The Dresden Files > DFRPG
Lawbreakers: Do We Need Them?
KOFFEYKID:
Do you actually think lawbreakers (the stunts) are actually needed? Ive been thinking that they are a crutch of the system, and shouldn't be modeled the way that they are. I think a social impact, and a aspect impact should be enough for most lawbreakers (the people, not the stunt).
What do you guys think? Can you punish a player adequately enough without having to also force a power on them?
SaintAndSinner:
If trying to run game in the Dresden Files universe I find them very helpful. If you're off doing your own take on urban fantasy and wizards I suppose you could pretty easily drop them.
Korwin:
Was posting this in the other thread
--- Quote ---I'm thinking about scratching the Lawbreaker stunt and keeping the political ramifications (ie Warden will want to kill you).
Need to ponder it more...
--- End quote ---
Deleted it there and copied it here, after seeing the new thread...
KOFFEYKID:
One of the major issues I have with them is that from a purely role playing standpoint, a player who wants to have a shady past (maybe a 3rd lawbreaker like Molly), has to start off with this penalty to their character's mechanical power. This can cause difficulty within the party balance, Players A, B and C are going to have more points to put towards their goals than Player D who has the lawbreaker. That means if Player C and D are both spell casters player C will invariably be stronger than Player D. Also, I hate that you get a "bonus" that you are discouraged from using.
Deadmanwalking:
Sure, if you like.
The Lawbreaker stunts have te great and sigular advantage of actually portraying how breaking the Laws more than once or twice directly leads to inevitable Warlockdom.
But if you want to reflect that with mandatory Aspect changes instead, that should work out fine, though for most games you'll need something in the way of guidelines to decide when a character has gone so far they need to be made an NPC, but those aren't especially hard to come up with.
--- Quote from: KOFFEYKID on April 28, 2010, 06:28:33 PM ---One of the major issues I have with them is that from a purely role playing standpoint, a player who wants to have a shady past (maybe a 3rd lawbreaker like Molly), has to start off with this penalty to their character's mechanical power. This can cause difficulty within the party balance, Players A, B and C are going to have more points to put towards their goals than Player D who has the lawbreaker. That means if Player C and D are both spell casters player C will invariably be stronger than Player D. Also, I hate that you get a "bonus" that you are discouraged from using.
--- End quote ---
Ah! I actually have an alternate way to handle this issue: I allow the Lawbreaker bonus to apply to two things other than breaking the Law (and in both cases the character in no way suffers for it):
1. I apply it to doing things that would break the Law but don't due to a technicality. I'd give Harry his Lawbreaker bonus to killing Ghouls and vampires with magic, for instance, or a reformed necromancer his bonus to raising an animal zombie.
2. I also apply the bonus to figuring out what other people with the same Lawbreaker stunt are likely to do. There's an incident in Turn Coat that sums this up best...
In both cases, you're that kind of person, and that means something.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version