deathbymanga
2016-05-15, 11:49 PM
So, I tried adding some space combat to my setting and the players didn't like it at all, so I figured I'd look for some help. I started them small because we were playtesting and I wanted to figure out all the kinks, but here's what we had.
1st - Balistas use Wisdom to hit and do 1d10+Wisdom for damage. My justification is that mounted, and highly sophisticated weaponry like this doesn't really need hand-eye coordination, nor raw power, but rather, really good aim. And Perception is a Wisdom skill, so they use wisdom to hit.
2nd - All player's took their turns at the same time. This is because the players were all in the same ship and only the pilot could really move the ship around, so it didn't make sense to divide heir actions. To make up for this, I never gave any of the enemy ships more than a single attack each since 1. It kept the action economy balanced, and 2. the ships were all small starfighters while they were in a big ship. Fighters and classes with Extra attacks could still make them in the ship though.
3rd - Ships weren't as mobile as people, so you need to fly in arcs. This was more to create a fun limitation to mobility to give big, powerful ships a disadvantage over smaller ships, which were faster, more maneuverable (i.e. can make tighter turns), hit lighter.
My players suggested afterwards adding some more variety to the weapons, such as EMPs, Lightning lances to damage shields but not hulls, etc. I'm worried that this might lead to power creep, but I'm not sure.
They also wanted more variety among the Player Roles, since the Wizard was the only one doing anything special (flying the ship and using his spell slots to heal it), while the other players were just sitting there making attack rolls and damage rolls.
I don't want this to turn into FTL though by making it too complex. How would you recomend making this better?
1st - Balistas use Wisdom to hit and do 1d10+Wisdom for damage. My justification is that mounted, and highly sophisticated weaponry like this doesn't really need hand-eye coordination, nor raw power, but rather, really good aim. And Perception is a Wisdom skill, so they use wisdom to hit.
2nd - All player's took their turns at the same time. This is because the players were all in the same ship and only the pilot could really move the ship around, so it didn't make sense to divide heir actions. To make up for this, I never gave any of the enemy ships more than a single attack each since 1. It kept the action economy balanced, and 2. the ships were all small starfighters while they were in a big ship. Fighters and classes with Extra attacks could still make them in the ship though.
3rd - Ships weren't as mobile as people, so you need to fly in arcs. This was more to create a fun limitation to mobility to give big, powerful ships a disadvantage over smaller ships, which were faster, more maneuverable (i.e. can make tighter turns), hit lighter.
My players suggested afterwards adding some more variety to the weapons, such as EMPs, Lightning lances to damage shields but not hulls, etc. I'm worried that this might lead to power creep, but I'm not sure.
They also wanted more variety among the Player Roles, since the Wizard was the only one doing anything special (flying the ship and using his spell slots to heal it), while the other players were just sitting there making attack rolls and damage rolls.
I don't want this to turn into FTL though by making it too complex. How would you recomend making this better?