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Old 05-12-2009, 11:56 PM   #31
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2
Yes I mean Perks and no they aren't. It's possible to modify a cheap Advantage down to 1 point or to get a single level of an Advantage that costs 1 per, but Perks are not Advantages, and Quirks are not Disadvantages. The game mechanics are different. That is why there are no multi-leveled Perks and Perks can never take enhancements and limitations and why Quirks are not limited by the Disad limit.
B.100 expressl defines perks as advantages. Quirks (B.162) have a notation that they aren't [i]necessarily[/i[ disadvantages, though earlier incarnations of the rules said they were.
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Old 09-28-2022, 04:41 AM   #32
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

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Old 09-28-2022, 06:19 PM   #33
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
I'd let some of those fly, but not all. In order:
Enemy's battle plans sound reasonable, although this is one place where players would be wise to not rely too heavily on things. Battle plans are too contingent on circumstances for alternate-reality plans to be totally trustworthy. Likewise on the quartermaster's ledger.
You do not even have to go to alt reality lengths...battle plans change all the time.

The French (via the Belgians)got a copy of the German invasion plans in late 1939 early 1940 via a crashed airplane and an officer who failed operational security. (A close on replay of The Schiefiein plan from WW1)

Fears that the plans had been compromised caused the Germans to radically alter their plan so that 'the big wheel through Belgium' was effectively a feint. The killing blow came through the 'impassible' Ardennes Forest to the Coast cutting off the BEF and the vast majority of the best French troops (including most of the motorized and tank forces).

Robert E. Lee planned to take Harrisburg, PA. to split the Union and end the war. Three or four days later he found himself in a small town called Gettysburg fighting for the life of his army. This major change of plans was driven by a large failure of intelligence gathering by his calvary. It is not too often that SEVEN Army Corps make a stealth roll by enough to (more or less) sneak up on someone (trust me the minus for 100,000+ men is significant).

The question becomes can you get a plan that is timely enough to be accurate but with enough lead time on your side to adjust your battle plan to take advantage of the information gained. That can be some pretty precise timing.

Moltke the Elder said 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy.'

Trust me Moltke was an optimist. The majority of plans start falling about about when troops start marching and long before 'first contact'.
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Last edited by Witchking; 09-29-2022 at 01:29 AM.
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Old 09-29-2022, 05:51 PM   #34
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

There are a lot of potential point crocks and I think mod points for accessories can absolutely be one of them. As a GM I'm extremely careful about accessories. The piece of equipment's effects, as a built in part of the character, really aught to be a mild convenience and on par with any other 1 cp advantage.

E.G. You could probably build a 1 cp burning innate attack designed almost exclusively for lighting small objects on fire out of combat and it's overall utility would be similar to, or even better than, a lighter. So Accessory: Lighter [1] seems totally fine to me.

On the other hand, Accessory: Small Backpack (typical weight 3 lbs, carries up to 40 lbs of equipment), costs 1 cp, but gives a ST 10 person all the benefits of Payload 20 (Exposed -50%, Counts Towards Weight Limit -20%*) [6 cp]. Even if you assume that things counting towards weight limit is worth twice that you'd lower the cost down to 4 cp and that's four times the accessory cost. So that is not an accessory I would ever allow because the ability to carry 40 lbs on your back, unprotected by your defensive traits, and counting towards your weight limit, costs a ST 10 person 4 cp, not 1.

Part of that goes back to another rule of thumb I have when designing things: when there is a specific advantage designed to do what I'm looking for, and a way I can cheese some other advantage (like modular points) to do it to as well, use the advantage that is explicitly designed to do it or find appropriate advantages or disadvantages to alternate build to justify the difference in point costs. In other words: Snatcher determines how much it should cost to be able to conjure up basic equipment. If you can get lower than the cheapest version of Snatcher via another advantage, then you better come up with a reason why that second build is that much worse.

Part of this is because advantages that are specifically designed to do a particular thing, like snatcher for conjuring equipment, have mechanics that are designed for gaming out the effect they're trying to model, while cheese builds often look great on paper but don't actually have game mechanics that are well designed for handling gaming out the effect in play. I.e. Snatcher will play better then mod points (accessories), for example because it has more clearly defined rules for what you can and cannot do with it and how, with relevant limitations.

But in the end, it's your game (assuming your the GM), you could just change Snatcher's base cost if you wanted, or add another tier of limiters if you want to go past -80% or whatever you feel is fair.
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Old 09-29-2022, 06:05 PM   #35
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

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Originally Posted by Witchking View Post
Moltke the Elder said 'No plan survives first contact with the enemy.'

Trust me Moltke was an optimist. The majority of plans start falling about about when troops start marching and long before 'first contact'.
Maybe the plan was screwed up long before the first contact and that first contact is merely the thing that puts the final bullet into the plan. It isn't nearly as pithy to say "No plan survives and by the time we meet the enemy the plan is hopelessly screwed up and doesn't survive contact with the enemy"
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Old 09-29-2022, 09:37 PM   #36
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

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Originally Posted by Žorkell View Post
Maybe the plan was screwed up long before the first contact and that first contact is merely the thing that puts the final bullet into the plan. It isn't nearly as pithy to say "No plan survives and by the time we meet the enemy the plan is hopelessly screwed up and doesn't survive contact with the enemy"
No doubt Moltke was wittier, pithier, and an immeasurably better strategist than I.

Millions of 'draft' plans die before being appointed The Plan (famous The Plans like Plan XVII, War Plan Orange, The Anaconda Plan, etc).

However I merely point out that in many cases warplans (especially poor to middling ones) have a very short space between 'the wheels have started turning' and 'the wheels have started coming off'.

Just pointing out that in addition to the point crock issues and the not RAW issues that getting A plan does not mean that the plan obtained is either useful or current. The 'this plan is from alternate universe 369' is there in the GM toolbox but IMHO really isn't needed.
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Old 09-30-2022, 09:08 AM   #37
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

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Originally Posted by Witchking View Post
Just pointing out that in addition to the point crock issues and the not RAW issues that getting A plan does not mean that the plan obtained is either useful or current. The 'this plan is from alternate universe 369' is there in the GM toolbox but IMHO really isn't needed.
Yeah. I agree. Even besides the fact that RAW explicitly states that information is only available in the forms of textbooks reports and other commonly available things like that, even if the GM decided for some reason to OK putting enough cosmic modifiers to bypass that, hyper specific very non-fungible pieces of information like the correct battle plans or tomorrows lottery numbers or the villains diary would all require absurd penalties for being so hyper specific (even if you could make an argument that you could correctly envisage them.) And if your snatcher has create and a bunch of cosmic modifiers on it then your GM decided he wanted you to be a god and you're playing a specific type of game, so it's not really worth debating.
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Old 09-30-2022, 11:55 AM   #38
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

Last time I GM'd a game with Snatcher the player who had it pulled a lucky idol (a few pounds of jade that gave the bearer Extraordinary Luck) and never let it go to summon something else... She could have, but I told her there was no way to get it back once she replaced it. It ended up costing something like [40] for a 3 pound gaudy object granting a [30] advantage. But players get to make these kinds of choices.
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Old 10-02-2022, 08:58 AM   #39
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Default Re: Why Take Snatcher?

I had a player take it in what was supposed to be a hard sf campaign. So I took a page from The Subtle Knife and had it let wraiths through.
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