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Messages - Lamech

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31
DFRPG / Re: Why is the true love catch +0?
« on: August 20, 2012, 04:01:30 AM »
For successful (non-accidental) implementation of this Catch, not only will you have to work to identify the nature of the weakness in theoretical terms, but in practical ones as well (and separately).
It won't do you much good if you know that WCVs of House Raith are vulnerable to True Love if you can't figure out how to get your hands on a sympol of that Truth (or whether you actually have gotten your hands on one, for that matter)
Ohh... this makes a lot of sense now. If the only test is zapping a WC vampire, then just because you in theory know that love zaps them doesn't have any practical value. 'K that makes sense then.

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DFRPG / Re: Why is the true love catch +0?
« on: August 20, 2012, 12:18:50 AM »
The appropriate cost of the True Emotion Catches is something of a hotly debated topic on these boards.



A few points that might support it's +0 value:

True Emotion is difficult to maintain for significant durations (the largest contributor to the duration of Harry's protection by way of True Love was his horrible facility with women preventing him from having an opportunity to 'get back on the horse'), so even if a substantial portion of humanity experiences it at some point in their lives, only a small portion would have experienced it recently enough to be protected by it

True Emotion (and particularly non-violent emotion) is incredibly difficult to weaponize (making this Catch more useful as a source of Compels than as a way of bypassing any Toughness powers, and Compels are cost-neutral)

True Emotion is even more incredibly difficult to verify (without the involvement of an entity for whom it serves as a Catch) than it is to weaponize, so not only do you have to discover that your target is vulnerable to True Love, but you also have to discover which of those decades-old bands of gold alloy (or whatever) actually serves as a symbol of True Love
It completely and totally makes sense that True Love is one of those things that only a few people have access too. Thomas and Justine, and that one wedding ring that Laura burned herself on are the only examples, so three of them, just as rare as Swords of the Cross. But that doesn't cover the notability portion of it. I would be floored if Harry hadn't informed Paranet, and even more surprised if it wasn't learnable through dedicated and careful research. So it should qualify for a +1 or +2.
Quote from: InFerrumVeritas
In the context of the universe, only Bob and the White Court seemed to know the catch or really how the Whampires worked.  That is, it requires personally knowing a WCV.  Remember, in the novels, Harry is very close with the WCVs and his intimate level of knowledge is rather rare amongst other wizards.  I don't think it's something you can just go look up.  I know this book is technically cannon, but I don't treat it as such in my game.  Too meta.
I think one of the Red Court new about it. (Short story.) And Harry has played a big role in Paranet so he should have distributed it to Paranet.

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DFRPG / Why is the true love catch +0?
« on: August 19, 2012, 11:37:20 PM »
What's up with true love on the Wampire template being +0. That would imply that only a couple people have twue wuv, and that next to no one knows about the catch? I would have thought that at the very least Harry explained the Catch to Paranet. At the very least a few people would be able to find it in obscure texts of lore such as the Harry Dresden Role Playing Game, or similar tomes.

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DFRPG / Re: The Glass Jawed Wizard
« on: August 09, 2012, 04:19:53 AM »
Attack their precious items! A mortal can get a new gun, or have a backup. A wizard who gets his staff shattered? He needs to wait for a chance to fix it. (And no, items don't take consequences.) Yes, its a bit mean, but hey it works. And unless you do go after their items, points spent on them are much more effective than anything else so you shouldn't let them have free power.

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DFRPG / Re: What does Taken Out mean?
« on: July 25, 2012, 06:35:52 PM »
No matter what the personality is you need to make sure there is an actual conflict. Suppose the co-pilot a friendly spirit of goodness, and it wins. After it helps your friends it goes directly to charging the local red court base. Maybe you get captured. Maybe you start a war. Maybe it succeeds and the red court hates you now. Oh, and you gave all your stuff to charity. Regardless being taken out is bad.

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DFRPG / Re: [Alternate Setting] You mean magic works?!
« on: July 15, 2012, 07:39:26 PM »
The Council may still be able to get some good press for their zero tolerance policies on casters violating humans. The self policing pattern has worked for many other professions and industries. You may also get people to avoid vigilantism if you warn them about the dangers of death curses and make reporting people easy, though I'd expect a lot of false positives.
Wizard: We have a 0 tolerance policy. If a wizard does something bad we'll chop their head off.
Reporter: Okay there's an illusionist giving people one dollar bills that look like hundreds. When does this menace lose his/her head.
Wizard: Erm... not actually a law violation. It really isn't even close. But if there is a wizard using their power to kill, head comes off.
Reporter: Okay there is a wizard shooting people, getting anywhere with the Nevernever, and clearing their presence with magic. When do you get them.
Wizard: We'll they technically aren't killing with magic.
Reporter: So there's this guy called Binder. He summons bunches of monsters and has them eat people. When does his head come off.
Wizard: Erm... actually he's careful to avoid the first law.
Reporter: ... Okay there's a necromancer. He's summoned an army of zombie dino's and most of Chicago is overrun.
Wizard: Still not our department.
Reporter: Alright then. Where going back to vigilantism. You do realize you're in a roundabout right?

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DFRPG / Re: [Alternate Setting] You mean magic works?!
« on: July 14, 2012, 06:41:28 PM »

If it was a sudden reveal I suspect you'd be correct - though that time of chaos could be an interesting setting.  Is a "big reveal" the only option?  For that matter, you make a case for those in power being aware of it since the Inquisition...wouldn't that lessen the impact of a public reveal?
I've always thought the way to do it, would be too many of the big boiling over actions have happened. Zombies running through Chicago, the Nevernever wall increasing ghost activity, the general boiling over of magical conflict and slowly everyone knows. Of course, everyone shuts their mouth so they don't go to the funny farm. Then, someone goes on T.V. and yells: "the king monsters have no clothes secrecy." And then everyone pulls out their supersoakers filled with holy water/iron-salts, bloody hula-hoops (instant circle)  and blessed Molotov cocktails, and its open season on baddies. The big reveal isn't telling people about the supernatural world, the big reveal is telling people everyone knows already.
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I'm not sure magic is repeatable enough for an 'industrial' revolution.  The WC uses widespread publication to make spells powerless.  That alone might drive a need to keep your spells secret.
Those are specific rituals. Those can't be industrialized, nor improved. They aren't human magic anyway. But there are other ways to revolutionize magic. Start mass harnessing the emotional power of humans. Make sure all slaughtered animals have their life extracted. Train anyone who can learn magic (like random college kids). Also of import using magic affects if your kids have magic. If the idea that being able to sense magic is what lets people be wizards, give them a weaker three eye, and you have artificial wizards. Also I'm pretty sure that drawing on external power sources heavily helps you build magical muscle: I think Victor Sells did that to be stronger than Harry for example.

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DFRPG / Re: Which is better - Enchanted items or Focus Items?
« on: July 14, 2012, 06:15:33 AM »
I always thought that enchanted items make good navel gazing mines, and good defenses, while focus items are good for offensive control, and getting 5 on thuramaturgy control. So both have their uses.

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DFRPG / Re: [Alternate Setting] You mean magic works?!
« on: July 14, 2012, 06:14:02 AM »
I'm going to guess magical arms race. Especially since there are all most certainly ways to build up the mortal magical power base if one tried. Also while insane necromancers won't preform their ascension rituals on a desert island, a lot of the nicer governments would certainly try. The industrial revolution would happen to magic. I don't see anything good coming of this.

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DFRPG / Re: Weapons ratings and blocks
« on: July 10, 2012, 08:41:10 PM »
High Powered Explosives, Landmines and Missiles should be treated as a crafting roll based attack IMO, and can hit significant levels of extra time and assistance aspects. Consider a scientist with crafting three, taking four units of extra time (has a stunt to reduce time by two steps), who has Assistance, the high concept chemist and made a Scholarship roll for Good Plans. Its probably a 13 shift shot. A good ward will reflect it, but in all honesty? A good block can shunt stuff into the Nevernever. So a really good ward should be able to block nuke level attacks (although the spiritual component of a nuke might do something nasty to magic at GM discretion).

I do however agree that its a problem that wards can stop big and small attacks equally well. It makes no sense, and is contrary to the books for normal defenses. (The Nevernever shunting not so much.)

On the wards not losing power. I think that is sort a the RPG wards not really lining up with the book wards, I don't recall many wards that deflect energy like the standard ones. Harry set up something that was specifically supposed to deflect magic, but most wards seem to be the landmine kind. Maybe the GM could use something similar to the time chart for a sustained assault.

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DFRPG / Re: Extremely High Complexity Rituals
« on: July 10, 2012, 03:23:51 AM »
An alternate point of view: any wizard who did the sorts of things described above (mind-controlling cops, replacing them with duplicates, committing mass-murder via wards, deliberately hexing helicopters in flight. etc) would become White Council Enemy #1 so fast that he wouldn't be able to say "Oops" before his entire body was diced into bite-sized chunks, let alone his head lopped off.
Mind Controlling and the Hexing in flight copters would get his head chopped off. Reflecting attacks is a standard White Council trick. Remember Harry was planning on doing this with a lethal spell. And killing people is a-okay with the White Council as long as you don't break the first law. Recall how Binder was going to call up his boys and kill his way out of jail? I suppose the Council might get pissed, but they haven't stopped Binder.

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DFRPG / Re: Thaumaturgy and Wards
« on: July 09, 2012, 02:29:01 PM »
The heart exploding spell had sufficient shifts that hitting a 4 shift ward (which, if you recall, is just a block, so it doesn't stack with defense) would still leave it as deadly to most, (-24 from consequences and best stress box still leave you with 6 more shifts to deal with, possible if you have toughness high enough). Change that to a 12 shift ward and things are looking quite a bit better, though you'll still come out of it gravely injured, and that only if you had a full compliment of consequences available.
Also don't forget something that should be spectacularly lethal, say a powerful explosive (weapon: 10) that lands right at your feet, (6 roll) that you don't try to dodge (-4 defense), only does 20 shifts. So 20 shifts of damage something Dresden would expect to splatter him. So eating 20 shifts of damage from the kill spell is something expected to kill you. A full health character will miraculously survive either, but it is still a miracle.

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DFRPG / Re: Extremely High Complexity Rituals
« on: July 09, 2012, 02:22:58 PM »
Somehow I missed the part where the wizard escaped from jail.
He's a wizard, he can turn into a cloud of gas and slip through the wall, or portal out in the Nevernever. Or pull a Binder and kill his way out.
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And where he transformed himself so he wouldn't traced under the 'armed and extremely dangerous" bulletin - the sort of want that can someone shot because he kind of looks like the guy they're looking for.
If he had to escape from jail and leave a doppelganger behind they don't know he's gone.
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If you want wizards to be supermen in your game, that's fine.  That's not how they are in the DV, where the White Council ensures they don't mettle too much with mortal governments.  Where the supernaturals fear that the next inquisition could happen - one where everyone accepts whatever the government says they have to do in order to keep the nation safe from the monsters.

Dresden, a wizard, has spent time in lock up.  He hasn't been able to do any of the things you suggest - possibly he isn't capable of doing it or possibly his moral code won't let him.  Which is why Rudolf's still walking around.
Binder was just going to kill his way out of jail if he wasn't set free. Not only that he expected Dresden to know exactly what would happen. And I don't recall Dresden ever being in jail for more than a day.

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DFRPG / Re: Extremely High Complexity Rituals
« on: July 09, 2012, 01:41:40 AM »
It seems as if you are assuming that this hoax evidence of Dave being out of prison would be admitted in a court of law.  That the legal system runs objectively on evidence.
You mean cops testifying? Because I'm pretty sure that can be admitted to a court of law. As far as the non-clued in people know that's exactly what it is.

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If you innocently set up something (say a prank on your brother) that results in someone dying, odds are you will do prison time.  Set up a trap that gets a law enforcement agent killed and you are looking at murder.  For example, if you live where there are bears and you set up a bear trap to keep bears off your property and if it kills a cop serving a law enforcement officer serving a search warrant, that's murder in the first degree.  And if you claim that someone else set that bear trap on your property, that's just you lying to get off the charge.
Every single wall ever can cause bullets to ricochet off of it. There is no trap. More to the point, when people who weren't there try to figure out what happened the physical evidence will point to the cops. The house is normal; it can't survive that level of gun fire. You want to know what it looks like? A suicide pact. The cops appear to have killed themselves with their own weapons, and made up an idiotic story. 
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When it come to the trial, the DA doesn't need to prove how you did it - the fact that a cop died speaks for itself.  You had to have rigged something for the bullets to ricochet that way.  Nor does he really need to prove that you did it - he just has to prove that you had the opportunity to set a trap and that a cop died of as a result.
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And very weak cases go to trial.  For example, in the Casey Anthony case, the DA basically said: "We don't know how the victim died.  We can't prove that the victim was killed.  We don't have any proof about the cause of death - but we want you to convict that woman for murder.".  It sounds like a weak case (and it was - not saying if I think the accused did it, just that the case was weak) but strong enough to keep her in jail for two and a half years in jail awaiting trial.

Two and a half years.  Thirty months before she got her day (well, six weeks) in court.  That's sort of wait isn't uncommon in a murder case.

And if it looks like a cop killer is going to get off on a technicality, that cop killer could end up dead in a prison fight, shot while escaping, or otherwise murdered by (or at the behest) of law enforcement personnel.  Nope, it's not supposed to happen, but it does.
You mean his doppelganger could end up dead. The wizard kills a couple of the cops responsible, and has look-a-like constructs report it to the FBI. And the news. Congrats now on the 8'o clock news reads: "cops attempt murder as part of satanic ritual." The wizard probably replaces his doppelganger at some point.

Of course, this is all for an good wizard. An evil one replaces the judge, some FBI bigwig and DA, and has the charges dismissed immediately. Oh and he has the judge put out arrest warrants for the drugs the wizard planted in every cops home, and has the FBI bigwig order the raids.

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