Ops and Tactics: .45 Strong Edition

Oh shit
Thanks senpai

No problem user-chan.

Also thank craft, not me.

Bump?

Ah fuck, I haven't read through any of this yet but it sounds perfect for a pre-apocalyptic/the Division game I want to run.

>Ah fuck, I haven't read through any of this yet but it sounds perfect for a pre-apocalyptic/the Division game I want to run.

It is. Read it. email me on what sucks.

OP, the ling to your blog on your site, the one at the bottom, is still backwards. Just sayin.

I ran a not!XCOM one-shot with your game, and it went like a breeze. This is what I noticed and thought it's worth mentioning.

- Two out of four players showed a preference for dual-wielding pistols. See below.
- Armor breaking mechanic feels a little clunky. It's an extra set of numbers to track.
- Not an issue per se, but running for a sniper is boring, even with all the prepwork. Emphasis on "running", the player seemed content.
- Full-auto fire is great for hitting things that are hard to hit, or groups. That's good, but after some investment (which can be achieved by level dual-wielding handguns seems to become retardedly powerful, due to the sheer number of shots. Armor doesn't really help. Some quick calculations show that with investment (6 feats or 3 levels) a character can make at most 5 double-taps per round. Same as 5 bursts per round with rifles, at the same CP cost. But then, just two feats after (dual-wielding), it gets literally doubled with a negligible to-hit penalty. I couldn't find such an option for rifles. Is that intended? Correct me if I'm wrong.

>Blog link
I checked it twice. I know it's right.

>- Two out of four players showed a preference for dual-wielding pistols. See below.

Huh. Even with the penalties?

>- Armor breaking mechanic feels a little clunky. It's an extra set of numbers to track.

You mean AP? It's really necessary, unfortunately. I know it's an extra set of numbers, and it sucks, but It's necissary to make people not just fucking soak rounds all day because "My armor never wears out.

>- Not an issue per se, but running for a sniper is boring, even with all the prepwork. Emphasis on "running", the player seemed content.

Yeah, this is an unfortunate truth. I tried to put tips on running and playing a sniper, but honestly a sniper's job is basically wait, scout, and take the odd shot or two.

>- Full-auto fire is great for hitting things that are hard to hit, or groups. That's good, but after some investment (which can be achieved by level dual-wielding handguns seems to become retardedly powerful, due to the sheer number of shots. Armor doesn't really help. Some quick calculations show that with investment (6 feats or 3 levels) a character can make at most 5 double-taps per round. Same as 5 bursts per round with rifles, at the same CP cost. But then, just two feats after (dual-wielding), it gets literally doubled with a negligible to-hit penalty. I couldn't find such an option for rifles. Is that intended? Correct me if I'm wrong.

There are some downsides to using two guns, they are below.

1. You can't reload without droping/holstering one gun to do as such.
2. The penalties Absoloutely should NOT be trivial. It's like a -6 and a -4. with all the feats stacked.

That being said, yes that's intended. Handguns, even with burst fire(Which is odd becasue they'd have to be using machine pistols of some sort, the 93R perhaps?, or a full auto).

But if the penalties(even with that -6 is negligible, I may add the recoil bonus to all ranged weapons when dual wielding)

As for the issue with rifles. Yes, this is done on purpose because using two machine pistols full auto basically doubles your firepower at the cost off ammunition, and penalties. They also lack any real "Range" that rifles have.

Also, if you're doing this with doubletap, doubling up can make up the deficiency.

But it sounds to me like The recoil penalty when dual weilding should be 1.5, at least. Probably doubled, if they can get away with double tapping two handguns and ignoring armor.

>Offhand weapons being small

Found the issue. FIxing it now. Expect an update in a week or so.

Oh! And you missed this rule!

>. A character fighting with two weapons only has to spend the Combat Points as if attacking with one weapon, but the combat point cost is increased by 1.5, rounded up, for the largest weapon that is being used.

This would make double taps 7CP, not 5. So yeah.

Ayy, I also ran an xcom game with this. I personally like the armor health, but I also think it needs a very good book-keeping flow to track in a timely manner.

How did you run the sniper? Off the map with a spotter, sitting in the corner of a map? I also had trouble with marksmen-focused characters in my game having a bit of trouble with the fact that there's only so large you can make a reasonable map and still run things without doing abstractions or workarounds.

Oh and Ops and Tactics thread? Nice.

It might just be me but the bipod seems a bit weak for what it does, it costs more than a foregrip, must be deployed before use and actually uses up a single combat point to unfold (though that's extremely negligible in theory it can prevent shooting in a turn.) but it only grants a +1 all around attack bonus, whereas the foregrip can be used on the move though it only gives a +1 bonus to multishot attacks.

Also, what is the synthetic stock supposed to represent out of curiosity, at least on weapons that already use synthetic furniture, is it supposed to be telescopic stocks like on the M4?

>This still exists
Nifty.

Anywhoo- I was reading over the new updates and I suspect ive found an error:

In the Core rulebook, page 88, bottom left, about Carrying capacities of items, Both large and small duffel bags are listed as having a capacity of 320 ounces of equipment. I take it that this is wrong?

Error aside Im looking forward to running this with some mates of mine soon. Ill post again if I find anything else.

bump

A question for the creator, a homerule I use when playing this game is get rid of multiple dice for damage and replace it with a multiplier, so if a round does 6D4 of damage I instead do D6x4.
It speeds things up and makes ones and sixes exciting for me and my group, what are your opinions on it?

does that mean every weapon uses a D6? Seems a bit weird, what do you do with damage bonuses, just leave them as is?

With all the feats stacked, it is around -4 to -6 for both guns iirc. It's negated by the BAB, MRK and feat bonus. Since DEF rarely exceeds low 10s, unless you're armored, invested into armor AND in decent cover, around half of the shots come through. Which is still a lot.

>Blog link

I'm talking about this one - the one which is your tripcode. It says "blogspot.opsandactics.com".

No. Some weapons deal 3D4 which in our group is D3x4 and so on. We add damage bonuses after the multiplication.

>Bipod

Having used one, it does help, but honestly not as much as you'd think.

Bipods are primarily for long range rifles, machine guns, and things that are in a more fixed emplacement, or too heavy to cart around.

> is it supposed to be telescopic stocks like on the M4?

Yes.

>In the Core rulebook, page 88, bottom left, about Carrying capacities of items, Both large and small duffel bags are listed as having a capacity of 320 ounces of equipment. I take it that this is wrong?

It is. It's supposed to be 800 oz.

Thanks for the catch.

>It speeds things up and makes ones and sixes exciting for me and my group, what are your opinions on it?

Negative, since all damage was meticulously balanced out. You basically made a lot of weapons worthless, and more weapons way too good.

The damages and the way they are crafted out was very, very specific in reflecting the average person's relative HPs. So by doing this you basically put low recoiling, but large dice number damages higher(So something like .22 TCM is just outrightly better than something like 9mm)

If I'm to understand that correctly, that is.

Unless he changed something, I don't think that's what he meant.

>With all the feats stacked, it is around -4 to -6 for both guns iirc. It's negated by the BAB, MRK and feat bonus. Since DEF rarely exceeds low 10s, unless you're armored, invested into armor AND in decent cover, around half of the shots come through. Which is still a lot.

Yeah, Armor's job is to stop bullets, not make you harder to hit.

Use cover?

Also, what about recoil? Do your PCs have enough strength to negate recoil, or are the guns they use just not recoiling high enough?
I'm still confused.

I'll admit we haven't playtested it massively. But for the game we used it in we saw nothing major, though we were not using rounds that may have made this problem come to light.
Thanks for the input!

Yeah, this was just as I suspected.

My issue with this is that the spread isn't good. With something on the higher side(Lets take 12 gauge, at 5d6, this is turned into d6 * 5. That means you're going to ONLY get a damage roll of 6, 12, 18, 24 or 30, on an even plane. That is a really big difference, as the intended damage for 12 gauge isn't supposed to be the maximum or the minimum. Or at least the max and min aren't supposed to be 1/6th chance. So doing that really fucks with the damage rolls because it really takes a chunk out of what's possible and replaces it with solid "Bad, ok, good" rolls.

essentially, if you roll a 3 on something like 50 gI(6d3+2), you'll have a nice 20 damage. But you roll a 1, and you're doing half that. The problem is that things with a lot of little dice are balanced in such a manner to give you a much better spread, so a single roll of 1 doesn't fuck your damage up.

Also, you're welcome!

I will note that on higher numerical dice(D6 and up), it's not all that bad. But small dice, and smaller calibers really makes this suck.

2d4 becomes 1d4*2. So it's either going to be 2,4,6 or 8.

The issue is that the rule you proposed(While it's not bad), does have an issue with spreading rolls. It's the D20 problem. There are no trending averages. Damage becomes completely random and the only goal is to just get as high of a dice as possible and hope you don't suck.

anydice.com/program/b3f8

It's not a bad rule though. If you can fix that problem I'd keep it and put it in as a variant rule.

I think the "bad, ok good" rolls is part of the appeal for some of my players. I can enjoy both, a fistful of dice or a singular 'powerful' one can be equally exciting. By using multiple dice you're unlikely to roll maximum damage (or minimum).
I can full appreciate the desire to have averages though, especially if you have based your math and balances around that.
Its been fun talking to you. And for a pet project game yours is up there in quality for me.

...

Another thing I just remembered, the rules doesn't seem to list how long it takes to set up a mortar.

Damn phone.

I'm glad that you like it. I'll probably take this rule and make it a variant rule. How should I credit you?

12 cp.

Or you can go with "manipulating an object"

Alright thanks, I'll probably stick with 12 CP as I don't want my players having to re-enact the first world war in order to survive contact with the bigger enemies.

Well, yeah, I did miss a rule and didn't have enough cover on the map. Thanks.

Other than that, the game is great and I'll use it in the future. Do you consider donations or something like that? I'd buy you a beer or two.

Email me.

[email protected]

Also spreading the word about the system would be nice too.

Twixman will be fine.
Not the guy donating but I share the system whenever possible (:

Not either of those guys, but I've effectively shilled it to an entire server worth of people trying to organize a game at this point.

Noice.

Nice. Good luck!

You know, we used to get a hell of a lot more trolls, dissenters, and complainers in these threads. I wonder what happened.

The day is young. They'll come.

By the way, speaking of armor. People WILL soak up rounds all day, because as of now, if it breaks, it stops providing a bonus to DEF, but doesn't stop giving DR. Unless I missed something again.

>Players coming up with ideas for their characters
>Foxgirl who wields an acid enchanted gauntlet guns
>Rabbit girl medic with magical healing
>Then the normal human guy with bombs, suddenly discussing the logistics of using his toolbox as an improvised club
I think I might've let things get out of hand.

Sounds like fun. But if you want to subtly deal with that, amp up the lethality, put in some extra mooks. Tone it down when you have a cast that you want.

Nah, it's totally fine, it's all going just as keikaku. Although it might get a little brutal considering I based the campaign (read stole it from) Jagged Alliance 2, so they will be facing over whelming odds.

You did. Armor stops working after there's no more Ap.

What did you do..

I took a bunch of autists I know from an autistic game I play, gathered them up and gave them the jist of my autistic little world and the rules for this game and said "here's some autistic homebrew stuff have fun".

Huh. Alright then. You made that bed.

>The equipment bonus is the bonus to
DEF a character gets if they are proficient in the armor, and it has not run out of AP
>When an armor has run out of AP, it also
stops providing an Equipment Bonus to DEF

I can't find anything about AP interacting with DR other than
>When armor protects a character from
damage using its damage reduction, it subtracts the damage done from its AP score

The fact that armor stops providing DR when it's out of AP makes a lot of sense, yeah. But it seems to be missing. Or I'm blind.

The only thing that annoys me is that no one wanted to play a Dwarf or something else, so it's already looking like the cast of an animal girl themed harem anime.

It doesn't have any AP to subtract from, so..obviously it won't provide DR.

Did you let them make their own races or something?

No, I made a set of races that fit in the setting I use (mostly just made elves and dwarves different then added two more).

I'm going to run a pic related game, but using this system. What can go wrong?

Nothing. It can only go right.

So guy with the anime party here, we're about to drop into our first fight soon I think, Fox girl is MIA but I've got the rabbit and the explosives guy, Rabbit's finishing some stuff at the moment. Current baddies are untrained "policemen" with hand me down's from the 60's.

>It might just be me but the bipod seems a bit weak for what it does, it costs more than a foregrip, must be deployed before use and actually uses up a single combat point to unfold (though that's extremely negligible in theory it can prevent shooting in a turn.) but it only grants a +1 all around attack bonus, whereas the foregrip can be used on the move though it only gives a +1 bonus to multishot attacks.
It seems to me that a grip should help firing full auto at short to medium range. But a bipod should help with medium to long range.

Since there isn't really a short/med/ long range set out, rather its determined by the gun, it wasnt the best way to do that. Plus I wanted the ability to do silly things still be useful, like attaching a bipod to a SMG.

Please take notes. Tell me how combat runs for you.

>while everyone is setting up more players want to join
THE TEAM GROWS LARGER

Kek.

So honest thoughts, what do you like and hate about the game?

Well, I've been around since like, late 4th edition/ early 5th, so my favorite part has always been the gun and how the list expanded, it tickled my /k/ommando side along with the more tactical combat, and I like the concept of the magic idea, but I dislike how it feels pretty low in power compared to firearms even at the higher levels.

maybe I'm not cheesing it enough or something, but it seems the really cool stuff (resurrection or permanent enchantment) requires you to have the magic books and at least some higher tier spell inks.

Perm enchant requires feats, inks, and a focus.

So only real professionals can perm enchant. Think of it how you think of engineers.

Resurrection is one of those balancing things. I couldn't just let people resurrect people without actually specing hard into it, and I couldn't make it forever. Removing the threat of death trivializes most of the game.

Also magic is dangerous as fuck! Especially evocation, and necromancy!

>magic

Also, I'm not sure you saw, but magic also has wands, and styli

Also you can still use guns and magic.

Nothing is stopping you from both casting spells and firing rounds

Yeah, the fox girl is rapidly proving that, with enchanted gun gauntlets that shoot enchanted bullets.

Ah yes, the revised version of d20 Modern that nobody ever asked for.

>autistically stats out the minute differences between hundreds of different firearms, for the sake of "realism"
>still ends up with a system where dual wielding pistols is fairly viable
kek

In a specific circumstance(spraying a large amount of rounds at a target), yes, it is viable.

Also I started out the minute differences between hundreds of firearms because I wanted a bunch of guns. Realism had nothing to do with it.

But is that all you wanted to complain about? Surely there is more I could fix. I depend on the analysis of people to see problems I didn't see so I can fix them.

To be fair, it's viable. If you heavily invest into it (top half of SWAT level heavily), your opponents are at short range, unarmored and aren't highly skilled.

You have to make a choice it seems you haven't made yet. Do you want things to be viable in this game that aren't in real life for the sake of lighthearted fun, or are you trying to make a faithful simulation? Either way you have a lot of editing to do. If the answer is the former and you want to embrace action-movie stuff, get rid of all the weapon stats and other boring rules and add rules that fit the conventions of narratives where dual-wielding pistols can work. If it's the latter, don't make dual wielding pistols even an option, and also get rid of all the magic.

A modern combat game can be ARMA or it can be Doom, but it can't be both.

>things are either super realistic or not
>there is no middle ground
Not to mention that particular instance was a GM misreading the rules and not providing cover on the map.

>A modern combat game can be ARMA or it can be Doom, but it can't be both.

Insurgency is both.

I choose to be like insurgency.

>You have to make a choice it seems you haven't made yet. Do you want things to be viable in this game that aren't in real life for the sake of lighthearted fun, or are you trying to make a faithful simulation?

I'm aiming for somewhere in the middle.

I think I've hit that middle.

The goal of ops ams tactics was to make a playable, fun, somewhat faithful representation of gunfights and combat while being fairly easy and smooth to play, without being bogged down with the need to be a simulation.

Simulations suck. They're slow, and nuanced. TW2000 and phoenix command have that covered.

And on the other hand, The arcadey feel like D20 modern just isn't enough meat to satisfy any real /k/ habits or taste for me. So yes, somewhere in the middle. Sometimes you want to be a swat leet operator who would never do anythibg silly ever. Other times you want to do hoodrat things with your friends and dual weild stolen mac-10s. OATS allows for both.

Insurgency is just faster ARMA.

Fast is good. Fast in a tabletop game means compact rules, which you have done the exact opposite of.

You can be realistic while still having few rules. Remember that wargame Lindybeige made up with no rulers and only 3d6 but that still pretty accurately reflects the importants of cover and not fucking around?

>Either way you have a lot of editing to do.
This is a project going on 9 years at this point, BTW.

> If the answer is the former and you want to embrace action-movie stuff, get rid of all the weapon stats and other boring rules and add rules that fit the conventions of narratives where dual-wielding pistols can work. If it's the latter, don't make dual wielding pistols even an option, and also get rid of all the magic.

And if its neither, I'll leave them both in.

You should probably actually read the system before you start saying someone should re-edit everything.

>Fast is good. Fast in a tabletop game means compact rules, which you have done the exact opposite of.

Go read squats. It was written for you.

Because you seem to have this notion of black or white. As if a game either has to be arcade style or this simulationist mess.

I'm not trying to be realistic. Ops and tactics isn't a simulation.

>simulations suck
>my beautiful, perfect masterpiece with 130 pages of weapons isn't a simulation

A middle ground between the original d20 modern and the opposite extreme like HERO System would be, like, five pages of weapons.

I like guns. And choice.

So I put a lot of guns in.

Why does this make it a simulation?

I also have a "generic guns" rule for people who don't.

>trolls trying to shittalk Ops & Tactics, one of the few homebrews to survive Nazimod
You guys need to try harder.

Nazimod? There was a nazimod?

I'm not even sure if you are serious or joking, but I don't remember you posting a lot during Nazimods reign, I had wagered you hunkered down for better times.

I'm serious. I don't remember a nazimod. What happened?

Basically, some years ago, a incredibly stringent mod came about, drove off a lot of the homebrewers, artists.
Yeah, the off topic porn posting and some tripfaggots like Sergal and Verity were finally sent packing, but not only were they replaced by new breeds of /pol/lacks and shitlords like Virt, the old homebrewers mostly never came back, a lot of people simply vanished, hell, m00t had to personally invoke Captain Keen in order to keep vidya lore threats like Elder Scrolls from getting purged.
A lot of unpleasant business, and the end result was a lot of creativity was lost for good in exchange for what ended up being a temporary reprieve from the most extreme shitposts.
I miss a lot of people from the old days, like Rage, DLFG, Rawk, Script, Grandpa Dread
I used to post in the 40k threads under the handle Guardsork

Oh wow. Yeah I was not here for that.

Better that way, it was bad stuff, man.
Things have never really been the same, it was the end of the wild west feel Veeky Forums had.
like when /cgl/ turned into what it is now, although I think that was simply a matter of time

>the strictest mod in history comes to Veeky Forums
>does not ban Virt

does not compute

Virt came long after.
The amusing part was that Nazimod expressly allowed /wst/ to exist, provided there was only one and it was purged literally midnight sunday, but current mods scrapped it because they couldn't deal with trolls.

Who is virt? Its been forever since I've really been here and posted.

I feel an old man, clinging to his rulebooks and guns.

Virt was a legitimately disturbed guy who was a dedicated troll and shitposter, and exulted in it.
Think of every troll you remember from way back when.
NONE of them were as bad as Virt. He would singlehandedly derail entire threads, multiple ones, at the same time, then screencap the resulting mess and post it on his tumblr.

Jesus.

So he's gone?

Yeah, he apparently got bored.

They all do, eventually.

The guy talking about loadsaguns being simulationist never answered me.

I would like an answer, too.

Wastelandwanderer's stories are what I miss the most.

and the joe's barman chillout and fire threads.

I still can't stand that these faggots who came in whined all the quests off the baord, because, shit, roleplaying isn't for the roleplaying board.

Entitlement through filtering was and demanding other people comply about your tastes was even worse than nazimod imho.

And now we have only king shitpile vidya and mainstream tg to shitpost in eternally.