06-12-2014, 07:26 AM | #21 | ||
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Land of the Britons
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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The potentially divergent flavour of many of the henchmen professions also lets you ignore both avenues and instead take a U turn mid-progression towards another area of speciality. Which may sound pointless/redundant, but the number of times I've seen players start with one mindset, but then quickly adopt a different role or style once they begin playing a character and "get to know them" is high. Giving a player as much flexibility and scope for improvement as you can is a very useful thing. Although it isn't too hard to steer away from the core professions if that's what you want to do when levelling, it does seem to be easier to do that when you don't have the touchstone of the professions name hanging over you choices and shaping your thought process. But again, like Antoni, I do have a bias towards henchmen.
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06-12-2014, 07:42 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Yorkshire, UK
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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The Power-Ups are defined for full 250 point Hero Templates, some of which can be built from different combinations of Henchmen Templates. An Archer might be a Scout or a Knight (Niche Substitution table, DF15.p5)- which Power-Ups can he use? How about a Brute+Veteran? can they use Power-Ups for Assassin, Barbarian, or Knight? or maybe Swashbuckler (Veteran) or Unholy Knight (Brute)? |
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06-12-2014, 09:24 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Land of the Britons
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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Henchmen templates/lenses are basically half professions, acting as either a bolt-on for extra versatility, or feeding into a more specialised profession/s. If you do the latter you just level up towards the complete template of your chosen profession (transitioning the henchmen profession into a full profession). The multi-class lenses in DF3 are the same as Henchmen, but are much more narrowly focused and clearly intended for adding to full professions (where as exotic races and lower point characters are better to start with Henchmen or multi-classed Henchmen). Once you've acquired enough abilities and attributes to count as a "full" profession (and have paid the UB cost if there are any) you can get any of that professions Power-ups. As henchmen don't have access to power-ups anyway, they basically serve as a neat package to improve yourself and either be swapped for or act as a stepping stone towards the professions which will give power-ups. There's a little more to it, but ultimately the idea is that you can diversify as much as you like - but the overheads become steadily more costly, making it harder to fill too many niche at once with access to power-ups. Although overly broad generalists can spread out into lots of half templates and gather up a huge variety of skills and abilities - but obviously at the cost of not having as many shiny specialist's toys, which is (imo) how it should be.
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06-12-2014, 09:41 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Yorkshire, UK
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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How do you define what traits qualify you for each level (incomplete/half/full) for a given profession 'slot'? Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this isn't a perfectly good and workable mechanism, especially with the great Henchmen/Lens choices. However, given we've gotten here from whether a Mystic Archer (a [0 point] Lens on the Scout Template) can use Scout Power-Ups, and do they invade the Scout Niche - your rules seem to add a lot more complexity that would be needed those questions - and in fact your rules probably make a Mystic Archer a Half-Scout/Half-Imbuement-Guy anyway? |
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06-12-2014, 10:02 AM | #25 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
If your aim is to play DF as close to "the rules as written" as possible, then the knot is cut by what the rules actually say:
Adding New Abilities (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level, pp. 42-43): "Power-Ups: Treat power-ups (p. 38) as part of the relevant template for delvers who start their career in that profession. Lenses don't allow power-ups." Thus, once a scout, always a scout, and you have to buy scout power-ups. This is optionally mitigated by Changing Professions (p. 42).However, Power-Ups Revisited (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen, p. 41) offers the player the option of picking power-ups that match either the character's base template or an add-on lens, and sticking with that choice forever once made. That would be my personal recommendation here. Mystic archers amount to scout-mystic knights, and I'd let the player decide whether to go with scout power-ups or mystic knight power-ups, and then lock in that decision forever after. Of course, the GM may prefer to build a custom power-ups list that blends the two; see Power-Ups for Henchmen (Henchmen, p. 11). Do remember that all of the above sources explicitly allow choices of abilities from the base templates associated with both professions of a character like this. Limits are on post-template power-ups – the cool abilities available only with points earned in play. For instance, a barbarian-wizard is restricted to barbarian power-ups unless the GM permits the player to switch to wizard power-ups in lieu of those or creates a blended barbarian-wizard power-ups list . . . but in all of those cases, the player can spend earned points on anything on the basic barbarian template or the basic wizard template.
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06-12-2014, 10:16 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Land of the Britons
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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The first is a ruling from the question "what happens when I multi-class", that basically was "you can multi-class as much as you like, but you need to meet the minimum requirements for if you had started as that profession to get the second professions power-ups". The house rule comes about from the realisation that once you've passed a certain point, its very very easy to technically count as a multitude of other professions, or at least can do so with incredibly little investment. As this would pretty much undermine the premise of niche protection of power-ups, I ruled that each addition profession you multi-class into costs steadily more UB. That's pretty much it, everything else is just to identify piecemeal progression and lenses rather than full investment that actually grant power-ups. I hadn't intended to give any additional solution for the whole Mystic Archer thing (I already weighed in on that) other than to point out that henchmen lenses are a good alternative if you so desire. EDIT: After seeing Kromms highlighting of the rules above, I notice that technically it's two house rules - but only because I allowed multi-classing before I had DF3 to use those rules, so I had to make a ruling on it before I had the 'official' ones. I had originally changed my game over from d&d, where certain characters were very clearly multi-classed, it seemed more appropriate once I did get DF3 to allow for more scope when levelling into other professions. Considering we're almost at a 500cp average now, its worked out quite well and has allowed a fun blend of powers. Ultimately, as others have pointed out, this is GURPS - and with so many alternate and optional rules you might want to toggle and try, as well as the (fairly common, seemingly) practice of taking a pre-built package like DF and expanding it with other elements... well it aint surprising you quickly get into 'eye-balling' territory. I mean, the Mystic Knight and Archer are (as far as I'm aware) still technically not even 'canon' within the DF line (as they're all from pyramid articles) so we're already into speculation and conjuncture by this point.
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06-12-2014, 10:59 AM | #27 | ||||
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Shangri-La
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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Also in part because, just like during initial character creation, the player can make the conscious choice to create a character who fills a completely empty niche in the party, or one who overlaps with an existing PC in some way. And of course, not all overlap is bad ... having a party with two awesome archers isn't going to ruin anything, any more than a party with both a Knight and a Swashbuckler will, as long as each one has a few abilities the other doesn't. In the case of the Scout and Mystic Archer, the overlap is "awesome archery," the difference is wilderness skills vs. magical abilities. Quote:
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"Every Dungeon Fantasy template effectively has hidden features that grant access to capabilities that are off-limits to most people while excluding traits that are normally accessible to anyone. For instance, the wizard template doesn’t list the Fit advantage; therefore, Fit isn’t a standard wizard power-up, despite being quite mundane. [...] "Thus,these power-ups are meant for delvers who start their career in a profession." So it's not a misinterpretation of the RAW to assume that niche protection is intended to create some walls ... our group generally chooses to implement it differently, but that's explicitly a house rule on our part. Quote:
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06-12-2014, 11:03 AM | #28 | ||||||
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Shangri-La
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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So if I were to write an official list of power-ups, it would be Option 3... most or all of the Scout's archery abilities, with none of the wilderness ones, and a few selected from the Mystic Knight list. In fact, I think I said in the article to add Energy Reserve and Eldritch Talent to the template's list ... I should have also said to drop the irrelevant ones. Likewise with the Mystic Swordsman ... the list would be similar to the Swashbuckler's, but get rid of the ones that require Luck (which is no longer a core part of the template), and add a few Imbuement-related ones (though not enough to totally eclipse the Mystic Knight, whose primary focus is Imbuements). Quote:
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06-12-2014, 11:21 AM | #29 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
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06-12-2014, 11:41 AM | #30 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Shangri-La
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Re: [DF] Mystic Archer Powerups
Heh, oh yeah, there is it. Someone (quite possibly me) must have read that and subconsciously incorporated into our "house/optional rules in use" ... and then promptly forgotten where it came from.
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