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Post by platimus on May 5, 2014 23:38:50 GMT -5
I don't think I like the karma point method of Advantage because of the book-keeping you mentioned. Also, I didn't intend on Advantage applying to damage - just success/failure checks. Maybe solving the Sudoku puzzle in the Guild newsletter would bestow XP
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Post by ednote on May 6, 2014 0:20:40 GMT -5
Good point about damage, how about Guild/Cult karma helping out if Mr. Flambé rolled a 18 to cast his fireball spell and uses a Fire Karma point to re-roll. Book-keeping could be a minor addition to the line on Mr. Flambé's character sheet from "Karma___" to "Karma/Guild Karma ___/___". If solving Sudoku puzzles in the Guild newsletter bestow XP, they're are darned sight better than the ones in my local newspaper. I've solved dozens (hundreds?) of them and I'm still butt-ugly, dumb, and can't cast a fireball worth a <expletive deleted>. Regards, Ed the Ugly, a.k.a. EUuuuuuuuuuuu
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Post by platimus on May 6, 2014 15:06:38 GMT -5
Ed, I'm sure you have some redeeming qualities. I bet those Sudoku puzzles have kept you smart as a whip I still don't like the Guild karma. How do you earn it? Also, you'd have to explain that normal karma can reroll any dice-roll but Guild karma can only reroll pass/fail checks. I just don't see a need to complicate karma like that. The spiritual nature of 'karma' just doesn't jive with the secular nature of Guilds. I think maybe I should say that not every Guild would bestow Advantage. I was thinking specifically of Thieves Guild and Rangers Guild. Other Guilds could do other things. Magic guilds could reduce FAT cost of certain spells or bestow Advantage. It depends on the guild. A Scribe's Guild could bestow the ability to create spell scrolls. A Fletcher's Guild could bestow the ability to make +1 arrows and bolts. Some guilds would exist in the game world just to provide a social network and drive plots - no mechanical benefits to characters. Just thinking aloud...
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Post by platimus on May 6, 2014 15:47:37 GMT -5
Maybe it would be better to replace 'Guilds and Cults' with 'Professions'. I guess you can call them 'Talents' too Talent sounds like something you're born with, not something you can pickup or learn. Burglar (20XP) - Burglars have Advantage on all Thief skills and searches. Scout (20XP) - Scouts have Advantage on all Survival skills Cleric (20XP or 2 starting skill points) - Clerics get the Prayer skill (see previous posts) and the ability to use karma to Bless, Curse, and Wish (see previous posts). Clerics must choose a religious affiliation. I guess I was over complicating things :/
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Post by nukesnipe on May 6, 2014 21:30:41 GMT -5
I guess I was over complicating things :/ Actually, that's an intriguing idea. I was toying around with something like that earlier in this thread when I was talking about here: When I generate a character, in my mind they are in their late teens or very early 20s. In TFT, the could purchase skills up to their IQ; in LAW, they get four points of skills. That's great, but it doesn't really tell the character's story of his upbringing. I mean, sure, Ranger Rik is 20 years old. The son of a woodsman, he grew up roaming the forests and avoids towns and cities whenever he can - he understands animals more than most of the people he knows, and is uncomfortable around crowds of strangers. Growing up, he developed some skill with a spear (Pole Arms +1) and bow (Bow +1) if for no other reason that to keep animals that considered him a tasty snack a little farther away. He can also track animals (Tracker +1) and live off the land (Survival +1), but that isn't all he can do, is it? But, I couldn't articulate what I was thinking. A "profession" or "vocation" - something that reflects the character's "life" before he started adventuring. Then again, I'm not sure this is much different from starting with 4 skills. Talents.... Sitting here looking at my ITL book (page 50 for those who want to follow along ), Men are the run of the mill race, with Orcs as their nefarious counterparts. Elves "are not mercantile in nature; very few have business sense. Elves also have an inbred horror of insects and crawling things, and fight them at a -3 DX penalty." ITL goes on to say they have an unencumbered MA of 12. Dwarves get a +1 damage with axe/mace/hammer and can carry twice as much as a Man. Halflings are likable and get a +1 on any reaction roll. "Due to their excellent hand-to-eye coordination, Halflings get an extra +3 DX adjustment for missiles, missile spells and thrown weapons, and do an extra +1 damage when they hit with them." Give a Halfling a longbow and the Missile and Thrown Weapons skills and a adjDX of 18 and watch the arrows, axes and daggers fly! They also fight giant sized (I always read that as "3-hex and larger") opponents at a -2DX, as do the giant-sized opponents against them. These were "natural" abilities that differentiated the races from one another - they're "born" with them. What if LAW had a list of talents from which characters could choose one? In addition to the skills. This is sort of the project I'm working on, pouring through the ITL skills list to try to identify those skills which are really talents, and so on. Of course, the next question becomes "Can one develop a talent over time?" Don't know the answer to that one just yet. What could talents do for the character? Another question I haven't thought through, but what if they reduced the cost of certain skill categories. Just thinking out loud.
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Post by platimus on May 6, 2014 22:25:48 GMT -5
I guess I was over complicating things :/ Actually, that's an intriguing idea. I was toying around with something like that earlier in this thread when I was talking about here: When I generate a character, in my mind they are in their late teens or very early 20s. In TFT, the could purchase skills up to their IQ; in LAW, they get four points of skills. That's great, but it doesn't really tell the character's story of his upbringing. I mean, sure, Ranger Rik is 20 years old. The son of a woodsman, he grew up roaming the forests and avoids towns and cities whenever he can - he understands animals more than most of the people he knows, and is uncomfortable around crowds of strangers. Growing up, he developed some skill with a spear (Pole Arms +1) and bow (Bow +1) if for no other reason that to keep animals that considered him a tasty snack a little farther away. He can also track animals (Tracker +1) and live off the land (Survival +1), but that isn't all he can do, is it? But, I couldn't articulate what I was thinking. A "profession" or "vocation" - something that reflects the character's "life" before he started adventuring. Then again, I'm not sure this is much different from starting with 4 skills. I didn't realize you were thinking about vocations there. It sounded more like 'background'. Yeah, the 4 starting skills seem like the background to me. I think I went down the Guild path because I felt like the starting skills define who you are when you start adventuring. The mix of skills you start with and later acquire define your vocation. Guilds provided a way to have advantage (lower case) with certain skills without being born with it. You could acquire it later after a few adventures or you could wave your hand a little and say the starting character had already had a few minor adventures and established a social network with people of similar skill sets. I didn't want to just throw the Prayer skill into the soup of existing skills because it has a lot of perk. I wanted to balance those karma perks with a greater initial investment and some on-going investment to maintain it. I wanted to give some sort of 'mechanical' life to those entanglements that Ed referenced. I didn't want to create something that would entice most characters to become religious. Seems like Elves got the crappy end of the stick there. I was cool with the +1 on reaction rolls for Halflings. Everything after that sounds like Elves to me. For a race of people that are right at home in the forest, it seems really comical that they would freak out when they saw a bug. That's what I hoped you were doing. I've thought about doing it before but I wasn't that interested at the time and it didn't seem like there would be enough. It would be cool if there were a bunch of 'Talents' similar to the racial traits described above. Starting characters could choose just one of the 'Talents' and the selection would be limited by their race. Demi-humans would have a very narrow list to choose from. Humans could pick any of the 'Talents'. Once the characters start adventuring and earning XP, they could purchase any 'Talent' from the list, regardless of race. The trick is to price 'Talents' and design their perks so that some arse-hat like me can't say, "For the same amount of XP, I could get the same effect with plain old skills." (Another reason I like the 'roll twice, take the best' Advantage. Sorry, I just can't stop beating that horse )
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Post by platimus on May 6, 2014 23:07:48 GMT -5
Honestly, I still like the Guilds and Cults concept. I thought if I broke it down to Professions it might be easier for others to swallow. If you are a Burglar, a Scout, or Cleric, where did you learn your profession? Where did you get your 'professional' (greater than normal) training? You were mentored by a group of professionals - Guild or Cult.
BTW, the Warrior 'Talent' or Profession fits right in with those other Professions.
Edited to add: I'm not saying the Guilds and Cults concept should exist instead of some sort of background talents. I think the two concepts can peacefully co-exist.
Another edition:
I think the GURPS Advantages/Disadvantages would serve as good examples of the kinds of 'talents you're born with' that would work well with the LAW system. It's been some time since I looked at those. I could be mistaken. I will look again.Scratch that.
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Post by jlv61560 on May 24, 2014 3:11:28 GMT -5
Thanks for posting that. I have to say I completely agree with your analysis of the Bless spell. I think A, B, and C are good ways of explaining how safe-havens can exist in a world full of magics and dark forces. I think they should be separate spells, if they exist at all, but tied together like Fireball-I, II, III, etc with IQ requirements. Definitely shouldn't be free either. I prefer the existing LAW system too with that little addition of 2 karmas = 1 Curse and 3 karmas = 1 Wish. What do you think about the Cult/Guild ideas? That 2 karma = Curse and 3 karma = Wish stuff could be specified within the perks of each individual Cult. Sorry I'm late on responding -- real life reared it's ugly head (as it has a habit of doing), and I've been busy the past three weeks. Hopefully you won't mind if I just "think out loud" about it for a bit.... Seems like cults/guilds might have some value as a methodology for structuring the skills we've been talking about, but I'm kind of with Ed on the idea that just joining the local carpenter's union doesn't necessarily make me much of a carpenter. On the other hand, joining such an organization might give me much better access to specialized training -- which might be more what you had in mind in the first place and I'm just missing it. If I recall correctly, TFT had some rather convoluted training rules that were never particularly easy to play, and using the cults/guilds paradigm might actually be more intuitive in that regard. Certainly it would enable the solitaire gamer and the Dark City Games scenario writer (or DM/FM) to more easily justify such training opportunities (as well as opportunities for other adventure hooks in the case of the DM -- "The local Magery Guild is excited to offer you the opportunity to visit the Darkling Dungeon of Doom and Death in order to recover the lost wand of Excelsior the Magician in partial payment for all that training and memorizing you've been doing in their library. But don't worry; they're pretty sure that other than a few hundred gargoyles, there isn't a thing you'll need to worry about encountering!") As regards more tangible "advantages/disadvantages," I would tend to think they should be fairly small in direct game terms -- at least as far as a guild goes (maybe you learn thieves cant or something, or get a secret handshake that'll let you "get out of Jail free" a time or two), but the advantage to membership in such an organization should probably be more indirect than direct. In a sense, it's like joining the Masons -- you get some networking opportunities, and maybe a little extra mojo along the way (for example, if you're competing with someone else for a job, and all things are basically equal between you, and you are a member of the guild and the other guy isn't, you'll get the nod). Guilds would work well without overly affecting the play of the game, I think -- and would even work well in a sandbox type environment. Cults, on the other hand.... Cults might be a bit more tangible in terms of rewards, but then the obligations of the cult ought to be more severe as well -- you can't really just shrug off what the high priest of the Evil Cult of the Scorpion God that you just recently joined tells you to do -- at least not without winding up having a lot of problems with both scorpions and the other cult members.... Even the Cult of Porfirio the Wonderful, Kindest and Most Gentle God of Waves, might tend to put a lot of extra effort on their members ("Sorry dear, but I won't make it home in time for dinner tonight; gotta go clear up some weird scorpion infestation that suddenly popped up over at Bob's house!") The biggest problem I can see with cults is that they would be harder to translate into a solitaire gaming thing because of the more intense effect they would tend to have on the participants. But the biggest advantage of cults is that they provide the GM in a moderated game a lot of opportunities to fool around with the players, introduce all sorts of story-line exposition, NPCs, and nefarious plot elements, and railroad them down certain paths if s/he needs to. In short, they'd be GREAT in a classic "story arc" campaign. However, in a sandbox environment, they might be a bigger problem than advantage simply because they'll have a tendency to somewhat limit the players' freedom of action. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, though. Definitely it's an idea worth exploring some more. All in all, I like the concept, and would like to hear more about it -- especially in terms of game balance and suggested effects on the PCs.
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Post by platimus on May 24, 2014 11:26:28 GMT -5
Thanks for weighing in. Honestly, I think the concept was perfect and addressed all of your concerns. It evolved a bit during our discourse though, so I'm going to explain it again.
1) Joining a Guild or Cult costs 20XP. GM may allow new characters to already be a member of a Guild or Cult if the player gives up 2 of the character's initial skill points.
2) There is an on-going cost of being in a Guild or Cult. The character must pay 10% of all coinage obtained to his respective Guild or Cult. When you stop paying it, you lose the benefits of membership. Want to rejoin? Pay the initial 20XP again and start paying the dues again.
These are very simple rules that incorporate well with solitaire play. Of course, the GM is always free to add other penalties, entanglements, etc. or completely ignore this crap.
3) Advantage: The role twice, take the best roll method is THE best method I've seen to-date. I know I sound biased. Let me explain:
3a) Its simple. It only amplifies current ability. It does not grant new ability. A character with DX10, IQ10, and no thief skills to speak of goes from 50% chance on Assisted thief skill checks (or less if you use a skill level 0 penalty) to something between 50% and 75% (estimate; or less with skill level 0 penalty). He cannot attempt Required thief skill checks - he has no skill.
3b) When the character loses membership, the character can no longer roll twice, take the best roll. Very easy to take away. I've tried to find a lower skill cost alternative but I can't find the right numbers. Frankly, I don't think 'the right numbers' exist for solitaire play. If it becomes cheaper to join the Thief Guild and increase thief skills, why wouldn't every intelligent player do it? I suppose the 10% tithes would make a min/maxer think twice before joining, increasing, then severing ties. If it costs more to join and increase skills, why bother? If it costs the same, why bother?
However, to be honest again, I'm less partial to Guilds and Advantage and more partial to Cults, Prayer, Bless, Curse, and Wish.
Joining a Cult and on-going cost of membership is the same as above. Simple and fair enough for solitaire with plenty of room for a GM to tack-on additional complications in a more interactive and objectively judged game.
Joining a Cult grants the Prayer skill at level 1. This skill may be used once per day to acquire 1 karma point. If the skill check fails, you lose a karma point. Increasing the skill costs 10XP. If membership in the cult is lost, the skill and all XP put into are also lost and the character is cursed by the cult or god of the cult. Cults and gods are vengeful like that.
A Cult member may use karma to Bless (give karma to another character), Curse another character (costs 2 karma), or Wish (costs 3 karma). This ability is lost when cult membership is lost.
Cult members may cast spells while wearing metal armor. Successfully casting under such circumstances requires a 4/DX check. This ability is also lost when membership is lost.
These are basic, balanced rules for a cleric-type character. GMs and players are free to add other perks and quirks as desired.
I may seem stubborn about these ideas but I assure you, I'm open to other ideas that are as simple, balanced, and somewhat logical. I'm equally likely to admit these were stupid ideas if I or myself ever finds a fatal flaw in them.
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Post by platimus on May 24, 2014 16:26:48 GMT -5
I finally found the formula for computing the probabilities of the 'roll twice, take the best roll' method of Advantage. Here it is: (probability of success on first roll) + (probability of failure on first roll) * (probability of success on second roll) After using this formula and going through the adjDX or adjIQ values of 8, 9, 10, and 11, the roll twice method seems too advantageous. Yes, it was a bad idea for the curve of 3d6. New definition of 'Advantage': -1 die-modifier on the skills in question. -2 would be too much, often resulting in more advantage than the 'roll twice' method. Thank you for being patient with my stupidity
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Post by jlv61560 on May 27, 2014 3:12:39 GMT -5
<snip> New definition of 'Advantage': -1 die-modifier on the skills in question. -2 would be too much, often resulting in more advantage than the 'roll twice' method. By "-1 die-modifier" do you mean -1 from the dice roll result? Or do you mean roll one less die? Sorry, but it's late at night again, and I'm more easily confused.... And in your earlier post, when you said: "Cult members may cast spells while wearing metal armor. Successfully casting under such circumstances requires a 4/DX check. This ability is also lost when membership is lost. " did you actually intend to say 4/IQ check for casting spells? Or is this an additional DX check on top of the normal spell casting roll? Again, I'm not trying to nit-pick here, I just want to make sure I understand all the details as I try this idea out.
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Post by platimus on May 27, 2014 16:10:39 GMT -5
-1 from the dice roll result. Thanks for bringing the murkiness of that to my attention. 4/IQ not 4/DX...whoops No nit-picking taken. I really messed up typing 4/DX instead of 4/IQ (intended) and I can see how my wording about the die-roll-modifier could be confusing now. Another error on my part that you helped me spot in that post is the Prayer skill. I didn't give a base attribute for it. Earlier, I based it on IQ but a little bit of Nukesnipe's thinking has worked its way into my brain. What's your opinion: should the Prayer skill be based on IQ (3/IQ against Prayer) or a hard number - let's say 8 (3/8 against Prayer)? I'm afraid basing it on IQ will encourage every wanna-be-bad-asterik wizard to join a Cult...
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Post by jlv61560 on May 28, 2014 13:10:38 GMT -5
Hmm. I'm torn.
Part of me says base it on IQ -- it's simple, easy to remember and fits the normal paradigm of the game. But then the other part of me says that it makes joining a Cult far too desirable for a player -- the down side is completely outweighed by the plus. Unless you make it a really HARD roll, like 5/IQ or more.
Skipping that alternative, the typical "TFT" response would be to somehow "adjust" the IQ roll to reflect whatever criteria need to be reflected in the Prayer concept -- e.g., is the praying person devout or merely trying to "scam" his/her god into taking care of his immediate desires (like praying for a bike for Christmas, or something). But then you start getting into all kinds of nit-pickyness if you do that -- like what actually modifies the success roll? Incense? Being in a consecrated place? Human sacrifice? Being fully paid up on your tithes? And who gets to track all of that? Mind you, that might be a really cool thing to work out for a major RPG campaign with lots of players, but it would never work for solitaire play; or at least wouldn't work very well....
So, in the end, I'm thinking the "hard number" concept is probably the better way to go; it's something else you have to remember (we're eventually going to REALLY need a DM screen or something to keep track of all of this), but in the end it's actually simpler and more "accurate" (if I can use such a term in a Fantasy Role Playing Game...). Gods shouldn't be easy to access or likely to respond, otherwise why would the players even bother to play?
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Post by platimus on May 28, 2014 15:32:13 GMT -5
Good points. The wind has blown and now I'm leaning back towards IQ. As you said, it's simpler and more consistent with the rest of the rules. My only concern was that wizards, with their high IQs would almost never fail at prayer and that guaranteed karma would heap too much extra power on them. The only reward for Prayer is karma. Karma only allows you to re-roll checks(1 karma point), Bless(1kp), Curse(2kp), or Wish(3kp). You can only gain 1 karma per day through prayer. Mechanically, this is one check per day but in an interactive, DM'd game, the DM may stipulate that the cult-person must pray morning, noon, and night; face east, west, north, south; burn incense; kill puppies; whatever in order to gain the 'right' to make that one check. The DM is the One True God that must be pleased Edited Addition (Edaddition?) To add some flavor and inspire some additional DM creativity, maybe we should rename the Prayer skill to the Ritualist skill?If you pray successfully every day, you have enough karma every day to re-roll one check every day. That's not incredibly powerful. Typically, many checks are made during any given day. If you pray successfully 2 days in a row, you'll have enough karma saved to Curse an enemy. Typically, Cursing your enemy is only useful if you are about to kill them (mechanically speaking, of course Ha!) You spent two days of prayer just to have an edge killing one enemy. Not incredibly powerful. After 3 days of successful prayer, you save enough karma that your god grants your Wish of not actually dying in that last round of combat. Wish might be the too powerful problem, not high IQ. Especially, if a party only fights one combat per day. Maybe Wish should cost 6 karma points? Also, I think a critical failure of Prayer (roll a 17 or 18) should wipe out all accrued karma, no matter the source. But that's just my inner DM talking.
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Post by jlv61560 on May 31, 2014 0:44:54 GMT -5
I can definitely live with it being based on IQ. As both of us noted, it's more in the spirit of the rules (both LAW and TFT). From a purely personal perspective, I'd still want the success roll to be harder than most, 4/DX at a minimum, and the whole thing has to be carried out for a minimum uninterrupted time (30 minutes? An hour? Just spit-balling here, but that would make it somewhat problematic in an active dungeon crawl....)
The system you describe is as good as any I've heard or thought of, and does effectively limit some of the potential "abuse" of the system. With the possible exception of Wish, or course. In TFT you had to successfully summon and control a Demon to gain a wish. It seems that prayer is a "good" alternative to that idea (pun definitely intended), but given the relative dangers of Demon summoning versus prayer, I still think there should be some additional "thing" required to gain the grant of a wish. I'm not sure what, but maybe the praying person has to be specially qualified (in TFT terms, maybe hold the Theologian skill?) and/or make some sort of "sacrifice" to earn the actual wish (plus spend the Karma Points, of course). For an evil cleric, the obvious choice would be the local virgin (or puppies -- puppies are good); for a good cleric, maybe s/he has to give up a magic item or a crap-ton of gold or something. Or maybe we just say that only good clerics can gain wishes through prayer (the bad ones still have to summon that Demon), and then come up with something just as difficult (but less evil than) Demon summoning so that it's not an idea they take on lightly!
Again, these are just ideas to sort of limit the likelihood of a PC being able to come up with a powerful wish every three days of down-time. Other than all of that, I still really like the idea of gaining Karma Points from prayer -- or some sort of clerical devotion/ritual, anyway. If players want to use "clerics" in the game, that's as good a reason as any to make them useful in a unique way.
Other items you raised:
"Ritualist" might be as good a title as any -- and more evocative of what we actually seem to be talking about here.
I like the idea of critical failures costing all the accrued Karma -- there ought to be some risk when the reward is potentially great. In fact, that might be an even better way to control the excess use of rituals to gain "get out of jail free" karma points -- some sort of continuum in die roll results (and in this case, the success roll would be the normal 3/IQ, I suppose): maybe it takes a critical success (3 or 4) to actually gain a karma point, and otherwise you get some other sort of boon on a normal success roll; maybe a free healing spell which the Cleric could retain until used? On a normal failure roll, nothing happens. On a critical failure (17 or 18) any accrued Karma Points (and Healing spells?) are lost (and if you don't have any accrued Karma Points/Healing spells, maybe you take a hit point or something). That would make it a little more risky to indulge in this sort of thing, and also make the gaining of Karma points a bit harder to do. At the same time, the power of prayer/rituals would still pay off most of the time, just in a more immediately useful (and less spectacular) way. Anyway, it's just a late night thought I'm throwing out for consideration....
This has been a good discussion.
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