jaymz wrote:
cornholioprime wrote:
grimmhold wrote:The people who say C.J. brought in the power creep and that his S.A. books were over powered are clearly K.S. fanboys who back K.S. up in regards for their hate on C.J. Rifts is a power creep line. From the start Rifts had tons of power creep. Juicers in melee combat. Heavy cyborgs. Shifters. LL Walkers. Glitter Boys. Robots with a gunner. I mean, come one, Atlantis was 100% pure power creep. Bio Borgs, Conservator R.C.C., Atlantean Undead Hunters. I mean the power tattoo that gives 75 m.d.c. per level is not power creep?
You have no idea of what you're talking about.
Most everyone I ever saw in these forums who complained about C.J. Carella's Power Creep....nevertheless loved the man and his creations.
Rifts, Nightbane, Pantheons of the Megaverse and otherwise.
See AlsoReviving the Classics: The Timeless Appeal of Traditional Tattoo Flash Art - Austin, TexasThe Rest Is Memory CrossoverWalk In Tattoo Shop - Broken Sword TattooIn these forums, he's probably about as well-liked an RPG writer as The Wuj was.
EDIT: I don't have my books with me at the moment. Fellas, did C.J. also give us Phase World?
With all due respect Corn, i have seen what he talks about a number of times over the years, including phaseworld in the mix.
The SA books have a few very specific items that may be considered overpowered (and frankly an anti tank laser that requires 3-4 actions to get your next shot off isnt)
It is. Or, at least, it was.
The ATL-7 inflicted 3d6x10+20 MD for a single shot.
The Boom Gun inflicted 3d6x10 MD for a single shot.
The JA-11 inflicted 3d6x10 MD for a full-magazine burst, which took two attacks (at a time when the average character only had 2 attacks per melee).
I don't have the full stats on the ATL, because I'm going off of the RGMG info, and that doesn't include stuff like weight... but it's pretty safe to say that the ATL-7 was a LOT smaller and lighter than the Boom Gun, even though it inflicted more damage per shot.
That's over-powered.
People like to say "But the ATL-7 was slower to reload than the Boom Gun!!" and they're right... but out of the other corner of their mouths, the same people are saying "And a full-magazine burst inflicted just as much damage as the ATL-7's single shot!" while neglecting that the full-mag burst took 2 attacks per melee.
Just like the same people hold up on one hand that the ATL-7's power level is comparable to some high-end super powers or other stuff from CB1, while neglecting to note that CB1 also nerfed the full-mag burst damage down to x7 instead of x10.
Sure, the Boom Gun is still the superior weapon compared to the ATL-7, but the Boom Gun requires a massive robot to carry and fire it. Not just any old robot, but one that has a specific stabilization system to handle the recoil from the weapon.
The ATL-7? It takes 2 attacks to reload after every shot, but it's man-portable (especially in a setting where more than human PS is common).
The fact that a hand-held, CR100k weapon out-performs the most powerful single gun in the game--a massive gun that requires specific infrastructure just to fire effectively--means that it's over-powered.
Even though it's NOT an overall superior weapon to the Boom Gun.
Compare it to the JA-11's full-mag burst.
The JA-11 inflicted (as of RMB) 3d6x10 MD over 2 attacks, and took one action to reload. With the JA-11, you could rip off a mag for 3d6x10 MD, then do it immediately again using the back-up reservoir, then reload using only one attack.
With the JA-11, you could fire your first three full-mag bursts using only 7 attacks. With the ATL-7, it'd take 9 attacks to fire that many times.
BUT after the first time you use the JA-11's reserve energy, you have the same fire rate as the ATL-7.
And you inflict 20 MD less damage per shot.
Post CB1, the JA-11 is only inflicting 3d6x7 MD (24.5 MD average) per shot, versus the ATL-7's 55 MD per shot; the ATL-7 does more than 2x the damage of a JA's full mag burst.
AND you're firing bursts with the JA-11, compared to the ATL-7's Aimed Shot. That makes a lot of difference.
For one thing, it means that you can fire Called Shots. Remember, when SA came out, it didn't take any more time or effort to make a Called Shot than any other Aimed Shot, and they all took only one attack.
If you're shooting at somebody with Heavy Deadboy, one of (if not THE) heaviest EBAs in North America, then you need to inflict 80 MD to blow past the chest armor, but only 35 MD for an arm, or 50 for a leg.
With a JA-11's average of 24.5 MD, you need 3+ full-mag bursts on average to blow through the chest plate.
With the ATL-7's average of 55 MD per single shot, you can blow off the target's arm or leg in a single shot.
Even if you're aiming for the torso, it takes two average hits instead of the JA's 3 attacks.
And since the JA-11 is firing bursts, that means that the shooter only has +1 to strike to start, compared to the ATL-7's +3 to strike to start, making the ATL-7 harder to dodge (because this was all back before the -10 rule, remember).
With the right skills, bonuses, sights, enhancements, whatever, it wasn't hard for most weapons that could make an Aimed Shot to be able to bump their Strike bonus up to +6 or higher. It wasn't the same with Bursts, though.
So even comparing the ATL-7 to weapons like the JA-11 performing a full-mag burst, the ATL-7 out-performs when it comes to dropping enemy soldiers quickly.
And that's ignoring all the tweaks that aren't endorsed, but that aren't really forbidden either, like hooking the ATL-7 to a nuclear power supply, or buying a bunch and making a gatling gun out of them, and so on and so forth.
It's a classic case of the writers obviously thinking, "well, it's not THAT much more powerful than the previous best. And it's got a couple of minor downsides. So it's probably balanced."
But (more powerful than the previous best) + (Only minor downsides) = Classic Power Creep.
Now, if we take the ATL-7, and we insert it into the post-RUE setting?
I haven't done a good comparison.
But I can tell you that the JA-11 isn't burst-capable anymore, so while the ATL-7 made some sense initially--when compared to a full-mag burst--it makes less sense now, because that kind of unleashing of energy is currently unprecedented and uncomparable to other energy weapons.
The OP's question really has three components:
-Are the SA books CONSIDERED to be overpowered?
-WERE the SA books overpowered when they came out?
-ARE the SA books actually overpowered today?
To which, I say:
Yes.
Yes.
Probably.
If GMs are stupid enough to let some of those items be had in games other than in SA then thats on them and does not make the books broken or overpowered.
1. The South America Books do not include ANY disclaimer that they are supposed to be completely isolated from North America to the point where no tech travels between regions. To claim that any GM who doesn't read the material, then add such a disclaimer himself/herself is "stupid" puts all the burden on the players and none on the game-makers.
From my perspective, if you're going to create a high-powered setting which is intended to be mostly or entirely isolated from the main setting, then you need to account for that in your writings.
2. Surely you know that MOST GMs out there aren't very careful about controlling that kind of thing?
I mean, every time I come onto the forums and explain that whenever I run, I heavily restrict which books the players can pull characters, gear, and powers from, people jump out from all over to call me a fascist or a killer GM or something.
To me, yes, restricting such things is common sense... but the scoreboard says that it's NOT actually all that common.
Not all of the burden for that rests on the players; a lot rests on the people making the game.
3. Kevin thought the stuff was overpowered when it was submitted to him. He allowed it against his better judgment.
THAT says that it was probably overpowered.
4. Comparisons to Atlantis aren't fair, because Atlantis is and was always supposed to have more powerful stuff than South America.
But South America was never hinted to have gear and classes so much more powerful than anything that North America had. There was nothing before the SA books hinting that South America was some kind of tech wonderland that could out-perform North America.
Balance is about more than just mechanics--it's about how those mechanics fit into the overall game setting, and the SA stuff generally didn't fit very well.
Hell I have seem people complain NightSPAWN is over powered as well.
Compared to other gamelines, it is... but in the case of Nightbane, it's its own setting, so that doesn't really matter.
For someone so well liked a lot of people complain about his work across the board yet these same peoole do not say a peep about the large power creep kevin himself created.
I peep quite a lot about that, actually.
But CJ was worse than Kevin was. He made some really cool stuff, but more often he made kinda cool stuff that bumped up the average power level of the game.
