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Messages - crusher_bob

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16
DFRPG / Re: Purview of the Elements
« on: April 21, 2013, 03:37:17 PM »
Can you elaborate, please?

The problem is that evocation is the most powerful (or tied for most powerful with incite emotion) offensive ability plus is the second most powerful defensive ability (is behind enchanted items).  Which means that it's worth 3 points for those abilities alone.  Adding the ability of evocation to do 'other stuff' means that you get both very powerful offensive and defensive abilities, plus whatever other stuff you add to it.

---------------

Now, how to get the effect you want?  Sounds like you might want something like incite emotion or Sanctaphrax's incite effect power, both of which are powers more geared to doing 'other stuff' than evocation is.

Another option is to work out some sort of (refresh costing) expansion of evocation, which allows you to do 'other stuff'

--------------

Here are two of the ideas I've had for allowing evocation to do other stuff:
They are taken from this thread where there's a bit more depth of discussion.
---------------------
idea 1:

While evocation is technically capable of many tasks, many of them require considerably more skill, practice, and luck than most wizards put into it.

So what are these 'other' uses of evocation?
Many skill rolls can be outright replaced by evocations, examples include moving (force jumps, 'tactical' hops through the nevernever, etc), very fine manipulation of objects (lockpicking, eavesdropping, fine craftsmanship, etc), illusions of considerable complexity, etc

In general, the power of the evocation will act as a roll of the appropriate skill.

You can gain access to the 'other uses' of evocation in the following ways:
1
Spend a fate point, to get access to the ability for a single use.
2
spend a point of refresh of a permanent expansion of your evocations to cover one trapping of a skill.

-----------
idea 2:

Basic evocation includes one skill trapping replacement for 'free', Harry's is movement, Molly's is veils, other wizards might have other basic abilities.  For example, if you want to have (some) knowledge of the ways, then maybe you'll take the navigation trapping of driving.

This means that the RAW can stand almost exactly as written, with most wizards being assumed to take veils as their default.

This removes spirit as the most equal element, puts slight hedge on free veils, explains why Harry doesn't do them until several books in, and hedges in other skill trapping replacements of evocation.

It's not really perfect, but does seem to solve some slightly irritating issues, (somewhat) hedge in free expansion of wizard power, and is easy.

-----------------

Both of those ideas have potential problems, but both do attempt to draw a line around how you get evocation to do 'other stuff' and what 'other stuff' you can and can't do.  Otherwise it's just 'whatever you can talk the GM into' which is a pretty bad idea, especially with evocation being as powerful as it is already.

17
DFRPG / Re: Purview of the Elements
« on: April 20, 2013, 03:40:37 PM »
You'll run into a problem: evocation is already a very powerful ability.  Letting it do 'other stuff' will quickly move it out of the top tier of abilities and into the best of all abilities category.

Sample things you generally shouldn't let evocation do without any extra refresh spent:
Duplicate other powers (examples: flight, supernatural sense, etc)
Do something that a skill roll would normally be needed for (examples: picking locks | note that there is already the rules explicit veil ability, which is problematic enough)

If one of the players wants their character to do something frequently, they should pay refresh to put it on their character sheet.  If they just want to do it rarely, charge them fate points for 'temporary access to powers'

18
DFRPG / Re: Making effective PCs that aren't wizards?
« on: April 02, 2013, 06:28:40 AM »
Relatively new 'covert' vests can be rated both IIIa (good vs pistols and shotguns) and stab/edged II (which I think is rated for everything other than things like full body charges with a spiked weapon.

In the game, this is somewhere between armor 1 and armor 2, depending on how you want to model things.

A vest with class III or class IV plates (which will protect against rifle fire) can't really be worn covertly.  That is, you can't say, shake hands with someone and have trouble noticing they are wearing armor.  That's somewhere between armor 2 and armor 3 in game terms.

If differentiating between various armors became important in the game:

Armor 1:
a variety of 'home made' protective gear, just as motorcycle leathers, jumberjack and/or various tool resistant clothing (lumberjack chaps, etc).  Not usually concealable.

Or old/reconditioned modern armor.  concealable.

Resources 1 (around 200-300 USD to acquire)

Armor 2:
Actual 'plate' or 'mail' style metal armor.  or 'modern' concealable armors

Resources 2 (around 400-800 USD for modern armor, considerably more for metal armor)

Armor 3:
Technologically reenforced plate or mail armor. 
Non-concealable modern armors (includes helmet, fragment goggles, etc.

edging into resources 3 (An armor 2 vest, and then another 400-800 USD or so for the strike plates, add several hundred more for things like helmet, goggles, knee and elbow pads, etc.
------------

This would mean that most police you'd meet in the US would have armor 2, and most US troops you'd see in Iraq or Afghanistan would have armor 3.

19
DFRPG / Re: Making effective PCs that aren't wizards?
« on: March 28, 2013, 04:59:07 PM »
Wizards do not seem all that better to me.

Here's a sample combat wizard
Submerged (10 refresh, 35 skill points)

5: Conviction, Lore
4: Discipline, ???
3: Endurance, ???
2: ???, ???
1: ???, ???, ???, ???, ???

-1 the sight
-3 thaumaturgy (+1 crafting strength)
-3 evocation (spirit, ???, ???) (+1 spirit power)
-1 refinement (+2 Spirit Control)
-1 refinement (2 item slots)

6 item slots:
enchantment focus (+2 crafting power, 2 focus slots)
offensive focus (+2 offensive spirit control, 2 focus slots)
defensive item (power 8, 3 uses, 2 enchantment slots)
defensive item (power 8, 3 uses, 2 enchantment slots)

So, this attacks with control 8, power 6 evocations, and defends with 2 power 8 layered defensive items.

Now, imagine that a ghoul attacks this character from ambush.

The ghoul tags an aspect, rolls +2 on the fudge dice, for a total of 8 to attack, and has a base damage of 4.

The wizard activates his first defensive item, for a power 8 defense.  The ghouls attack matches it, so the attack gets through, and the block provided by the defensive item it shattered (important if there are more attackers).  The wizard is looking at 4 damage, so he activates his second defensive item to provide 4 armor, reducing the damage he takes to 0.

Then, the next round happens.  The ghoul goes first, and the wizard probably has to use a defensive item to bring up another block, but it's highly unlikely that the ghoul will roll a +4 on the dice and break through.

Then the wizard lets fly with an evocation.  He has a rote that's a power 8 attack, so he does that an pays 3 stress.  Assuming everyone rolls a net of 0 on the dice: the ghoul defends at 5, so it's looking at an 11 stress hit, so it would have to take 7 points of consequences to stay in the fight.  But random unnamed ghouls aren't likely to do that, so the fight is over.

The wizard is down 3 item charges and 3 mental stress.  If there had been two ghouls, the wizard would probably be down 6 charges ad have his 3rd and 4th mental stress boxes marked off by the time the fight is over.  Or if the wizard had room to move, he has a chance of ending the fight in first non-ambush round with a supplemental move and a zone wide attack.



20
DFRPG / Re: Bleeding out
« on: March 27, 2013, 02:38:27 PM »
If you want the consequences to have some game effect, you compel them. 
For example:
GM: You cut open face is bleeding pretty bad.  You'll have to leave off <important thing you are doing> to go get some medical attention.
PC: Refusing compel, "I don't have time to bleed.  I put some superglue on it and continue doing <important thing>.

---------

To start recovering from a consequence you need a 'justification'.  The amount of justification needed depends on the consequence.

So, worse consequences usually require going to a doctor, or something to justify the start of recovery.  Though notice that recovery powers, etc may provide their own justifications for consequence recovery

21
Thing I can think of:

A stunt or minor power related to resisting mind control and mental attacks.
Most sorts of mind control are for human targets, and your mind now has awesome improved bits stuck on where all those human weaknesses used to be.

A purely mental beast change.
Always wanted to do better in negotiation, but having trouble with your hunger for blood getting out of hand? Now you can swap in some new mental software and only want to kill your foes and drink their blood after the talky bits are done!

Or just some stunts or powers related to you being a really good method actor.  Or, at least, you've eaten the brains of some pretty good method actors, and you've been itching to try out your new acting skills.

A stunt or minor power to improve the sight/make resisting it easier.
"I used to have trouble looking at things like that, but now that I see the same sort of thing in the mirror, I find it's not so much of a problem anymore."


22
DFRPG / Re: Failure in games
« on: March 25, 2013, 04:53:20 AM »
It also allows you to play for different stakes that those that the fictional layer seems to provide.

Consider a game where the PCs are the knights of the cross.  The game is the events of Death Masks and the stakes are Harry's soul.

So it's possible to play the game, have the events in the fictional layer exactly as they happen in the book, and the only 'variable' part be when happens after Nicodemus throws the coin out the car window.  The outcome at the climatic moment of the adventure rests on the actions taken by an NPC, when none of the PCs are even on screen.  But it's still possible for it to be emotionally satisfying becuse that's what the players have been struggling the whole adventure to determine.  And all the narration with sword fights and plagues and trains and holy relics and stuff, while not entirely unimportant, only described the actual stakes of the adventure in the most roundabout way.

23
DFRPG / Re: Failure in games
« on: March 25, 2013, 12:57:51 AM »
Right but the concession is a group decision so it stands to reason that whatever makes sense in the current scene is how the latter part will play out. Even if the guy kills himself he could have a pack of matches from the hotel he is staying at, or an address scrawled on a piece of paper (both these things being declarations in most cases) just because you failed to have him give you information directly does not mean you have failed to find anything out

No, I'm saying that one way of doing 'success' or 'failure' is to make the fiction layer say whatever you want 'after' the dice determine that result.  And as long as you get what you were after, 'success' can be narrated in whatever way you find interesting.

So, as long as the dice give me victory, the fiction layer can give me a victory in whatever narrative that the players find acceptable, and if the dice give me failure, then my failure also happens in a whatever narrative way people find interesting.

Example:
GM, this fight will end up with you captured by the villain.  The stakes are how much you find out about the villains plan.

So:
1: the characters aren't risking death, even if the in fiction layer of the game says that the villain wants to kill them
2: even a victory by the players here will result in their capture.
3. what the PCs get for winning is finding out about the villains plans, but how their winning actually happens in the fiction layers can be described in whatever way people find entertaining.

This allows things like the fictional layer describing narrow margins of escapes and skin of the teeth victories without needing the dice system to promote the 'you die now!" mathematics that that tends to require.

-------------------

Example, in the game, any contest you get into with a black court vampire is going to be a big deal.  They can deal large amounts of damage with a lucky hit, so you may need to have a lot of fate points in reserve to deal with them.  So, if we'd expect the characters to want to avoid fighting them, wherever possible, and prefer to do things like burn down the building they are in and stake anything that manages to crawl into the sunlight.

Bur we, the players, might prefer our characters to get into fights with black court vampires, to show how awesome we are.  But that's a pretty (eventually) lethal thing to do if we the fiction layer drives the game.

------------------

So, how can all this be applied within the scope of a DFRPG game?

You can set the stakes of the contest to be something other than the stakes that appear in the fiction layer.

For example
1 the stakes in the fiction layer are 'the city blows up!'
2 none of the players in interested in 'the city blows up!' outcome

So, if we let the fiction layer drive things, we need to arrange things so that the dice don't allow the city to blow up, because no one wants that.  This can lead to the players being able to crush the end villain like a bug, because eve a 10% chance outcome of 'the city blows up!' in that fight is unacceptable to the players.  They want to keep playing in the city, after all.

-----------

But if we set the 'actual' stakes as something other than 'the city blows up!' then we can have a lot more flexibility in how much chance of 'failure' the dice system allows.

For example, at the end of Fool Moon, the fictional layer says the stakes are "Harry dies horribly" if things go wrong.

But instead, if the set the stakes as something like "How much Marcone respects Harry when this is over" then the players can allow for 'failure' because it doesn't end the game.  After all, there's plenty of interesting stories to tell when Marcone doesn't respect Harry.

[edit]
Some edits for spelling, and stuff.

24
DFRPG / Re: Failure in games
« on: March 24, 2013, 05:35:12 PM »
No, because my 'stakes' or desired end condition of the fight was to learn more about the villains plans.  So any fight outcome where I don't learn about the villains plans is a loss for me.  So, even if the fiction layer has me 'winning' the fight, it the outcome is me not learning anything about the plans it's because I lost in the dice layer, and the fiction layer comes around with a description that matches that outcome.

And on the winning side, as long and the outcome is that I learn about the villains plans, the fiction layer can say whatever I think is most interesting about what the outcome of the 'fight' was.

Sample things this lets you do
play the incompetent protagonist, that somehow still succeeds in the end.
play the guy who brings words to a gun fight, and still 'wins'.

---------------

Or, in a slightly humors example where I explained potential victories in Exalted shaping combat:
Your opponent stabs his sword though your heart.  But the beauty of your death poem and your obvious moral superiority have made him have a change of heart.  He abandons his old ways, and takes up your equipment and philosophy, trying to emulate you as best he can.  In fact, he plays you so well that all your friends and allies treat him as you.

Outcome: you win the fight, and your character is exactly the same as before; but if this were a television show, you'd now be played by a different actor.

25
DFRPG / Re: Failure in games
« on: March 24, 2013, 05:09:00 PM »
And to make people 'able' to play in these sorts of games, you really need to do one of two things:

--------------------

Be able to explicitly communicate to the players that the loss in this encounter isn't really a loss, which very few games actually do. 

Were we to play a game 'naively' we'd have two things to guide us.  What the rules say, and what the game fiction says.  That is, if we get into a fight with people who want to kill us, we'd normally expect the consequences of losing that fight to be death.  And we'd expect the rules to model the winning or losing of that fight to agree with the fictional presentation of the fight. 

So, for example, if the dice say we won the fight, we'd also expect the fiction to say we won the fight.  Though it's possible to have, say, the fiction say that we lost of fight, were captured, and learned more about the villain's plans by listening to his henchmen talk before we made our daring escape.

I don't know any games that have meta rules that explicitly say things like: the stakes of this fight are a minor advance or setback.  So you probably don't want to spend too many of your metagame tokens on the outcome of the fight.  You want to save your metagame tokens to influence a more important conflict later.

[edit] whoops, Dogs does do this.

----------------

Or two, separate the game fiction layer from the dice results.

---------------

There are a few games that try this, I can think of Dogs in the Vineyard as an example.
Briefly: you roll the dice and describe what you do, but the success or failure of the dice roll doesn't need effect your description.  So, if you want, your character can actually always succeed in the vast majority of stuff that happens in the fictional layer.

Example: your character is in a struggle with one of the villains henchmen.  You want to  find out more about the villains plans. 
Sample story outcomes of a failure in the dice layer:
1. you manage to beat the henchmen down, but he has a poison capsule and you learn nothing.
2. you manage to beat the henchmen down, but "he'll never talk!" and your character won't use torture.
3. you manage to convince the henchmen of the moral superiority of your cause and he's about to tell you  everything, when another of the villains henchmen shoots him.

Sample wins in the dice layer:
1. you are defeated by the henchman and taken prisoner.  While you are tied up, you hear the henchmen talking about the villains plans.  Then you make a daring escape.
2. The henchmen gets away, but you use your investigative skills to deduce what the villains plan is.
3. You defeat the henchmen, and the threat of getting his remaining teeth knocked out is enough to get him to tell you everything he knows.
4. You convince the henchmen to be a proper and moral nihilist, like yourself.  In a fit of feeling for his fellow man, the former henchmen tells you everything.

---------------------

So we could have a loss in the fictional layer just be the 'interesting' way of narrating our victory in the dice layer.

But that takes some careful rules design and writing.  Notice how often the 'concessions are metagame constructs, not something that the in game players have to agree to' keep coming up.  The fact that you are in a fight with people that want to kill you, but a concession where you don't die is a perfectly valid result to end that fight seems to be something totally unexpected to a lot of people because the vast majority of game are driven by what happens in the fiction layer.

26
DFRPG / Re: Failure in games
« on: March 24, 2013, 03:01:32 PM »
The most important thing to remember about resolving combat in Dresden is that not every fight is to the death. In fact, the vast majority aren't going to be. Concessions exist to give you an option to end combat beyond, "Everyone on one side or the other is dead."

Failure doesn't mean death in DFRPG. It might, but there are tons of other options.
This needs to be highlighted, because I think it states my point well--I consider "We're awesome at everything and never face a real challenge" to be something that will end the story prematurely.

'Failure' that doesn't result in failure isn't failure. 

To expand:
If there isn't any point in the adventure where 'failure' will result in actual failure, then your chance of success at the adventure is 100%, and you are dressing up the narration of that 100%.  And if there are places where 'failure' then you need to look at how often they actually happen and what the PCs chance of avoiding them are.

Also, how well are the lines between them communicated?  Will losing this fight result in the city blowing up, or not?  If it will, I'd prefer not to lose.  Will losing this fight make it more likely that the city will blow up?  If yes, I'd still prefer not to lose because the city blowing up is such a bad result that even a small increase in likelyhood of it happening is a terribad result.

27
DFRPG / Re: Failure in games
« on: March 24, 2013, 01:57:02 PM »
If the characters never face the chance of losing, they do not face adversity and challenges. If they never face a major setback and basically win at everything they do not face adversity and challenges. What they're facing is boring. What they're facing is softball validation.

Adversity and challenges mean the characters have to work to beat them. Otherwise it's, to put it as bluntly as possible, one big circle jerk. Fanfiction is filled with this sort of "We're all awesome and nobody can beat us ever" stories, and except for the ones that are parody, they generally suck.
It's not about your character succeeding. It's about your character always succeeding without there being any chance of failure.

Part of the problem here is that the vast majority of game designers and GMs do not understand compound probability.

An example:
What base chance of success does the character need to have on any give roll to succeed at 8 rolls in a row with a 75% total probability?

More in depth coverage of the example: the adventure has 8 'critical points' the the PCs have to succeed at.  Everyone wants to PCs to succeed at adventures at least 75% of the time, or even higher, because the stakes of the adventure are often something like "and the city blows up if you fail".

So, what percent chance of success at an individual test would the characters need?
If the PCs succeed on an individual test 90% of the time, they'll succeed at the adventure only around 43% of the time.   To succeed at the adventures 75% of the time, the PCs would need a success rate on an individual test of around 96.5%.  But books and cinema tend to support the characters only succeeding by the narrowest margins.  And that's the feeling that game designers often try to emulate, which means that they set the expected PC success rate to maybe 67% and the whole adventure goes off the rails the first time the dice hit the table.

That's why most stealth systems in games are completely useless.  They ask you to succeed several times in a row to get anything done with stealth, and unless you've really cheesed out your stealth skill, you'll fail one of those rolls sooner rather than later.  Which means planning for succeeding in sneaking isn't something you do.  Sneaking is just something you plan to do to let you get as close as possible to the enemy before you switch to the combat engine.


28
DFRPG / Re: Newbie GM looking for PC-related advice
« on: March 24, 2013, 12:14:15 PM »
The reason that the powers are written the way they are is so that they don't have to write a specific set of powers for every possible variation.

So, a guy to turns into a crow might look like like:

-1 echoes of the beast
-1 beast change
+1 human form, covering:
-1 Wings
-1 Diminutive size
=
-3 refresh

While a guy who turns into a T-Rex might look like
-1 echoes of the beast
-1 beast change
+1 human form, covering:
-2 inhuman speed
-6 mythic strength
-6 mythic toughness
-2 hulking size
=
-17 refresh

But the people who wrote the book don't need to write a specific 'turn into a bird for -3 refresh' power, just like they don't need to write a 'turn into a T-Rex for -17 refresh' power.

So, for example, you might build yourself an 'amnesiac assassin' type character who has beast change, but doesn't turn into anything at all.  He just switches from being a nice chef to Mr. Kill Bot in his head, without any creature features at all.

Or you can change forms without the beast change power, if you don't feel like changing your skill totals around, or whatever.

-------------

One thing that pure mortals with very high refresh can do is act as human bombs.

Example:
Harry Dresden: "We are really in trouble here, my force 10 combat evocations barely scratch it!"

Juan Doe, the human bomb: "I got this"
Juan Doe steps forward and swings his might fist of justice (And pays fate points to invoke around 12 aspects).  My fists total is 30.  No, I don't have any stunts that up my fists damage.

Harry Dresden: "... That was a demi-god, Juan, and you laid it out with one punch.  How did you do that?"

Juan Doe: "Un poco con la puņo de Juan y otro poco con la mano de Dios"

---------------

Admittedly, I think that's a bit silly.  But I do see how being able to hand of god something once a session could appeal to some players.

29
DFRPG / Re: New GM advice
« on: March 08, 2013, 05:40:06 AM »
My advice is to be generous with FATE points.  The system tends to be considerably less interesting without a ready supply of them, because people are holding on o their last point or two to stave off disaster, rather than using them to do anything interesting.

The balance point to keep in mind is that having a high starting refresh should still be advantageous.  So you should be thinking about giving out somewhere between refresh and half refresh in fate points out between when you call for a fate point pool refresh.

So, for example, if you are playing 10 refresh characters, and refresh FATE points at the start of every 4 hour game session, then you should be thinking about arranging everyone to get around 5-7 FATE points per session.  To meet this ideal, you have to give out a FATE point every 10 or 15 minutes.

But how do I give out that many FATE points, you ask?  Develop the art of creating the minor cost for an action. 

30
So, something like

Magical Sponsor [-Varies]
Maybe you just have an exceptional talent, maybe you have a magical sugar daddy, or maybe the abyss has taken root behind your eyes and is driving you around like a car.  In any event, you can do things with magic that most people can't.

Agenda:
Most sponsors that are willing to give you power want you to support their agendas.  Since they are usually more powerful than you, it's usually a good idea to nod your head a lot when they start talking.

Alternatively, the extensive practice of certain subsections of magic (e.g. Kemmlerian Necromancy) tends to produce... let's call them predictable mental aberrations in practitioners which make them want to follow certain patterns of thought and action.

But the bottom line is that you are giving up a certain amount of your free will in exchange for power.

Sponsor debt:
You are able to 'borrow' fate points from your sponsor.  Which you can spend on magical actions.  The 'sponsor' is then able to demand repayment by (later) compelling you later to take actions in line with it's agenda.

Of course, assuming you have free will, you can resist these compels.  But resisting compels from your sponsor when the bill comes due tend to have entirely predictable results, like horrible death and getting worse from there.  No one said that free will was safe.

Expansions:
Expansions go here.
Examples:
thaumaturgy at evocation speeds
directly satisfying catches with magic

Limitations:
You sponsor can put limitations on you too
Examples:
Your powers don't work against: X
Your powers don't work in situation X
You can't use your powers to do X

---------------

Note that is technically allows you to write up 'Life magic, as practiced by the White Council and most other (sane) human practitioners' as a sponsor, with the laws of magic as limitations.  With the laws of magic being something like a -2? limitation. 

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