Could They Do This at Level One?

I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding.

By Damage Effects, I mean things like Burst, Piercing or Spread.

The little Vault Boy symbol on the official dice (or a 5 or 6 if you’re rolling normal d6s) are just called Effects, even though they are rolled on Combat Dice for damage.

So, let’s say a weapon has a Damage Stat of 5, as well as the Burst, Piercing and Spread Damage Effects. One rolls 2 damage and 2 Effects on the dice. In the Rules as Written this is 4 Damage 2 Piercing on the first Hit Location, plus 2 Spread Damage Effects doing 2 Damage Piercing 2 on random Hit Locations, plus if the attacker chooses to spend the ammo 2 Burst Damage Effects doing 4 Damage and 2 Piercing to two additional targets in the same Zone.

Some argue that even those 2 Burst Damage Effects should trigger their own Spread Damage Effects.

This works pretty well at low level with un-modded equipment, but I’ve found that creates a lot of unnecessarily OP weapons at higher levels. So, I’ve ruled that in the above example, the initial damage would still be 4 Damage 2 Piercing, but the Spread Damage Effects would be 2 Damage with no Piercing and the 2 Burst Damage Effects would have neither Piercing nor Spread added to them.

This game’s terms get pretty confusing. I wish we had separate terms for:

  • The Damage Rating of a weapon
  • The Damage Dice Pool rolled for that weapon
  • The dice faces on the Combat Dice that indicate damage has been rolled
  • The final Hit Point loss a target takes
    But they are all called “damage” interchangeably in the rulebook.

Yes it is. However, the whole “rules-lawyer a scenario that tanks the GM’s entire campaign” plotline is a recurring one.

Honestly, if your players are min maxing and just out for as much caps and XP as they can gather, this is NOT the system for you.

This RPG system is way too loose and flimsy to withstand rules lawyer cheese monkeys trying to exploit it.

The ideal players for this game are ones that have interesting character concepts and are interested in the lore and story. If your party is just a bunch of murder hobos, you might try converting a crunchier system for the game. This game really isn’t hard enough to present a sustained threat/challenge to players who are doing everything they can to kill things faster without any focus on non-combat related skills and character development.

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My take: Your players suck. They went out of their way to abuse and break the game. This was pre-meditated. If you call these people “friends”, you might consider new friends. They manipulated you to “win” at a role-playing game. That’s bad form. Trying to win at a board game or war game is understandable, but they either don’t understand the concept of RPGs, or they don’t care. I’m not saying you, as GM, didn’t make a few mistakes, but those were minor. Your biggest mistake was innocently taking these d-bags at face value when they said “We just like Flamers”, and were requesting a fully tricked out weapon. I’m glad you learned a lot from this experience. What I would have learned is to never play with this group again. They would be banned from my table and, if they had been my friends for any length of time, I would have expressed how hurt I was at their behavior. And yes, I HAVE stopped playing with friends who have ruined my games so bad that I completely canceled a game (though for other reasons, not abuse of rules), and yes, I have expressed to those players that they completely ruined my game, hurt my feelings, and made me not want to be around them. In fact, that was the last game I ran, over 2 years ago. I haven’t felt the motivation or inspiration to run a game since. But I’m trying.

The title of this thread is “Could They Do This at Level One?” The first sentence describes that this is a fictional scenario. I have nice players. I am lucky to have a very good group, and so I want to run a very good game for them. Back in June (after running 7 sessions of this game) I had noticed some weaknesses in the rules. Then I examined the rulebook more closely, and I found many, many more issues that could make being a good Overseer more difficult as the game went on.

So, I wrote this made-up, hypothetical scenario to illustrate just how cartoonishly unbalanced the gear, modding, looting, combat and XP were in the rulebook. It was also a challenge to the community to show me if I was misreading the rules. And in places, I was (most notably movement.)

And now, after running 30 four-hour sessions of this game, I stand by every criticism I laid out, and have a few more. The core of the 2d20 system, (betting on each roll with AP and Luck Points, generating AP with exceptional success which supports other players who are having a harder time) is beautiful, probably my favourite core mechanic of what I’ve played in 30 years of TTRPGs. The art, lore and GMing sections of the Fallout 2d20 rulebook are top-notch, but many of the stats are a clumsy port of Fallout 4 assets that are not balanced for a tabletop experience.

I agree with the sentiment that rules are secondary to the interpersonal aspects of a TTRPG. Any system can be Min/Maxed. But by showing that this game can be Min/Maxed into absolute absurdity in the first hour of the game we see how little support the rules give an Overseer. I don’t need rules to run a good game, there are plenty of diceless systems and storytelling games out there. But I like rules, if they are good rules that help me create an enjoyable experience for my players.

I love my Fallout 2d20 game, I’m running it again on Sunday. But if I had used the looting rules out of the GM Toolkit, the Modding rules as written, Damage Effects stacking, the encounter difficulty suggested by the rulebook, and the XP distribution they offer, I would not like this game. It would be random and silly. I love my homebrewed version of the game, but only because I disregard a bunch of the rules as written, and because I wrote elaborate spreedsheets to generate more balanced loot and encounters.

So, I’m still very grateful to Modiphius for purchasing this license and printing this system. I don’t know what Bethesda/Zenimax/Microsoft requires them to do, or what Covid did to the production process of this book. I have no ill-will toward Modiphius and will probably buy Fallout 2d20 supplements in the future. But the original post on this thread is a warning to Overseers that if you simply take many of these rules as written, you may find that gear makes players grow wildly in combat power, different player builds are vastly different in their effectiveness and your combat encounters have bizarre outcomes.

If you’re okay with that, a salut. But my style is very long term, slow growth, narrative driven play. I average about one combat encounter a session, so it better be challenging, cinematic and have a meaningful outcome. And I’m looking for a 150+ session campaign, so I need to create 150 interesting encounters. Balanced, supportive rules go a long way to help me with that, and many other TTRPGs provide those.

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Yeah, this is a particularly flimsy system for balancing encounters and characters. In relatively short order a party can get geared up to the point where the vast majority of the monsters and enemies in the book present zero challenge at all. I can’t imagine trying to make credible threats to a party decked out in power armor. I think the DR system is good, but that offensive output does not keep up with the DR of upgraded armor.
I think trying to keep every encounter challenging would drive me insane because it is extremely hard to present a real threat without going too far and kill off PCs or dropping tons of high value loot. Fortunately my players seem to enjoy dominating every fight so if I can manage a credible threat every once in a while, I’m good.

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All you need to get through power armor is some modest Piercing and some good damage. Remember that 5 points of damage after DR breaks the armor, rendering it useless. So at around level 6 you could have Awareness and Rifleman Rank 2. Then your basic Hunting Rifle would get Piercing 3, damage 6. Some luck for rerolls and you can mess up even X-01 torso armor. All you need to do is roll 5 damage with 4 effects.

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Yup. If you run the math, there are lots of ways to defeat all of the equipment in the book. At level 7, with Awareness, Laser Commander 2, Rifleman 2, Science! 2 and a Laser Musket with Full Stock, a character can have Damage 12, Piercing 4. An average shot with that will do 10 damage and pierce 16 Energy DR. Add damage with Accurate or do a sneak attack with Mr. Sandman and an X-01 suit isn’t much of a problem… for one player. At level 7.

But there’s nothing in the rulebook that tells you that one player could build a world-ending combat monster at level 7 and the other players will be left watching with their damage at 8 Dice. The poor Throwing Weapons player is completely left in the dust. And now what do you do with that party? Nerf the Musket sniper? Give the other players enormous bonuses? The Musket sniper can already pick off an X-01 helmet. Do I create a new suit of power armor with Energy DR 17? And if I boost the rest of the party to match the musket, now I need a power armor suit with what, DR 25?

I’m glad I noticed this stuff early and made a plan for it.

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Absolutely there are issues. This was more in response to the

I think the entire game needed more time in the oven. It’s fun and feels like Fallout but man does it need HR to really be playable/balanced.

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