Bubbles sounded like a really cool character. The Heavy class focuses one using the really big guns, so Bubbles shoots the minigun (aka Rotary Cannon). Andi took the class abilities where Bubbles adds to the armor class of allies nearby - which was perfect for our party of 4, the Face was not a strong combatant and the Techie has a slightly better offense than defense, while my Gunslinger/Martial Artist was designed to run into melee range. Bubbles' other ability was improved Overwatch, so if needed he could hold our flank and blast any number of baddies who tried to sneak up on us. In the team or solo Bubbles looked like a good character. But didn't play that way.
Our first adventure was a building infiltration, it was a lot of planning and talking but no shooting. Bubbles was able to get hired on as a guard, which gave us an "inside man" and valuable intel. But the class didn't have any non-combat capabilities. This is half the fault of DnD 5e, which is sadly lacking in anything non-combat, and half the fault of the Ultramodern5 team, who should have realized this limitation and tried to correct it. So adventure one was a little disappointing, but we knew adventure 2 would be combat-focused, so finally Bubbles would get his chance to shine.
Sadly it was not to be. The Heavy class is all about those heavy weapons, but we found some problems. The rotary cannon always fired multiple bullets, which meant it could hit a 10' cube and targets had to make Dex saves and took no damage on a successful save, or full damage on a failed save.
Problem #1. Ten feet right in front of you and ten feet a hundred feet in front of you are two very different arcs. Let me use a diagram...
So here's my biggest problem with the square-grid system DnD and others use, things do not line up well at all. I would much rather use a hex map, and allow objects to stand in-between hexes, which gives better positioning. Still, 10' is two squares, which I'm spreading over 3 squares because that makes more real-world sense. The 10' right in front of the shooter (played by the GIMP mascot) is a huge angle, while the furthest 10' is a very tiny angle. Now, there is some validity to the concept that at close range you can cover a large angle because the targets are so close you're not likely to miss, while at a long range you have to keep to a narrower angle so that you can hit the smaller targets. Which I can buy, with something like a machine pistol that has a relatively small ammo supply. But something like the minigun, which carries hundreds to thousands of bullets, seems like it should be able to fill any angle with a potentially lethal amount of firepower. So in the end the minigun just doesn't feel like it's hitting enough targets.
Problem #2. Weapons in U5 with "auto" fire have 2 damage values, one for firing a single bullet and one for firing auto. Those numbers are always 1 die type apart. So a Machine Pistol does 1d4 single, 1d6 auto. An Assault Rifle does 1d8 single, 1d10 auto. The "Rotary Cannon" cannot fire single shots, only auto, so how much damage do you think it does? I'll give you a second...
The answer is 1d10. Yup, the same damage as an Assault Rifle. What !?!? The thing that fires a thousand bullets does the same damage as the thing that can, at best, fire 30 bullets? As I mentioned in the last post, a 2-handed Greatsword does 2d6 damage. So this is just insultingly low for such a huge weapon. Not only is that damage low, is could be zero. According to the rules when you auto fire (which the minigun has to) you don't roll to attack, the enemies roll Dex saves. And on successful saves they take no damage. The DC for that save is either 8 + Dex mod + Proficiency Bonus (if proficient) or 15, whichever is higher. Your Ladder can get 1 attribute up to 22, or a +6 bonus max, and the max Proficiency Bonus is also +6, for a maximum possible DC 20. That's pretty low. Especially given that a successful save negates all damage. I believe Bubbles had a +2 Dex (Heavies are Str builds), and we were level 5 so we had +3 Prof Mods - that's just a DC 13, below the minimum DC of 15. And a creature with no Dex mod can beat a DC 15 save 30% of the time. Again, that might be fine if we were talking about a machine pistol or other "small arm" - but we're not, we're talking about a huge, fire-breathing, bullet-spewing monster of a minigun!
Problem #2a. We played it so that Bubbles rolled his to-hit and it was applied among the number of targets the GM determined. The other problem with making them saves is that the player now doesn't ever roll to hit, only the GM rolls for the monsters, which sucks for the player since he doesn't get the fun of rolling anything and sucks for the GM because he has to make 12 rolls for all the Small drones in that 10' cube.
The sad story of Bubbles is that of missed expectations. From everything we read in the book the expectation was of a hard-hitting, hard-to-kill tank. The reality was that Bubbles was hard to kill, but while he had the advantage of being able to hit multiple opponents, did not do a lot of damage to any of them. With my Gunslinger and Martial Arts mix I was able to do just over 100 points of damage in 3 rounds - about triple what Bubbles could do. That's just not right.
The other problem of our adventure is again inherited from DnD but overlooked by the U5 team - interacting with technology. Our adventure was supposed to be a zombie outbreak (it's in the book), but one of our players doesn't like the living-impaired so the GM changed it to an android/robot outbreak. Something so common it's cliché in the SF field. But with only the "Computer Use" and "Engineering" skills, and literally no sample DCs, trying to figure out if something could be hacked, how hard that would be, and what modifications could be made was left entirely on the GMs shoulders. That's extra work on the GM, and it means the payers can't read a rule to set their expectations, instead it's a big question mark until it comes up. Which, in a science-fiction setting, anyone with a functioning brain knows it is going to come up! And I'll illustrate that with something the U5 team did right. My character took the "Runner" Ladder, and one of my abilities was that I could move 10' and then spend the rest of my move as a climb speed (so no Acrobatics roll needed). That said to me that I was really good at climbing stuff. So when we were attacked by a robo-forklift I had a crazy thought - since I was a melee-based character, could I climb on top of the forklift to do my melee attacks? The GM decided it was just crazy enough to be plausible, and that I would make a Dex save to avoid getting run over, but if successful could climb on top without another check. That was perfect, the Dex save gave that bit of risk and uncertainty but skipping the Acrobatics check kept it from being so uncertain it might not be worth trying. No where in the book did it say I could climb an evil forklift, but it did say enough to logically and reasonably determine if it should be possible. Which is where the computer use and engineering fall short, they don't have enough detail to extrapolate from, as a player trying to formulate a plan or as a GM trying to set the appropriate difficulty.
After a second adventure my impressions have been reinforced - I don't think this is a very well-written game, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. There are lots of other games that were designed for modern/ SF/ urban fantasy and do it a lot better. None of us wanted to play a third adventure, though we might someday try converting our characters to another system, who knows?
Doing some research I did find that the U5 team is working on Ultramodern Redux, and had a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year (2019), so who knows, maybe the next book will be awesome? I hope they do learn from this version and can give those who like DnD 5e a good modern/SF system to use.
There is going to be one more post on the game though, next I'll put up my character.
You can read all the posts in this series here
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