Homebrewing a cyberpunk game in pathfinder. What are some rules or fixes your DMs have made that keep up a gun fights theatrical? Conversely, what are some gun fight rules that were more tactically layered but still fast?
Gun Fight House Rules
Homebrewing a cyberpunk game in pathfinder. What are some rules or fixes your DMs have made that keep up a gun fights theatrical? Conversely, what are some gun fight rules that were more tactically layered but still fast?
You will benefit from reading the cyberpunk 2020 and the cyberpunk red corebooks, and comparing and constrasting their combat systems. The TL;DR is that gun combat is served with having many dice rolls, and how many dice rolls your group can process quickly is going to determine if the system is good for you or not. For some 2020 is the obvious best answer, for some Red is the obvious best answer, most people will fall in the middle.
My take is that if you are homebrewing your own gun combat you should focus on the damage the weapons do, like organ injuries, instant kills, crippling, etc rather than focusing on the mechanics of delivering the damage. The best gun combat ever will always be "If you are shot you roll a death save."
Yup, using Cyberpunk 2020/red is the way to go.
>The best gun combat ever will always be "If you are shot you roll a death save."
Delta Green has it for some weapons, where instead of rolling damage it's just straight up % live/die roll, but that doesn't work too well with Cyberpunk rules. Aside from making it difficult to run a scenario when the lethality is too high (or inconsequential when too low), it also goes against the purpose of implants like pain editor or biomonitor.
No advice anyone can give is more useful than "Don't try to run a cyberpunk campaign in Pathfinder." Use a system that's actually meant for cyberpunk and gunfights.
you're probably not wrong. Its just what we've played the most.
will take a look over friday night firefights
Why in the ungodly hells would you use Pathfinder of all things?
>but muh group is used to-
I trust they have enough intelligence to learn a new fricking system, right? They did learn Pathfinder to begin with.
>but uhhh too lazy to learn new syst-
Then call them homosexuals and find actual players.
Just use Cyberpunk 2020. Grab some splatbooks. Run a Cyberpunk game in an honest-to-god cyberpunk system instead of hacking together a grotesque heartbreaker out of a fantasy system made for a completely different purpose using duct tape, lollipop sticks, and cum.
>They did learn Pathfinder to begin with.
Anon we both know they didn't learn shit.
Something I think that's worth going back to is the idea of the GM having all the character crunch behind the screen, with the players just saying what they'd like to try to do, and the GM telling them which die/dice to roll (and optionally remind them which things they're good or particularly bad at). I'm surprised as my table gets older that I seem like the only person who doesn't love rolling dice for the sake of it, but this method keeps those little dopamine prisms moving for all the ADHD brains
It seems like a pretty blatantly obvious solution to get peoples' feet wet in non-DnD systems without them shitting their diapers but I've never seen anyone really bring it up, I assume because "muh player agency" as if having their little spreadsheets and pretending they remember how the game works matters for the first however-many sessions
NTA but yeah I've run into a similar issue, mainly that *they* want to build their characters and seemingly don't trust me to make their characters for them. Playing a new system thus requires them all to read and understand the rulebook enough to roll a character, which never happens and the game keeps getting put off until I give up trying to drag them along.
I'd get that for a longer campaign, people like the feeling of twisting knobs and making their build come to life, but if you draw them in with a short tentative 2-4 session thing with pre-made characters that are mostly blank slates beyond their skills and shit, would that still be an issue? My buddies and I tried this as an intro to the Fria Ligan Alien RPG and we had an absolute blast
Might need you to elaborate on the time(s) you've seen what you're describing happen, because I'm not sure I understand and I have to disagree
I would think the opposite is true, in that players who don't have a grasp of how a game works are less likely to be pissy about miscommunication or failure than ones who (think they) understand a system as well as the GM does, OR that ones who are learning a new system and who also build their characters may come to session 1 now having ideas of exactly what their unique crafted identity is supposed to succeed at, and feeling their pride pricked when their avatars fail (this happened in a Dark Heresy game of mine with two new players who did make PCs) vs. just having the sheet you picked not do so good some times
You will have a nuclear-bomb tier fight the moment there's a conflict between their expectations and what is happening. I've seen it happen more than once with someone trying this.
Teach them through one-shots, slowly giving more stuff to do by themselves. Give them easy handout characters (e.g. various flavours of Solo), and have a combat scenario. Print everyone a tiny subset of GM screen and combat flowchart from base book so they aren't lost. If I could explain it to a bunch of sixthgraders, then you shouldn't have a problem with (ostensibly) adult people.
Also, most systems are either roll + stat + skill vs DC, a dice pool of stat + skill vs DC, or KdN vs DC. And guess what: Cyberpunk 2020/red and D&D are firmly in the first category. Tell players to think of cyberware as replacable feats or whatever and get going.
Why not starfinder? I mean I haven't played it but its bound to have a more fleshed out ranged combat system than pathfinder.
Why not just play Cyberpunk 2020 instead of homebrewing it in a shitty game?
Would /tg/ accept the Major's boof?
Dumbest. You need education and therapy
Can I use dark heresy rules for a cyberpunk game?
there's lots of cyborg shit and combat seems pretty lethal, I don't want to learn 2020 or red or shadowrun
Short answer, yes. Now, dark heresy comes with some baggage that is not shared with cyberpunk settings (flamers, fear effects, WS and BS vs cyberware, combat drugs, initiative passes). I'm an 80s purist for cyberpunk aesthetics, so the 40k hive cities and bulky tech is fine for me, but it might not translate well to a more modern "20 years from now" setting with wireless, micro electronics and AI surveillance.
Anon
makes a good point. It can work, just might need to fudge some rules for feel.
That said, in my experience, DH incentivizes cover, turtling and stealth is often the first thing to drop. CP is heavy on aggressive attack, advancing, and the stealth works best when using audio/flash flares to sneak past. Running fast and/or having high reflexes makes you much more difficult to hit, and a single well-placed grenade can change the tide of engagement even if the other side is more augmented/better equipped.
Also, even though you don't want to learn another system, you absolutely should read 'Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads', because it's about thinking like a cyberpunk first and cyberpunk GM second.