What does /tg/ think about the cypher system ? Should I run it

Expect plenty of cock cannibalism from our friend Monte.

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I find the flaws in the Cypher System Rulebook to be quite bothersome.

1. Intellect is clearly and obviously the best statistic of them all, covering all tasks of "intelligence, wisdom, charisma, education, reasoning, wit, willpower, and charm" (page 15) and even healing (page 210), looking or listening (page 212), social interactions (page 212), disabling devices and locks (page 213), gaining insights (page 217), and using most cyphers (page 241). Intellect covers an absolutely insane span of tasks. This might have been passable in a wilderness/dungeon-focused setting like Numenera, but in other settings, Intellect is king.

2. Ranged beats melee. In this game, if you want to both move and attack, you can move only 10 feet by default. If you want to move further than 10 feet and attack, you must succeed on a difficulty 4 Speed task (difficulty 2 if you purchase a specific special ability), and bad things happen if you roll a natural 1.

Also, ranged attacks made within 10 feet lower the difficulty of the attack by 1. Melee attacks do not have this benefit. Yes, ranged weapons are more accurate than melee weapons within 10 feet.

Similarly, most attacks in combat target your Might, so you will want to conserve your Might as much as possible rather than spend it.
Because of this, ranged weapons are simply better than melee weapons. (Consequently, Speed is better than Might.)

Under the "fantasy" equipment list, longbows are weaker than greatswords, but the movement restrictions and the point blank bonus still make a longbow preferable to a greatsword. Use Speed and Speed Edge to attack with a longbow, take Practiced in Armor to start with elven chainmail for free, and laugh at anyone who bothered with melee.

Under the "modern" and "science fiction" equipment lists, there are better ranged weapons available, so you should wield one of those and ignore melee. Take an unarmored ability.

(Continued.)

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>>54109326

https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47452111/#47454131
In the Cypher System Rulebook, there are 10 enemies that can damage Speed or Intellect, 2 enemies that can damage Speed or Intellect only sometimes, and 56 who can damage only Might.

https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47452111/#47454344
In the Strange core rulebook, there are 4 enemies that can deal damage to Speed or Intellect, and 42 that can deal damage only to Might.

Therefore, the one damage type you really need to worry about most often is Might damage. Therefore, it helps greatly to conserve Might, by attacking with something other than Might.

3. In various cases, "magic" accomplishes tasks far more competently and cheaply than mundane methods ever could. Here is a good example: https://boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/46672143/
Far Step is worth a single talent. Being trained in "running" and "jumping" is also worth a single talent, and it is several orders of magnitude worse than Far Step.

(Continued.)

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>>54109344

4. Skills have no balance to them. Various options, such as the Calm descriptor, the Doesn't Do Much focus, and the Would Rather be Reading focus give you a blank check on selecting skills. However, page 20 gives us a sample list of skills like "deceiving," "intimidation," "metalworking," and so on, then tells us:

>You could choose a skill that incorporates more than one of these areas (interacting might include deceiving, intimidation, and persuasion) or that is a more specific version of one (hiding might be sneaking when you’re not moving). You could also make up more general, professional skills, such as baker, sailor, or lumberjack. If you want to choose a skill that’s not on this list, it’s probably best to run it past the GM first, but in general, the most important aspect is to choose skills that are appropriate to your character.

Why would you ever choose "deceiving" or "intimidation" when you could choose "interaction"? Why would you even bother with "hiding" when you could take "sneaking" instead? What is the point of telling a player to select X number of skills when those skills could be as narrow as "hiding while not moving" or as broad as "social interactions"?

Even worse are the abilities like:
>Investigative Skills: You are trained in two skills in which you are not already trained. Choose two of the following: identifying, perception, lockpicking, assessing danger, or tinkering with devices. You can select this ability multiple times. Each time you select it, you must choose two different skills. Enabler.

"Lockpicking" and "tinkering with devices" are good and all, but are we really to believe that either is as broad as "perception"?

(Continued.)

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>>54109353

5. Descriptors and foci have flimsy balance.

For example, the best descriptor in the entire game is Foolish, because it has this ability:
>Carefree: You succeed more on luck than
anything. Every time you roll for a task, roll
twice and take the higher result.

This is a d20-based game wherein 1s are critical failures and 17-20s are varying degrees of critical success, so rolling twice and taking the higher result is a stupendously strong benefit. The descriptor comes with some downsides that fail to balance out rolling twice on all rolls. For example, Foolish characters have 1 higher difficulty for all Intellect defense tasks and tasks that involve seeing through deception, illusion, or traps... but rolling twice still makes them better at such tasks than a regular character.

Foolish is a supremely strong descriptor, and it gets even better if you can immunize yourself against all mind-influencing effects, such as the Slays Monsters focus's tier 2 ability.

Another example is the Travels Through Time focus (which, sadly, does not synergize well with Foolish). This is the broken part:
>Tier 1: Anticipation (1 Intellect point). You look ahead to see how your actions might unfold. You have an asset for the first task you perform before the end of the next round. Enabler.

This is an enabler. If you have Intellect Edge 1, then congratulations, you have an asset on every single task you could conceivably perform, lowering all difficulties by 1. Monte Cook did not think this through.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some foci are awful at various tiers.
Masters Weaponry's tier 1 ability is laughably, objectively worse than Slays Monsters' tier 1 ability.
Infiltrates' tier 1 ability is likewise totally worse than Doesn't Do Much's tier 1 ability and Would Rather be Reading's tier 1 ability, especially since the latter two let you choose broad skills like "interaction."

(Continued.)

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>>54109364

6. Spending XP on short-term benefits simply is not worth it unless you are using 1 XP to reroll a roll that will spell death and/or calamity should you fail it.

4 XP is enough to earn you a major, permanent ability for your entire career, and once you purchase four of those (16 total), you advance a tier and reap all of the benefits for doing so. 1 XP rerolls in anything but life-or-death scenarios are thus a trap.

2 XP for short- or medium-term skill trainings are a complete and utter ripoff when all a skill training grants is 1 lower difficulty. 2 XP is half the price of gaining a permanent major ability, and delays you from gaining tiers.

On a tangent, speaking of spending 4 XP for a permanent, major ability, this is perhaps the best of the lot:
>Add 2 to your recovery rolls.
Recovery rolls are the key to resource management. A +2 bonus to such rolls gives you a massive, flexible boost to the resources available to you.

Cypher has an intriguing concept for a resource management subsystem, but the execution is not quite to my liking in many respects.

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>>54109326
>>54109344
>>54109353
>>54109364
>>54109386
Wow, that's the fastest take-down I've ever seen.

>>54109454

OP here so pretty much that's a nay ?

>>54109274
The cypher system is what happens when a D&Dfag tries to make it rules lite without understanding what that really is

I run Numenera, three times a month. The Cypher System works reallly well in Numenera's setting. The anon saying "this many creatures do this damage" is technically correct the best kind of correct, but making a Cypher System monster is as easy as going "it's level x, but level y when doing this, and has a special attack that's level z that damages stat a." That creature is literally built, you know everything you need to know about it, mechanically.
From experience, he's correct about pretty much everything else. If you have very gamist, mechanics-focused players or min-maxers, the system's flaws are incredibly apparent. I feel like this is true of every game, but I admit it's pretty prevalent in the Cypher System.
I think it handles anything but sci-fi pretty badly, despite touting itself as a generic system. I find the GM intrusion system is cool, but having players "pass one of the experience" to another player only fosters discontent. I only give one XP for an intrusion, it still costs one to deny it. There's not giving your XP to another player.
In the end, like most systems it has its flaws, but me and my players like it.

>>54109364
Travels Through Time directly addresses, in the book, how powerful it is. It literally says it. Also none of the character options in the book are balanced against each other in terms of PVP, because the system isn't intended for that (as players roll all the dice and there's no difficulty level for players options. They literally can't be used against other players, mechanically).

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>>54111561

I do not think it is unreasonable to use premade bestiary monsters as a benchmark for frequency of damage to Intellect, Might, and Speed. Having a consistent and empirical benchmark is certainly better than having none at all.

>>54111672

This was the case in the Numenera Character Options book, but it is conspicuously absent from the Cypher System Rulebook. All that is present in the latter is a sidebar concerning the troubles and pitfalls associated with time travel, but that is besides the point; the broken part about Travels Through Time is *not* the time travel, which comes only at tier 4 and is actually quite tame, but the out-of-the-box tier 1 ability.

>Also none of the character options in the book are balanced against each other in terms of PVP
When did I mention or imply PvP?

>>54111758
I'm both of those, actually. I agree it's not incorrect to use the published monsters for a benchmark, but I am saying that creating a monster for the system is so simple that it's disingenuous to call it a problem. It says at the beginning of every book's bestiary that creating a monster is as easy as assigning a level and maybe adding an effect.

As for the Travels Through Time focus, I didn't realize it's not present in the Core Book, though I took the sidebar in the Character Options book as a general warning about the focus, not just the specific act of time traveling.

As for the PVP comment, I misunderstood. I thought you meant having the Foolish descriptor to combat the Slays Monsters focus, but looking at them both again I see what you meant. My bad.