Savage worlds

My group just switched over to pic related, how is it? Seems pretty simple at first glance, does it suffer from balance issues?

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>incoming pasta

All roleplaying games do. If they don't, it's probably not a roleplaying game.

Guns/shooting is way overpowered compared to melee combat.

Melee combat is opposed, which means you need to roll higher than the defender... but ranged combat, you just need to roll a hit.

That's my experience with it anyway- and I played it a lot- at least ran a campaign for over a year.

Well yeah, but to what extent is me question.
Well damn, our game does use guns, and I'm a melee guy. Our previous homebrew system had a similar problem, so at least I'm used to it. How's the magic, similarly OP or is it bearable?

I played it once with some friends. It's fun, but like said, shooting is much better than melee.

Very short list of available traits for a generic game.
Little mechanical differentiation between characters.
Skill list makes it weirdly difficult to make characters who are competent in areas other than combat (every vehicle type and 'knowledge' needs it's own skill, but all combat is handled by just two skills).
Only supports a fairly specific style of play.
Low detail (but with stuff like counting your ammunition still needed).
Dice mechanic is alarmingly prone to swing between failure and overwhelming success.
Plenty of did-not-do-the-research stupidity (warhammers more effective against rigid armour, armour-piercing katanas, 1930 medicine just as useless as medieval, but huge improvements in the late 20th century...)

Playing it with non-gamers is fucking awful. The dice mechanic is difficult to explain to them and watching them hunt through their dice trying to figure out which one is the D8 is painful.

That said, it is quick and uncluttered system which works OK once people have got the hang of the rules.

>Melee combat is opposed, which means you need to roll higher than the defender... but ranged combat, you just need to roll a hit.

Melee combat is only 'opposed' in that you have parry scores and you need to roll over your target's parry. There's no active defence roll.

Parry is 2 + (half your fighting dice maximum) though, so it scales pretty close to the combatant's power level. Ranged combat, by contrast is against a fixed number for a given range and amount of cover. That means high-skill gunfights are way more lethal and dependent on getting the first hit than high-skill melee.

>being this autistic
I'm pretty sure one of the devs said katanas were expressly action-movie katanas and you should just use regular sword stats if you're that bootybothered about muh realisms

>playing it with non-gamers
Maybe you're just shit at explaining it?
>hunt through their dice trying to figure out which one is the D8
Oh wait, you're playing with literal retards, I get it

I've had some good fun playing it.

But the rules come from a miniature skirmish game and it shows.

Magic is done pretty awesomely.
Unless I recall it wrongly, you essentially have to buy every spell (except your starter set) with edges, meaning you have to get more magic in lieu of anything else.
It incentivizes characters having a handy spell or two depending on the situation, while preventing the one 'wizard' character from dominating the game the way certain other systems do.

>gotta climb down a cliff
>Bolt Vanderhuge with his d12 Strength and d12 Climb rolls a 3 and eats shit
>Skinny McDyel with his d4 Strength and d4-2 Climb explodes his d4 / rolls 6 on his Wild Die and climbs down that very same cliff without a problem
>Young Castyman shapeshifts into a bird

So, a bad roll can fuck you over? How is that different to any major system ever? Also,
>wild die

bennies nigga
Also with a d12 in Climb the chances of you rolling less than a 4 is pretty damn low. And Strength matters jack shit in this situation save for skill caps, dunno why you're even mentioning it

The Powder Mage RPG book for this did just come out. Is it normal for other RPG books these days to always talk about the X-Card?

What's an x-card? Is it like the Joker? What does it do?

>Bad luck makes you lose!
Welcome to RPGs!

Bolt has a 75% chance of succeeding in that roll, while Skinny has only a 25%, and Castyman spend 3 out of his 10 power points to bypass the cliff.

The wild die does mix things up, but still- the WD is a 50% chance of success, so it's literally just a flip of the coin added onto every roll.

If something makes someone uncomfortable, they're supposed to simply present a card with a big X on it rather than being a civilized fucking human being that uses the simple words "Not cool, man."

Luck too often beats skill

Static bonuses are rare enough that a d12 has a 1 in 4 chance to fail the usual target number of 4. And Strength having nothing to do with the roll (other than how expensive it was to buy the die) was mentioned because it's horseshit.

3/12*3/6 = 1/8 to be exact so not much better than rolling a 1 2 or 3 in DnD. But you also have to take bennies into account.

Savage world is good at whats its supposed to be. Pulpy action. The spell system is pretty nice, but the differences between the usefulness of skills are huge as another user said. Climb and fighting take the same ammount of skill points.

All in all its fun if you want to do a generalist system without reading 5 GURPS books, but allegedly, never played it, GURPS is better overal.

>it's horseshit
kek, because being swole shouldn't make it easier to learn certain skills

The true patrician choice is to roll Swimming and Climbing into an Athletics skill,
though

>gurps is better
For the terminally autistic, maybe

>X-card
This was developed for convention play, where you're sitting with strangers and don't want to tell them all about how your teacher molested you in a closet and now closets trigger your PTSD. If you're playing a regular game with friends there's no reason not to say "please don't trap my character in a closet" beforehand.

bump

If you want a system that's crunchy and detailed it probably isn't the system for you.

If you want a game that's fast paced, easy to run, and simple, then it is.

It's not particularly a well balanced game so know that going in. It's also not very rules heavy.

It's a good game if you just want to play an easy to run RPG and you can trust your players not to be autists. Don't take it too seriously and it's great.

How does it handle martial arts, horror, and superpowers? I find other “universal” systems lacking in one or all of these regards.

Bump

Sounds perfect for us, so far the campaign has been very lax and memey(my guy currently has the head of a decapitated negress from parallel universe detroit and the skin of David Bowie mutant spider giraffe in his inventory) so we take everything with a joke and a pinch of salt, but the dm has expressed an interest in making things a bit more serious, so I'll have to see how it pans out.

Martial Arts are usually "feats" oriented which are small bonuses. Though I've seen the game handle maneuvers.

Magic/SuperPowers/Psychic Abilities are all lumped together under one section, but they use different mechanics, such as Mana, or having to roll a test before using (though some have benefits to using them)

Horror has an optional "guts" skill to roll for sanity and not being spooked.

Its a fun quick general system that still feels like an actual game rather than story based.

Where as gurps has rules for every little thing, SW has general rules that work for everything.

My friends want to play SW, but I'm not that fond of the system from what little I've played. Somebody sell the system to me, what is it supposed to do well?

>what is it supposed to do well?
It's perfect for games where the players want to be Jack Sparrow, Indiana Jones, or Commander Shepard. It's also retardedly easy to homebrew and has a bunch of official and third party supplements with anything you need. If you want to run an action movie game with just a bit of crunch there is no better system.

It's good for quick, pulpy, not-too-serious games. It's also not too crunchy, and yet general enough that it can do anything. Super easy to homebrew for. I've played everything from a bunch of cute magical girls doing magical things to a more serious pirate adventure.

>what is it supposed to do well?

Be a solid system thats about as mechanically deep as D&D5e, but isn't just standard fantasy.

It works, but isn't great.