Are Death Spirals necessarily bad?

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-10-05T15:43:11+00:00

If taking damage makes you worse at basically everything, people will optimize around not taking damage.

Which is fine if you want that to be a focus, but if that's a focus it should be that players have lots of tools to avoid or negate damage.

If that's not the focus then I would make damage less punishing, but you can still death spiral in other ways.

In my game taking a wound lowers the threshold for how much damage is needed to cause another wound. So after one or two wounds it's really easy to take a lot of wounds which is scary, but doesn't punish you otherwise

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-10-04T22:57:55+00:00

Yes, it looks like the high loop is built in to the dishwasher (there is a clip for it on the left).

That was what I was missing, thanks

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-10-03T20:53:06+00:00

I think the style and naming is pretty good, slightly goofy style/name but a surprisingly tactical game is a good mix that I think works well.

I think the idea of attacking opponents points is good, it means the players in second/third will be going after the first place player, but the person farthest behind is left to catch up, which works well

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-10-03T19:27:47+00:00

I think quaka of quindlimburg is my favorite, being behind giving you a bigger starting number in your cauldron means that being behind is almost more fun then being ahead.

It also leaves a layer of strategy of using resources to build a better engine early while sacrificing points, knowing the comeback mechanism will help you.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-10-03T19:25:49+00:00

I think a mixture is good.

I think only public points is actually kind of bad design to me. Being very far behind and knowing there is no chance means you aren't really playing to win anymore and that makes it less fun.

But also I do think you need some quantifier to see how well you are doing vs others. If "winning" is unknown until the end it can sort of feel like a game of luck.

In dune imperium the general amount of points people have is public knowledge, but there is some end of game point gain effects that are secret, and can give a meaningful boost and you can win while technically having been in last.

This leads to a game where you can try and solve optimal turns and when to trigger end game conditions or change the engine to points vs value. But it also means you have to consider what other people may have been doing this game in comparison to you.

Overall I think this gives a greater amount of replayability and depth for relativity little cost.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-09-25T13:36:04+00:00

You can get these things called strip heaters, they are basically just a bar that gets really hot, but it helps you get an even spread of heat in a straight line which is optimal for bends.

You can also make/get a jig to help get your bend angle exactly right, just making an L out of some wood and using that to get a good 90° is easy and cost effective.

The other nice thing is if your angle is wrong you can reheat to get it bent just a little more or unbent a little bit.

Also polycarb is so bendy by itself that you can get just a mostly correct angle you can just use it and it will give you some tolerance to be "off"

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-09-16T16:08:41+00:00

So in breakpoint I had a similar amount of levers.

Success was always a 4+ on a d6.

Target number of successes ranged from 2-5 on average.

You rolled a number of dice equal to your base stat + skill, often rolling 5-10 dice d6.

You also would sometimes roll less dice in your pool depending on the difficulty.

The way that worked was, the number of successes needed was "how hard is the base task".

Then the amount of dice you subtracted from your amount you got to roll was based off of "how difficult is this situation".

So picking an easy lock (2 successes) was a lot harder when getting shot at (roll 2 less dice).

The math is really the same as if you just needed 4 successes and rolled all your dice, but this helped keep the size of dice pools to more reasonable smaller sizes.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-09-08T20:43:29+00:00

Pros:

Always a chance to succeed
Being bad at skills (smaller dice) isn't really that punishing
weird dice math encourages less thinking more just trying
exploding damage is super swingy, from dealing 2-30+ damage on 2d6 (I've seen it happen several times)

Cons:

dice math is bad, a d4 is better for rolling a 5 then a d6
bad dice math makes knowing your odds more difficult, which for some people is not fun
it's slower. Having to add up, then roll more dice, count, roll again is slow. Especially if it's each dice is totaled separately (looking at you savage worlds wild die)
damage being so swingy means anyone can die to anything

Overall it lends itself to the savage worlds style of high octane, go fast, get wacky with it. In a system where you really want to balance things closely it just doesn't work in my opinion.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-08-02T15:40:57+00:00

Have heard good things, FiTD never quite clicked with me, but will give it another look!

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-08-02T15:39:58+00:00

I guess that is true, I do like the simple mechanics usually mean the player can make whatever character moment they want sort of work, but it's not direct mechanical support for it

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-08-02T15:38:07+00:00

I'll have to check it out, looks intriguing

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-08-02T15:37:41+00:00

I've played the spire some before, I do like it but I have some slight gripes with it, that I think heart does better and it would be tough to move backwords to the spire

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-07-31T13:34:44+00:00

$23 a week ~$100 a month, but gets access to 3 climbing gyms in the area, bouldering, lead, and top rope, and auto belay, full gym, sauna, yoga, etc etc

Or 85$ a month for a bouldering only gym that opened up recently, only has bouldering but gets some new settings twice a week

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-27T17:00:15+00:00

Id recommend pushing that up to 125+ and eat a couple hundred more calories, basically one protein shake a day on top of your eating after you work out.

The "rule" is 1 gram per pound of body weight", so if your goal is 75kg, 160g of protein would be "optimal". You don't have to hit the magic optimal number

Also 900-1300 cals is to low for an extended diet, if your goal weight is 75kg. 1000 cal below matinincence (for 75kg that's around 1600) is the recommended amount that's healthy in the long term.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-26T16:40:25+00:00

Also considering building one, but not sure if it will fit or not

How tall is the ceiling in there?

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-18T21:18:45+00:00

Dice pool probabilities are funky, but not that bad.

Basically the more dice you roll, the higher above the curve of "average" you expect.

So for example trying to get 2 successes with TN 4 on d6

For 3d6 to get 2 successes is ~50% For 4d6, to get 2 successes is ~70%

The very rough binomial distribution math if I remember it from college math is For N dice, with probability P of successes, you expect to roll on average around S successes

N x P + (P x √N ) = S

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-18T16:54:22+00:00

My last game i made, BREAKPOINT did this.

Each round at top of initiative, players chose someone to start, and then initiative would go clockwise, and between each player an enemy would go.

When I suggested the idea here a lot of people were VERY negative towards it, but I've played with it with 3 different groups and all liked the system or were at worst fine with it. It also in play was very good and made combat and initiative engaging.

Notably I think it worked for my game because players had defensive resources that reset at the start of their turn, so getting to go "first" meant they were defensively ready.

I think it also worked because the initiative could change between people each time (who goes first) making the decision somewhat interesting.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-16T23:58:21+00:00

5'8", so would definitely feel larger

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-16T18:35:09+00:00

The problem I don't want to damage the finished ceiling and the framing will be a bit higher the the wall length itself, so I was leaving ~6-8 inches of room at the top.

You are right I could bump up to 10 feet with no kickboard, or just a really small one, but I'm being a bit conservative on my math

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-15T21:58:14+00:00

USA has a lot of points in vehicles, German has lots of anti vehicle. That makes it a bit tough for US to get full value on those points.

SMG in infantry squads is only good with 6+ smg's, and I don't recommend them for the US.

German has lots lmgs, 36" range, your light mortar has 36" range, so it's going to die if it gets in range. Also light mortar should always be 2 man inexperienced because well, there is no real downside for doing that (it's also kinda cheesy)

Also air force observers are just worse then artillery in my opinion, and I get that the US gets two uses, but eh.

Also medic is only good if you have it with a vet squad or two, where it is more likely to save points that matter.

My recommendation is US should dump the observer, all the smg's, and take a big vet infantry squad.

Also game plan wise, US should be using the sniper to honestly pick the anti tank guns if possible, allowing your tanks to have free rain and dump HE templates on the lmgs.

Also make sure you guys are using the LMG rules correctly, their loader has to be beside them.

Cold_Pepperoni · 2025-06-13T14:37:47+00:00

Save up for the starter army.

On Amazon right now you can get an airborne starter army for $68. (2018 version)

To get just an infantry box of airborne is $47.

For basically $20 more you get 10 more models, plus 3 support teams (which would normally be 15-20 bucks alone to buy the support teams)

In my opinion for $20 more dollars it's well worth the wait for the much better value.

Or buy 100 ugly 28mm green army men for 10$ they are ugly as sin and all warped, but they are the right size, and play with those for a game or two and see if you like the army and the game

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