I mentioned in Part Five of my Numenera RPG review that I
had planned on skipping past Chapter 8, which contains the rules of the system.
I didn’t hear any protests, so for now, at least, I am going to do just that
and move on to Chapter 9. Chapter 9 is all about optional rules. I really did
not expect to find this in the core rule book for Numenera.
The optional rules provide guidance on a variety of ways to
customize your game play. They change the way some of the core rules work. I
should not really be surprised, though. One of the things +Monte Cook is known
for is taking apart different RPG systems and changing them. Why wouldn’t he do
that even to his own? But, what kind of game changing rules suggestions does he
provide, you ask?
There are a few and I will try and go over them one by one.
Of course, I’ll only talk about them briefly, because that is what I do.
First, he talks about trading damage for effect. Normally,
on an attack roll of 19 or 20, you get a minor or major effect. Here, he
provides rules that allow you to trade some or all of the damage you inflict on
a target without rolling a 19 or 20 in order to attain specific results. These
results include things many of us might be familiar with such as knock back or
stun, but also things such as just being able to move past the target of the
attack.
There are also rules here to cause lasting and even permanent
damage to a player character. Here, it’s set up so these things can be done on
a GM intrusion. It is recommended that they be used only when appropriate such
as after falling a long distance onto a hard surface or as a replacement for
character death. Right off the bat, I’d say I have a problem in that this can
only be caused to player characters on a GM intrusion. My issue is that, for
story purposes (and random acts of coolness), I’d like to see character’s able
to do this to NPCs that may end up escaping or otherwise surviving and be run
into later on down the road. There doesn’t really seem to be a mechanic for
that. I would probably have these options available for characters when they
score a major effect.
Next, they provide rules for weakness and inability. Weakness
is exactly the opposite of Edge, making it more expensive to apply effort.
Inabilities can cause the character to be worse at certain tasks, make certain
things be one step more difficult than they would normally be. This is
recommend to present how dangerous the Ninth World can be in the event of
disease or poison.
There are rules here that provide suggestions on how
characters can spend more from their stat Pool in order to be able to push
their special abilities to do more. There are also suggestions for making a
special roll just to determine if what they are trying to do, by extend their
powers further, is possible. There are also suggestions for rolling when no
roll is needed to lower the cost of using an ability or achieving an above & beyond success.
Monte brought something in here for lovers of D&D and
that is: the Attack of Opportunity as an optional rule. I might use it
arbitrarily with my group, but only if it makes sense at the time. They are not
going to get attacked, for example, if the enemy is otherwise engaged.
They have a rule that allows characters to roll an extra d6
if they roll a natural 20 instead of taking the major effect. This makes it
possible to attain target numbers over 20, even if the difficulty couldn’t be
lowered enough.
There is an option to attack beyond the set range for a
weapon. There are also options for making a distinction between different types
of weapons such as slashing, stabbing, and bludgeoning. I kind of like this
rule and I think I will end up using it. A slashing weapon, for example would
do an extra point of damage against an unarmored opponent while one less damage
against an armored opponent.
There are rules for miniatures provided in the Numenera
optional rules section. This might work well just to get an idea of where
things are in relation to one another, but it is not set up to be a tactical
battle mat style game. In fact, it would probably need done with a series of movable
circles (the book recommends different lengths of string) denoting the
difference between immediate, short, and long distances. I think of these
distances almost like zones in Fate Core. If it makes sense, it makes sense. If
it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There are also considerations in regards to size of miniatures
and terrain. These are followed by drawbacks, which I agree with and are probably
one of the reasons I will not use them. If I need to give a basic idea of
surrounding and placement, I will sketch something out on a notepad real quick
or use Scoot & Doodle in G+ Hangouts.
The next set of rules talks about character customization.
That is to say that they give us suggestions for how to modify the character
type, descriptor, and foci. It does say that, other than the suggestions given
here, the type, descriptor, and focus should not be changed. I am not sure why
that is, exactly, but maybe it will make sense as I read through it.
For character type it mentions moving around stat points
within the different Pools and placing the Edge where the character wants. They
also recommend sacrificing a skill for additional cypher use or swapping out a
single special ability at first tier with that of a special ability from
another character type.
The character descriptors, according to the book, can be
changed in a number of ways. They actually provide the basic formula used to
create a descriptor as they are presented earlier in the book for some
guidance. They do recommend that a new descriptor be created rather than
modifying existing ones.
With character foci, the changes are limited to swapping out
specific abilities and it gives three abilities to choose from per tier (except
for 6th tier where it only provides 2). I am sure there are more
changes that could be made and I really wish they would have given us the basic
formula for foci as they did for the descriptor.
Next, it talks about take drawbacks in order to gain further
advantages without giving up what the character already has. Instead, they would
be giving up something different. I am sure, with the wrong group of players,
just like with point buy systems that use some sort of merit/flaw,
edge/drawback, etc. system, this could be easily abused if not properly monitored.
There are new suggestions on how to award experience here.
These include taking a vote on who had the best ideas, contributed most, etc.
It also talks about using XP between sessions and GM intrusion XP for specific
things only. There are a couple of neat ideas, but I think I would have to play
the standard way for a little while and see how the group and I like the
progression. There is also a suggestion here on getting XP in the beginning of
the story based on a serious complication related to one of the characters or,
more likely their past. I could see this working a few ways and it could
actually be spread amongst players between different legs of a campaign.
Next up, it provides racial options. I am not going to go
too deep into these, but I will say one thing. I wish they would have laid
their cards on the table with this one as well. What is the formula? There are
not many races, so it will be hard to extrapolate from existing data. They
cover one alien race, the Varjellen as well as one race that is kind of the
product of the weird Ninth World—a cross between a bigfoot and a mutant fungus called
the Lattimor, and then mutants.
Oh boy, is the section on mutants fun. It involves a lot of
rolling on percentile tables. It reminds me of the old Palladium game, Heroes
Unlimited.
As an aside, I’d like to mention that this is probably the
most fun I have ever had reading a role playing book. I have read many of them
over the years and I have enjoyed those games. I have enjoyed some of the
content. But, this is perhaps the first book that screams to me how I need and
want to read every chapter. I consider this a great sign.
Next up is Numenera Setting. That could take awhile. Until then, check out another sneak peak.
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