lolbesm

[14:44] <+Aerdan> Pen: if you're up for it, gimme reasons to disrecommend BESM 2e, please.
[18:34] <+Pen> Aerdan: Man I barely remember 2E but 3E is basically that but better while still having all the problems. It's one of those "everyone gets a buttload of points to spend on things" systems which means even with an equal distribution of XP some players will be wildly stronger than others just based on how they invest it (ALTERNATE FOOOORM). It's not terribly great for narrative style games because there's an "you can do X" ability for everything under the sun, so unless it says you can, you probably can't (as written). When it gets to combat you put autofire on everything and then that's pretty much it. Offense/damage scales so much easier than defense that it literally just becomes an arms race but GM always wins an arms race.
[18:34] <+Pen> The way Shads made it work for Pillars was we all basically had an equivalent of the Dynamic Powers attribute but for our ninja bullshit which was basically "you can use anything that fits with <theme> that would cost less than X points"
[18:36] <+Pen> which brings back the fun thematic points of characters cuz otherwise the Attribute system gets kind of dull since most point investments result in just bigger numbers than an overall larger scope of action or whatever; But even then all the previous issues apply and so we ultimately ended up planning on switching to FATE and then shenanigans happened
[18:37] <+Pen> It doesn't really do social encounters well, and when you get to combat while you've got all these super speed things and environmental manipulation and force fields and blah blah blah
[18:37] <+Pen> it still just boils down to who has the biggest Damage Multiplier and stack that Autofire
[18:37] <+Pen> gets dull quick
[18:54] <+Pen> What else... for low power games you have players that can't do all that much, or only do one thing well. which while it can work, there's probably better systems for (Django made it work for Neoteny for a bit). For high power/EXP games, you have characters who can do whatever and have so many immunities/movement types/weird things that it's just like whatever, plus that damage scaling issue again. Like with Pillars we were admittedly in the "Superhuman" scale despite being only one/two threads in and it was already like... Ryuu was tied for the highest health out of everyone at 100. Meanwhile, his strongest technique, Amaranth Godspeed Eclipse, did 106 /per strike/. You pretty much need to ban Autofire (and Extra Actions, and a bunch of other stuff).
[18:54] <+Pen> Ok that's everything I think
[18:54] <+Aerdan> thanks, much appreciated.
[18:55] <+Aerdan> needed to scare someone away from BESM2e who basically admitted his entire table was new to it and was looking for an anime-inspired tabletop game to use.
[18:57] <+Pen> Yeh the only really "anime-inspired" part of it is the choice of splash images in between chapters and the few blurbs on how to use certain attributes. It's fairly generic overall.
[18:57] <+Pen> As usual, not the /worst/ system, and if you can't get anything better/something everyone else agrees on, then eh. But always be aware of the pitfalls.
[20:03] * Julian looks up at Pen
[20:04] <Julian> Pen thank you very much for summing up my experiences with BESM3E