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Old 10-24-2016, 04:02 AM   #1
Terranaunt
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Default About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

I've been making a character and a couple of questions arose in the process.

Can a talent have a power modifier? What if it is not a power talent?
example: character has power talent "Chinese Elemental Talent" and mundane talent "Chi Talent".

Can a character have Abilities "alternated" to mundane talent?
example: character has three levels of mundane talent "Chi Talent", for 45 points. Character then learns an Innate Attack, full cost of 30 points, for 6 points as an "Alternative Ability, x1/5".
The intent here is that character, being a person with Chi powers, can channel his qi either to gain skill bonus from mundane talent or to "cast" an IA.


What is the more accurate way of representing the following:
the character is dead, but he is keeping himself sort-of-alive only by making daily meditations. If he stops making those "rituals", he will truly perish.
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Old 10-24-2016, 04:11 AM   #2
Mailanka
 
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terranaunt View Post
Can a talent have a power modifier? What if it is not a power talent?
example: character has power talent "Chinese Elemental Talent" and mundane talent "Chi Talent".
For example, Smooth Operator (-10% Chi)? Sure, why not?

Quote:
Can a character have Abilities "alternated" to mundane talent?
example: character has three levels of mundane talent "Chi Talent", for 45 points. Character then learns an Innate Attack, full cost of 30 points, for 6 points as an "Alternative Ability, x1/5".
The intent here is that character, being a person with Chi powers, can channel his qi either to gain skill bonus from mundane talent or to "cast" an IA.
It might be a little cheesy in that an attack is instant and then he can immediately go back to using his talent, but in principle, I see nothing wrong with this. The GM should pay attention though.

Quote:
What is the more accurate way of representing the following:
the character is dead, but he is keeping himself sort-of-alive only by making daily meditations. If he stops making those "rituals", he will truly perish.
Terminally Ill with Mitigator is probably your best bet. It won't give you "And you'll die if you stop doing your ritual." That's probably not an advantage or disadvantage, though.
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Old 10-24-2016, 04:17 AM   #3
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

Terminally Ill has the limit of one month. But some have house-ruled faster forms if only for such use as mitigators.
Though Ultra-Tech does use the basic form for cybernetic vital organs where one obviously wouldn't take weeks to die if they ceased to function.
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Old 10-24-2016, 04:45 AM   #4
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

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Originally Posted by Mailanka View Post
It might be a little cheesy in that an attack is instant and then he can immediately go back to using his talent, but in principle, I see nothing wrong with this. The GM should pay attention though.
I was thinking of necessity to wait one turn between such alterations. Either to not use any powered abilities and\or skills or to make a concentration maneuver.

Quote:
Terminally Ill with Mitigator is probably your best bet. It won't give you "And you'll die if you stop doing your ritual." That's probably not an advantage or disadvantage, though.
Hmm. Then the question moves to the exact percentage of said mitigator.
A friend of mine says it should be -80%, simply because the character in question already is making daily rituals to keep his Chi-powered abilities and skills working.

Last edited by Terranaunt; 10-24-2016 at 04:46 AM. Reason: improving my english
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Old 10-24-2016, 06:50 AM   #5
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

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Originally Posted by Terranaunt View Post
the character is dead, but he is keeping himself sort-of-alive only by making daily meditations.
How about Maintenance (B143)?

Dramatically speaking, I wouldn't think you'd really want instant death if you missed a meditation session. Maintenance can kill you on a crit fail, but it's generally a longer degradation. That gives you a chance to have the Disad actually come up in play, say when an enemy deprives you of your meditations, so you can show the trait off.

(If the trait never appears in the game, you might as well not have it. Just call it a Quirk: "Meditates daily", with the bit about being dead just being fluff.)
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Old 10-24-2016, 08:09 AM   #6
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

Using Terminally Ill with a mitigator is pretty classic for Terminally Ill ("if I don't get my medication...") but as in all cases of Terminally Ill, you need to remember that the character doesn't just have a little timer that goes on hold whenever you make your Meditation rolls or take your pills or whatever.
You are ill. You suffer from a condition that has signs and symptoms, which will get worse as that counter ticks down.

In this case being dead, missed Meditation rolls would lead to acquiring things like Bad Smell, Supernatural Features, Numb, Bad Sight as the eyes cloud over, lowered Appearance, and such, and then trading Supernatural Features and whatever current level of appearance for Appearance: Monstrous. Fragile may also be an appropriate symptom once decay has progressed enough.

If they manage to make a whole bunch of Meditation rolls with no interruptions or failures, feel free to back up on the symptoms, but I would never remove them - he's still Terminally Ill. Bad Smell can be reduced to OPH: Funky smell or even a quirk "Smells odd". Appearance might recover, but never to normal. Supernatural Features might get dialed back to Distinctive Features. Or shuffle them around. His smell might recover completely, but replace it with Hamfisted as his Numb-ness temporarily worsens. Cancer is certainly a cavalcade of constantly shifting misery, I don't see why being dead would be better.

Being Terminally Ill isn't a free ride of loaned points until you implode.
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Old 10-24-2016, 03:54 PM   #7
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

Those are house rules, not R.A.W. They make lots of sense and are written up nicely on Ravens N'Pennies web site though.
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Old 10-24-2016, 06:04 PM   #8
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

Is there a reason why no one has suggested: Dependency, meditation, daily. The 1d6 damage per hour if he skips will pretty quickly kill him.
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Old 10-25-2016, 04:36 AM   #9
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

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Is there a reason why no one has suggested: Dependency, meditation, daily. The 1d6 damage per hour if he skips will pretty quickly kill him.
That actually was my first thought. But dependency is about consumable resource which is used in process, and it raises a question about availability of the said meditation.
If we go RAW - meditation "must be made", which, in conjunction with daily need, produces [-90]. While I'm personally okay with this result - after all, character loses HP at pretty frightening rate if anything bad happens - my group is not okay with it.

Last edited by Terranaunt; 10-25-2016 at 04:41 AM.
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Old 10-25-2016, 06:06 AM   #10
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Default Re: About Chi, Talents, and Chinese Elemental Powers

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Originally Posted by starslayer View Post
Is there a reason why no one has suggested: Dependency, meditation, daily. The 1d6 damage per hour if he skips will pretty quickly kill him.
I actually considered something similar after I posted, so I'm glad you brought it up. I see no particular reason why this approach couldn't work either.
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