[RPM] Dancing Shield

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Heh. I don't find either broken. My only argument on the subject is that if you have a munchkin player, that you shouldn't permit said munchkin to have access to a flexible power system; they will abuse it. RPM is no more subject to abuse than Alternate Form, Cinematic Skills, Modular Ability, Spells-as-Skills, Talent and so on and so forth.

Yeah pretty much this. ANYTHING can be abused in a game system like GURPS. It assumes the players and GM(s) are working together - not against each other. I don't run games for people like that nor do I play in games with GMs who consider players to be naught more than pen-and-paper gladiators.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Would it be crazytown to say that you wind up (say) with a projected skill of 10 plus some sort of bonus for margin of success? Notionally, Path-19 would give Skill-19 on a flat roll.

Another way to go would be to assume something like 10, plus the bonus you'd get from relative skill level (so if you have studied Shield and have it at DX+2, you'd start at 12), and then take -1 to your Path roll for every +1 of skill, so a more-skilled dancing shield is harder to cast.

So if you had Path-19 you could drop your skill by 6 to Path-13 (83% success) and give your Dancing Shield a skill of 16 for Block 11 plus shield defense bonus.

If you were also a shield expert at DX+4, the above would give you +2 more to block (from +4 to skill) for Block-13 plus shield DB.

That gives people who have invested points in a regular skill some benefit, forces an active trade of skill-for-result (like Deceptive Attack), which is pretty GURPS-like, and gives a variable effect. More time (for more skill) might also thus be an effective bonus, etc.

I'm not saying the rule is bad or Ghostdancer and RPK are wrong - as Ghostdancer pointed out, they've been playing with RPM for a LONG time. But there are ways in GURPS to play around with this result for other games styles that might give some desired results.

You could do this Doug. It's a valid way to work it out. To much extra steps for me but it's workable. I do think one thing people are forgetting is that RPM first appeared in MH1 and the MH line starts its characters at 400 points so skill 16+ isn't uncommon for many or even all Path skills. Campaigns with RPM and lower point values are not going to play out the same.

A final thought - the complaints about RPM casters have a omniskill or whatnot are kind of baseless. After all a caster could simply cast a spell to give himself a modular ability slot through altered traits or a huge bonus to a single skill (+5 to a single non-Wildcard skill is a mere 16 energy).

[PK]

I understand the complaint, and agree that Anarexes et al make a good point. With a system as flexible as RPM, it's possible for casters to find ways to overshadow other players. However, I'd like to emphasize something: The GM is the one who determines when it's right (or not) to use the "Path skill" rule that I mentioned. It's merely one more bit of advice and guidance for the GM to use when it seems like it'd be helpful.

I intended it for things like, say, a spiderwebbing spell. What's the effective ST of the webs? Use Path skill. That makes sense and provides sane results, so yay. I did not intend it for things like, say, a "give me this skill spell," because that's obviously a buff and would use Altered Traits. (You wouldn't use Altered Traits for a spiderweb because obviously a certain degree of stickiness is going to be inherent to that web, and you need to know what that would be.)

IMO, a Dancing Shield falls in between those two options, and I'd be comfortable giving it Shield equal to Path skill. It produces a result that I think is balanced.

However, if the same PC later said, "Okay, now I want to make a magic calculator that's a master of Mathematics and Physics," I'd let him do so with Lesser Create Mind, give the calculator an IQ of (8 + 1 for every full two points of casting success), and have him raise skills from that IQ using Bestows a Bonus.

RPM is a toolkit, just like GURPS, which makes it trickier at first until you're comfortable with it. Once you are, I think you'll find that it gives both the player and the GM tremendous freedom to come up with spells that work well for the campaign.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by PK

RPM is a toolkit, just like GURPS, which makes it trickier at first until you're comfortable with it. Once you are, I think you'll find that it gives both the player and the GM tremendous freedom to come up with spells that work well for the campaign.

I found this out early on and never looked back.

[Kalzazz]

You can grant skills using Altered Traits? I somehow completely and totally missed that

How does this work?

How does it interact/not interact with bestowing bonuses?



For the record I haven't felt RPM to be to terribly broken and love love using it (as all my comments on the board about it tend to suggest) but boy I absolutely would have been driven insane and probably not be love love using it (or using it at all) if not for all the great help from the forum

[PK]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

You can grant skills using Altered Traits? I somehow completely and totally missed that

How does this work?

How does it interact/not interact with bestowing bonuses?

Ack, no! I had a momentary crossed wire while typing that up, sorry. I meant to write Bestows a Bonus. Anything involving improving skills should use BAB. (I've been tempted to say that adding a skill must be done by using Altered Traits to give it at the attribute level, for 1, 2, 4, or 8 energy, and then BAB should be used to go past that -- but that's too fiddly to be an official rule, IMO.)

[Kalzazz]

I had always assumed that adding a skill is impossible, you can just use BAB to raise it from your default

To bad the 'Altered Traits to Grant a Skill at Attribute' isnt actually a rule, I would love it