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Messages - Taran

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61
DFRPG / Re: Assorted questions
« on: June 14, 2019, 05:46:08 PM »
I thought that if you break an oath on your power it makes you unable to use your power at all.

I’d treat it as a compel or make it a block on all spellcasting.  The block, depending on its strength, would prevent spellcasting all together or reduce its efficiency.  It wouldn’t be a power you buy but an aspect attached to the wizards high concept or a new aspect put on the scene/campaign.

62
DFRPG / Re: Assorted questions
« on: June 04, 2019, 01:00:33 AM »
Regarding  The ‘asking  The right question’ power, why not re-skin Guide My Hand?

@Mr.  death: asking the right question is, essentially, the fortuitous arrival trapping of the power.  And its other benefits seem in line with what nadia  wants.

Probably covers the dreams and quests too. 

As far as dreams go, Cassandra’s Tears creates an aspect that guides you to an objective.   It can be invoked to push the story in a direction or compelled to push it similarly in a direction at an inconvenient time.  So reskin it to push you towards wisdom and learning instead of Disaster(which is the hat Cassandra’s Tears was based on.  You’d have to change the ‘people don’t believe you’ part of it. 

63
DFRPG / Re: Evocation for focused practitioners question
« on: May 24, 2019, 02:04:39 AM »
My first question is, what would a transformation evocation look like?

Much of the game is narration.  So I find it helpful to know how you see it playing out in a game, especially if you are circumventing sponsored magic.

64
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 24, 2019, 01:48:59 AM »
Quote from: nadia.skylark
yeah, I'm just going to represent this with an upgrade of the easy evocations power (written up on another thread). That makes more sense.

The mechanics of the game are, literally, built on aspects.  You seem reluctant to use these mechanics to solve your issues.  Are you finding aspects aren't getting used much in your games?

65
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 23, 2019, 04:52:13 PM »
Well, for a start... yeah, nobody's going to be super good at everything. That's how life -- and this game system -- works. If you spend all your time being swordy and magicy, something's going to fall to the wayside. That's why we see some Wardens that are better at one or the other (Yoshimo in Dead Beat, who Morgan outright says shouldn't have tried to use her sword because she's crap with it).

It's a balancing act, and I think some of the most fun parts of the game are when a character has to make use of his or her lower-point skills, because then they have to get creative instead of, "OK, just gonna roll my apex skill again and again."

Also 3 in a skill is still "decent." 4 and 5 are already exceptional, and 6 is explicitly more than humans are usually capable of.

I do not see any issue with just having Weapons, Discipline and Conviction filling the 3-5 slots. With focus items and specializations, that's more than enough to be badass with swords and a more than formidable caster. And hell, with a decent Lore, the Thaumaturgy power can let you be good at damn near any other skill with some prep time.

And again, this is just playing into the inflation -- suddenly Shiro's 6 in swordplay is understatted? 6 is literally beyond human ability.

I see a lot of unwarranted assumptions being made based on a fight we didn't see.

A 5 with Swords -- especially a Warden sword which can become Weapon:6 on command -- is already plenty good enough to carve your way through the Red Court's footsoldiers and ghouls without needing some "free" casting power.

Morgan doesn't have to have personally, individually taken out every single one of the Red King's bodyguards to have taken a swing at the Red King.

A. Morgan was not the only Warden in the battle and B. Morgan could have used some huge Earth evocation to simply knock the bodyguards away in one go

So again I fail to see the need for a stunt or power of this type; Morgan's write-up already has him as good with swords and a strong magic user. Unless you're buying into the whole "Anything below a 5 is weak" philosophy.

@nadia.skylark

To reinforce this point and to touch on the point that Shiro’s +6 skill isn’t high enough. 

1. He’s twice as good as a full professional swordsman
2. I play in a 19 refresh game where the skill cap is +6.  My character’s weapon skill is 6 with a boost to 7 with a magic weapon. 

-Mundane enemies are not a challenge at all.
—granted, the character has toughness powers and Incite Effect triggered off of weapons
-My character single handedly took out Lord Raith.  It was a super hard fight and he had high refresh goons with him but his goons couldn’t touch my character.  With fate points and maneuvers and tags, I was putting up +9 and 10 blocks and defending everything at +7. 

If you boost things past the Ladder, then low skills become useless.  I already find skills at +2 and 3 to be less useful because the high refresh enemies we are facing are usually able to defend against it.  But it’s still perfectly fine against ‘normal’ enemies.   If you push me to everything higher, then your mooks now all need to be full professional soldiers in every situation. 

Regarding aspects:  a taggable aspect is not equal to a straight +2 bonus.  Aspects can be invoked for effect.  So, instead of giving yourself a +2 to dodge, you can use that aspect to make an attack miss by compelling the aspect against the enemy, for instance.   I feel you may be under-selling aspects. 

66
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 23, 2019, 02:26:26 AM »
OW says Shiro is +6 and +7 to defense.  Even if you push it by 1 shift, my point still stands:  the more shifts this ability gives Morgan, the crappier he is naturally.  I think he's only slightly worse than micheal who has a skill of +5 

A normal joe has a skill between +1 to 3 in most things.  Most people have weapons skill at +0 to +1

also: I'm reposting this edit I made in the last post.

Edit:
Or what if the stunt/power allowed you to make earth magic maneuvers related to combat as a supplemental action without the usual supplemental action and without taking stress?

Doing it as a supplemental would give you a free tag every round and, if it didn't cause stress, you could do it for infinity. 

How about something like this: 'You may use your earth magic to 'hone your instincts', making you more alert for danger and quicker and deadlier in combat.  You may use your Earth magic to create the Maneuver: 'honed instincts'.  The aspect lasts for the scene and you may tag the aspect twice.'

It could even be one of his Rote spells.

67
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 23, 2019, 01:57:30 AM »
Before we dive too far into homebrew, let's refocus the question: You want a good representation of Morgan.

So, then, we must ask: How good of a swordman is Morgan when you consider his 'honed instincts' derived from his earth magic ?

Shiro is listed at Fantastic which, according to the ladder is:
Quote
Š Fantastic (+6) and above skirt the boundaries of natural human capacity.

He's +7 to block.  But he's supposed to be the best swordman alive(RIP Shiro)

So, maybe you put Morgan at +4 or +5 (Great or Superb)
Quote
Š Great (+4) and Superb (+5) indicate veteran or masterful capacity, or the combination of extreme talent and good training.


So the question is this:  How good a swordsman is Morgan without his magic?  With his buffed instincts, If you add specializations, we can quickly add +3 or 4 shifts.  Which which puts his 'mortal' skill at +1 or +2.

According to the ladder, a +2 skill is:
Quote
Fair (+2) and Good (+3) indicate journeyman or “professional” capacity, or a nearly inhuman degree of talent.

If the homebrew stunt/power pushes his skill any higher, then he's only a novice swordsman without his earth magic. 

I think he's a very skilled swordsman.  Like, +3 to +5.  I think 'honed instincts' is going to net you a +1 or 2 max, which puts him on par with Shiro.(and I feel that's generous)  So, if it was me making the stunt or power, I'd keep that range in mind.

If you want to add more, then Morgan is either a very poor swordsman who relies entirely on his magic for his skill or he's an expert/proffessional swordsman whose supernatural ability makes him better than Shiro.

Whatever you decide, your stunt or power should reflect that.


68
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 22, 2019, 09:15:55 PM »
What I meant by "doesn't replicate what I want it to" is that your suggestion isn't earth magic-specific.

Also, it's got nothing to do with manipulating metal--earth magic, according to Paranet Papers, is about enhancing your instincts.

It is related to earth.  If his discipline is 4 and his weapons is 5, he wouldn’t get the bonus to weapons.  If his earth specialty pushes his earth control over 5, he gets a +1 to weapons. 

As far as fluff goes, it doesn’t matter.  So instead of it being his manipulation of metal, his specialty has honed his instincts.  Mechanically, it is still his earth magic that compliments his weapons skill.

But if it’s just honed instincts, shouldn’t it affect more than just weapons? Like dodging and alertness?

It sounds more like an aspect to me.

69
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 22, 2019, 08:28:03 PM »

Because it doesn't replicate what I'm trying to replicate. I had considered designing this power to allow wizards to add their earth power bonus to their weapons/fists skill, but the original point of posting this was to resolve the problem of "making wizards have high weapons/fists skills is unoptimized" while still allowing Morgan-type characters to run around with swords and stuff.

I have to disagree,  This is literally what complimenting a skill does and why it was put in the game.

Morgan is really good with swords.  His weapons skill is 4 or 5.  He’s amazing at earth magic: like 6+ skill after specialization.

His earth magic helps his sword fighting.  In this game, the mechanical term for that is ‘compliment’.   His earth magic skill compliments his sword skill which boosts his weapons to 6. 

So, even when he’s out of spells, his ability to manipulate the metal in the sword boosts his attack to 6.

I mean, feel free to ignore this but i feel it’s a lot less complicated, requires no limitations and is not overpowered but is still a solid boost.  And it’s based on other stunts.  You could even expand the stunt to affect other items other than swords.  Like having it compliment a Might Check when trying to bust down a metal door if you feel it’s underpowered.

70
DFRPG / Re: Earth magic responsible for weapons skill?
« on: May 22, 2019, 07:57:19 PM »
This all seems too complicated.  Why not just say that his weapon skill is complimented by his discipline?  Thematically appropriate and it adds a +1 to his weapon skill if his discipline is higher than weapons. 

This is a -1 refresh stunt - at most.

71
DFRPG / Re: Request A Character
« on: April 24, 2019, 05:00:04 PM »

72
DFRPG / Re: Request A Character
« on: April 24, 2019, 04:22:27 PM »
Sure.

Had an idea for the chimp wizard too, riffing off of Mr. Death's suggestion.

(click to show/hide)

(click to show/hide)
Perhaps a pizza guy who is the only person sent to deliver to the worst addresses (some with regular old gang violence, some with supernatural baddies) because he’s the only person who exists who has both enough power to survive and is poor enough to have to take it?

awesome.  The pizza guy is hilarious.

The Chimpanzee reminds me of the Warden who suffered the body-swap.  (I forget her name because I haven't read the books in a decade).

73
DFRPG / Re: Hellfire as two powers
« on: April 17, 2019, 03:49:59 PM »
AFAIK

As far as I know

74
DFRPG / Re: hellfire/holy water interaction?
« on: February 15, 2019, 09:22:32 PM »
Or you could treat the holy water as an aspect and tag it for a roll or tag it for effect.  You could even use it to compel the wielder of hell fire.

75
DFRPG / Re: Building a jedi knight of the faith
« on: January 23, 2019, 05:31:48 PM »
So math would the math look like this?

Sponsored magic: soulfire (grants 4 focus items)

Base focus items (4 slots)
+2 to offensive power
+2 to offensive control


Refinement (2) gain 4 focus item slots
Lightsaber crafting tools

+2 crafting frequency and +2 crafting strength( I've searched up and down the focus item and enchanted item section for power and all I saw was strength.)
Yes, it's strength.  It's been a long time since I made a spellcaster and I'd forgotten the term.

Refinement (gain four enchanted item slots)
2 slots

Lightsaber
Mephite


Item creation math
Superb Lore:5
Crafting power: 2
For a total of : 7

Looks good.  You put all your spellcasting foci in to offense.  Which means casting blocks will be at your straight Conviction/discipline.  But you can probably rely on your enchanted items for defense.

You could have 4 different items - one for each slot or several effects in one item, if I remember correctly.

I'd save one slot for potions.  Potions are super useful in that you can use a declaration to have any type of potion you want.

The other thing you can do is reduce the amount of items you have (say you only want 2), you can use the other two as another focus or you can use 1 them to boost frequency of one item by 2 or use one to boost Strength by 1.

Note: saw something in book 3 in regards of getting a +1 bonus to power or complexity when it comes to pure creation. I would like to know do I get the bonus for both or do I pick over the other?

I don't know because it doesn't mention it in YS.   Remember that your Soulfire is reskinned as The Light Side of the Force.  If the creation theme fits, then talk it over with your GM.  It's a pretty narrow specialty.  I'd imagine creation has to do with birth and life and not 'fabricating' items or conjuring stuff.  Maybe along the of Immaculate Conception?

Uses per session
Base: 1
Crafting frequency: 2
Total for 3 uses per session
Am I on the right track so far?

Yes, it looks good.  Depending on how your DM tracks 'sessions', you may want to invest in more 'uses'.


What enchantments are you planning to put on your items?

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