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Rand Brittain posted:It is, yeah, which is why they should just ditch it for a 1 XP cost, which has a much better bellyfeel for some weird neurological reason. Paying XP to make setting changes (except in a system like Chuubo's when that's like, the only thing XP is for) always feels bad, but it's much better to do it via WP drain than via direct XP tax. Permanently standing magic sapping the creator's will actually lets you know how it feels to characters, why most characters don't do it, and how an NPC should change if they do it or have already done it in the course of the story, while standing magic permanently sapping the creator's pool of abstract stat-buying currency doesn't really deliver any setting information or inform the behavior of NPCs.
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Aug 16, 2017 17:23
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Ferrinus posted:Paying XP to make setting changes (except in a system like Chuubo's when that's like, the only thing XP is for) always feels bad, but it's much better to do it via WP drain than via direct XP tax. Permanently standing magic sapping the creator's will actually lets you know how it feels to characters, why most characters don't do it, and how an NPC should change if they do it or have already done it in the course of the story, while standing magic permanently sapping the creator's pool of abstract stat-buying currency doesn't really deliver any setting information or inform the behavior of NPCs. On the other hand, Willpower is a limited resource and XP is effectively infinite. Objectively they're the same, but spending Willpower still gives people a gut "gently caress no I'm not spending 1/5 of my total willpower on that, I might need that" response that spending XP doesn't. I mean, you have a point. Spending willpower does show that it feels bad in-character. Spending willpower just feels bad out of character too.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:06
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Someone did a bad copy replace.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:07
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Kurieg posted:There's an... unfortunate typo in the example dots for Wits. I have an electromagnetics textbook that suffers from a similar error - all instances of "fl" and "fi" are just gone. Thanks to a quirk of the Swedish language, this has resulted in the frequent references to "flow integrals"* all being replaced with "fate integrals." (*a term for the surface integral of a vector field that afaik doesn't have a direct translation)
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Aug 16, 2017 18:25
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counterspin posted:Someone did a bad copy replace.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:30
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'd probably just treat anything like that as a one-dot merit (that you can buy on credit, so to speak) complete with the "if it's lost or destroyed then per sanctity of merits you get it back." Some gamelines might even handle it that way explicitly, at least as far as refunding willpower, I forget.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:36
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Terrorforge posted:I have an electromagnetics textbook that suffers from a similar error - all instances of "fl" and "fi" are just gone. Publication often uses ligatures for "fi" and "fl," so in both cases I'm guessing the problem is the text is trying to use ligatures with a font that doesn't have them ready.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:37
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Basic Chunnel posted:I hadn't considered sanctity of merits but in that light, paying Willpower for soul pacts in Demon is unambiguously a better option than the alternatives. The whole point of those pacts is that they're irreplaceable and if you get one torn up, you're at the bottom of a steep and treacherous hill. Wouldn't be the same if it was a matter of finding a place to lay low and reinvesting your xp refund I'm not saying sanctity of merits covers this RAW, just that anything that leaks XP-value out of the player's character sheet is a bad idea. If you don't address it by giving them more attention / opportunities for beats it leads to them falling behind, and if you do address it every time then you're right back to there being no long-term cost again.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:43
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Basic Chunnel posted:I hadn't considered sanctity of merits but in that light, paying Willpower for soul pacts in Demon is unambiguously a better option than the alternatives. The whole point of those pacts is that they're irreplaceable and if you get one torn up, you're at the bottom of a steep and treacherous hill. Wouldn't be the same if it was a matter of finding a place to lay low and reinvesting your xp refund Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm not saying sanctity of merits covers this RAW, just that anything that leaks XP-value out of the player's character sheet is a bad idea. If you don't address it by giving them more attention / opportunities for beats it leads to them falling behind, and if you do address it every time then you're right back to there being no long-term cost again. i think the Sanctity of Merits approach works for something like relinquishing spells in Mage, but in the specific case of Demon it would seriously devalue the gravitas of both making a Soul Pact and losing a Cover if you could just permanently shuffle one or two points of xp around into a series of backup Covers. e: I mean in most cases those Willpower costs are supposed to feel bad, to discourage you from making a habit of it Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 18:49
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Well I mean, under my suggestion you'd still be losing the Cover, just not the dot of Willpower / 1 XP. e: If the willpower cost of a soul pact is the nastiest or most difficult part of it, there's probably a problem on the narrative side of things. I'm all for making mechanics reinforce theme but not at the expense of more basic / fundamental principles, and losing XP is both incredibly feel-bad and opens up a can on worms in the ways I mentioned. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 18:53
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SunAndSpring posted:I'm interested in Mage 2e. It's pretty loving wordy but I probably have no room to complain considering I play Exalted. Anyway, how did you guys find the rules? My response has been mixed. I, personally, loved them, but I'm a weird obsessive who likes to spend a lot of time thinking about how mechanics feel. It helped that I followed the dev blogs, so I was at least vaguely familiar with the ideas when the game dropped. On the other hand, my players had trouble sometimes, coming to internalize both the mechanics and the actual ideas behind things like an Imago. It doesn't hurt that I'm still occasionally discovering rules I wasn't aware of now and then. Hasn't happened in a while, but there's a lot of smaller details, like Mages always being aware of spell Clashes or that rotes aren't something everyone can insta-cast, that aren't obvious if you don't sit down to read it very carefully from cover to cover. But overall, 2e is fantastic. It just takes a littlr time to learn to love.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:59
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Well I mean, under my suggestion you'd still be losing the Cover, just not the dot of Willpower / 1 XP. That still makes each Cover a lot more disposable. It becomes way more practical to just acquire burner after burner, never having to worry doing irreparable damage to your Cover because hey, you can always just pickup another. As usual that's not an objectively wrong way to play Demon, and if you want to you can smack some restrictions on it or just apply common sense ST fiat, but to me that feels like a lot of work to fix something that ain't broke.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:01
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Terrorforge posted:That still makes each Cover a lot more disposable. It becomes way more practical to just acquire burner after burner, never having to worry doing irreparable damage to your Cover because hey, you can always just pickup another. Permanent XP loss is broke, that's my point. I'm not a fan of mechanics that punish the player in order to stop them from doing something, still frame it as a choice, and result in an undesirable game state for the whole table if they go ahead and do it anyways. Putting some other mechanical restriction on it would probably be wise, you'd have no argument from me there.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:04
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Lurks With Wolves posted:On the other hand, Willpower is a limited resource and XP is effectively infinite. Objectively they're the same, but spending Willpower still gives people a gut "gently caress no I'm not spending 1/5 of my total willpower on that, I might need that" response that spending XP doesn't. Yes, that is a good thing. Experience points aren't actually real or representative of anything in-game - they're an out of character editing currency. Willpower dots are - they're representative of your character's psychic reserves. If it was up to me I'd remove the ability to buy WP dots back with XP, but instead have them come back by the in-game year or something. But you can recover them faster if you eat people's souls, and if you spend special magically-charged sacraments in the initial spellcasting you can spend WP points instead of WP dots for permanency.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:08
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Ferrinus posted:if you spend special magically-charged sacraments in the initial spellcasting you can spend WP points instead of WP dots for permanency. Tome of the Mysteries covered this a bit. I always liked anything that encouraged seeking out magical bargains or oddities.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:15
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Ferrinus posted:Yes, that is a good thing. Experience points aren't actually real or representative of anything in-game - they're an out of character editing currency. Willpower dots are - they're representative of your character's psychic reserves. This works well on several levels, although I'm not 100% on tying the recharge to something as book-keepy as an in-game year. Maybe make it work like glitches where you have to plug yourself into a G-M facility to fix it.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:15
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This works well on several levels, although I'm not 100% on tying the recharge to something as book-keepy as an in-game year. Maybe make it work like glitches where you have to plug yourself into a G-M facility to fix it. Oh, I was talking about mages making spells permanent, not demons doing pacts or whatever. But yeah I'm not married to the year thing, I just went for a unit of time because, hell, WP points come back by the day right?
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Aug 16, 2017 19:18
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When I was running Demon, my idea was a Condition that gave a penalty until resolved. I had it be so you just couldn't do it again until resolving, but it could easily just be stacking instances.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:18
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Permanent XP loss is broke, that's my point. I'm not a fan of mechanics that punish the player in order to stop them from doing something, still frame it as a choice, and result in an undesirable game state for the whole table if they go ahead and do it anyways. You're probably right in the general. I'm a bit of a masochist, though, so to me a lot of the feel-bad stuff reads as a feature rather than a bug. Especially in Demon, which already has a big high-risk, high-reward theme and actually gives you a tangible (and substantial) mechanical advantage for your trouble. In Mage it definitely just feels like a roadblock, though. Same with stuff like the Gadget rules in Demon. Obviously you don't want apprentices enchanting everything in sight, but it feels more than a little lovely that the entire "guy what makes cool things" archetype is locked behind an xp paywall.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:21
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Mors Rattus posted:If it makes you feel better you can think of it as a 1-XP permanence tax, that being the cost now to replace that Willpower dot. Yeah, as others have expanded on, that's not something I'm all that excited about. I feel like this is a problem that was begging to be resolved with Conditions. I also really like Ferrinus' mitigation idea upthread. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 19:39
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A Condition that leaves you with a lower maximum Willpower and a resolution trigger of "Achieve a personal milestone" or some such would feel like an improvement, yeah.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:19
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Rand Brittain posted:It is, yeah, which is why they should just ditch it for a 1 XP cost, which has a much better bellyfeel for some weird neurological reason. (Looks at the long section in Signs of Sorcery to allow alternative payments than Willpower, which just making it XP would render impossible) ... Like the whole "You get free Reach equal to main Arcanum +1 - Practice Rating of Spell," which could also be simplified, it's an "expansion slot" in the mechanics. In 1st ed, only suckers actually paid Willpower to relinquish their spells. Making cursed items or paying some of the other esoteric prices is less game-breakingly easy in 2e, but those rules are coming.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:31
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Dave Brookshaw posted:(Looks at the long section in Signs of Sorcery to allow alternative payments than Willpower, which just making it XP would render impossible) Curse you wizards and your future knowledge!
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Aug 16, 2017 20:32
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Rand Brittain posted:Curse you wizards and your future knowledge! To not be a total goit about it, an example - SoS has a Death 3 spell to destroy a soul instead of sacrificing your own willpower dot when relinquishing.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:43
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Dave Brookshaw posted:To not be a total goit about it, an example - SoS has a Death 3 spell to destroy a soul instead of sacrificing your own willpower dot when relinquishing. Subbing in for your own WP dots has been the most obvious use for stolen souls for like forever and I can't even remember if it was suggested back in ToM.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:50
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Just go visit your local Reaper and don't ask where the soul came from.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:50
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Mors Rattus posted:Just go visit your local Reaper and don't ask where the soul came from. I still love the Proximi character from Conquering Heroes who's master Mage was having her steal souls for the sake of stealing souls at the behest of a ludicrously evil Beast who was doing it for the lulz. The souls gave the Proximi bloody soul diarrhea.
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Aug 16, 2017 21:19
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Dave Brookshaw posted:To not be a total goit about it, an example - SoS has a Death 3 spell to destroy a soul instead of sacrificing your own willpower dot when relinquishing.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:01
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Ah, the "weird, culturally specific niche descriptions" scale of character capabilities. My favourite.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:14
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The dot rating examples are goofy, not especially useful, and I will be so sad if they ever stop using them.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:16
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What book is that from, even?
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Aug 16, 2017 23:26
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I like how they decided to just make the dots go right-to-left now for no reason.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:27
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Terrorforge posted:What book is that from, even? The latest V5 playtest book.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:35
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Kurieg posted:The latest V5 playtest book. Oh phew. I saw things like mapping dots of Intelligence to specific IQ numbers and the phrase "mentally lethargic" and thought it looked dangerously V5, but since I was under the impression they'd ditched the nWoD attributes I got really scared that it was a Deviant or Scion preview.
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Aug 16, 2017 23:41
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What the gently caress. Boiling the attributes down to just physical, mental, and social was one of the good parts!!
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Aug 16, 2017 23:48
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Andunsophis Ticated is my new taxonomic classification.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:08
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Welp. Apparently someone's going to make some sort of announcement about 5E soon.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:34
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Nobody ever talks about Promethean or Mummy. Are they worth looking into? I like to shake things up a lot and run shortish games with defined endpoints rather than long-running campaigns, so I like to jump around gamelines to keep things fresh. I see that there's a Promethean demo, but as someone who has never run a game that I didn't write myself, I'm a bit skeptical of trying it with my players. And with Mummy I have no idea what I'd do to try and get a taste of it without just diving in facefirst.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:38
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Promethean is an exceptionally well-written game and a very hard one to run. 2e has improved a lot of things, but also made a lot of others pointlessly complicated or weird; it isn't bad, but it's definitely a storm of proper nouns and weird subsystems that I don't really think help the game. Mummy is basically what happens when you write an oWoD game using nWoD rules.
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Aug 17, 2017 00:41
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Terrorforge posted:Oh phew. I saw things like mapping dots of Intelligence to specific IQ numbers and the phrase "mentally lethargic" and thought it looked dangerously V5, but since I was under the impression they'd ditched the nWoD attributes I got really scared that it was a Deviant or Scion preview. pretty sure scion doesn't have dots at all
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