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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: fantazero on November 10, 2011, 12:51:47 AM
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Working on a Clint Eastwood Character
Item of Power
No Name's Revolver [-3]
Description: The Man with No Name's Revolver.
Musts: You must have an aspect related to your possession of this item.
Skills Affected: Guns
Effects:
[-0] Purpose. Forged from the swords of Fallen Angels the Revolver is to be used by its wielder to punish the wicked
[-0] It Is What It Is. A weapon 2 Revolver.
[-0] Unbreakable. As an Item of Power, this item cannot be broken except with a magical ritual predicated upon perverting its purpose.
[+2] One-Time Discount. It's a big revolver, not easy to hide, oh and its shiny
[-1] Did he fire six shots or only five? ...No need to count how many shots, Revolver never needs to reload
[-3] Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?... Being as it's the most powerfull handgun ever made and could blow your head clean off, When facing an opponent, the wielder may spend a fate point to ignore all of that opponent's defensive powers and mundane armour for a scene.
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I feel like it should be a weapon 3 and add +1 to Gun roles
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I feel like it should be a weapon 3 and add +1 to Gun roles
You could make it weapon 3 no problem.
But +1 to Gun rolls would have to be an additional power.
Oh, and you miscalculated the cost. As it is now it would cost a total of -2, not -3.
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Bit of a mix there between Harry and TMWNN. All the powers are named after Harry quotes but the gun's named after TMWNN.
As for weapon 3, nope. It is what it is means it's a handgun, granted possibly a .50 caliber handgun, and most likely deserves weapon 2 with an outside chance of weapon 1. Adding to that with powers would be fine but if it's meant to do more damage than what it is it needs to pay for it. Give it a ranged version of claws or some such?
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As for weapon 3, nope. It is what it is means it's a handgun, granted possibly a .50 caliber handgun, and most likely deserves weapon 2 with an outside chance of weapon 1. Adding to that with powers would be fine but if it's meant to do more damage than what it is it needs to pay for it. Give it a ranged version of claws or some such?
YS:202 "Oversized Pistols (Desert Eagle and company) - Weapon:3"
Considering that it's supposed to be a very special Handgun... so I think it could be weapon:3. Especially if you make it a .50 caliber.
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YS:202 "Oversized Pistols (Desert Eagle and company) - Weapon:3"
Considering that it's supposed to be a very special Handgun... so I think it could be weapon:3. Especially if you make it a .50 caliber.
Desert Eagle and co pack significantly more punch than the .50 cal handguns from the latter half of the 1800s. You might be able to barely squeek into weapon 3 but you'd have to be using modern, custom made ammunition. The "very special" comes from it being an Item of Power not from the purely physical aspects, so it needs to be a Power to boost damage.
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Is it just me or does anyone else think that the "spend a fate point and get over the catch" thing should be the property of the swords of the cross?
We should come up with other such abilities for an item of power to have...
[-x] Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?... Your Guns skill is always complements your Intimidate skill as long as you carry this item. In addition, you can spend a fate point to increase the weapon rating of this item by 4 points for an attack against an enemy when you tag or invoke an aspect that you have placed with an Intimidation maneuver.
I dont really know what that would cost but I feel like it is significantly different from the holy swords but still yield a similar result (killing them faster).
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You know, I don't really understand the desire to keep the Swords mechanically unique. Could someone please explain?
Do You Feel... seems like a -1 power to me. Bit too stuntlike for my tastes though.
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You know, I don't really understand the desire to keep the Swords mechanically unique. Could someone please explain?
I think it's more 'bored with the repetition' than a desire to keep them unique. That power seems to get copied on a semi-regular basis.
@fantazero - I'd give pistols (and knives) a +1 discount while saving the +2 for rifles and swords. Pistols and knives are fairly easy to conceal.
@PolaroidNinja - Your "Do You Feel Lucky Punk..." is probably overpowered for a -1 stunt (since it adds one to Intimidate in a large percentage of situations) but definitely not powerful enough to be a -2 power. So probably works as a -1 power. Personally, I'd prefer a more powerful situational bonus though...a flat bonus simply isn't as interesting. Perhaps something like "Gain +2 to Threats and +1 to Interrogation attempts when the victim is looking at you behind the barrel of your gun.
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You know, I don't really understand the desire to keep the Swords mechanically unique. Could someone please explain?
Well, items that powerful are extremely rare in the books. Makes them feel special. If everyone and their dog has a Louisville Slugger with the same powers as the Swords, what's so special about a KotC? Unique power sets giving unique flavor is the way to go on IoPs.
It's the whole "if everyone is special then nobody is" thing.
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I guess I can respect that.
Don't agree with it, though.
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May just be me. I like campaigns that could fit into Jim's world without altering the flavor of the books for me.
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I mean, you could play a Dresden game where everyone is a pure mortal, but wheres the fun?
The pistols being melted from swords is just from Preacher.
Anyone care to post what they think would be the Correct stats for the weapon? I'm still kinda lost on that. Also what does True Aim do?
THANKS so much for the help, btw
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Plus, Sancto, the way the Swords are talked about and handled in the series it sets up their purpose and power to being "Very Special." There are ONLY three swords and they are forged by, and please please please remember I'm speaking in the idiom of the series, the nails of the Crucifixion. Which was, taken in the context of the culture, THE act of sacrifice that opened up heaven for all of humanity. That's some epic, once in a species ju-ju right there. So if weapons made of the nails of the White God's "only son"'s death, then that sets a benchmark. A high end mark. Can nothing surpass it? Well, no, of course not. But it'd have to be pretty damned impressive to pass it. Is Ferrovax the end all be all of creation? No, but you're hard pressed to find anything that rivals him. And denying "the Catch" to EVERYTHING is a fairly MASSIVE tactical advantage. Now, to be sure, one COULD read it that bypassing the Catch is the top tiered power that the greatest weapons the Powerful Beings give to mortal kind. Like...that's the greatest gift they can bestow, a way for humanity to level the playing field. So there IS that way to go. But even then, given what had to happen to get the relics to makes the swords, one would need something as epically scaled.
And to me, the "Swords of fallen angels," while the baddest assed metal album title I've heard in a while, doesn't sound like the same thing. It's so vague. And depending on who you listen to, those angels fight all the damned time, and there seems to be plenty of them, and they all have swords, and well...the swords are just our brain interpreting their "power" into a framework we get. Hardly seems the same scale of special as the nails of the cross. Maybe if the gun were made of something AS epic and came with the same rules and restrictions as the Swords it'd work. Because the Swords have uite the price. You do what God says. You follow His rules. One misuse could ruin everything.
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Or to put it mechanically, it's MMO power economics. You don't want something that's that powerful to become so commonplace, because why WOULDN'T you want that? Players have a way of finding ways to pay for what they want. If you're not careful, you end up with a party full of people with epic lightsabers. Sure, it's game justified, and you can roll with it, but then lightsabers just don't seem that special any more.
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Using fluff as a basis for mechanical balance is a very bad idea.
So the "the swords are really epic, therefore they should have powers nothing else does" argument doesn't fly with me.
No matter how epic the story behind something, it should still use the same ruleset as everything else.
Also: The Divine Purpose is basically just a matter of compels. And compels are not bad things. They Swords simply don't have "quite a price".
PS: True Aim comes from the Sword Of The Cross writeup. It gives +1 to Weapons. No meaningful restriction. Could easily be adapted to boost Guns.
Heh. I wrote the above before seeing the second post from finnmckool. Having read that post now...finn makes my point pretty well for me.
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Using fluff as a basis for mechanical balance is a very bad idea.
I find this ironic in a game where narrative and story affect mechanics all the time. ;D
Heh. I wrote the above before seeing the second post from finnmckool. Having read that post now...finn makes my point pretty well for me.
I think finnmckool was arguing for keeping some powers unique.
Shrug, my reasons have already been stated. Variety is a Good Thing (TM). ;)
Anyone care to post what they think would be the Correct stats for the weapon? I'm still kinda lost on that.
"Correct" is whatever you and your fellow gamers enjoy. That said, here's one take...
The Man with No Name's Revolver [-2 total]
Effects:
It Is What It Is. A weapon 2 Revolver.
Unbreakable. As an Item of Power, this item cannot be broken except with a magical ritual predicated upon perverting its purpose.
[-1] Purpose. "Forged from the swords of the dead, the revolver is Weapon:3 when used in pursuit of vengeance or justice."
[-1] Did he fire six shots or only five? "No need to count how many shots, Revolver never needs to reload."
[-1] Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? "Gain +2 to Threats and +1 to Interrogation attempts when the victim is looking at you behind the barrel of your gun."
[+1] One-Time Discount. It's a big revolver, not easy to hide, oh and its shiny
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That's a valid point, Sancto, but I'm with UmbraLux. It just seems that denying the Catch, as a rule, is pretty powerful stuff, and shouldn't be tossed around lightly. Now my Question back is, your concerns about people keeping the Sword's power of "denying the Catch," are those concerns about limiting the mechanics of what can be done by players? Because my feelings on the matter are all world/story/context based. Because while I appreciate the separation of mechanics and fluff, I feel that fluff isn't, necessarily JUST fluff. Or is this a separate conversation?
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Disordered thoughts:
-I know that finnmickool was trying to argue against me, but I'm pretty sure he ended up explaining my main point anyway.
-Purpose looks underpowered.
-One of the reasons I like this game is that there's almost no fluff in it. Seriously. Aspects are a form of mechanics, as are FP and compels. When people say that FATE isn't about mechanics, I raise an eyebrow. Because unlike, say, D&D, this game has mechanics for basically everything.
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*sigh*. If it's one rpg canard that wears down the soul, it's the idea that players have to take a backseat to NPCs. Not PCs -- the players themselves.
There is no aspect of the setting -- none -- that does not exist for the players' entertainment. And that includes the GM -- they're all social equals. As such, if the group is made happy by the given power level of a game object, even though it may rival or surpass some NPC, then that object is an inherent good. Demanding that the group supress their preference is no different than persons in real life becoming desperately concerned that a stranger, in the privacy of that stranger's home, may be doing something that the said persons don't approve of.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. -- Mencken
This is made more clear by the fact that the setting doesn't even implicitly, not even reaching explictly, trump the power level of the artifact at issue. Who's to say that the only thing that the swords do is what they've been seen to do? Who's to say that the swords' power levels and abilities aren't affected by their weilder? Those swords could be more powerful than what's been seen. Or they could be a lens for the true power of their weilder and contain little magic in and of themselves. The swords' uniqueness is also unconfirmed, and the virtue of said uniqueness is a totally fact-free matter of opinion: it is purely a matter of taste. (It would be fun for some if powerful artifacts, regardless of the source, followed similar patterns, for example.) This world background's metaphysics have been staggeringly unexplained. And since the author of said background's name is up above our text box in titanic 72-point type, we can safely conclude that that was intended as a design feature. Indeed, the rpg's vagueness on basic aspects of magic isn't always a feature -- it's often a flaw for some -- which is why we're here.
If someone sits down and plays the Dresden Files rpg and decides that her PC servant of Vishnu has more cosmic juju in her gear than anyone elses toys have in the universe and her group loves the concept, not only are they not "wrong,"* they're playing a roleplaying game right.
*The worst they could be is directly contradicting canon, and that's clearly not going to be the case until Butcher's next rumored book "Christ Rulz, Vishnu Drulz" hits the shelves. I find that rumor highly dubious.
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I can understand if everyone in your game was a Knight of the Cross and you had 4-5 swords floating around.
I personally dont like the 4th nail of the cross, I think theres so much more in the real world to keep coming back to Christianity of a certain era seems lazy, to me.
Then you throw in, Fairies, BCVamps, and all that of the Dresden world and their should be tons of "Items of Powers" that are more interesting than pointy metal.
I am also thinking of just flat out stealing this Item of power for my ongoing game and making it a Fairy Weapon that they give to mortal to kill other fairies, or something.
Thanks for the write up, interesting conversation all around
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Desert Eagle and co pack significantly more punch than the .50 cal handguns from the latter half of the 1800s. You might be able to barely squeek into weapon 3 but you'd have to be using modern, custom made ammunition. The "very special" comes from it being an Item of Power not from the purely physical aspects, so it needs to be a Power to boost damage.
It is perfectly possible that like the Swords of the Cross it was reforged (or since it is a gun, maybe remade would be more appropriate). Thus, it being a modern handgun is plausible.
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It is perfectly possible that like the Swords of the Cross it was reforged (or since it is a gun, maybe remade would be more appropriate). Thus, it being a modern handgun is plausible.
ITS A MAGIC GUN!
but it looks like this
(http://www.smith-wesson.com/wcsstore/SmWesson/upload/images/engraving/cus/SCI_right_side.jpg)
Smith and Wesson 500 (ITs for Bears/Moose/Helicopters ;-)
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ITS A MAGIC GUN!
but it looks like this
(http://www.smith-wesson.com/wcsstore/SmWesson/upload/images/engraving/cus/SCI_right_side.jpg)
Smith and Wesson 500 (ITs for Bears/Moose/Helicopters ;-)
If you're going for as powerful as possible I would suggest a Pfeifer Zeliska .600 Nitro Express. It is significantly more powerful than the Smith and Wesson 500 (it just isn't a "production" revolver so it is really expensive).
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ITS A MAGIC GUN!
but it looks like this
(http://www.smith-wesson.com/wcsstore/SmWesson/upload/images/engraving/cus/SCI_right_side.jpg)
Smith and Wesson 500 (ITs for Bears/Moose/Helicopters ;-)
"It shoots Through SCHOOLS!"