[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I may be misreading, but I'm getting a distinct vibe of defensiveness from your responses, as if you feel I'm attacking your work. If so, please feel at ease: I rarely comment on things that I don't like. But I'm a tinkerer at heart; when I see something like this, my instinct is to find ways to refine and expand on it — that's what I'm going for here. One side effect of that is that my comments generally take the form of critiques and challenges rather than praise; but the motivation behind it isn't to tear down what you've built, but the opposite.

Nope. And if it came off like I that I'm sorry. :-/

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Obviously I'm free to do as I wish in my campaigns; I'm not asking for permission so much as I'm asking for insight. With all due respect, “That's how I wrote it” and “extensive playtest revealed…” doesn't provide insight.

Unfortunately, much of my work is as based on numbers as it is based on experience and gut feeling. You are seeking answers to a question that I cannot give. I cannot give them because when I wrote it and playtested it, I felt that the one who pilots the ship - i.e., the who is making the skill roll to operate the vehicle - is the who who should be making the imbuement skill roll. I adjusted it to allow others to make such rolls because one of my players brought up some of your concerns (Scotty on the Enterprise actually). That is it in a nutshell. I didn't like how it worked and felt play balance was slightly askew. I put in a adjustment for said balance.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

How does the engineer not have control of the vehicle? Certainly, he doesn't control what direction the vehicle is going; but he very definitely has control of the engine. And it's in that capacity that he'd be Imbuing the vehicle with such things as better fuel efficiency or a higher top speed. Kirk doesn't ask Sulu for more speed, despite the fact that Sulu is the helmsman; he asks Scotty.

Right, but in this example Sulu would be making the actually Piloting rolls, Kirk would roll Shiphandling (the skill of operation), and Scotty would be performing engineering tasks (probably via Crewman, Mechanic, or possibly Vehicle operation skill. The latter two would be giving complimentary skill rolls and Kirk would need to be the one to make an imbument skill roll.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Put another way: Imbuements are generally about enhancing gear; but more precisely, they're abòut enhancing skills that involve gear. Whenever the Imbuements system asks you to specialize an Imbuement skill, it generally asks you to specialize by skill use. And while many of the Transportation Imbuements certainly strike me as being conceptually associated with vehicle operation skills, a few of them strike me as being more closely associated with the likes of Mechanic. In those cases, it seems to me that if anyone should suffer a -2 penalty for not being the ideal person to do the Imbuement, it would be the pilot rather than the engineer: Sulu rather than Scotty.

I could see that as an optional rule in some instances, but you'd need to clearly define what skills could use it.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

And optionally, magic spells.So you feel that the attack, defense, transportation, and hypothetical “cognitive” (i.e., sensors, communications, and computers) Imbuements are sufficient to cover everything that ought to be covered? That once the last item there is addressed, the Imbuements “system” will essentially be complete, save for the occasional introduction of an individual Imbuement here and there?

That's not a rhetorical question or an attack; I don't know if there's anything else that needs to be covered, and the system very well might be one class of Imbuements away from being “complete”. Or there may be something that I've overlooked, which is why I'm asking the question.

To be fair, I'd really have to devote more spoons than I currently possess to the question, but right off...no. I'm sure there are angles I'm not seeing. I have this idea - well, I have about 3,000 words written, so not an "idea" idea - about "crafting" imbuements where you'd have something like "Keen Weapon" (which gives a permenant bonus to damage for cutting or impaling weapons you've forged) or "Strengthen Weapon" (which would increase the HT of a weapon you've forged). Such "crafting" imbuements would let you mimic how forging magical weapons or the like seem to work in fiction or movies. It would be totally magic system independent and could serve to function for other supernatural systems as well, say, like, a way to create psionic weapons or the like. It would also be TL independent so you could create firearms, GRASERS, or whatever.