunch or is this an issue of power creep?
• 34:12
  Like both. Both because it's a situation
• 34:19
  where I. Can hit them.
• 34:22
  I can hurt them, but it's. It's getting to a.
• 34:25
  Point where I have to do. Weird shit and get.
• 34:30
  Lucky on the die or crank dice in my favor by giving characters
• 34:35
  a just a bunch of of advantage. So like I I put some sniper
• 34:39
  NHPNPCS up against. Snipers do 15 damage A.
• 34:43
  Shot with their anti material rifle and their.
• 34:46
  Snipers have. Two advantage, which is. 2D.
• 34:49
  Six, take the higher +4. It's really high.
• 34:53
  You're you're averaging. About.
• 34:54
  An extra like a + 8 to hit every round.
• 35:02
  And that's cool, and that's fine.
• 35:03
  But like, it's another. Die, I have.
• 35:06
  To add to the system, it's another bit of math that I have
• 35:09
  to do and I guess it it is both power creep and crunch.
• 35:12
  But like it, it really does feel like it's both.
• 35:16
  If that is, it feels like both. Like it sounds like you're
• 35:20
  complaining more about the power creep though.
• 35:25
  I guess so 'cause like I guess so, yes.
• 35:29
  I guess the main problem, I guess the revised of these main
• 35:31
  problem is the power creep and then the crunch I have to do to
• 35:36
  beat the power. Creep.
• 35:38
  Because I have to so. I used AI, used an.
• 35:42
  NPC. In this fight called the
• 35:44
  Warlock, now the Warlock is a homebrew creature, and basically
• 35:50
  what it does is it creates a a, a sphere of influence in which
• 35:56
  you have to roll to see if you can, if you're affected by it,
• 36:01
  if you're affected by it. What does it say?
• 36:07
  Players cannot alter or replace dice rolls.
• 36:10
  They cannot cause automatic misses or failures against
• 36:15
  themselves. They lose immunity to being
• 36:19
  critically hit. They cannot.
• 36:21
  Change. Targets from original attacks.
• 36:23
  They cannot negate attacks, but they are.
• 36:26
  Still affected by. Invisibility.
• 36:28
  They also cannot use lock on perform a.
• 36:31
  Critical hits. Or gain the benefits of
• 36:36
  accuracy. So it's really.
• 36:41
  It's like brutal at shutting people down.
• 36:46
  But it tells you something. That I was like.
• 36:51
  This encounter needs. This crazy bullshit hexfield
• 36:54
  ability. To be to effectively.
• 36:59
  Stop them and I'm going to be honest, it did effectively.
• 37:03
  Stop them for two turns. OK, and then I literally could.
• 37:09
  Not I had a couple of really bad rounds where the snipers just
• 37:12
  couldn't hit anything. Because I am.
• 37:16
  Unfortunately, fighting Brett Mr. I have damn near I I am was
• 37:23
  a fucking invincible #sundowner heliports behind you nothing
• 37:28
  personnel kid with siffy and then pass.
• 37:32
  Who's just invisible? So it was.
• 37:39
  Thick. Yeah.
• 37:40
  And I was like, in my head, I was like, you know, they really
• 37:43
  have to work together. They really have to pull this
• 37:45
  shit off, right Or I think I'm going to, I might actually beat
• 37:49
  them in this fight. And I was just wrong.
• 37:52
  Because I didn't. Realize.
• 37:53
  How tightly interwoven the team mechanics get now.
• 37:58
  And it like. I.
• 38:00
  Was just sitting there being like.
• 38:01
  I don't know what to do. And they haven't even beat.
• 38:03
  They haven't beaten in the encounter.
• 38:06
  Yet. But it is a guaranteed.
• 38:08
  Win. Because they killed the warlock
• 38:11
  like handedly. Killed it.
• 38:12
  And now it's these. Now there are these two snipers
• 38:14
  and they can do 15 damage around but if the players brace.
• 38:19
  They're halving that 15. Damage to a 7 does not the
• 38:23
  bracing burn their turn? And no, it's a reaction.
• 38:29
  It's a reaction. And.
• 38:31
  What it does do is it means they can only use one quick action
• 38:34
  and they can't overcharge on their next turn, but they do
• 38:37
  still get a turn on the next turn.
• 38:40
  And as a quick action, they can. It's not like AD and D dodge
• 38:44
  situation. No it's a reaction and every met
• 38:47
  can do it. Holy.
• 38:49
  Shit. Yeah.
• 38:52
  And like OK. That seems a little crazy.
• 38:56
  It is and like my NPCS can do it as well but it get and I did.
• 39:04
  I literally like I had the the warlock brace and it.
• 39:07
  Survived. One extra.
• 39:10
  Round that. It would have like one extra
• 39:11
  turn order. Because the players got lucky.
• 39:16
  And they ignored the hex field with good roles and it was like
• 39:20
  ADC 15, which is that's not easy to beat at LL6.
• 39:24
  It's doable. But they were.
• 39:26
  Rolling really good, so I was getting unlucky.
• 39:29
  It just felt, just felt bad man, like.
• 39:36
  OK. I mean.
• 39:43
  I like, I don't. I don't know.
• 39:49
  I don't, I don't know. Necessarily what what what I
• 39:52
  can. Say in this particular.
• 39:55
  Situation like. The the problem is I don't know.
• 40:01
  The system in question. So I can't I can't give you any
• 40:03
  kind of system specific advice. I I mean, if you, you said.
• 40:09
  You're doing the. Combat slightly out, somewhat
• 40:11
  non standard. If you were doing them in a more
• 40:14
  standard fashion, would that change this very much?
• 40:18
  It doesn't really sound like it, but not really like it would be
• 40:22
  a little bit different, right? There are more enemies on the
• 40:25
  field, there are more ways that I can affect the players, there
• 40:29
  are more attacks I can throw out the players, but there
• 40:33
  unfortunately are not enough ways to counteract invisible
• 40:38
  once it's been, once it's used, there's no way to stop the
• 40:44
  intangibility thing unless I just stop the player from taking
• 40:47
  turns or again, I melt her through reactions, but that also
• 40:51
  eats my NP CS reactions, so they can't use their their custom
• 40:55
  reactions or brace to to eat damage, you know what I mean?
• 41:00
  Uh huh. I mean.
• 41:05
  And I can I have overwhelmed the Brett with damage, but it's got
• 41:10
  to. It's it's.
• 41:10
  Got to be like back-to-back, back-to-back heavy hits.
• 41:16
  Is and then does the. Paladin, it's just, it's just
• 41:19
  attrition. I just have to throw as much
• 41:21
  shit at him as physically possible lol.
• 41:23
  He's thick. Yeah.
• 41:24
  And like for Brett, I can circumvent his armor by giving
• 41:27
  things armor piercing or make them do burn.
• 41:31
  But. As.
• 41:33
  Brett can attest cause. I've had a couple encounters
• 41:35
  where that happens. It feels bad when his
• 41:37
  character's one thing keeps being circumvented.
• 41:42
  Ah. Yes, I am.
• 41:43
  Armor, Mick. Armor, man.
• 41:44
  Well, all of these things are just going to ignore your armor
• 41:46
  now or they'll give you a, a, a status effect.
• 41:50
  That's that just turns your armor off.
• 41:54
  Like I can't, I can't keep. Praying on my my players
• 41:57
  weaknesses every combat. You know what I mean?
• 41:59
  I can't throw hackers at them every combat.
• 42:02
  But is that what the game expects you to do?
• 42:06
  Like no, this is the crazy thing the game tells.
• 42:10
  You. What a typical.
• 42:13
  Enemy. Team should look like a typical
• 42:16
  enemy Encounter should be comprised of three or four mech
• 42:19
  types 50. Percent of those.
• 42:22
  Mech types should be strikers, so you should have two strikers
• 42:26
  and either 1 defender, controller or support.
• 42:30
  Can we? Translate.
• 42:31
  These terms here I mean, so you need 2.
• 42:36
  It's literally. Like it's.
• 42:37
  It's it's 14 light party. Two DPS.
• 42:42
  Could you translate this for the normies as it you need 2DPS1
• 42:46
  tank, one support. OK OK OK.
• 42:48
  Or two DPS, one controller, one tank.
• 42:53
  And like supports. Can be healers but not every
• 42:56
  support or can can be hackers, but they aren't always.
• 43:02
  It's a pretty even split. Between support hackers and
• 43:06
  support healers and buffers. Same thing with controllers.
• 43:09
  There are. Some controller hackers and
• 43:12
  there are some controller buffers and then there are ones
• 43:14
  that like OK, I don't I don't know that that nullified my
• 43:17
  question here though I I like so.
• 43:22
  To to compare. Here.
• 43:27
  I'm trying to just. I was trying to think if if.
• 43:33
  We could use DND as the like broad touch point, but I don't
• 43:36
  think DND really tells you to build encounters in this
• 43:38
  fashion, so probably not going to work.
• 43:40
  But like for Fabula, right, The player characters get access to
• 43:47
  some pretty equally wild shit to a certain degree, right?
• 43:51
  Like. You know, in our.
• 43:54
  Current game, free every turn, damage incredibly consistent,
• 44:00
  really strong healing, the ability to just like, ignore
• 44:03
  status effects quite a few times, the ability to turn off
• 44:06
  enemy shit right. These are all things you guys
• 44:09
  can do on the fabulous game. Fabulous.
• 44:12
  Specifically. Says when talking about
• 44:16
  encounter design, I mean the. Book probably doesn't.
• 44:20
  Explain that. Well, actually the best theory
• 44:22
  explains this better. The best theory says like.
• 44:27
  You have to design every You want to design every encounter
• 44:32
  in response to your group, right?
• 44:34
  The book has that whole bit about the the the creatures in
• 44:39
  the bestiary were designed to work with the average party, but
• 44:45
  most groups are not going to fall under the average
• 44:48
  parameters. So the point is that you're
• 44:51
  supposed to take these and then make adjustments and essentially
• 44:55
  design combats for your party specifically.
• 44:58
  And that can mean designing combats that you know your party
• 45:02
  will kind of shit on, like having your.
• 45:05
  Party fight a. Fight a bunch of ice golems even
• 45:08
  though you know they have reliable fire damage, and the
• 45:10
  reason you do that is to let them do the cool thing where
• 45:13
  they just get to flex their ability, right?
• 45:15
  But also on the other side, if you want the fight to be hard,
• 45:18
  design it for your party in such a fashion that you know it's
• 45:20
  going to maybe not completely shut down, but at the very least
• 45:24
  respond to what your party's abilities are.
• 45:29
  So the, the, the easy example in Fabulous, you have a group of
• 45:33
  players who all use melee attacks reliably throw a bunch
• 45:36
  of flying enemies at them to force them to have to try and
• 45:39
  change up their plan or figure something out, right?
• 45:41
  And Fabulous says you're supposed to do that, right?
• 45:43
  Sometimes you design a fight that you you intentionally let
• 45:46
  them smack around, and sometimes you design a fight that
• 45:49
  intentionally is going to be, you know, quite an uphill battle
• 45:53
  for them. It.
• 45:54
  Doesn't tell you to design. Fights they intentionally lose,
• 45:57
  obviously, and I would say that's, you know, you don't want
• 46:00
  to do that in general. So is Lancer saying like it
• 46:06
  gives you the the sort of role types that you should have in
• 46:09
  the team on the on the enemy team, but is it saying that you
• 46:13
  should design the enemies specifically in response to
• 46:16
  player loadouts like? Is that part of the?
• 46:20
  Intended design. I have not seen anywhere in the
• 46:24
  core rule book where it says that, but I don't.
• 46:28
  Not do. That right like OK, I I create
• 46:31
  fights that I think will interact interestingly with the
• 46:35
  players right. So with this like sniper.
• 46:37
  Fight. I know players have a bunch of
• 46:40
  ways of manipulating dice, so I built NPCS that can turn off
• 46:44
  their ability to manipulate dice.
• 46:47
  And in. That vein I did just sort of get
• 46:51
  unlucky because they rolled well enough to avoid that ability,
• 46:54
  right? Like I'm getting that.
• 46:57
  I'm not saying that's not the kid.
• 47:00
  What I am saying is that. If I can't.
• 47:05
  Actively shut down what? Their characters.
• 47:10
  Can do every round in every fight.
• 47:17
  Then there isn't a lot. I can do and I wouldn't.
• 47:21
  Want to? Build encounters like that,
• 47:23
  right? Like I, I build encounters.
• 47:26
  To what I think is fun. And what I think my players will
• 47:28
  enjoy or they'll, they'll have to like, use their brains to
• 47:32
  solve. But ultimately, it's starting to
• 47:36
  feel like nothing I do matters. Because they can just.
• 47:42
  Subvert it. And I was thinking like in.
• 47:47
  My head as I was building this the like the sniper encounter, I
• 47:50
  was like maybe I should make these guys tier 3.
• 47:52
  Uh huh. And I stand by I.
• 47:56
  Didn't I made them like high Tier 2?
• 47:57
  I should have made them mid tier threes and just not made them
• 48:00
  ultras but. I'm.
• 48:02
  Not 100%. Sure.
• 48:04
  How much that would have solved Like, yeah, the Warlock would
• 48:07
  have lived a little bit longer and it would have had an extra
• 48:10
  structure, but like. Or not even.
• 48:12
  No, sorry, it wouldn't have. Had extra structure it would
• 48:14
  have had like extra hit points and would have done extra damage
• 48:16
  but. It like I don't.
• 48:21
  Know that it would have done enough to make a meaningful
• 48:23
  difference. Well.
• 48:29
  I I can't. Really get.
• 48:30
  Into the nitty gritty on the math of the mechanics and shit
• 48:32
  with this situation. I haven't played this game.
• 48:35
  So like that particular element. I, I I don't know, but it sounds
• 48:45
  like what you're saying is. The players have been.
• 48:50
  Pretty consistently shitting all over all over everything you've
• 48:54
  thrown at them. Have you tried to design?
• 48:58
  A fight that will like kind of intentionally dunk on them.
• 49:04
  I have. You know so.
• 49:06
  Before they did the big like walking fortress thing I made
• 49:10
  them fight enemies. That have something called the.
• 49:14
  Ushoptigun, which is basically it's the thing the the Pegasus
• 49:18
  has that just like it just hits you like.
• 49:21
  There's nothing you can do. It just hits you for free, no
• 49:25
  role required. I don't know what Pegasus has to
• 49:27
  do with anything, but OK, it's a mech.
• 49:29
  Called the Pegasus I. It's I don't know.
• 49:32
  Any of the mechs in this game. My my guy, I'll just.
• 49:36
  I'll just read to you what? It says, I mean, it does, it
• 49:38
  doesn't matter. No, no, no, no, don't, don't
• 49:40
  read it. We're getting into the weeds.
• 49:41
  It doesn't matter. So it's a thing that shuts down
• 49:42
  the players, that's all we know the specifics don't matter.
• 49:45
  Yes, it deals damage to them no matter what for free and there's
• 49:47
  nothing they can do about it 'cause it's armor piercing OK
• 49:52
  it. Ignores cover.
• 49:53
  Bypasses immunity, it's it's damage can't be reduced or
• 49:57
  ignored in any way, and it specifically.
• 49:59
  Says no. Rule in the book or any other
• 50:01
  can supersede this. OK.
• 50:06
  So I threw that. At them.
• 50:08
  And then threw hackers. At.
• 50:09
  Them and I upped the use shop D's damage because typically
• 50:12
  it's one AP and I made it 4 AP and there was two of those.
• 50:18
  So while that. Damage isn't a lot, it is
• 50:22
  consistent and because their abilities aren't working, they
• 50:26
  are not turning them on right? They're not wasting the action
• 50:30
  economy to either go invisible, even though I mean for two of
• 50:33
  them it's passive. But like, you know what I mean?
• 50:35
  They're going. OK, I'm not even going.
• 50:36
  To worry about this because. If they can just ignore it.
• 50:41
  Then there's no point, right? And that was funny and it was
• 50:44
  fun and it was like challenging for the players.
• 50:46
  They were really sweating. But I can't.
• 50:48
  Give every enemy the. Fucking who?
• 50:50
  Shop the gun. No, but.
• 50:53
  The the the the question, the solution.
• 50:57
  Is not to. Give every enemy the the Super
• 50:59
  special fuck you gun. Right when?
• 51:03
  You're dealing with. This is the thing about
• 51:07
  tabletop. Games you don't want the win
• 51:10
  rate. You don't want.
• 51:14
  Tabletop games to be perfectly balanced right, the win rate
• 51:17
  should not be 5050 because then that would mean you'd be killing
• 51:21
  the players 50% of the time TPK ING them 50% of the time, right?
• 51:25
  That's not right. Players should be winning like,
• 51:29
  you know, handily. 80% of. The time or whatever, 70% of the
• 51:33
  time. The.
• 51:37
  The objective is just to have stuff in your pocket for.
• 51:42
  When it narratively makes. Sense that they should be
• 51:45
  sweating, making them sweat, and when it makes sense that they
• 51:49
  might not, then you don't need to worry about it as much.
• 51:52
  So you just have to kind of balance.
• 51:56
  When you throw out the. Stuff that specifically shuts
• 51:59
  them down when you don't, right? Again, just.
• 52:04
  Trying to go with using my game for comparison because it's, you
• 52:09
  know, we're both playing it. It you know.
• 52:15
  I I actually here we'll use a very recent comparison, right?
• 52:19
  You guys are fighting the Lich, Seth and I saw that the Lich,
• 52:23
  you know, I saw he had a fireball, right?
• 52:25
  That's one of his spells. And I knew for a fact that.
• 52:30
  Senna was. Weak to fire, right?
• 52:33
  I knew that and I left that in there on purpose because I
• 52:39
  wanted y'all to sweat when fighting him and as soon as I
• 52:42
  did the fireball, immediately everyone went oh fuck right.
• 52:48
  So yeah, if. If it narratively.
• 52:53
  Makes sense where you want to have that oh fuck moment.
• 52:55
  Or another example is you know. This didn't happen but like.
• 53:01
  If I want to have an enemy where it specifically is like, oh, OK,
• 53:05
  let's say I want to shut down your character, in particular
• 53:07
  Isaiah, like I'm going to shut down Goromaro for this fight.
• 53:09
  So somebody else has to try and pick up the slack, right?
• 53:13
  I'm probably going to have the enemy, you know, probably
• 53:16
  they're going to be flying for starters.
• 53:18
  They're probably going to have some sort of ability to like,
• 53:21
  you know, counter basic attacks. Or maybe they're going to have
• 53:25
  something that specifically has a clause about sword type
• 53:27
  weapons. You know, I might have a
• 53:32
  situation where you can't use your protect for some reason,
• 53:35
  right? You can't jump into the way to
• 53:36
  defend somebody else. If I'm specifically like this,
• 53:39
  this fight's going to shut Goromaro down.
• 53:42
  And then the fight after that, I'm like, all right, this fight
• 53:49
  is specifically going to be a problem for Senna.
• 53:51
  But Goromaro and Don, if they are paying attention, we'll just
• 53:54
  absolutely stomp on this guy, right?
• 53:57
  So you. You.
• 53:58
  Want to kind of balance that? That.
• 54:02
  That idea of. Designing an encounter.
• 54:09
  In such a fashion that who do you want to bully and who do you
• 54:14
  not want to bully or do you want to bully nobody or do you want
• 54:16
  to kind of bully a little bit of everybody and just.
• 54:21
  Playing with that. And it sounds like the problem
• 54:27
  is that. Lancer.
• 54:27
  Has quite the complicated math, so sometimes it's going to be
• 54:30
  quite hard to. Make your.
• 54:35
  Bullying mathematically correct, right?
• 54:40
  Because you have this weird. It's tricky because when you
• 54:44
  have a game that has has quite complicated math, and if the
• 54:48
  math is somewhat obfuscated from you, it can be hard to design
• 54:53
  something where, oh, I want to make one player sweat, not a
• 54:57
  other, not the other. Or it can be hard to just design
• 55:00
  a challenge in general for everybody.
• 55:03
  But that's kind of the mindset you want to have is.
• 55:08
  Not every fight can. Be a super hard.
• 55:11
  It's like when the GM It's like when the five EGM makes every
• 55:15
  single encounter a deadly encounter, right?
• 55:19
  That gets annoying. Quick.
• 55:22
  Because. There's no variation, it's.
• 55:25
  Just everything is bringing us to the very limit, to the very
• 55:28
  edge. So you just want to avoid the
• 55:31
  monotony. So if the problem you're running
• 55:33
  into is that your players are steamrolling too many things.
• 55:40
  You got to. That's where you got to figure
• 55:42
  out what tools you have to kind of steamroll them back a little
• 55:46
  bit. Or at the very least.
• 55:51
  Operate in the middle. Well, like, that's what I'm
• 55:53
  saying. I don't know the like, I don't
• 55:54
  know the mechanics of the game, so I can't get into specifically
• 55:58
  what that looks like, but. Whatever you got to.
• 56:03
  Do like even if you have to kind of over crank things then.
• 56:08
  Maybe that's. Just what you got to do over
• 56:10
  crank things, you know, Maybe I mean.
• 56:13
  And and. So I'm not necessarily opposed
• 56:15
  to over cranking things like seeing how this fight went I.
• 56:19
  Was already going to. Crank the final round of the
• 56:21
  tournament, because that's what they're going into.
• 56:23
  Probably not next session, but the session afterward.
• 56:27
  So. I'm going to say fuck it and go.
• 56:28
  Balls to the wall and throw a bunch of shit at them, yeah, and
• 56:32
  I'm not going to feel too bad about it, but.
• 56:38
  And like, yes, we're, we're at the point.
• 56:40
  Where they're going to start facing tier 3 enemies as at the
• 56:43
  norm. So we I am also running into a
• 56:46
  situation where there is not much higher.
• 56:50
  I can crank things I'm running at.
• 56:52
  I'm running up to a limit they are not.
• 56:57
  Why are you running up to a? Limit because.
• 57:01
  There. Is no Tier 4 enemies.
• 57:05
  Like. The game says generally.
• 57:09
  Speaking, the game goes to Tier 4 but doesn't have Tier 4
• 57:13
  enemies. Pretty much like you.
• 57:16
  Can you can argue you can. Argue that the.
• 57:20
  The math should actually work out as one tier is 4 levels, but
• 57:26
  it. Doesn't actually really.
• 57:27
  Work out that way because the mech.
• 57:31
  Licenses come. In.
• 57:32
  In sets of three. Right.
• 57:36
  There's 3 license. Levels per mech, so you get to
• 57:40
  a. Situation.
• 57:41
  Where one mech gives a player, let's just see the most basic
• 57:48
  one. Let's go with the fucking
• 57:49
  Blackbeard. For three license levels.
• 57:53
  You get 123456 things, so the players have generally speaking,
• 58:03
  double the options of an of an NPC.
• 58:10
  Uh huh. So the math doesn't.
• 58:13
  Really work out on a three to three basis, not to mention that
• 58:17
  even at Tier 3. Unless I'm making every.
• 58:21
  Enemy either an elite or a veteran, they're still only
• 58:24
  going to have two structure unless I.
• 58:27
  Specifically, Go. In and custom build every enemy
• 58:31
  to have more structure outright. I'm still.
• 58:35
  I'm. I'm still.
• 58:35
  Confused you're saying? Again, if we're if we're to D.
• 58:41
  And D translate it, the players can get to level 20 but the
• 58:44
  enemies are stopping at CR-15. Kind of, yeah.
• 58:51
  Is there an expectation that you're supposed to custom build
• 58:54
  everything after that point? Not that I have seen.
• 59:00
  I haven't seen a whole lot. Of talk even on the Lancer
• 59:03
  subreddit about campaigns hitting level 12.
• 59:09
  A lot of people say 6. Is like a good number, but I
• 59:17
  want to like I want to. Run it to 12 to see what.
• 59:20
  What it looks like and I'm seeing what it looks like and
• 59:24
  I'm less than enthused. I.
• 59:30
  Are you sure you're not missing? Something because I like almost
• 59:33
  don't. Almost don't believe you.
• 59:36
  Like I, I don't know what is there not to believe, brother.
• 59:40
  Like I just I'm just having a hard time believing that the
• 59:45
  game is like, yeah, players can get to level 20, but enemies
• 59:50
  stop at level 15. Like that just doesn't that
• 59:53
  that's where the. Templates come in right.
• 59:56
  Templates. Like can.
• 59:57
  Power up the the NPCS. But the game says that even
• 1:00:03
  like. They.
• 1:00:05
  Shouldn't have more than. Two templates, typically even
• 1:00:08
  bosses. Shouldn't have more?
• 1:00:09
  Than two templates, right, they are, they have ultra and then
• 1:00:12
  they'll get one other template. Like, you know, the templates
• 1:00:15
  are like spec OP or contract killer or, you know, like a
• 1:00:21
  walking Armory, like that's a talent, but you know what I
• 1:00:24
  mean? Like it just sort of informs how
• 1:00:26
  they play. Does it?
• 1:00:30
  Make them. Directly stronger though.
• 1:00:34
  Some of them do, some of them. Do flat out make them stronger.
• 1:00:36
  So elite gives them an extra round in combat.
• 1:00:39
  OK, so I mean, again, this again, stop getting into the
• 1:00:44
  specifics. The specifics aren't really that
• 1:00:45
  relevant here. Well, the, the specifics are
• 1:00:46
  important. It makes them stronger 'cause it
• 1:00:48
  some of them can give them extra turns on the initial I, I know,
• 1:00:51
  I know, but that's not what we're talking about.
• 1:00:52
  We're not talking about specific.
• 1:00:53
  We're not getting into the noodly of the mechanics of the
• 1:00:55
  game itself 'cause we can't because I don't know the
• 1:00:58
  mechanics right. Well, so that that is kind of
• 1:01:01
  there's not much. Else I can.
• 1:01:02
  Say I have to explain these things and then the way to do
• 1:01:04
  it, this context, what I'm trying to say here is OK, so you
• 1:01:09
  have this template system is the intended use that the templates
• 1:01:12
  are supposed to bump an enemy from a Tier 4 into a from a tier
• 1:01:16
  3 into a Tier 4 level thing it like no, it's supposed to bump
• 1:01:21
  any tier up to like approaching. The next tier?
• 1:01:28
  Right, which would be 4. If you're.
• 1:01:30
  Saying the game effectively. Goes to Tier 4.
• 1:01:35
  Then should not the next tier? After that third one be the
• 1:01:38
  template bumps them into 4. Is that not?
• 1:01:41
  The intention? You would think, but it doesn't
• 1:01:43
  seem to be working. Or it or it either.
• 1:01:47
  Doesn't seem to be working. Or I'm just doing it wrong,
• 1:01:49
  which like, sure, I'm sure I could probably be doing it
• 1:01:51
  wrong. Like, I'm not saying that Lancer
• 1:01:53
  is poorly designed. I think it actually is very well
• 1:01:55
  designed, but I think it's running.
• 1:01:57
  Into. A similar.
• 1:02:00
  Issue that. High level 5 E is where they're
• 1:02:02
  the players just get such a large bevy of abilities and shit
• 1:02:05
  that they can pull off at any given time.
• 1:02:08
  That. It's hard.
• 1:02:10
  To keep track. Or keep up.
• 1:02:14
  I can't say whether you're doing.
• 1:02:15
  It wrong enough? I don't know.
• 1:02:16
  I don't know. I don't have enough information
• 1:02:18
  here, but. It it.
• 1:02:23
  It just doesn't. There's got to be something that
• 1:02:27
  lets you push enemies into that final echelon, because otherwise
• 1:02:31
  that. If there isn't.
• 1:02:34
  Then the game just kind of stops being a game and you're just
• 1:02:39
  kind of fucking around the last, like the last tier, the last
• 1:02:43
  echelon of play. And that just seems weird and
• 1:02:49
  out of place to me. Like I I just have a hard.
• 1:02:52
  Time. Picturing that.
• 1:02:56
  Like in five. East it.
• 1:02:58
  Yes, it is true that the PCs get a.
• 1:03:02
  Crazy amount of shit. And the crazy amount of shit the
• 1:03:05
  PCs get can sometimes just shut your day down.
• 1:03:08
  But there are. A couple of.
• 1:03:11
  Dials that you can just over crank in 5 E to help compensate
• 1:03:15
  to a point. Like the easiest dial in 5 E is
• 1:03:19
  to just go ah ah stupid silly with the damage right?
• 1:03:22
  Like fucking. Was it Tiamat?
• 1:03:27
  Her breath weapon does just, you know, unreasonable.
• 1:03:33
  Amounts. Of data like I don't even
• 1:03:34
  remember exactly. Hold on, let's see if I can.
• 1:03:36
  I might be able to pull it up. If we'll load.
• 1:03:46
  Yeah. OK, so chromatic flames is a
• 1:03:51
  three. 100. Foot cone.
• 1:03:53
  So you're just going to hit fucking everybody DC-27, which
• 1:03:56
  is like, I mean, it's doable at at Max level, but it's hard and
• 1:04:01
  it's 11-D12, right? It's just like a just an ass
• 1:04:04
  loaded damn. Which granted, you know, PCs
• 1:04:07
  could have potentially like 200 HP at Max level, but eleven D12
• 1:04:11
  is still nothing, nothing to sneeze at.
• 1:04:14
  So you. Know that's like saving throws
• 1:04:17
  and big damage numbers are two dials that you could just kind
• 1:04:21
  of over crank the shit out of in 5 E and it doesn't fix the
• 1:04:24
  problem right. High level play is still fucky
• 1:04:26
  wacky, but it certainly can help you a lot to over crank those
• 1:04:29
  particular dials. And there's there's a couple
• 1:04:31
  other ones. So like, there's got to be
• 1:04:34
  something in Lancer that you can just go stupid with to sort of
• 1:04:38
  make up for the problem to a certain degree.
• 1:04:41
  I. Find it hard to believe that?
• 1:04:42
  There's like nothing, you know what I mean?
• 1:04:45
  So I didn't say that there's nothing right again.
• 1:04:46
  So like the templates give you extra abilities, you can assign
• 1:04:49
  the extra abilities to the NPCS, give them more options, give
• 1:04:51
  them more things to do, and some of them are very strong, but.
• 1:04:56
  Following the game's rules. On not overloading the NPCS with
• 1:05:02
  a bunch of abilities. Which the game?
• 1:05:05
  Advises you to. Not do unless the game.
• 1:05:08
  Says to just. Throw that idea out the window
• 1:05:11
  by tier 3:00. Well, it kind of doesn't seem
• 1:05:14
  like I'm I'm thinking perhaps after Tier 3 the intention is to
• 1:05:18
  throw that out the window. If if if the player.
• 1:05:24
  Characters are supposed to go to a a Tier 4 worth of power, a
• 1:05:29
  Tier 4 power level, but the enemies don't go to a Tier 4
• 1:05:33
  power level. Then it seems like your only
• 1:05:36
  option left is to throw out that recommendation of, you know,
• 1:05:40
  limit the limit the abilities of the enemy.
• 1:05:43
  It seems like that's just like. That that.
• 1:05:47
  Doesn't apply anymore. You know.
• 1:05:51
  Because. Otherwise.
• 1:05:55
  You're just. Doing nothing.
• 1:05:57
  Like you're just kind of wasting time otherwise because you're
• 1:06:00
  throwing stuff at the players that you know for an absolute
• 1:06:04
  fact they're just gonna kick the dog shit out of and and on their
• 1:06:08
  side of the table. It'll be fun for them to kick
• 1:06:10
  the dog shit out of shit for like, you know, a couple of
• 1:06:13
  fights, but they are gonna get bored eventually.
• 1:06:15
  So at some point you're gonna have to over crank it no matter
• 1:06:18
  what. I suppose so.
• 1:06:21
  I. Just I just don't like it's,
• 1:06:31
  it's becoming a situation where the the players have not.
• 1:06:36
  Absolute A. Defenses, right, but I'm still
• 1:06:40
  running into the issue of like. Like yes.
• 1:06:46
  I know that I'm not. Supposed to challenge them with
• 1:06:48
  every single fight, but that's never really been my intention.
• 1:06:52
  My into my intention. Well, so no my my.
• 1:06:55
  Intention. Has been to challenge them every
• 1:06:57
  single fight right but like challenge in so far as make them
• 1:07:01
  think about the fight I. Don't think.
• 1:07:04
  I don't think that's achievable, but that's what.
• 1:07:07
  The game wants you to do. Right like that's why the game
• 1:07:09
  has sit reps The game is forcing you to think about things in a
• 1:07:12
  non linear way and. It's.
• 1:07:15
  Less frustrating, right? Like when when the players have
• 1:07:19
  to actively think about using. Using the sit reps to.
• 1:07:25
  Like, oh, you know what a character, you know, Snuffy's
• 1:07:27
  character can't go intangible because she has to hack
• 1:07:29
  something. Like, yeah, sure, that's fine.
• 1:07:32
  But then that again it it creates situations where some
• 1:07:37
  sit reps don't feel worth running.
• 1:07:44
  Because contending with. The player's stuff isn't.
• 1:07:48
  Super. Satisfying for me.
• 1:07:53
  And because the game is. Is trying to deincentivize just
• 1:07:56
  doing all out combat and I know that in in like doing this
• 1:07:59
  tournament arc I am dealing with all out combat.
• 1:08:01
  I was going to say you are doing all out combat in this
• 1:08:04
  situation. He's sort of stress testing the
• 1:08:07
  combat in of itself and it's making me realize that.
• 1:08:25
  I don't even know like. I don't want to say that the
• 1:08:27
  combat's not as well designed as I thought it would be, because
• 1:08:30
  it is like, I mean, that might be your point.
• 1:08:34
  It might be like the combat is really well designed.
• 1:08:39
  And it feels for the most. Part Pretty smooth.
• 1:08:43
  So maybe it's just the fact that.
• 1:08:45
  Like my players just got lucky and built some weirdly
• 1:08:49
  overpowered shit by accident, right?
• 1:08:52
  Because not like. Any of them were are.
• 1:08:53
  Looking up build videos, I know they aren't.
• 1:08:55
  I was going to say I I don't think you have the kind of
• 1:08:57
  players that did that. I I mean, I I suppose they could
• 1:09:00
  have happened upon a few particularly good combos.
• 1:09:06
  It sounds like maybe the issue is well, A like I said, you just
• 1:09:12
  need to over crank things a little bit more, but also B
• 1:09:15
  yeah, maybe the game is just anti straight up straight.
• 1:09:21
  Up slap fight. Combat, like maybe maybe the
• 1:09:25
  game just is of the opinion that you just should not do that.
• 1:09:29
  And because you're trying to do that so directly, it's starting
• 1:09:32
  to to struggle too much. Potentially it just.
• 1:09:37
  It feels like these. Problems that I have.
• 1:09:41
  Are going. To be.
• 1:09:45
  Like this, this is those problems.
• 1:09:46
  Are are presenting themselves in a distilled manner because it is
• 1:09:49
  all out combat. But I'm still going to have
• 1:09:51
  these problems moving forward. They are still going to keep
• 1:09:53
  getting stronger. I am still going to have to keep
• 1:09:56
  overtuning my NPCS more and more.
• 1:10:00
  Well, to keep up with their abilities to just stop me from
• 1:10:04
  doing things. If their objective is something
• 1:10:07
  other than just defeat guys in front of us, that mitigates the
• 1:10:13
  need to overtune to a certain point, right?
• 1:10:15
  If they have to, if they have to split their attention to other
• 1:10:18
  objectives, they. Can't just.
• 1:10:22
  Use all their best stuff to pub stomp the enemy.
• 1:10:27
  No it it will help. That but.
• 1:10:32
  I think you have to figure out what.
• 1:10:33
  The intention of of that that Tier 4 of play is supposed to
• 1:10:37
  look like in terms of of NPC power level, because it just
• 1:10:40
  doesn't. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not
• 1:10:43
  saying. You a liar, but I I feel like
• 1:10:46
  you got to be missing something. It just doesn't make sense to me
• 1:10:49
  that the game just absolutely leaves you high and dry 100% in
• 1:10:53
  the last 25% of the game and just has nothing.
• 1:10:56
  And I know that we're like, Oh well, 5 E does that, but. 5 E
• 1:11:01
  doesn't leave you. Completely high and dry, like it
• 1:11:03
  still provides you with like NPC, you know, there are still
• 1:11:07
  stat blocks for those higher levels of play.
• 1:11:10
  There are enemies that you could throw at level 20 characters.
• 1:11:13
  You know, it doesn't leave you completely high and dry.
• 1:11:16
  It's not the most balanced shit in the world, but it's like it
• 1:11:18
  gives you something. No, you're like.
• 1:11:20
  The game's. Got to give you something it.
• 1:11:24
  I think what it gives you are. The templates and like but
• 1:11:28
  again, like I keep saying, not. Every character.
• 1:11:32
  Can be a veteran. Not every character can be an
• 1:11:35
  elite. Not every character can be an
• 1:11:37
  Ultra. Why not?
• 1:11:39
  Because the. Game specifically says not to.
• 1:11:41
  Do that. Is there no other template?
• 1:11:47
  Options that do something like that I don't in terms of like
• 1:11:53
  straight up power scaling, that's pretty much it you get.
• 1:12:03
  Well, that one's not. That's not an.
• 1:12:04
  Official 1 you get grunt, elite, veteran, and ultra.
• 1:12:10
  Grunts turn mock characters. Into minions.
• 1:12:12
  They get like, you know, one or two HP and when they die they
• 1:12:16
  just explode, right? Like they're grunts.
• 1:12:20
  Like I guess I could. Turn everything into an A
• 1:12:22
  veteran because that one doesn't actually give them more turns on
• 1:12:25
  the turn order. But they get so much.
• 1:12:32
  Shit. There has to be a dial somewhere
• 1:12:36
  that could be increased. It just doesn't make any sense.
• 1:12:41
  To me otherwise. You'd think.
• 1:12:47
  I, I I. Can't find them.
• 1:12:50
  I can't figure out what it's supposed to be other than
• 1:12:53
  maintain a super tight balance between the sitrep kind of
• 1:13:04
  encounter, really specific builds and like.
• 1:13:10
  Tightly interweaving. NPC synergies together.
• 1:13:17
  And I'm already doing that last. Thing.
• 1:13:23
  I mean the tightly weaving. The MPCS is not that.
• 1:13:25
  It is not, it's. Not the intention to do.
• 1:13:29
  That all the time. Yeah, it is what I.
• 1:13:35
  I mean like, yes, the idea is that you.
• 1:13:41
  Want your NPCS? To have synergy, but I what I'm
• 1:13:43
  talking about is like completely optimizing their synergy.
• 1:13:48
  I'm already. Doing that quite.
• 1:13:49
  A bit. But it is still.
• 1:13:54
  Really hard again to circumvent the absolute abilities that are.
• 1:13:59
  Invisibility. Intangibility.
• 1:14:04
  They just don't really. Have a good turn off button.
• 1:14:12
  I I mean. I I can deal with high health, I
• 1:14:15
  can deal with high defence, I can deal with high armor.
• 1:14:20
  But I there really? Isn't a lot of ways to deal with
• 1:14:23
  half the? Characters more.
• 1:14:25
  Than half the characters being. Practically speaking.
• 1:14:29
  Untouchable combat. I and only one.
• 1:14:34
  Of those characters is untouchable and you know can't
• 1:14:37
  be and can't touch anything else.
• 1:14:39
  Invisible characters can still do that.
• 1:14:42
  Again, unless I just never hit them with melee attacks and only
• 1:14:47
  hacked them. That's the only thing that
• 1:14:50
  negates their invisibility. But that's boring.
• 1:14:53
  I don't want to run legions of hackers.
• 1:14:57
  The game's got like. 50 different NP CS I can play with
• 1:15:01
  you know well. No, but perhaps you.
• 1:15:04
  Need to always have at least one or two hackers present.
• 1:15:09
  For every encounter. Like you got to think about
• 1:15:12
  this. It's expecting 3 or 4 encounter,
• 1:15:14
  2 to 3 encounters per mission. That's just not fun.
• 1:15:23
  I, I, I really don't know what else you want me to say, like I
• 1:15:27
  don't know enough about the problem that's.
• 1:15:29
  Like I, I can't I. I I don't know.
• 1:15:32
  This could. Be super easy if I just make it
• 1:15:35
  so the players can't have fun, which I don't want to do.
• 1:15:42
  I I feel like there has to. Be some sort of element?
• 1:15:44
  You're either. You either don't know.
• 1:15:48
  About or are misunderstanding because I'm.
• 1:15:52
  Having a hard time? Believing that this game gets to
• 1:15:55
  the final 25% or whatever and then just completely falls to
• 1:16:00
  pieces and just does not function, you know?
• 1:16:06
  Like there's there's a. Difference between functioning
• 1:16:09
  poorly and this shit just don't work at all.
• 1:16:11
  And it kind of sounds like you're saying it don't work at
• 1:16:13
  all. It doesn't feel like it.
• 1:16:15
  And even if my math is wrong, right?
• 1:16:17
  And each tier is every 4 levels as opposed to every three.
• 1:16:23
  I don't know that that. Makes much of a difference.
• 1:16:27
  I don't know. I, I I.
• 1:16:29
  I can't speak on the math. This is the thing you like.
• 1:16:31
  You keep bringing up the math. I can't speak on the math.
• 1:16:33
  I don't. I don't know, but you're saying
• 1:16:36
  I might be missing. Something I'm trying to explain
• 1:16:38
  to you is that I've done the math both ways.
• 1:16:42
  Well, when I say, you might be missing.
• 1:16:43
  Something I I, I mean quite literally.
• 1:16:45
  There might be an element of the book you like.
• 1:16:48
  Didn't read, misread, haven't read in a while, forgot about
• 1:16:53
  like. I mean quite literally.
• 1:16:55
  You may be lacking information. I mean, I I haven't.
• 1:17:00
  In depth read. The.
• 1:17:01
  Lancer combat rules in a while, but.
• 1:17:06
  To the point of you. Saying.
• 1:17:09
  It doesn't make sense that they. Would leave you without a Tier
• 1:17:12
  4. And what I'm saying is that even
• 1:17:14
  if there is no Tier 4 and it's still tier 3, yeah.
• 1:17:19
  That. Doesn't seem to affect things
• 1:17:21
  much. No, but I that might not.
• 1:17:24
  Be the core of the problem. Right, like maybe the core of.
• 1:17:29
  The problem is some different element of of NPC design that
• 1:17:33
  you're just not not thinking about or don't remember or you
• 1:17:37
  know or just just generally missed if, for example, we'll
• 1:17:47
  just. Not calling out any particular.
• 1:17:50
  Game just whipping up a hypothetical, let's say there's
• 1:17:52
  a game that caps out at level 10, but the game gives you rules
• 1:17:57
  for the players and how their power level like how their power
• 1:18:01
  increases past level 10. You know, they get extra damage
• 1:18:05
  and extra health and then the. Game says.
• 1:18:08
  To you yeah, once enemies hit level 10, if you wish to
• 1:18:13
  continue playing, you have to do this, that and the other thing
• 1:18:17
  to these level 10 enemies to continue to make them to keep
• 1:18:20
  up. So the problem might not
• 1:18:22
  necessarily be just the tier. Maybe the game intends for you
• 1:18:26
  to change the math on damage output, or change the math on
• 1:18:30
  health, or change the the group design in terms of which types
• 1:18:36
  of enemies and all that are supposed to be on the board.
• 1:18:41
  Like there might be some other. Other element there it's not.
• 1:18:46
  Just necessarily. Tiers and levels.
• 1:18:49
  So I checked and as a quick. Clarification.
• 1:18:51
  It is. Yeah, it is Tier 1.
• 1:18:53
  Is. Licensable 0 to 4.
• 1:18:55
  Tier 2 was 5 to 8. Tier 3 is 9 to 12.
• 1:18:59
  Yeah. And they're fighting tier.
• 1:19:06
  Twos right now, yeah. And they're curb.
• 1:19:10
  Stomping. So.
• 1:19:14
  I'm not even at tier. 3 yet. Yeah.
• 1:19:21
  And so I'm so then presumably going up to Tier 3 will bring a
• 1:19:29
  shift up is the hope like, you know, change things up a bit.
• 1:19:38
  Maybe I I I mean. You're you're complaining that.
• 1:19:47
  You're saying the enemy doesn't? Have the sufficient power.
• 1:19:51
  But you haven't hit that. Next stage yet?
• 1:19:53
  So presumably hitting that next stage is going to cause some
• 1:19:57
  changes to happen. I don't know how much it will
• 1:20:07
  just with. The experience I've.
• 1:20:09
  Had right now? I don't know.
• 1:20:12
  How much it will? I mean, have you looked at any
• 1:20:14
  of the tier 3 like abilities and stat blocks in terms of what
• 1:20:18
  they have? Yeah.
• 1:20:22
  Tier 3 typically just. Gives an across the board bump
• 1:20:25
  in stats and abilities. Will.
• 1:20:28
  Either increase damage or they'll go, they'll increase
• 1:20:32
  save, and there's like one or two abilities that I know off
• 1:20:34
  the top of my head where it goes from a save to an absolute.
• 1:20:42
  Sounds like relevant. Changes.
• 1:20:49
  Like not not. Nothing, right?
• 1:20:53
  No, it's, it's not. It's not about the not nothing.
• 1:20:56
  It's it's. I'm not sure how else to.
• 1:21:04
  Put it like, I'm not sure what answer you're fishing for.
• 1:21:08
  I'm not fishing for an answer. This is kind of the problem.
• 1:21:10
  I don't know what the answer can be.
• 1:21:13
  I'm not. Asking you for an.
• 1:21:14
  Answer. I'm kind of asking the universe
• 1:21:16
  for an answer and I'm not really getting one.
• 1:21:21
  I I I mean. You're playing a.
• 1:21:24
  You're playing a game that is intended to be highly.
• 1:21:30
  Tactical. Quite crunchy, quite specific
• 1:21:34
  combat. Where?
• 1:21:38
  The intention is that you have. To build your.
• 1:21:43
  Party in such a way that they can all synergize with each
• 1:21:48
  other and really dunk on the enemy or whatever, right?
• 1:21:51
  And then I, I think the intention is that you as the GM
• 1:21:56
  are supposed to counter synergize.
• 1:22:01
  And I and that's what I'm. Doing I am counter synergizing.
• 1:22:05
  But are you countering? Their shit specifically.
• 1:22:08
  That's kind of what I'm getting at here.
• 1:22:13
  Not explicitly, but. Again, that's not fun, but I
• 1:22:17
  think you're supposed, I think the game wants you to.
• 1:22:20
  I don't know how it could want me to if the if the idea of just
• 1:22:23
  being like. That in the character who goes.
• 1:22:27
  Invisible every encounter. You just negate the fact that
• 1:22:31
  they can be invisible by hacking the shit out of them.
• 1:22:33
  Like, just from like a On a very fundamental TTRPG perspective,
• 1:22:38
  that isn't fun. I mean, maybe not every.
• 1:22:42
  Literally every single combat. But as soon as you want a combat
• 1:22:45
  to be any degree of a challenge, then you have to take that into
• 1:22:49
  account. Right.
• 1:22:52
  Like, sure, they're fighting. The random Gamuka guys, they
• 1:22:55
  don't have a hacker, so the invisible person dunks on them.
• 1:22:57
  But as soon as you get to the boss encounter of the mission,
• 1:23:01
  then yeah, they got to have a hacker like that's sure the the
• 1:23:04
  boss encounter that's fine, but. I'm already doing that like.
• 1:23:09
  For bosses I am giving like I even said like I threw the.
• 1:23:14
  Thing at them that. Negated their abilities.
• 1:23:16
  I'm doing that, but I. It's it.
• 1:23:20
  It seems like what you're. Suggesting.
• 1:23:21
  Is to do that more often, but my counter.
• 1:23:25
  Is then that's. Not fun.
• 1:23:27
  It's not fun. For me because then.
• 1:23:29
  I have to limit myself to what NPCS I can run but I don't get
• 1:23:32
  to. Play, you know.
• 1:23:33
  I have all this box full of toys that I can't play with and it's.
• 1:23:37
  Not fun for them. Because I'm.
• 1:23:40
  Just. Legitimizing.
• 1:23:42
  Their. Kit well.
• 1:23:44
  Again, you don't do it. All the time, right?
• 1:23:47
  You give them the you give them the ones that you know they're
• 1:23:50
  going to dunk on and you give them the ones that you know
• 1:23:52
  they're not going to dunk on. You know, you give them the ones
• 1:23:54
  that you know are going to be challenged and you give them the
• 1:23:56
  one like you got to give both ends of the spectrum as much as
• 1:24:00
  you can. And I think this particular
• 1:24:03
  tournament arc idea, maybe it was just.
• 1:24:06
  Kind of a bad. Idea for this system, you know
• 1:24:09
  like maybe it just. Didn't want to.
• 1:24:12
  It's just not going. To work that way because you're
• 1:24:14
  trying to do kind of a weird thing that the system doesn't
• 1:24:16
  want to do. Maybe like maybe?
• 1:24:25
  'Cause like even. Even sitreps with objectives
• 1:24:29
  require combat, yeah. So I'm going to and.
• 1:24:36
  I and like. For some things I've run into
• 1:24:38
  this problem before, right? I've run into the intangibility.
• 1:24:41
  I've run into the invisibility before and it was frustrating
• 1:24:43
  before, but. Now we're getting.
• 1:24:46
  Into a thing where. It's just a.
• 1:24:50
  It's another. Thing to keep track of right?
• 1:24:52
  Like Snubby's character can make another character.
• 1:24:55
  Intangible characters can give each other abilities that
• 1:24:57
  replicate invisibility characters can.
• 1:25:00
  Like Brett's character can just force re roles for allies.
• 1:25:07
  Like Oh yeah, character failed role.
• 1:25:08
  OK no I'm just going to make it so they can re roll.
• 1:25:10
  Oh, now they succeed. Roll the issue I'm.
• 1:25:13
  Running into is that. Like I said earlier, the players
• 1:25:15
  the the the players abilities are are beginning to create.
• 1:25:20
  This overlapping. Net that I can't seem to pull
• 1:25:23
  encounters out of. I mean.
• 1:25:28
  You might have to just kind of take the L on that one and just
• 1:25:32
  make whatever encounters you're going to make and just kind of
• 1:25:35
  run them and hope for the best. Like if they're that OP, it's
• 1:25:43
  kind of like when the wizard busts out force force cage.
• 1:25:49
  You know, like, all right. Guess you're holding that L or.
• 1:25:54
  Wall of Force or? Whichever one it is, it's.
• 1:25:57
  I know what you mean. Like.
• 1:26:01
  The spell that I said is. A little ridiculous and then you
• 1:26:03
  defend it. Now you're.
• 1:26:05
  Seeing why I said it's. Ridiculous.
• 1:26:09
  Well, I still stand by force, Cate.
• 1:26:10
  Like you can. You can defeat force.
• 1:26:15
  Cage right? You can counter spell force
• 1:26:16
  cage. You can do stuff to stop force
• 1:26:18
  cage like. Not that easily sounds like.
• 1:26:26
  You're running into the force cage problem on the other side
• 1:26:28
  of the table and you're getting annoyed about it.
• 1:26:30
  And then no, it's more like 3 characters have force cage.
• 1:26:36
  Sure. Yeah, that could happen.
• 1:26:38
  To D&D too, yeah, but that's. Unlikely.
• 1:26:43
  And if that was? The case like that's a situation
• 1:26:46
  where you can talk to the players and be like, I know
• 1:26:48
  you're taking these things to overlap them to make it so that
• 1:26:50
  it legitimize things. That's not what.
• 1:26:53
  They're doing on my end. Kinda.
• 1:26:55
  Is So what? They might not.
• 1:26:57
  Be doing it consciously. But they might they they they it
• 1:27:00
  sounds like. They kind of are doing.
• 1:27:01
  It subconsciously they're finding, they're finding
• 1:27:04
  particularly powerful combos somewhat by accident, and then
• 1:27:07
  they're rolling with it. And they're intentionally
• 1:27:12
  picking. Things that are furthering said
• 1:27:13
  combos. Yeah, they are, but.
• 1:27:17
  Like that would be. There's a clear difference
• 1:27:22
  between. Like purposefully power gaming
• 1:27:24
  for optimization and just using the abilities that a look fun
• 1:27:31
  and then could that come with the mech?
• 1:27:37
  I mean, yeah. But it's like twilight cleric
• 1:27:41
  being busted because it has that stupid I can fly and have crazy
• 1:27:45
  buffs to the twilight zone thing I do.
• 1:27:48
  It's not power gaming if you play.
• 1:27:50
  A pure fucking twilight cleric. You know what I mean?
• 1:27:53
  That's just what the class offers you.
• 1:27:55
  I'm not saying that they're, they're power gaming.
• 1:27:57
  What I'm saying is they picked a thing.
• 1:27:59
  They they picked a thing that initially they went, oh, this
• 1:28:02
  looks cool. And then they realized, oh, it's
• 1:28:04
  also really effective. And then they continued to pick
• 1:28:07
  the really effective thing. So they're kind of like
• 1:28:09
  passively power gaming. They weren't necessarily
• 1:28:11
  planning to do it that way, but they kind of end up in ended up
• 1:28:14
  in that place and then they kept doing it 'cause that's usually
• 1:28:18
  what happens. Oh, I want to do this build.
• 1:28:20
  Oh, this build happens to be protect your, you know,
• 1:28:23
  particularly good. Oh, I'm going to keep.
• 1:28:26
  I'm going to. Keep doubling down.
• 1:28:27
  On my build idea, 'cause it's working really well.
• 1:28:29
  It's not, it's not power gaming per SE, but it's kind of it's,
• 1:28:33
  you know, it's seeing the code and going, oh, this is going to
• 1:28:36
  work great, Which is kind of what it sounds like they're
• 1:28:39
  doing, right? OK, sure.
• 1:28:44
  Even if that's what they are doing, I.
• 1:28:47
  Don't see that as a. Like what is the option there?
• 1:28:50
  Just ask them, hey, just stop doing that stuff.
• 1:28:53
  Like, I mean sort of kind of like the force cage example
• 1:28:57
  maybe. I I don't, I don't know how.
• 1:29:03
  I don't know how comparisable, how comparable the force cage
• 1:29:06
  thing is I I but maybe. Or or, you know, maybe just
• 1:29:17
  fucking. Let them catch the W and just
• 1:29:18
  move on. That's the other.
• 1:29:21
  Option. But like neither of those are
• 1:29:23
  good options. Either just take an L and feels
• 1:29:26
  bad man my way to the rest of the encounters or tell them that
• 1:29:30
  they have to feels bad man and not do the stuff that their
• 1:29:32
  characters have built around like.
• 1:29:36
  Either of those are good options.
• 1:29:37
  Those are. Both just sort of failures on my
• 1:29:38
  part. I don't think they're.
• 1:29:40
  Failures on your part. Sounds like the game is failing.
• 1:29:47
  Sounds like the players have. Very easily put themselves into
• 1:29:50
  a position where they have incredibly powerful shit and
• 1:29:54
  they didn't even really do it on purpose that that kind of sounds
• 1:29:57
  like a failure on the game from. Where I'm sitting, I don't know.
• 1:30:08
  I I. Don't know.
• 1:30:09
  I don't have the answer. I don't know.
• 1:30:11
  I mean, let's. Put it this way, if.
• 1:30:12
  You were complaining about 5 E at level 15.
• 1:30:15
  I'd be telling you it's a failure of the game.
• 1:30:20
  Which pretty much everyone agrees.
• 1:30:21
  On. Yeah, like.
• 1:30:25
  Yeah, fair enough. So it might just be a failure of
• 1:30:29
  the game here. It might be the same scenario.
• 1:30:31
  Lancer just may not have been tested at that higher level
• 1:30:33
  enough. I don't know that but.
• 1:30:38
  It's very possible. Right.
• 1:30:41
  And then like that's that's. That end.
• 1:30:44
  Of itself is kind of something. I'm running into is that I don't
• 1:30:47
  feel like. I have a bunch of.
• 1:30:48
  Resources to rely. Like at this point there's 18
• 1:30:53
  fucking trillion things for 5th edition that people can look at
• 1:30:56
  and go, OK, you know, people have mapped this out.
• 1:31:01
  But it feels like it doesn't feel like I have these.
• 1:31:13
  Resources. Well, yeah, you don't, because
• 1:31:17
  you're. Playing a not as popular game
• 1:31:19
  that's not as well known. So no, you don't have those
• 1:31:21
  resources. But that's kind of the trade.
• 1:31:25
  Off That's kind of the trade off that comes with playing a less
• 1:31:28
  popular game. The the.
• 1:31:35
  The benefit? That you potentially can have
• 1:31:39
  and use is you can just say fuck it, do kind of whatever you
• 1:31:43
  want, whatever you think might work and not feel particularly
• 1:31:48
  beholden to any sort of. Ideas that other?
• 1:31:53
  People have had because there's just not that many out there,
• 1:31:57
  you know? One thing that's a little weird.
• 1:31:58
  About 5 E is sometimes you'll go to want to home brew or or make
• 1:32:02
  changes and you know make minor changes to 5 E and then you'll
• 1:32:07
  find 35 YouTube videos telling you why you're a dumb fuck for
• 1:32:10
  trying to make that change. And then you go oh OK never
• 1:32:12
  mind, maybe I won't but in this situation you're not going to
• 1:32:15
  find that YouTube video so lol fuck it we ball.
• 1:32:19
  You know, that's one that's. One benefit?
• 1:32:27
  I suppose so if. You think the math?
• 1:32:29
  Has just completely cracked like a fucking chicken egg at this
• 1:32:32
  point. Then fuck it, we bald.
• 1:32:33
  Do whatever you want and. Try and make the math work for.
• 1:32:38
  You as much as you can make it. Bend to.
• 1:32:41
  Your will in whatever way you think might might work.
• 1:32:52
  I am. If I do that, I.
• 1:32:53
  Am worried that I will put myself in a position where I'm
• 1:32:55
  going to accidentally steamroll the players and not know what to
• 1:32:58
  do. Well, then you.
• 1:33:02
  Just then you just retcon things.
• 1:33:05
  That's an easy fix. You just hit them with the you
• 1:33:10
  know what, that that didn't happen.
• 1:33:12
  Let's not do that. That's just an.
• 1:33:14
  Extreme I've. Done retcon in the past, but
• 1:33:17
  that feels like an extreme retcon.
• 1:33:20
  Well, if you try. To, you know, increase the power
• 1:33:24
  level of an NPC and then it turns out you accidentally made
• 1:33:29
  a super fuck busted combo ability that you didn't realize
• 1:33:32
  would be as strong as it ended up being.
• 1:33:34
  Then you pause the fight and go all right, we're going to have
• 1:33:37
  to not do this and like we're going to rewind and I'm let me
• 1:33:40
  make some adjustments, you know, go back to round one of the
• 1:33:43
  fight. I'm going to take this ability
• 1:33:45
  away or maybe we'll finish the fight but and NPCS going to like
• 1:33:51
  save you guys from getting completely TPK Ed or something,
• 1:33:55
  you know? Convenient Deus Ex mocking.
• 1:33:58
  To that shit. Right, if you're running. 5E and
• 1:34:05
  you know the players are level 10 and you throw ACR twenty
• 1:34:10
  thing at them and it stomps the dog shit out of them and you
• 1:34:13
  didn't realize it was going to stomp them as hard as it did and
• 1:34:15
  you go OK well suddenly a planetar appears and and fights
• 1:34:19
  the CR20 thing then gives you guys a chance to run away.
• 1:34:23
  You know just feel shitty. I don't know well what's your
• 1:34:31
  other fucking I don't know your problem OK your only other at
• 1:34:36
  this point you're telling me no to everything.
• 1:34:38
  Your only other option is to just play the game and be sad
• 1:34:40
  because it's not working like. Or just stop playing.
• 1:34:45
  Those are your last two options. Play the game and be annoyed
• 1:34:48
  that it's not working the way you want it to, or continue to
• 1:34:51
  play it just or. Or just stop playing it
• 1:34:53
  completely like. I'm trying to give you
• 1:34:59
  potential. Workarounds here and you're just
• 1:35:02
  hitting me with no over and over again.
• 1:35:03
  I don't know what else you want me to say.
• 1:35:10
  I don't. Like I'm, I'm, I'm.
• 1:35:20
  I get what you're doing and I appreciate what you're doing for
• 1:35:23
  literally anything. I see what you're doing and.
• 1:35:29
  I appreciate it. What my struggle is, is like.
• 1:35:35
  I've got 6 1/2 years. Experience running this fucking
• 1:35:37
  game and it's frustrating me or running games in general and
• 1:35:40
  it's frustrating me that it's like.
• 1:35:44
  It it, it's pissing me. Off that, I feel as stumped as I
• 1:35:47
  do. Well, every new, every yes, I
• 1:35:50
  am. I am kind of shutting down a
• 1:35:52
  little bit because it's like, I feel like if I have to resort to
• 1:35:55
  this, I am. Failing in some way.
• 1:35:58
  And we've, we've talked about this before and I know you're
• 1:36:00
  going to say like, well, you can't feel like that.
• 1:36:01
  And it's like, well, sure, I don't want to, but I do when
• 1:36:04
  there's not a lot I can do about it.
• 1:36:06
  Like, well, I was more going to say every new system is kind of
• 1:36:10
  a restart point no matter what. I, I, I mean, it's not a
• 1:36:14
  complete restart point because years of jamming other stuff is
• 1:36:19
  still of value obviously, but it is a restart point to a certain
• 1:36:23
  degree because it's a new system that you have to learn and
• 1:36:25
  understand so. You know you're not.
• 1:36:28
  Starting from. Zero.
• 1:36:29
  You're starting from like 10 to 20% or whatever.
• 1:36:33
  So that's just kind. Of how that.
• 1:36:35
  Rolls and. It's down it.
• 1:36:41
  Again, it might not really be a failure on your part, you might
• 1:36:44
  just have found the cracks in the system's design because
• 1:36:48
  that. Just happens sometimes.
• 1:36:49
  Sometimes you play a game and then you play it for a long time
• 1:36:51
  and then you start to find the cracks and you go, oh, this is a
• 1:36:55
  problem. And then you have to either
• 1:36:57
  decide if you want to deal with it or just move on you.
• 1:37:02
  Know it's like who you play a video.
• 1:37:03
  Game for a long time and then you get to higher rank and when
• 1:37:08
  you get to the higher ranks, the you find problems that at lower
• 1:37:12
  ranks aren't really a big issue or you never even thought about,
• 1:37:15
  but all of a sudden at the high rank they're a huge fucking
• 1:37:18
  problem that you have to contend with now.
• 1:37:20
  Like you're playing league and a particular character at bronze
• 1:37:24
  rank nobody gives a shit about, but that same character at gold
• 1:37:28
  is literally the menace to all. Everyone's existence just
• 1:37:31
  destroys every fucking game they touch because of XY or Z thing
• 1:37:36
  that people figured out at the higher ranks or whatever.
• 1:37:38
  You know, sometimes you play a game for a long time and you
• 1:37:41
  find the cracks and then you just got to go.
• 1:37:43
  OK, well. Either I stop or I.
• 1:37:47
  Deal with the cracks. Those are your two options, and
• 1:37:49
  maybe you should just cut the Lancer campaign a little bit
• 1:37:51
  short. You know, maybe you should just
• 1:37:54
  end it a little sooner than you were planning.
• 1:37:59
  If your sanity is. Slipping as the campaign goes
• 1:38:01
  on. I'll see.
• 1:38:06
  I like, I don't want to get to that.
• 1:38:07
  That's literally the last thing I wanted.
• 1:38:10
  Why? Because I want to keep.
• 1:38:14
  Running it and I don't want. Because it feels like a failure,
• 1:38:20
  like I don't know. It feels, it feels like I'm
• 1:38:21
  fucking it up. Why?
• 1:38:22
  Why would you want to keep running if it is disappointing
• 1:38:25
  you at this point? Because I want to keep running
• 1:38:27
  it. I just want it to fucking.
• 1:38:32
  Right, but it's not. Working and it's disappointing
• 1:38:35
  you, so why would you want to continue if it is starting to to
• 1:38:38
  shit on the fun? Stubbornness, I guess.
• 1:38:43
  Like a All right, Well, that's not a good reason.
• 1:38:47
  I also like the. System.
• 1:38:50
  And I I like this. You've liked it up to.
• 1:38:53
  A point, but I I like it like. That's I, I, I think that's.
• 1:39:01
  A valid thing to keep in mind though.
• 1:39:02
  You've liked it up to this point, but maybe you're hitting
• 1:39:05
  the point in the system where you're like, I don't like this
• 1:39:07
  part, I don't, I don't like the back half of the system.
• 1:39:11
  I like the front half of the system, I don't like the back
• 1:39:14
  half of the system. Like maybe that's the situation
• 1:39:16
  you're in. And in that scenario, it might
• 1:39:22
  not be worth dragging it out through this weird, you know,
• 1:39:26
  through some sort of self flagellation ritual.
• 1:39:29
  It might not, it might not. You might be right.
• 1:39:31
  I just want to do my linear story thing and have it feel
• 1:39:39
  good and have it come to like a, a conclusion that I'm proud of.
• 1:39:43
  You can have it come to a conclusion.
• 1:39:44
  You don't need to hit Max level to conclude a narrative.
• 1:39:48
  Lots. Of people conclude.
• 1:39:49
  Narratives at level 12 in D&D for this exact reason.
• 1:39:52
  They like the front. They like the front half of the
• 1:39:54
  game and not the back half of the game, so they cut things
• 1:39:57
  early. That's why every fucking
• 1:40:01
  official adventure ends at level 12.
• 1:40:02
  Yeah, but that never feels good. Like when you're playing when?
• 1:40:08
  You're. Playing an official adventure.
• 1:40:11
  And none of them hit Max. Level you're like.
• 1:40:15
  That. Kind of sucks.
• 1:40:16
  I kind of want to like go a little higher.
• 1:40:18
  I want to see like what I can do at later level and then nothing
• 1:40:21
  ever gets to that point. I mean it, it bothers me
• 1:40:24
  slightly from a mechanical standpoint, but from a narrative
• 1:40:27
  standpoint, do I feel like descend to Averness was not like
• 1:40:31
  a a satisfying conclusion to the narrative?
• 1:40:33
  No, I I think that was a satisfying conclusion.
• 1:40:39
  It doesn't. Satisfying narrative conclusion
• 1:40:41
  and hitting Max level in the game mechanically are not one to
• 1:40:45
  one. No, but they.
• 1:40:47
  Like I. Feel like they feel entwined I
• 1:40:50
  don't think. So I think a lot of players
• 1:40:53
  would disagree. With you.
• 1:40:55
  They can be wrong I guess, I don't.
• 1:40:56
  Know like there's no reason that you can't have.
• 1:40:59
  You could have a completely satisfying DND campaign that
• 1:41:02
  goes from mobile one to level 5. And it you have an.
• 1:41:06
  Idea and you finish that story and the idea is done.
• 1:41:10
  You did the thing you wanted. The arc is complete.
• 1:41:12
  It's the same idea that just because a book is 600 pages
• 1:41:16
  doesn't mean it's a more satisfying narrative than a book
• 1:41:18
  that's 150 pages, right? OK, but to to the point that you
• 1:41:22
  just made. I started this game.
• 1:41:27
  With the intention of this game going to LL 12 because I wanted
• 1:41:30
  that narrative weight of them going from rookies to being the
• 1:41:33
  best of the best before you knew how the game worked.
• 1:41:35
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:41:36
  But I that doesn't mean I don't want to steal a hold to that.
• 1:41:39
  I don't want to give that. Up.
• 1:41:40
  'Cause I know this is really important for what I'm trying to
• 1:41:43
  do and how I'm trying to run the game.
• 1:41:45
  If the game is falling apart, then you might have to accept
• 1:41:48
  that. That's not like you are like,
• 1:41:51
  you know, I'm going to run a 20. I'm going to run.
• 1:41:56
  I'm going to bike. From this part of the state to
• 1:42:00
  this part of the state. And then you didn't know that
• 1:42:03
  75% of the way through your bike travels, you're going to hit the
• 1:42:07
  fucking a fucking desert and you go, oh, OK, well, I.
• 1:42:11
  Didn't know this was going to. Be a desert.
• 1:42:13
  I could die if I biked through this desert.
• 1:42:16
  I'm going to have to change the plan.
• 1:42:18
  You know, like you plan to go to Max level before you knew what
• 1:42:23
  the game was like. You read it, obviously, but you
• 1:42:26
  didn't fully. You hadn't played it.
• 1:42:28
  You didn't know the full scope of the game.
• 1:42:30
  So yeah, you wanted to go to Max level, but maybe you realize
• 1:42:33
  like maybe it's just not going to work out.
• 1:42:39
  And just. Adjust.
• 1:42:43
  Just adjust the plan. And, you know, make some
• 1:42:46
  narrative, make some narrative changes and and cut it a little
• 1:42:49
  shorter. Also in terms of.
• 1:42:52
  If the players feel like they. Did the zero to hero thing.
• 1:42:55
  I don't see any reason it sounds like they did.
• 1:42:58
  If they're this, fuck off OP already.
• 1:43:05
  Sounds like they've kind of already.
• 1:43:07
  Gone the like we were nobody. Loser.
• 1:43:10
  Rookies to like now we're cool. Giga sheds.
• 1:43:13
  Yeah, and they are. I don't know they are.
• 1:43:15
  Cool. It just doesn't because the
• 1:43:19
  number didn't hit 12. That's your, that's your hang up
• 1:43:21
  because the number didn't hit 12.
• 1:43:24
  You say it like it's dumb. It's not.
• 1:43:26
  It's a little silly. No, it really fucking isn't.
• 1:43:29
  Like, that is what makes epic level in D&D cool, because it's
• 1:43:33
  epic level. Like, yeah, you can be pretty
• 1:43:36
  cool at level 10, but you don't feel like epic level until you
• 1:43:39
  hit epic level. But you can have cool epic level
• 1:43:42
  events in D&D without actually straight up hitting level 20.
• 1:43:47
  Like you could still do from a narrative perspective, do all
• 1:43:51
  sorts of cool epic level shit. Like, it sounds like you're
• 1:43:54
  getting weirdly obsessed with the number on the paper, when I
• 1:43:57
  feel like you should be more worried about the narrative
• 1:43:59
  satisfaction of the whole thing. You know, does it feel like you
• 1:44:03
  hit that beginning middle and end and have A and and and a
• 1:44:06
  satisfying beginning middle and end?
• 1:44:07
  Well, it, it certainly won't hit that satisfying beginning,
• 1:44:10
  middle, end if I cut it off fucking 6 levels early.
• 1:44:14
  Well. It will if.
• 1:44:15
  You adjust, like, the plan for whatever the narrative was,
• 1:44:20
  right? If you were like, all right, at
• 1:44:21
  level 12, you know, fucking Satan's going to show up and
• 1:44:25
  kick their teeth in. All right?
• 1:44:26
  Well, Satan's going to show up at level 8 instead, you know,
• 1:44:29
  like, you can still do it. You just got to make the
• 1:44:31
  adjustments. Yeah, but the adjustment's going
• 1:44:34
  to feel weird and tacked on. Why would it feel weird that
• 1:44:37
  players don't know? They don't know they don't see
• 1:44:39
  behind the screen your fucking they don't see the sacred text.
• 1:44:42
  They don't see your notes. Why would they?
• 1:44:43
  They don't It's not gonna feel tacked on like yeah, they do.
• 1:44:47
  It's why would. They how are.
• 1:44:50
  They gonna know it's coded because tacked on like players
• 1:44:53
  know what you had planned. Players understand when pacing
• 1:44:57
  feels rushed or not. Yeah, but if you if you make the
• 1:45:02
  necessary, you have a rough draft and then you prune your
• 1:45:06
  rough draft to the final version.
• 1:45:10
  If you had a 300. Page rough draft and then the
• 1:45:13
  book comes out and it's 150 pages nobody who read the 150
• 1:45:17
  page book knows that it was going to be a 300 page book and
• 1:45:21
  as long as everything still feels narratively satisfying
• 1:45:23
  they're not going to complain OK I don't know if I can make that
• 1:45:27
  feel narratively satisfying OK well that's a different problem
• 1:45:31
  but you. Could try.
• 1:45:33
  Could make the attempt, yeah. I could.
• 1:45:35
  I could fail. Yeah.
• 1:45:39
  It's not. Life or death here, we're not
• 1:45:41
  trying. To curve the meteor off the
• 1:45:42
  fucking track of the earth or anything.
• 1:45:44
  Like yeah, it could go poorly. It's not the end of the world.
• 1:45:48
  Life goes on. Oh, it's not the end of the
• 1:45:51
  world, but it's. Important to me.
• 1:45:54
  Right. So if it's important to you.
• 1:45:56
  Then OK, let's put it this way. Imagine these two hypoth.
• 1:46:02
  Imagine this, this split path here.
• 1:46:04
  Option A is you drag the game out to level 12 and then you get
• 1:46:10
  really burnt out and sick and tired of everything.
• 1:46:13
  And then you get to the like, intended narrative conclusion
• 1:46:17
  that you had planned, but everyone's kind of burnt out, so
• 1:46:20
  it's not that satisfying. Or option B, you cut it a little
• 1:46:23
  shorter, but you make it a little punchier.
• 1:46:25
  So yeah, you don't hit level 12, you only hit level 8 or level
• 1:46:29
  10, but everyone's quite happy because the ending felt really
• 1:46:32
  punchy and satisfied. Right, like what?
• 1:46:36
  Which? Option do you want here.
• 1:46:38
  This is the too much video game argument.
• 1:46:41
  You know what I'm saying? Like.
• 1:46:43
  I get what you're saying I but you're you're like your
• 1:46:46
  assumption that like, Oh yeah, you'll just make it shorter and
• 1:46:48
  then it'll just be beggar and you just have to adjust like
• 1:46:51
  that is a lot easier said than done.
• 1:46:53
  Yeah, I'm not saying it's easy, but that's the fucking problem.
• 1:46:56
  Well, I'm not what do you want treating it like it's easy?
• 1:46:59
  No, I'm not treating it like it's easy, but I'm saying that's
• 1:47:01
  what you should maybe try to do. I'm saying it's an it's it is a
• 1:47:05
  potential solution to the problem.
• 1:47:08
  I. Didn't say it was an easy
• 1:47:09
  solution to the problem, I said it was a solution.
• 1:47:11
  You're making it seem like it's fucking easy.
• 1:47:14
  I don't. How else do you want me to?
• 1:47:16
  Phrase it like. Like.
• 1:47:19
  Again, going back to. The Too Much video.
• 1:47:22
  Game example here, right? Balder's Gate 3 is a game that I
• 1:47:26
  love a lot and I. Was happy.
• 1:47:29
  When I beat it, but I'm not gonna lie, there was a part of
• 1:47:31
  me that when I got to that last couple hours of the game, I kind
• 1:47:34
  of didn't give a shit anymore and was just going through the
• 1:47:37
  motions and was really having to push through 'cause I was
• 1:47:39
  playing it for 120 hours. If Boulders Gate was 40 hours
• 1:47:43
  shorter I would have been way more satisfied.
• 1:47:47
  That's kind of the situation I'm.
• 1:47:48
  Talking about dragging out the final, the last chunk of the
• 1:47:52
  game, just for the sake of dragging it out is not
• 1:47:56
  inherently better. Just because you think you.
• 1:48:00
  Should hit level 12 does not mean hitting level 12 is going
• 1:48:04
  to be inherently better. So you got to.
• 1:48:09
  Decide which is going to be more worth it.
• 1:48:12
  Is it going to be more worth it to put up with the system's
• 1:48:15
  bullshit and hit level 12, or is it going to be more worth it to
• 1:48:18
  cut it a little bit short so you don't have to put up with as
• 1:48:20
  much as the system's bullshit but don't necessarily hit level
• 1:48:22
  12? Also, depending on the game in
• 1:48:25
  question. I can't speak for Lancer, but
• 1:48:27
  some games you get the full breadth of the game before you
• 1:48:31
  even really hit Max level Fabulous Ultima.
• 1:48:33
  You don't need to hit level 50 in Fabulous Ultima for the
• 1:48:36
  player characters to have really gotten the full breadth of their
• 1:48:40
  characters. By level 20 to 30, they've
• 1:48:43
  pretty much seen everything. They've seen everything the game
• 1:48:45
  is going to do for them mechanically, and they've
• 1:48:47
  probably created a satisfying build and have like fully
• 1:48:51
  envisioned their character at that point.
• 1:48:54
  So yes, there are more levels, but you don't necessarily need
• 1:48:56
  the more levels. I don't know if Lancer is that
• 1:48:58
  case, but that can also happen, I'm sure.
• 1:49:01
  It probably is that case to a point like.
• 1:49:05
  Is there anything? That unlocks that's super
• 1:49:07
  specially awesome when you get to like level 11 or 12 in Lancer
• 1:49:11
  No, but like the the the fact that you have at that point
• 1:49:14
  potentially 4 full MEC licenses that you can mix and match is.
• 1:49:19
  Fun and exciting. Mix and match, sure, but you're
• 1:49:22
  not. You're not unlocking like a
• 1:49:25
  whole new mechanic or anything, right?
• 1:49:27
  Fabulous to to use the. Fabulous example.
• 1:49:30
  By level 11, you could potentially have your first
• 1:49:33
  heroic skill. Once you've gained your first
• 1:49:36
  heroic skill, you have accessed everything that the game has to
• 1:49:39
  offer for you as a player character mechanically.
• 1:49:42
  So getting up to level 50, you're not going to get a new
• 1:49:45
  mechanic. You're going to get more
• 1:49:46
  options. You're going to mix and match
• 1:49:47
  more shit, but you're not going to get a new mechanic.
• 1:49:50
  So in that. Way.
• 1:49:53
  I think you can be perfectly satisfied stopping a fabulous
• 1:49:57
  game at like, I mean, you could potentially stop a fabulous game
• 1:50:00
  at like level 11. I think that's a little short,
• 1:50:01
  but you could so you know in that same regard if.
• 1:50:08
  They're going to be if. They've hit a point where,
• 1:50:11
  again, they've already sounds like they've gotten to fuck
• 1:50:14
  busted badass territory, so they're probably pretty
• 1:50:17
  satisfied in that regard. And if they're not going to?
• 1:50:21
  Unlock any kind of new crazy upper echelon skill then.
• 1:50:29
  You're probably OK cutting. Things short, right?
• 1:50:32
  This is a problem that 5E has where the game.
• 1:50:36
  Starts to fall. Apart in those last really those
• 1:50:39
  last five levels are the are the true like the true villain but.
• 1:50:46
  The game does. Those last five levels do have
• 1:50:50
  mechanical things that you're going to potentially unlock, and
• 1:50:53
  for some subclasses the coolest shit is like level 17, which is
• 1:50:58
  annoying. So if you cut them short, if you
• 1:51:01
  cut a campaign short of level 20 and 5 E, yeah you are missing
• 1:51:04
  out on shit. And that is annoying.
• 1:51:05
  A lot of people do it anyway because the game pisses them off
• 1:51:08
  enough that they don't want to bother, but you are cutting them
• 1:51:11
  off. But if Lancer doesn't have that.
• 1:51:15
  Problem then you're avoiding that already like and also you
• 1:51:23
  could just say to your players. Listen guys, I wanted to go to.
• 1:51:27
  Level 12, but the game's really pissing me off.
• 1:51:29
  So we're going to stop at like level 8 or we're going to stop
• 1:51:32
  at like level 10 because my sanity is slipping and you know,
• 1:51:37
  quite frankly, it's a game. My sanity is more important than
• 1:51:39
  the game at the end of the day. Yeah, I, I sure I did that with
• 1:51:43
  with Hellscapes where I was like, I'm getting frustrated.
• 1:51:45
  We're not moving fast enough. I'm just going to bump you to
• 1:51:47
  level 20. And I wasn't happy about it.
• 1:51:51
  I was, in fact, very. Annoyed about it.
• 1:51:54
  All right, well, you got to pick your poison.
• 1:51:55
  I don't. I don't know what to say.
• 1:51:56
  You got to pick your poison here.
• 1:51:57
  You. Just want the damn game to.
• 1:52:00
  Work for me. I do what I want.
• 1:52:02
  God damn it, that is off the table.
• 1:52:07
  That option is. Not present.
• 1:52:09
  We don't have that option. Again, unless there is something
• 1:52:14
  you are misunderstanding and or missing about how the game
• 1:52:18
  works, then maybe that option will return to you if you find
• 1:52:21
  that thing that you are missing. But if that is not the case then
• 1:52:25
  the game just worked. God damn it is off the table.
• 1:52:30
  So you got to figure out a different.
• 1:52:32
  Option apparently. Personally, if it was me.
• 1:52:39
  I would not be if. If if the last 25% of a game is
• 1:52:44
  just fucking falling apart for me and there's there isn't
• 1:52:48
  anything particularly redeeming to keep me going, then I'm just
• 1:52:53
  going to cut it short, right? I pushed 5.
• 1:52:58
  E to level 20 because there were even though 5E does get fuck
• 1:53:03
  brokey on those last eight. You know 5 to 8 level range
• 1:53:09
  there. Was enough.
• 1:53:10
  There was enough fun things, enough fun toys for me to
• 1:53:14
  potentially play with, and I had enough fun ideas that I was
• 1:53:17
  willing to push through the fucky wacky of that last 25%.
• 1:53:22
  But if I was. Dealing with the.
• 1:53:25
  Fucky wacky of that last 25% and there was nothing particularly
• 1:53:29
  fun to like keep me going. Then yeah, I would have stopped
• 1:53:32
  at level fucking 15 or whatever I.
• 1:53:35
  Would have just said fuck it. Because, you know, effectively.
• 1:53:41
  What we're getting at is no DND is better than bad DND, right?
• 1:53:44
  That's really kind of what we're where we're at.
• 1:53:48
  Not that I'm saying the game is. Not that I'm saying the game is
• 1:53:51
  like the campaign is going bad quote UN quote, but you get what
• 1:53:54
  I mean in terms of how you're feeling.
• 1:53:57
  Not playing is better than playing and being mad.
• 1:54:02
  Or frustrated or however. You want to phrase it?
• 1:54:10
  I still don't know. How much I agree with it?
• 1:54:12
  But like sure, I guess how much do you?
• 1:54:15
  Agree with what? Like none is better than bad
• 1:54:18
  like. I I.
• 1:54:22
  Wait a minute. You've agreed with me on that
• 1:54:24
  before. I've like.
• 1:54:26
  Tentatively agree with. You on it?
• 1:54:28
  Because I get what you're saying.
• 1:54:33
  The point of the saying I. Understand what you're saying I
• 1:54:36
  do. But that doesn't change.
• 1:54:39
  The fact that it like. That the game in my.
• 1:54:46
  Ability to run it mean a lot to me and I don't want to feel like
• 1:54:50
  I'm just giving up. You're not giving up people.
• 1:54:56
  You've already made the attempt. The attempt has been made
• 1:54:59
  already. It's not giving up.
• 1:55:00
  You've made the attempt. Like.
• 1:55:05
  You've tried to run it for a while in this current
• 1:55:09
  predicament and it's not cooperating.
• 1:55:13
  And unless you're going to start hacking up the game.
• 1:55:18
  Then you look at it and go all. Right.
• 1:55:19
  It's not going to do what I want and I've tried to make it do
• 1:55:23
  what I want and it's just not going to do it.
• 1:55:26
  So then it is what it is. Like that's not a giving up.
• 1:55:30
  That's I made the attempt and then it didn't work out.
• 1:55:32
  I mean, but like it. To me it is giving up like.
• 1:55:37
  It's like, oh, I couldn't make it work.
• 1:55:38
  I guess I have to. I just got to give up.
• 1:55:40
  Like, OK, if there's no point trying, if you want to.
• 1:55:42
  I, I, I, I don't know. It's I can't brainwash you here.
• 1:55:45
  If you want to, if you want to think about it that way, fine.
• 1:55:48
  But that's not the same thing in my book.
• 1:55:52
  And giving up if it. Was giving giving up to me is.
• 1:55:57
  I tried to make this. I tried one time to make it work
• 1:56:01
  and it didn't work the first time I tried and I'm just gonna
• 1:56:04
  stop. I don't care.
• 1:56:05
  As opposed. To I've.
• 1:56:07
  Run it for quite a while. I've banged my head against this
• 1:56:10
  wall for quite a while. I've tried a couple of different
• 1:56:13
  solutions. Banging my head against this
• 1:56:14
  wall. It simply isn't gonna cooperate.
• 1:56:18
  Moving on. You know, if you try to fucking.
• 1:56:22
  Build a house out of mud bricks for a week straight.
• 1:56:26
  At a certain point you're going all right.
• 1:56:28
  Maybe I should use rocks? Right, that's not giving.
• 1:56:31
  Up that's. Just being like this method is
• 1:56:33
  not going to work. You know, like that, that is.
• 1:56:39
  A different thing. And again, it would be a lot it.
• 1:56:47
  Would be a lot more helpful if I actually knew the game in
• 1:56:50
  question mechanically speaking. But like, I don't.
• 1:56:53
  So I'm still, I'm still keeping the door open that there is
• 1:56:57
  something, there is some sort of element of the game's design
• 1:57:02
  that you're sort of misunderstanding, don't know
• 1:57:04
  about, forgot about, whatever, you know, something like that.
• 1:57:09
  I'm still leaving the door open for that being a possibility.
• 1:57:12
  So in that regard, I would say maybe try and find that thing.
• 1:57:18
  But in terms of? Whether?
• 1:57:23
  It's giving up or. Not or it's just like saying
• 1:57:26
  fuck it, it's. Not it's, it's not.
• 1:57:31
  Attempts were made. It's.
• 1:57:33
  Not giving up. If you made the attempt.
• 1:57:35
  Giving up means you. Didn't try, and not for nothing,
• 1:57:49
  I do remember reading this. Book and being like, damn this
• 1:57:51
  motherfucker crunchy. She might get a little crazy.
• 1:57:55
  And you? Were aware of that.
• 1:57:58
  So you know. You still signed up to give.
• 1:58:03
  Give it a whirl. I did yes, and and.
• 1:58:06
  Like. I was more gung ho.
• 1:58:10
  When I thought the crunch was just the math.
• 1:58:14
  The the. Overlapping.
• 1:58:16
  Lol fuck yous that I'm running into is more than just the math.
• 1:58:20
  But you know, it's your power creep.
• 1:58:22
  Maybe I am missing something? Like as as we were talking.
• 1:58:28
  I was quickly like running through.
• 1:58:32
  Like. Running the game section and
• 1:58:34
  like it does. Talk about like.
• 1:58:37
  The challenges in scope, but it doesn't really talk about it in
• 1:58:40
  terms of. Tears of combat it doesn't.
• 1:58:44
  Really give you any tools for like I to your combat right?
• 1:58:53
  It just sort of. Breaks down combat and how it
• 1:58:55
  should work, which is the math I've been using.
• 1:59:00
  I mean, yeah, but again, sometimes the math don't.
• 1:59:07
  Be getting, you know, sometimes the math doesn't.
• 1:59:13
  Get the full scrutiny it needs and sometimes the math works at
• 1:59:17
  lower levels and not higher levels for a lot of games.
• 1:59:20
  So you got to kind of especially for most tabletop games, for
• 1:59:29
  most video games too, as you get into that higher.
• 1:59:33
  Level math like. As you get.
• 1:59:36
  Into the late game. Math.
• 1:59:38
  You kind of got to take it with a grain of salt no matter what,
• 1:59:41
  because there's pretty much no game on the planet far as I'm
• 1:59:44
  aware where that late game math works perfectly.
• 1:59:48
  You know what I mean? Yeah, it's always that.
• 1:59:51
  Is true. It's it's pretty much.
• 1:59:56
  It's pretty much always a case. For any kind of game where.
• 2:00:01
  The math is really tight in the. Beginning and starts to loosen
• 2:00:04
  the further on you get. And sometimes that.
• 2:00:08
  Sometimes. That loosening is really bad,
• 2:00:10
  and sometimes it's not too bad. And so you maybe.
• 2:00:15
  Just got to be taking the the the math with a heavy great
• 2:00:17
  assault for this particular game and need to be like all right.
• 2:00:23
  Where can I make? Personal adjustments for my
• 2:00:26
  personal game to make the math work for me better.
• 2:00:33
  And especially because you don't need to.
• 2:00:35
  You're not designing anything for anyone else to play, you're
• 2:00:39
  only designing shit for your table, so you got a lot more
• 2:00:42
  wiggle room in that regard. And that might just be the path
• 2:00:48
  I. Have to try again.
• 2:00:54
  I yeah, I can't, I can't speak on the specifics of it.
• 2:01:00
  So I'm I'm. I'm.
• 2:01:01
  Flying dark and spitballing here, but yeah, I mean, I, I get
• 2:01:05
  that and I'm I'm. It is.
• 2:01:08
  Definitely a. Pause of.
• 2:01:12
  Frustration for both of us. I mean.
• 2:01:18
  I mean, I'm not particularly, I mean, I'm not playing the game,
• 2:01:21
  so I'm not particularly frustrated by the frustration is
• 2:01:23
  I'm trying to explain the rules. You're like, well, I like you
• 2:01:26
  don't have the time to go into the like nitty gritty.
• 2:01:28
  But like, oh, I mean, sure, yeah, it's a it's a frustrating
• 2:01:31
  feedback because like I have to get into the nitty gritty.
• 2:01:33
  But you're right, we can't really get into it because we
• 2:01:34
  don't have time to get into. That being said, well, I also
• 2:01:37
  don't think the nitty gritty is that important in this scenario.
• 2:01:41
  I think it is more about the. Broad scope.
• 2:01:50
  To that point. I.
• 2:01:56
  Don't really have much else. Like we were sort of exhausted
• 2:01:59
  by notes a while ago. I did have a float like one of.
• 2:02:03
  The flow charts that I worked out in the last fight to.
• 2:02:07
  Sort of show. What I'm talking about, but it's
• 2:02:09
  not super relevant. Yeah.
• 2:02:18
  Got it. I just sort of.
• 2:02:20
  Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I I don't know the.
• 2:02:27
  Flow chart thing probably wouldn't be that useful anyway
• 2:02:29
  because it's you're explaining a thing that nobody else has a
• 2:02:31
  frame of reference for. So like, it's probably not that
• 2:02:34
  important anyway, yeah. Yeah, being said that.
• 2:02:43
  I. Was going to say that's pretty.
• 2:02:44
  Much all I had. Yeah.
• 2:02:49
  Look, it's. Like when you're talking about.
• 2:02:50
  Doing the the 5E fireball math. Sometimes you got to make your
• 2:02:53
  own math. Suppose I did say that you did.
• 2:03:01
  Send it to me very. Directly.
• 2:03:03
  I did, yes. Well, ain't that the pot
• 2:03:07
  calling? The I.
• 2:03:10
  I guess it is the. Pot calling the kettle black,
• 2:03:11
  Yeah. All right, all right,
• 2:03:19
  motherfuckers. That's that's.
• 2:03:20
  Been us. I hope you had fun listening to
• 2:03:22
  me lose my shit and mold. And mold.
• 2:03:28
  And mauled, Really. That's the.
• 2:03:29
  Important one. I'm going to have such a
• 2:03:30
  nightmare doing this fucking clip for this episode.
• 2:03:36
  Just make it a super. A super cut of.
• 2:03:41
  Shouting. I don't know.
• 2:03:43
  All right, you know, that might just work.
• 2:03:47
  It's a super kind of weird noises, just fucking like.
• 2:03:51
  Chimpanzee. Grunting.
• 2:03:54
  Something like that, yeah. Brett just randomly interspersed
• 2:03:57
  chimpanzee like screeching throughout the episode.
• 2:03:59
  No, that's not a good idea. Do it.
• 2:04:03
  It'd be funny. I don't like that.
• 2:04:05
  Idea. I wish.
• 2:04:11
  I don't. All right, that that.
• 2:04:15
  Has been us motherfuckers indeed.
• 2:04:21
  Click that link in the. Doobly Doo to see our coffee and
• 2:04:24
  toss bread. A donation and I don't know.
• 2:04:27
  Follow us on social. Media I.
• 2:04:29
  Want to bang my head against a rock?
• 2:04:31
  These. Motherfuckers.