Hey all,
I'm posting this here rather than rpg.net because 1) You guys know DFRPG and that's the game I have, 2) I don't want to wade through 27 posts of "use Leverage! Use Strands of Fate! Use fucking Exalted!" and 3) I don't know how I do it or what I did in the past, but either I'm on more people's ignore lists than I think or my posts are forum poison.
I have it in my head that I want to tinker with DFRPG and present it to my brother to run a "cyberpunk heist" game. He got Deus Ex and so has sneaky transhumans on the brain. I'd appreciate any comments on the following ramblings. Please keep in mind my tabletop group is usually 4 people with a sometimes 5th, I like "Up To Your Waist" as a starting power level (7 refresh/25 skill points/Great cap), and only have SotC and DFRPG (although Diaspora's SRD is somewhat known to me). I'm also not even touching the cyberpunk/augmentation stuff yet; this is primarily heist-focused.
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How do we want to divide up different heist roles or niches? We’ll assume a 4-5 player party, so we should have, say, 4 main roles with 2 additional roles that could be useful but a 4-person team should be able to get through. Leverage has the Hacker, Hitter, Grifter, Thief, and Mastermind. Even then, the Mastermind is more of a metagame-level role, so let’s ignore that and map the Leverage roles onto their Deus Ex “pillars”: Hacking, Combat, Social, and Stealth.
Spycraft’s classes map okay: Fixer, Soldier, Faceman, Pointman, Wheelman, Snoop.
Wheelman is cool but honestly the driving part of things happens around the heist except for very specific heists. Likewise, Soldiering is good to have as a backup but it’s typically not the initial plan.
Fixer: casing the target, knowing people, getting gear
Soldier: combat, tactics, physicality
Faceman: social engineering, infiltration, disguise
Pointman: analogous to Mastermind. The “leader” role.
Snoop: intrusion, stealth, hacking
The Leverage breakdown is better, so let's use that. Assign existing DFRPG skills (26 in total) to each role:
HackerCraftsmanship
Scholarship
Investigation
HitterAthletics
Endurance
Fists
Guns
Might
Weapons
GrifterContacts
Deceit
Empathy
Intimidation
Performance
Presence
Rapport
ThiefBurglary
Stealth
N/A (or at least not central to the heist theme)
Alertness
Conviction
Discipline
Driving
Investigation
Lore
Resources
Survival
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Next step: How much of a default DFRPG 7-refresh / Great-skill-cap / 25 skill points / “Up to Your Waist” character build do these roles take up? You can make a passable Hacker/Thief, especially if you use Stunts to strategically remove the need for certain skills.
+4: Scholarship, Burglary
+3: Investigation, Stealth
+2: Craftmanship, Athletics
All you need is the Cat Burglar stunt and you really don’t need Stealth at all. And Athletics would be good for the Thief, but it’s VITAL to a non-stunted Hitter for ranged defense so it goes in that column.
Meanwhile, a Grifter or Hitter’s skillset is going to consume their highest skill picks all by themselves.
+4: Rapport, Deceit
+3: Empathy, Presence
+2: Intimidation, Contacts, Performance
I think if you had four skills to cover a role’s responsiblities (with a fifth as a “nice-to-have” or an easily stunted-away option), it would allow enough crosstraining that people wouldn’t feel pigeonholed nor would it allow too many jacks-of-all-trades. Let’s look at the Hitter, and what he’d use each skill for primarily:
Athletics -> Defense
Endurance -> Physical Stress
Fists -> Melee Attack, Melee Defense
Guns -> Ranged Attack
Might -> Grappling Attack
Weapons -> Attack, Ranged Attack, Melee Defense
Despite thinking of fighter-types as strong, we can put Might in the “nice to have but not essential” category. That leaves us with making a hitter tougher, defending against incoming attacks, and making attacks on others across a variety of ranges and with various implements.
If we use Stunts to pare down our skill picks, we can make a Hitter pretty efficiently:
+4: Weapons, Guns
+3: Endurance, Might
Shot on the Run (dodge trapping moved to Guns), Anything Goes (never forced by circumstance to be unarmed, thus removing the need for Fists entirely).
Perhaps even using a Stunt to increase the range of thrown weapons and taking a Footwork-analog stunt for Weapons could let us ignore Guns entirely. Or use Fists, take a high Athletics, and use a Stunt to use thrown weapons off Athletics.
Hmm.
Actually, 6 skills seems to be the sweet spot here, not 4. A few Stunts in the right place can really remove the need for so many skills, which frees you up to cross-train. Or you can take the full gamut of that role’s skills and use your Stunts to further increase your capabilities. With that said, I’ve never liked the whole “when do I roll Rapport/when is it Empathy/when should it Presence” muddle. Let’s combine a few of those, and we’ll need to expand the Thief and Hacker’s skillsets so they’re comparable to the Hitter and Grifter. By the same token, we should pare down the skills that aren’t central to the heist theme. Lore, for example, is out of here. The mental stress skills aren’t as important when there aren’t psychic powers going around, although they might be useful for cyberwear’s stress on the mind if we go that route. If we do drop mental stress, let’s call social stress Composure like in Diaspora.
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And that's where I am. I'm wondering if I'm making some serious errors in my assumptions so far, and if you guys have any suggestions about where and how to branch out the thievery and hacking portions of the roles. Or if I'm really missing some interesting heist roles that should be considered.
