Thinking about DMing this game

>Nu Men Era

>The rules are excellent
You talking about Numenera or Cypher System generic?

How the fuck do I get my players to use their fucking cyphers? They get up to their limit, keep them "just in case" then, throw away any additional cyphers they get, trading in any they find better than the ones they have or selling some if they are feeling particularly poor.

They know they are not rare and will get like five more every session. I have told them to use the things. But, they fucking won't. FUCK.

>fucking retard goes ballistic samefagging trying desperately to pretend anyone else in the fucking universe wants to talk about his male pregnancy fanfic game

Take your phone, throw it in the toilet. Take yourself, throw it into traffic.

Literally have some creepy hermit start following them. He liberally uses Cyphers on himself, even for no reason because he's addled in the head or addicted, or sells them when able.

Start small like the PCs looking back and seeing a figure picking up their trash, then gradulately have him get boulder and boulder. Coming closer in to the PC's line sight.

Yikes. Monte touch you in a bad place, user?

>maybe if I just keep doing it someone will think I'm talking to another person!

Maybe if you just keep trying to kill yourself one day you'll succeed you fucking failure.

Numenera is fine. Cypher System is actually worse, as a lot of the "fixing" just brings the problems with the system to the forefront; and the focuses and descriptors designed after the core rulebook have been unbalanced as fuck, oftentimes functioning on a meta level and interacting with mechanics that make no sense. These new focuses and descriptors were just tossed into the generic book without consideration for overall power level. So, you need way more system mastery as a GM to set up your game than you really should.

They will probably just not look for them or pick them up if they cause them trouble. Thing is, that once the players reach tier 2, they have everything they could ever really need on their characters. They can brute force through armor with just effort and effort with items and skills tends to deal with non combat tasks. Most cyphers are awfully underpowered when compared to just spending a few points from their deep pools or using a tool to take off a level.

kill yourself you fucking retard

I had a pretty good time DMing it.
My personal rule of thumb: The book seems to discourage this, but the DM should know how and why artifacts and player powers work. I think it's very important that unexplained things are consistent, as it makes them that much more mysterious than using mystery as an excuse to be randumb.
>One of my players is a Jack with monthly lycanthropy
>I have an extensive backstory behind the screen for how and why it works
>Glaive gets grabbed by killbot and peeled apart
>Killbot is wearing the remains of Glaive
>Lycanthrope attacks the killbot
>Nat 20
>Rulebook suggests transferring Jack's condition to whatever is hit
>Based on my notes for how Jack's Lycanthropy works, Glaive reforms
>Once a month, the Glaive turns into a pile of organs before becoming himself again
Campaign ended when my players broke time.

kill yourself you fucking retard

>Once a month, the Glaive turns into a pile of organs before becoming himself again
Ew. You doing a horror campaign?

Sounds like you aren't throwing enough 6+ challenge stuff at them user. Throw more, especially non-combative stuff.
Also you don't HAVE to rely on handing them cyphers, if they don't want to use them, don't have them find anymore.

Money is still a thing and there are always Artifacts. Player's tend to use Artifacts without thinking too hard about them burning out, and it's always a surprise when they do.

Kill yourself you fucking retard

kill yourself you fucking retard

I would like to expound on this. From what I understand, the Cypher System Rulebook came and wreaked havoc on game balance.

1. Intellect is clearly and obviously the best statistic of them all, covering all tasks of "intelligence, wisdom, charisma, education, reasoning, wit, willpower, and charm" (page 15) and even healing (page 210), looking or listening (page 212), social interactions (page 212), disabling devices and locks (page 213), gaining insights (page 217), and using most cyphers (page 241). Intellect covers an absolutely insane span of tasks. This might have been passable in a wilderness/dungeon-focused setting like Numenera, but in other settings, Intellect is king.

2. Ranged beats melee. In this game, if you want to both move and attack, you can move only 10 feet by default. If you want to move further than 10 feet and attack, you must succeed on a difficulty 4 Speed task (difficulty 2 if you purchase a specific special ability), and bad things happen if you roll a natural 1.

Also, ranged attacks made within 10 feet lower the difficulty of the attack by 1. Melee attacks do not have this benefit. Yes, ranged weapons are more accurate than melee weapons within 10 feet.

Similarly, most attacks in combat target your Might, so you will want to conserve your Might as much as possible rather than spend it.
Because of this, ranged weapons are simply better than melee weapons. (Consequently, Speed is better than Might.)

Under the "fantasy" equipment list, longbows are weaker than greatswords, but the movement restrictions and the point blank bonus still make a longbow preferable to a greatsword. Use Speed and Speed Edge to attack with a longbow, take Practiced in Armor to start with elven chainmail for free, and laugh at anyone who bothered with melee.

Under the "modern" and "science fiction" equipment lists, there are better ranged weapons available, so you should wield one of those and ignore melee. Take an unarmored ability.

(Continued.)

3. In various cases, "magic" accomplishes tasks far more competently and cheaply than mundane methods ever could. Here is a good example: boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/46672143/

4. Skills have no balance to them. Various options, such as the Calm descriptor, the Doesn't Do Much focus, and the Would Rather be Reading focus give you a blank check on selecting skills. However, page 20 gives us a sample list of skills like "deceiving," "intimidation," "metalworking," and so on, then tells us:

>You could choose a skill that incorporates more than one of these areas (interacting might include deceiving, intimidation, and persuasion) or that is a more specific version of one (hiding might be sneaking when you’re not moving). You could also make up more general, professional skills, such as baker, sailor, or lumberjack. If you want to choose a skill that’s not on this list, it’s probably best to run it past the GM first, but in general, the most important aspect is to choose skills that are appropriate to your character.

Why would you ever choose "deceiving" or "intimidation" when you could choose "interaction"? Why would you even bother with "hiding" when you could take "sneaking" instead? What is the point of telling a player to select X number of skills when those skills could be as narrow as "hiding while not moving" or as broad as "social interactions"?

Even worse are the abilities like:
>Investigative Skills: You are trained in two skills in which you are not already trained. Choose two of the following: identifying, perception, lockpicking, assessing danger, or tinkering with devices. You can select this ability multiple times. Each time you select it, you must choose two different skills. Enabler.

"Lockpicking" and "tinkering with devices" are good and all, but are we really to believe that either is as broad as "perception"?

(Continued.)

5. Descriptors and foci have flimsy balance.

For example, the best descriptor in the entire game is Foolish, because it has this ability:
>Carefree: You succeed more on luck than
anything. Every time you roll for a task, roll
twice and take the higher result.

This is a d20-based game wherein 1s are critical failures and 17-20s are varying degrees of critical success, so rolling twice and taking the higher result is a stupendously strong benefit. The descriptor comes with some downsides that fail to balance out rolling twice on all rolls. For example, Foolish characters have 1 higher difficulty for all Intellect defense tasks and tasks that involve seeing through deception, illusion, or traps... but rolling twice still makes them better at such tasks than a regular character.

Foolish is a supremely strong descriptor, and it gets even better if you can immunize yourself against all mind-influencing effects, such as the Slays Monsters focus's tier 2 ability.

Another example is the Travels Through Time focus (which, sadly, does not synergize well with Foolish). This is the broken part:
>Tier 1: Anticipation (1 Intellect point). You look ahead to see how your actions might unfold. You have an asset for the first task you perform before the end of the next round. Enabler.

This is an enabler. If you have Intellect Edge 1, then congratulations, you have an asset on every single task you could conceivably perform, lowering all difficulties by 1. Monte Cook did not think this through.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some foci are awful at various tiers.
Masters Weaponry's tier 1 ability is laughably, objectively worse than Slays Monsters' tier 1 ability.
Infiltrates' tier 1 ability is likewise totally worse than Doesn't Do Much's tier 1 ability and Would Rather be Reading's tier 1 ability, especially since the latter two let you choose broad skills like "interaction."

(Continued.)

6. Spending XP on short-term benefits simply is not worth it unless you are using 1 XP to reroll a roll that will spell death and/or calamity should you fail it.

4 XP is enough to earn you a major, permanent ability for your entire career, and once you purchase four of those (16 total), you advance a tier and reap all of the benefits for doing so. 1 XP rerolls in anything but life-or-death scenarios are thus a trap.

2 XP for short- or medium-term skill trainings are a complete and utter ripoff when all a skill training grants is 1 lower difficulty. 2 XP is half the price of gaining a permanent major ability, and delays you from gaining tiers.

On a tangent, speaking of spending 4 XP for a permanent, major ability, this is perhaps the best of the lot:
>Add 2 to your recovery rolls.
Recovery rolls are the key to resource management. A +2 bonus to such rolls gives you a massive, flexible boost to the resources available to you.

Addendum:

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47452111/#47454131
In the Cypher System Rulebook, there are 10 enemies that can damage Speed or Intellect, 2 enemies that can damage Speed or Intellect only sometimes, and 56 who can damage only Might.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47452111/#47454344
In the Strange core rulebook, there are 4 enemies that can deal damage to Speed or Intellect, and 42 that can deal damage only to Might.

Therefore, the one damage type you really need to worry about most often is Might damage. Therefore, it helps greatly to conserve Might, by attacking with something other than Might.

>complete lost-cause grade sperglord decides to plunge bravely ahead with his avatarfagging shit thread

plunge into traffic

kill yourself porkeye pedophile shitbag

Not horror, per se, but I based each main adventure on a story from the book Dangerous Visions, but I diverted a little bit by having the Amber Monolith turn out to be AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
The monthly gibbing was just the logical outcome of the Jack transferring his essence, based on how it worked in my notes. I seriously did not even expect it to happen. I thought the Glaive would stay dead.

You need to chill and put the pasta away. But, yes, the generic rulebook is a mess. They expect the GM to balance all the shit, as the campaign sheet is literally designed to have the GM exclude shit from it. So, they just tossed everything under the sun into it without regard for balance.

You need a hobby.

Yeah it's already been stated the Generic Cypher has issues.
It's more advantageous to take a look at the first Numenera book or the Strange. And yes, easy on the Copy-Pasta. Christ.

You need a noose

If your players aren't worried about their pools then you either aren't making the challenges tough enough or are making it too easy for them to rest.

My players make plans around the cyphers they have because they know that'll make things easier for them.

As the game goes on the offensive cyphers tend to become less useful but the utility ones still give them a ton of new ways to solve challenges.

Try giving them obvious ones. Need to scale a level 9 wall that requires three climbing checks? Give them an antigravity tether that lets them walk up it for one minute. That should help with their mindset.

noose

If I grind them, they will probably rather die than use their cyphers. They might need them later!

But, seriously, tho. I'll see about refocusing to utility cyphers. Probably gonna see about tossing them into a grind soon, see what happens. The campaign has been going on long enough that I don't particularly care about a wipe. It'd be just a breath of fresh air to play something else.

noose

Have any of your players gone two steps down the damage track?

Yes, twice. They just book it when it happens.

you should go 1000 steps down the nearest railroad track

Then besides making cyphers that turn immense problems into trivial ones, I don't see anything that's going to help them. Your players are dumb.

>Turn immense problems into trivial ones
And aren't broad enough that they think of a million other uses that they 'might' need it for.

Like, say they need to block a gushing dam with a 1' hole, and have a cypher that creates a 1' plate that's an immovable object. This has a clear and obvious use that'll save them the might or intellect they might use to block or fix the hole, but has many other potential uses. So your players, being insane hoarders, probably won't use it.

Essentially. Same group wouldn't use destiny points in star wars either.

Stop replying to your own posts dumbass. Get out

>play a melee character
>use might to try to hit stuff
>might gets lower
>miss anyway
>enemy hits me and I lose might
>I would be better off not using any of my cool might abilities most of the time
Health and the Action pool being combined is one of the most unfun experiences I ever had in an RPG.

Why does some mong have to come into every numenera thread and moan about monte cook or whatever.

sad cunt

...

>reply to own thread
>reply to own posts
>pretend to be someone else
>clearly aren't
>won't fucking leave
>won't stop samefagging
>won't fucking kill yourself
chug a buncha bleach in a mcdonalds bathroom so that you can die at the only place where you are allowed in public

It's what 13 year olds and pathetic shut-ins do when the masturbating starts to chafe.

Shitting up threads is a masturbatory substitute for those who've never seen a pussy anywhere but an LCD monitor.

Or you could just be a retarded piece of shit and everyone on Veeky Forums hates you and your shitty threads

>see numenera thread
>guy asks if is worth it
>give a response
>some guy is spurging out over shit poster and thinks I am him for not liking numenera

>see cock
>cut it off and eat it

>then gradulately have him get boulder and boulder

Are you enforcing the thingy where you can't hold more cyphers than you can support? 'Cause if they start having to leave cyphers behind, they might think about using one now and then.

I know that sort of thing usually works for me in vidjeo games, where I'm an item hoarder nonpareil. (Fuck me, I often use quicksave/load just 'cause I'm sure I can beat that last fight without wasting so much ammo, if I just reload and do it one more time!)

>Everyone on the internet is one person who hates everything I like and likes everything I hate.

Your rage is turning me on. Bring the hate, daddy, bring it hard!

>gets called a piece of shit
>knows it's true
>but won't take simple steps to improve himself so it stops being true
>"bring it daddy"
The only thing I'm bringing is the message your parents wish they could bring themselves to bring you

jesus, m80. how old are you lol?

Keep going!

Don't STOP!

ABUSE ME!

>Kinda sick of the whole medieval fantasy crap.
Prepare to be disappointed, then. Under the thin veneer of sci-fi, it's the same D&D-esque medieval fantasy, just with names switched around. Also there's usual Monte Cookery - In a game about exploration, Glaive (the fighter class) is all about the combat. In a game where you can create tornadoes (as a mage), control minds (as a mage), or instantly know the purpose of any machine (as a mage), the options for a combat class are "hit", "hit slightly harder", and, of course, the amazing "hit while moving".

That's the main problem with Numenera. It looks and sounds fancy, but underneath it's just a D&D clone thematically.

no wonder you like numenera lol

Well, a D&D clone with a bunch of forced fetish shit, yeah

Examples?

>see a numenera thread
>samfagging galore
>sage

Don't enable him, user.

Look up "love and sex in the ninth world". Generally it boils down to "whoa, people are doing some kinky shit with ancient technology". It's honestly not as bad as the shitposter.

this is just one of the many, many sidebars in the book that insist on forcing some deviantart-tier fetish shit into the game

Unlike the troll you're quoting, I actually love Numenera, but the first source book was called 'Love and Sex in the Ninth World'.

Past that, the setting's a gonzo kitchen sink, and you know Veeky Forums can find a magical realm on a blank piece of paper.

kill yourself autogynephile trash

>Forcing memes this hard

>gonzo
It's D&D with fetish shit
>kitchen sink
It's literally D&D with the classes renamed and fetish shit forced in
>I actually love Numenera
Of course you do, you're already willing to lie about the content game just because it has some of your personal favorite fetish shit in it, why wouldn't you love it?

Were you trying to give a tame example on purpose? Or are you just scared that other people might be different to you?

Because calling that deviant-tier or even fetishy smacks of a "Blame 'The Other' For All The Bad" outlook.

kill yourself before you hurt a kid autogynephile trash

No?

>memes
Spamming variations of a statement is not a meme. Not even trolling. It's just spamming, a bot could do it.

kill yourself

I feel like I've seen more cringe than this in D&D

Listen, I know some people are scared of transsexuals, but you need to stop telling people to kill themselves.

he'll just tell you to kys for saying that

I'm not telling "them" to kill "themselves" I'm telling you to kill yourself autogynephile trash. "Transsexuals" literally do not exist and your brony-tier autogynephilia fetish is retarded. End it.

called it

Truly, he's a 13 year old master linguist of the highest caliber.

>maybe if I hop back on my phone and start samefagging again we can direct the conversation away from how I'm a piece of shit
whoops guess it didn't work

That or a 45 year old virgin who's scared of everything he perceives as different to his sad existence.

>guess I'll stop bothering to post on the phone then but I'm still going to keep samefagging, whatever, nobody can stop me

He'll get around to transitioning one day and he'll finally find peace.

>just having a conversation with myself about how somebody called me an autogynephile
>it's cool I'm okay guys

Buddy, you are clearly too angry for a chill board like Veeky Forums. You should check out /pol/, it seems like you'd be happier there. Mayby talk to somebody about your anger issues, shit like that isn't healthy.

He literally has the mindset that everyone who disagrees with him is the same person. He can't fathom the concept of different people having different opinions. He's not scared, so much as very limited in perception.

I wonder if he realizes how much fun it is to keep him going like this.

I can't decide if it's more the joy of keeping him occupied in a meaningless loop, or the pure pleasure of seeing his impotent rage directed at something he can't ever affect.

>maybe I should try calling everyone who hates me /pol/ or /v/ or gamergate or something. It didn't work the last time I spammed one of my own threads for four days but this time it might

>I'm really showing this guy who's boss by responding to my own posts

Paranoid Personality Disorder is the one where you see all your 'enemies' as one entity, right?

>This fun
I think it's more like having a little kid pestering the grownups and screeching while they try to have a conversation.

Hell, I don't even have anything to talk about relating to Numenera. Already done with what I came to say.

>I'm going to call this guy crazy because he's making fun of me for samefagging on Veeky Forums

I am actually worried for you, it isn't normal or healthy to have this much anger all the time. Did something happen in your life recently?

Me too. I was done by the 5th post, but the shitposting has a sort of charm to it. I'm mesmerized by the dedication to being shitty for what appears to be no reason.

Good night user. Don't stay up all night accusing everyone who drops by the thread of samefagging.