Comments on: Comments and thoughts on the rules so far http://microwavesushi.com/?p=18 Gaming, mostly Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:08:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: sean http://microwavesushi.com/?p=18&cpage=1#comment-9 sean Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:19:58 +0000 http://microwavesushi.com/?p=18#comment-9 Some additional thoughts: Given the tendency in the books for Thomas to accidentally use Incite Emotion when hungry, I think it might be a good idea for only the physical powers to count towards Hunger. (There is precedent for something like this with the handling of Weres, where some powers can only be used in the alternate form, which gives a limitation bonus, and some can be used any time.) I think some of my complaints regarding the skill squeeze for White Court vampires, specifically Raith vampires, is that for a competent social combatant, unlike a physical combatant, there is a real drive to have a lot of skills. For instance, a physical character can happily survive with just a high Weapons skill. Sure, there are going to be times when this is to his disadvantage, but in general he's golden. If you want someone to like you, then you pretty much have to have Rapport, as I understand it. If you want to lie to someone, you have to have deceit. Granted, there are often ways to use either to achieve your ends, but from a roleplaying perspective, there would seem to be far more disadvantages to just being competent at one. This was pretty much born out by character creation, where (on 25 skill points) after choosing Good Deceit, Discipline and Weapons (in this case), I was left with having to get Empathy (to read people and social initiative), Presence (social fortitude and how likeable you are at first impression) and Rapport (general social defence and how actively likeable I am). Obviously I had to get most of these at Fair. Possibly this is just coming from SOTC, but this doesn't exactly strike me as a competent social character. I guess we'll find out in the playtest. Some additional thoughts:
Given the tendency in the books for Thomas to accidentally use Incite Emotion when hungry, I think it might be a good idea for only the physical powers to count towards Hunger. (There is precedent for something like this with the handling of Weres, where some powers can only be used in the alternate form, which gives a limitation bonus, and some can be used any time.)

I think some of my complaints regarding the skill squeeze for White Court vampires, specifically Raith vampires, is that for a competent social combatant, unlike a physical combatant, there is a real drive to have a lot of skills.

For instance, a physical character can happily survive with just a high Weapons skill. Sure, there are going to be times when this is to his disadvantage, but in general he’s golden. If you want someone to like you, then you pretty much have to have Rapport, as I understand it. If you want to lie to someone, you have to have deceit. Granted, there are often ways to use either to achieve your ends, but from a roleplaying perspective, there would seem to be far more disadvantages to just being competent at one.

This was pretty much born out by character creation, where (on 25 skill points) after choosing Good Deceit, Discipline and Weapons (in this case), I was left with having to get Empathy (to read people and social initiative), Presence (social fortitude and how likeable you are at first impression) and Rapport (general social defence and how actively likeable I am). Obviously I had to get most of these at Fair. Possibly this is just coming from SOTC, but this doesn’t exactly strike me as a competent social character. I guess we’ll find out in the playtest.

]]> By: Scott Dorward http://microwavesushi.com/?p=18&cpage=1#comment-8 Scott Dorward Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:22:53 +0000 http://microwavesushi.com/?p=18#comment-8 Thanks for putting all this together, Sean! Thanks for putting all this together, Sean!

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