Newbies ask the darnest things

[Saracen]

Yeah, blatantly superhuman skills have a lot to do with the skill cap. That's why I made sure to increase the skill cap slowly.

The number of points is honestly not as important as the cap, but I found that the totals I chose were pretty suitable for the characters I was writing up when I made those levels.

Of course, many of those characters were negative Refresh anyway. But where it counted, with the Wizards and such, I found that the numbers worked pretty well.

The fact that Refresh increases faster than skill points during the last jump is weird, I admit. But 65 is already a huge number of skill points. It's enough to make pyramid-building a real hassle.

If the disparity bugs you, I recommend raising the base skill. In a way, starting skills at Average is like adding 25 skill points.

That's a very nice idea. I'm going to play around with it for a while, I think. Thank you.

[GamingInSeattle]

Question about the Sight:

So, had a great game with my players last night and had two PC's who both used the Sight to great effect.

However, I have a question about what the Sight might reveal.

Scenario:  A Red Court Vampire (RCV) uses their Addictive Saliva on a NPC.  A PC uses the Sight on this NPC, would they notice anything unusual due to the Saliva Addiction?

Now certainly Soul Gaze would reveal something about this, but what about the Sight?  If it's strictly a biological effect, it might make the NPC's Aura seem off or drained.  If it was a Curse then I could see how it might show up under the Sight.  Even if Saliva Addiction has given the NPC to have a trouble aspect of "Under the sway of the Red Court", I'm leaning towards the Sight not revealing that much info.

Thoughts?

GiS

[Cadd]

I'd probably let it show under the Sight, but in a rather obscure way.
Assuming the vampire not having fed on the NPC, I'd describe strings attached like on a puppet, or some kind of viscous fluid covering the persons eyes (representing the way the addiction colours how the NPC sees the world)

[Quantus]

The Sight can show s decent bit about the person, independent of specific magical effects at play.  While it might not show the current presence of the saliva on its own, Id expect it to show some signs for nearly any significant and/or lasting addiction. 

Use Proven Guilty as an example.  Harry's sight showed the Addiction of Molly's friend as a bunch on hungry mouths, while the magical damage that Molly inflicted was shows as laser holes burned into her temples.  So when Harry got dosed during the Ball in GP it wouldnt have shown because he was being affected in that moment, but had not been addicted which would cause deeper marks. 

I should also say in the case of Wampires, whose powers are less biological and more spiritual, Id expect their similar thralling effects to show regardless.  I seem to recall Harry being shocked that Thomas could affect a spirit while it was possessing a living person. 

[Taran]

Didn't harry do a soul-gaze on some guy to find out he was being manipulated by a WCV?  Soul gaze is a bit more personal than the Sight, though.

The Sight shows a person's aura (or that's how I see it).  Many things can affect a person's aura:  magic, illusions, emotions, addiction, affliction etc...

All the swirling colours and images are there and they represent all those things.  Some of them are very subtle and some of them are obvious.

It might be hard to tell someone is a bit depressed  because their cat died last month but much easier to tell they have a huge, powerful curse on them.

On the same token, It might be hard to noticed faint magic but easy to see that someone is so depressed they are suicidal.

That's what the Lore check is for.  It gives aspects and information.  The more shifts they get, the more information they should receive.

Beware that they don't use the Sight all the time.  I think the base difficulty recommended in the book for trying to close the Sight (and interpret it is 4 or 5).  Otherwise, it becomes 'detect magic/True Seeing' for DFRPG.

I don't think Harry likes opening the Sight.  Because it's freaky and dangerous.

[Cadd]

To drive home the price of the Sight, I make notes of particularly jarring/gruesome/fascinating/beutiful things (basically the high intensity stuff) they see and very occasionally compel their High Concept for a distraction when something might remind them.

[Quantus]

Agreed. the horrid indelible memories are the primary downside, so it needs to be at least as prominent as the players make Sight usage.  For that matter Id expect the sight to deal some pretty rough mental consequences if you look at the wrong thing, like a Naagloshii for example. 

[Taran]

To drive home the price of the Sight, I make notes of particularly jarring/gruesome/fascinating/beutiful things (basically the high intensity stuff) they see and very occasionally compel their High Concept for a distraction when something might remind them.

This is great.  I never thought of doing that.

[dapperatchik]

To drive home the price of the Sight, I make notes of particularly jarring/gruesome/fascinating/beutiful things (basically the high intensity stuff) they see and very occasionally compel their High Concept for a distraction when something might remind them.

Why is there no Really Brilliant Ideas Master List Mk IV to put this on?

[Saracen]

A couple of questions about weapon ratings:

1) Does the weapon rating only count for attacks that cause stress or also for maneuvers? If it's the latter, how is the bonus applied?

2) On spray attacks, weapon ratings are applied fully in case of mundane weapons and are instead divided (similarly to the targeting roll) in case of magical attacks. Do enchanted items count as the former, the latter, or does it depend on the type of effect?

[Quantus]

1) not sure offhand

2)Id say it all depends on the type of item and type of effect.  If the effect is basically a mundane attack that just happens to be magically augmented, say a kinetomantic gun that does extra damage by increasing the effective mass of the slug, then treat it as it's mundane counterpart; if it's a magic effect that just happens to come from an enchanted item that looks like a mundane weapon (say a shotgun that spews magic fire) then treat it as a magical attack. 

Or house-rule that particular difference away (Im personally not a fan of it, or at least havent heard a great justification for the difference).

[Taran]

A couple of questions about weapon ratings:

1) Does the weapon rating only count for attacks that cause stress or also for maneuvers? If it's the latter, how is the bonus applied?

2) On spray attacks, weapon ratings are applied fully in case of mundane weapons and are instead divided (similarly to the targeting roll) in case of magical attacks. Do enchanted items count as the former, the latter, or does it depend on the type of effect?

1.  Maneuvers don't have weapon ratings.  You could, maybe, do invokes for effect to have people take damage from a maneuver but that's done on a case-by-case basis and involves a compel.  But weapon ratings don't add to a maneuvers effectiveness

(aside)Some weapons allow you to set aside weapon ratings to create a maneuver instead.  Like a stun baton, where the weapon rating becomes the difficulty to resist the maneuver.  Which seems kind of silly since I could roll a maneuver with a higher difficulty than the weapon rating.

2.
a) If you have a weapon capable of doing a spray attack (like a fully auto rifle), you split the accuracy but maintain the weapon value of each hit.

b) Enchanted items:  No matter how you fluff it, it's a stored spell so I think they should be treated as a magical attack and the weapon value should be divided along with accuracy.  I would say that the enchanted item should be crafted specifically for spray attacks.  Like a rote spell.

[Tedronai]

Maneuvers don't have weapon ratings.

Enchanted weapons being used in an attack may either be treated as a mundane weapon, such as a warden sword being used as a very well made sword that is only coincidentally enchanted, or as an enchanted item that is coincidentally shaped like a weapon.  One cannot take the best of both worlds.

[Saracen]

Thanks, guys.

[Saracen]

When do you apply bonuses from Stunts and Powers to a modified (restricted or complemented) skill? In short, what comes first? Example: a character with Great +4 Driving and Good +3 Guns wants to shoot some bad guys while at the wheel and has an appropriate Stunt that grants him a +1 to Guns. Does he get a +2 on the roll because Driving>Guns or just the +1 from his Stunt because that's added before the modifying mechanic? From page 213, I'm guessing the former, but I wanted to make sure...