Mailanka has a great post on scale escalation, the "Voltron's Sword" issue that Steven Marsh pointed out years back, and GURPS.
Musings on Scale Escalation
Sometimes I think a good solution to the "Voltron's Sword" issue is a bonus for not using it, such as a bonus XP for not deploying it. You don't lose out if you do need it, but you gain if you can find a different solution than using your Win Button. Of course, you can end up with the problem that no one wants to solve a problem with it, because they feel the "bonus" XP is somehow expected or required. It can also create issues where the players start to feel foes that push them into the "nuke" solution are unfair, because the ref is not making it possible to solve the probem without it. In other words, the "entitlement" issue. It's like charging 1 xp, in a way, but you don't get the xp unless you don't do the thing that spends it.
You can also, or instead, impose an in-game cost of consequences. If you fire the Wave Motion Gun*, you win the battle but it costs the benefits of winning without it . . . maybe it destroys some of the loot, kills the hostages, causes a negative reaction from people who see you do it, etc. You can win, but it comes with a cost. And sometimes, you don't win . . . rarely, but it's a non-zero chance. If you are a Space Battleship Yamato fan, you'll recall that there was at least one time where firing the spinal mount didn't turn out to be such a good idea. So it doesn't have to be perfectly "I win" or "I don't win" but could be "Almost every time I do this, I win . . . but don't get cocky."
None of the options for such powers are perfect, but hey, in the fiction, it's something that gets used every damn time anyway, so maybe it's an appropriate thing. "You get one nuke per session, you might want to make sure it's the boss fight first" isn't a bad thing, necessarily.
* Great. Now the "Uchuu senkan yamato" theme song is stuck in my head. Maybe I shouldn't have watched them over and over to practice Japanese back in the day.
Another possible way to handle this is to have your special attack be easy to defend against in normal circumstances, instead of or in addition to having limited uses.
ReplyDeleteSome sentai shows tend to use this one - their finisher is a shot from a big-ass bazooka or laser canon that has to be carefully assembled and aimed.
The thing will absolutely kill the monster if it hits, but you have to use your other skills to make sure it does. You have to clear out the mooks that could get in the way of your preparation, and you have to leave the monster stunned and defenseless so it can't just run away.
Good idea. Having foes - especially bosses - have Luck, Bless spells, limited but automatic defenses, etc. would force you to make sure you use them up. If you fire the Wave Motion Gun and the GM says, "He uses Luck, you miss" and you get one shot . . . you're more likely to pull it out only once you've exhausted other options.
DeleteIt's clearly a genre switch, though, and something the players have to be behind. If you get a person who wants to bust the genre, you and they will both be unhappy as they try to finagle a way around using the finishing blow as what it's meant to be in the game style.
It has been many years but I used to watch the Americanized version, Star Blazers, after coming home from elementary school every day. If I recall correctly, the Wave Motion Gun, like the SDF-1's Main Gun had a clear drawback that it had a long recharge cycle and firing it knocks out the ship's power, leaving point defense systems offline for a critical period. At least in Battletech, if not also Star Blazers, the enemy recognized this and got tired of being wiped out with a single shot, so began sending decoy attacks to draw the big shot so the main fleet could then attack while the good guys are vulnerable and the superweapon is offline to recharge. I don't know how that plays into your XP discussion, but the cost of using the win button is using it at the wrong time and not having it available when it is needed (provided it has limited uses per session/episode/unit of time).
ReplyDeleteDo you mean Robotech, not Battletech?
DeleteIt can end up with a similar effect - players reluctant to use it. If you can never be sure this is "the big fight" that needs it, you may never use it. You can end up with a wizard with a fireball who never casts it, a Yamato with a WMG that never gets fired, a martial artist with a fight-breaking move that never gets deployed. Maybe not "never," but "rarely," since you don't want to waste it and the GM clearly is going to fake you out sometimes. That can be counter-productive in a genre where you do want the weapon deployed.
Yes, I meant Robotech and I realized I wrote Battletech right after I hit submit but the way the blog works it goes to you for approval and there is no editing after that so I couldn't correct myself.
DeleteIsn't that always the case? I come from a D&D background where spells and magic items are limited use resources and a big part of the game is deciding the right resources to bring (spells to memorize) and when to deploy them (cast that fireball). I know GURPS is different but you still have a cost to using your resources. Casters suffer fatigue from using all their mana rapidly before it recharges, leaving them vulnerable (the same would go for melee characters that fatigue from fighting too long) but I suppose it feels different because rather than a single big expenditure it is the accumulation of uses that gets you there and it's never a bad idea to use an effect if you think it helps since the cost isn't close to the caster's capacity (I don't know the details but this is what it sounds like from your game...the GURPS Fantasy convention game I played had no casters). And potions seem to be plentiful and cheap so there is rarely a moment's pause to decide is this the right time to use my healing/paut potion since I only have the one.
Anyway, bottom line, I think it always comes down to a balance of some sort that is in the hands of the GM to set. If the cost is low or non-existant then the Win Button is hit every single time. If the cost is too high then the Win Button is sometimes held in reserve too long, costing the players victory. The ideal situation is that the Win Button is not the default solution to every problem but isn't so devastating to the players when used improperly that it never gets invoked. That is a calculation that will take a lot of experience, knowledge of the game mechanics, and familiarity with the players to get perfect. Likely it is an iterative process: GM sets a cost, observes the players, adjusts the cost, repeat until desired balance is achieved.
The idea of the long recharging period is one reason I liked 2e Space because it had a capacitor not just batteries, obstensibly for preparing FTL drive, but it was good for simulating something like this.
ReplyDelete