12-10-2013, 03:39 PM | #121 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
It's not the skills I'm having a problem with, I couldn't get past the powers on the first read-through. I know I said 200 points was a soft limit and not a hard limit, but seriously, I'd suggest toning him down, a bit, unless you plan on putting him in a specifically superhero version of the setting (which is perfectly fair, I just wasn't expecting that). I have some characters I've been thinking of posting, but haven't because they're still incomplete, or have things I'm not sure about. Now I'm thinking maybe I should post them, anyway.
In general, most people, even fairly powerful ones, have powers like Thoughtform Talent and/or Path/Book Adept, sometimes a little Signature Gear from the spirits, and maybe one or two other minor powers and some perks. Even the ones with lots of powers have lots of weak powers. Having more than one level per power is fairly rare, though not forbidden, and usually means you've been very lucky, or have been working on building up that power. It does help that most of your powers come from Gadgets, but it still looks a bit munchkiny, even if that's not how you meant it. How much backstory do you have for the Gadgets that 'you' have, and how 'you' got them? Also, how much backstory for how a hell raven likes you enough to become your ally? I'll put a Gadget or two that I've been working on in the next post, so as not to push this one past the character limit. Looking through it again, at least you have the skills to make fetishes, and have kept them at a relatively low level, so I can believe that, but if you seriously want to keep all those gadgets (if any of them started out as gifts from the spirits, that's acceptable, but if so, I'd like to know which, and whether you took the time to improve it/them, or if they came that way), and don't want to drop a lot of the powers, you'll need to make note of how much time you spent working on empowering them. If this is 5Earths-you 'now', on December 10, 2013, it's more believable than if this is 5Earths-you some time in, say, February or March. Also, what style do 'you' use, and is it an Effect Shaping or Energy Accumulating style? In general, I'd replace Code:
Ritual Magery (Path/Book) (3) [30] Ritual Magery 0 [5] Code:
Thoughtform Talent 3 [30] For the Blasting Rod, I'd suggest reducing most or all ofthe powers that are above one down to one. The Wizard Hat and Wizard's Robes are fine as they are, unless you want to put a Low Ceiling limitation on Flight.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
12-10-2013, 03:52 PM | #122 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
I'm not 100% sure about this one, but I'm more sure of is than I am of the writeup I have for Power rings, which I'll post part of, below:
Magic Wand (Potterverse) Path/Book Adept 3 (Time, Space, Material; Breakable (DR 2; SM -5 or -6) -20%*; Can Be Stolen, -30%; Must Have Thoughtform Talent 1+, -10%;, Must Be Chosen By Wand, -20%) [6] *The Breakable limitation should actually be -30%, but that would give a total cost reduction of -90%, rather than the maximum of -80%. Remember this when adding or removing enhancements or limitations. Notes Some wands have other properties, based on the wood they are made of, or the core material their creator imagines or places in them, as described on the Pottermore website, and its wiki. Others are more generic, simply matching the example above. While few wand-spirits have the concept of language, much less the ability to use it, many have some form of sapience, and often have personalities of their own - though they are normally quite limited in their ability to express it. The wand-spirit as a character would normally have IQ 6 to 8, No Manipulators, No Legs (Portable), and in most cases, Slave Mentality, among other appropriate disadvantages, and might be a strange sort of Ally. A wand suitable as a PC would be especially unusual and powerful. Many who have these wands also have some level of Wild Talent with the 'Emergencies Only,' 'Focused: Psi (Thoughtforms),' and usually 'Uncontrollable' limitations, and some wands require that advantage as well as or instead of Thoughtform Talent. The usual Potterverse style is Effect Shaping, and the skill is Ritual Magic (Potterverse). A wand made for an Energy Accumulating version would have two levels of Time. The Paths of Potterverse magic are: Path of Charms Path of Transfiguration Path of Jinxes, Hexes, and Curses Path of Potions Path of Items Rituals on the Path of Transfiguration often have prohibitively harsh penalties, much to the frustration of many casters. Even First Year transfigurations are likely to have penalties in excess of -10, especially if warping space is involved. Transfigurations that don't require warping space will mostly be easier - illusions may fall under Transfiguration or Charms, depending on how the creator of the ritual thinks of them. Rituals in the other Paths will mostly have defaults based on the year the novels say it should be learned, unless noted otherwise: Year 1: 0 or -1 Year 2: -1 or -2 Year 3: -2 or -3 Year 4: -3 or -4 Year 5: -4 to -6 Year 6: -6 to -8 Year 7: -8 or worse If the logic of the setting suggests that a spell should have a higher or lower default penalty than its usual year of introduction (or apparent difficulty in the books, if no year is given), the GM should feel free to adjust it. The years given are only important because they affect how hard practitioners of the style think the spell should be. Rituals on the Paths of Potions and Items do not involve wand use, and do not seem to benefit from it. While there was no 'Magic Item Creation' class in the novels, AFAICT, there clearly were magic items, and some way of producing them in large numbers. Since neither Harry, Hermione, nor Ron attended Hogwarts in Book Seven, placing a class on the creation of permanent, reusable magic items in Seventh Year would be plausible, and fit the fact that Fetish has a default penalty of -8 (placing it in Sixth Year or earlier would also work, as Harry just might not have noticed the class, since he wasn't taking it). Single-use items fall under the concept of charms (Thaumatology p139, rather than the Path of Charms), as do potions. Popular belief among many fans has it that Ancient Runes and/or Arithmancy are involved in the creation of magic items, the invention of new spells, or both, and thus Symbol Drawing (any alphabet) and Fortune-Telling (Numerology) are Complementary skills for Ritual Magic (Potterverse), and the Paths derived from it - the Path of Items, especially. Because so many fans don't know that Arithmancy is supposed to be a class in numerology, Mathematics is also a Complementary skill, and because Astronomy (probably Observational) is a core class, both it and Fortune-Telling (Astrology) may serve as Complementary skills. Potter-style casters may take advantage of the Decanic modifiers (GURPS Thaumatology pp83-86 & 248-252), if they are aware of them. Power Ring (Common) Advantages Path/Book Adept 4 (Time 2, Space, Material; Nuisance Effect (Obvious: Green Glow), -5%) [38] (May need to change this, per discussion here, despite this not being a RPM system.) Perks Active Thoughtform Creation [1] The Gadget Limitations vary from ring to ring (some are more destructible than others, for example), as do the skills, if any, programmed into it. Unless the skills are covered under Modular Abilities, no other advantages are absolutely required, apart from possibly a limited form of Altered Time Rate, for faster casting (probably not going there).
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. Last edited by Prince Charon; 12-10-2013 at 04:02 PM. |
12-11-2013, 03:41 AM | #123 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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And Can Be Stolen should be -15%. B117: "Halve the value of the limitation if the gadget will not immediately work for the thief" which IMO follows from Must Be Chosen By Wand. |
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12-11-2013, 04:00 AM | #124 | |||||||||
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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12-11-2013, 09:04 PM | #125 | ||||||||
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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Having lots of powers, lots of levels, or both, is going to attract attention, as is having a Hell-raven girlfriend - speaking of whom, do you have a character sheet for her? Power attracts adventure, because the spirits want people to act in-genre (not that they all agree on what the genre is), and if you have that many points worth of powers (as opposed to point in skills, mundane advantages, or Luck - which you may want to take), they're paying more attention to you, than they are to most other people. Weirdness Magnet (or variants thereof, like the Murder Magnet disad that I though was in GURPS Mysteries, but apparently isn't - it's the disad that defines amateur detectives like Jessica Fletcher) is not uncommon, among those with a lot of points in powers, or especially high magical skills. The majority, the 20 to 50 point NPCs with only 2 - 5 points of powers, will be mostly ignored unless they go out of there way to gain more power, either directly, or through training up their mystical skills. Some do, some just go back to talking on forums, and only engaging in 'safe' experiments with what little power they have. 'You', on the other hand, set out to make yourself particularly interesting. If I wanted to say anything else, I've forgotten between all the distractions of living with other people, and strange automated phone calls at eleven in the bloody evening, while I'm trying to type this reply.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. Last edited by Prince Charon; 12-11-2013 at 09:12 PM. |
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12-12-2013, 12:47 PM | #126 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. |
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12-12-2013, 06:15 PM | #127 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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On another note, I've been thinking about Energy Accumulating styles, and how Ritual Path Magic might differ from other EA styles. RPM is an improvisational style, like Symbol-Drawing styles are. You can do anything you can think of, as long as you have the power and the right Paths (or Symbols, or Words, or Realms, or...), and you don't take a skill penalty for doing it. I'm not even sure you can spend points on RPM rituals, or if there'd be any point. I've also been thinking of the difference between improvisational and non-improvisational styles, and whether all EA styles are improvisational, or not. The question is important, because I've been thinking about whether to charge an Unusual Background for improvisational styles, or not, and how much it should be, or if I should just declare all styles to be improvisational, since all rituals in a Path default to that Path, in an Effect Shaping style. One thought I had, is that if you don't have a ritual noted on your character sheet, and use a non-improvisational style, you need to roll against the appropriate Path to see if you remember how it goes, with a penalty one worse than the Effect Shaping penalty for the ritual (so, for example, if you've never used Fetish, and are trying to recall how it goes, the penalty to remember all the details well enough to cast it is -9, but you only have to think about it for a few seconds to know what to do, not the hour it usually takes to perform the ritual), while in an improvisational style, you just set it up and go. Possibly, in a non-improvisational EA style, you spend a Perk to get eight of them, like Dabbler. This seems a bit clumsy. I could say that all styles are improvisational, or that all EA styles are improvisational (in which case I really need to define that UB cost), but I don't really like that. Thoughts?
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
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12-12-2013, 07:33 PM | #128 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
Well, with RPM, there *is* a perk to improve spell casting in a *specific* type of ritual. Like, a set Path Effect for a given spell effect.
It's in the e-Splat for RPM, and Likely (?) in Monster Hunters as well... And really, RPM includes a set of rules to *price* Energy Accumulation magic. As a GM, one is well within their rights to alter the Paths to suit their campaign. Given the free-wheeling nature of "magic" as Infopunk earth settles, however... Like, my good friend "Groggy" Oxnard may well have RPM as written in the e-Splat. Our Brony working up the "real" Thaumatology skill in-setting may well personally cast with Paths based on the Elements of Harmony, but he's working on being able to identify and perhaps reverse engineer someone else's "ZOMG REEL MAGICK FROM A BOOK AT THE MALL." From chats with Bob Schroeck, the homebrew campaign that became GURPS Supers had a "Grand Unified Theory of Magic." This would be similar. So, imagine, if you will, that the extant different flavors of magic are merely how each different character can best use their magic. The "classic" spell casters like rotes that they can just rattle off to get magic to work. The "Powers as Magic" types are either proper psis, given the setting's stated underpinnings, or folks who "Just use" their minor abilities. Presumably, if anyone from the Five Earths go into the wider IW cosmology, they may well have to "rebuy" their magic to include the "Psi" Power source modifier instead of RAW's "Magic." |
12-13-2013, 09:46 PM | #129 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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EDIT: I suppose I could give it a -5% to -10% 'Psi' or 'Meta-Psi' limitation, but then again, Magery doesn't have a 'Magic, -10%' limitation, either.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. Last edited by Prince Charon; 12-13-2013 at 09:51 PM. |
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12-13-2013, 10:51 PM | #130 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: Five Earths, All in a Row
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Well, effectively, Magery already has a virtual "power source" disad for Magic. Changing it to Psi would be a net +0% change |
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Tags |
5 earths in a row, alternative earths, infinite worlds |
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