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Old 10-17-2021, 10:10 AM   #31
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
<shrug> It may be in a 4e book but it was written for 3e and was not re-written de novo for 4e. I suppose that's the root of most complaints about the book.
Agree, but I don't think it's the specific issue here. It would have been problematically vague even in terms of 3e.


Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
Again, here's my replacement spell. I had to correct the duration after rereading the description of "Costs Fatigue;" I thought it might be off.

Mimic Skill (Spell, IQ/VH): Information; Resisted by Will. ...
That seems quite well constructed in terms of rules mechanics. Maybe not attractive for every campaign perhaps.
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Old 10-17-2021, 12:05 PM   #32
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Also when we realistically think about choking: does choking on tear gas literally mean "all I can do is fall down?"

You can't even take a step?

I'm pretty sure if you're choking on a piece of food you can still in theory change posture (stand up) and walk around, it's just very distracting/difficult.

Seems more realistic to treat choking as being stunned (like from a major wound) where all you can do is take the "do nothing" maneuver.

You don't get a "step" during a "do nothing" but if you can still use retreats on your active defenses that could be used to get around, just retreat against imaginary attacks.

IE "I'm doing an escaping parry against the piece of shrimp grappling my esophagus" = 1 step in any direction.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
If this is too much of a copy and paste for the forums, I'm happy to delete the post, but I am puzzled about the intent for Steal Skill.

It takes a minute to cast: is the caster grappling the subject?
That's what "touch the subject and hold on to him" sounds like to me.

"Steal (Attribute)" has the same phrasing...

following them, the "Steal Youth" spell conversely mentions...
subject must either be willing or totally helpless; the caster must touch the
subject
I couldn't tell you what the difference is, or if there is even intended to be a difference between SY reqs and SA/SS

Youth only requires "touch" not "hold on to"... plus since it doesn't say "for the entire casting time" like the preceding spells, it's possible to read SY as only requiring a momentary touch at some point during the 1-hour casting time as opposed to an entire 60 minutes worth of touching?

If we look earlier in the Necromantic College section (M150) to Steal Energy / Steal Vitality, these two spells have identical phrasing as Steal Youth. So I would expect conversions of either of these spells to work in the same way.

Thaumatology: Sorcery pg 22 tries to emulate "Steal Vitality" via the "Leech" advantage used in GURPS powers. It is phrased:
subject must be either willing or completely helpless. You must t ouch him constantly
That's not exactly how Leech works in Powers though: Leech just requires ongoing contact: a non-helpeless unwilling victim can still be leeched so long as you can sustain a grapple during that time.

Powers 96 says "maintain ongoing contact with your victim; a brief touch isn’t enough. In combat, you must grapple or pin him –"

Seems like you can ignore "or pin" because grappling is a prereqs for pinning (you can't maintain a pin if someone isn't grappled...)

Grappling is just said to be "trivial if he’s unconscious or otherwise helpless" which is true (unless of course they're slippery, or very small, or it's dark and you can't see them?)


Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
It says "neither character can do anything for [the one minute] duration." How does the caster prevent the subject from acting?
That seems overly literal to me. Clearly the caster IS doing something (casting the spell) so at bare minimum it should say "do anything ELSE".

Plus even if you had a subject tied up, they're still doing the act of "thinking" which you couldn't really prevent without knocking them out on top of it.

I think we should view this in context of how this kind of phrase gets used elsewhere in the book...

M73 (Smoke)
Until it dissipates, it has the effect of tear gas (anyone failing a HT roll is unable to do anything but cough and weep).
If we look in basic set for the effects of tear gas

B416 "choking and partial blindness for tear gas, etc. See Afflictions (p. 428) for descriptions of the most common effects"
B437 "tear gas is both a respiratory agent (with one set of effects) and a vision-based agent (with other effects)."
B439 As a respiratory agent, it has no delay and a HT-2 roll to resist, and causes coughing (see Afflictions, p. 428). As a vision-based agent, it has no delay and a HT-2 roll to resist, and causes blindness.
Blindness/weeping is more about impeding what you sense, so I think the respiratory impact is the key here.

Clearly there's some inconsistency about tear gas (probably realistic considering there might be different types with different intensities, not to mention differing impacts based on proximity).

B428 defines "coughing" (what M73 and B439 say tear gas does) as merely irritating: it definitely doesn't prevent you from doing anything except use Stealth, it's an IQ and DX penalty.

Choking, however, is incapacitating. "You are unable to breathe or speak. You may do nothing but drop."

These are one of those situations where (and I'm sure some ability stats it) it'd probably make sense as a two-tier affliction (coughing as basic effect on HT fail, choking if you fail the HT roll by 5)

Here we see you can do at least one extra thing: "drop". B428 allows chokers to drop, which is more than the "do anything but cough and week" that M73 mentions for smoke.

Coughing and Choking are actually pretty different if you think about it: coughing is probably a lot more audible than choking, no? Like if you were trying to locate your ally, you'd probably hear them coughing loudly and get to their location faster than if they were choking, because people can choke pretty silently.


Quote:
Originally Posted by JulianLW View Post
Also, is that minimum cost of 10 an error? Am I missing errata for this? What if the subject only has one point in the skill?
Then I guess it's a better investment to target people with high skills and not go around casually using it on low-skill people.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post
Daze is a prerequisite for Steal Skill. Looking at Daze, I would suggest that it provides the explanation you seek.

While effectively a house rule, a reasonable interpretation would be that Daze is a prerequisite for Steal Skill because the Steal Skill spell incorporates a Daze effect within it.
Daze has a HT roll to resist the effect though, so I would say a more reasonable interpretation is probably something like "you're expected to cast Daze first to ready the subject, then cast Steal Skill while they're dazed".

M134 mentions "successful resistance to a spell, causes the subject to snap out of the daze".

M158 says "The outcome of the struggle (i.e., the resistance roll) remains unknown until the casting is complete" so the casting of Steal Skill shouldn't break the daze unless they pass the Will roll.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
the caster is just as helpless as the target while casting the spell,
the only difference being that the caster has paid the FP cost
and can break off before the spell is cast by aborting.
Pretty sure you don't pay the FP until the casting is completed, so if you break it off early for whatever reason then you don't lose any energy.

There could be some exceptions in the case of "burning HP for energy" though (I think there was a mod ruling on that?) because of weirdness that could cause regarding the casting penalty causing spells to fail (costing 1 energy instead of full energy, which only crit fails and normal fails on info spells cause)

Last edited by Plane; 10-17-2021 at 12:44 PM.
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Old 10-17-2021, 12:40 PM   #33
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Actually it says the "results" of the Resistance Roll are unknown until the end of the minute.
The roll would take place at casting as usual
"as usual" would be at the end of the casting time though, so it's basically just reiterating standard procedure

I don't know of any spells where resistance rolls get made DURING the casting (always after it's completion).

The only outlier I can remember is in regard to when defining energy costs before/after the casting/roll.
1) cast spell
2) decide energy cost
3) make skill roll
4) spend energy
But in the case of missile spells it seems to swap it around
1) cast spell
2) make skill roll
3) decide energy cost
3) spend energy
M7 (general successes)
On a success, mark off the spell’s energy cost against your FP or HP
..
there is never an energy cost if
you get a critical success
M7 (general failures)

If success would have cost energy, you lose one energy point; otherwise, you lose nothing.
..
Exception:
You must pay the full energy cost for an Information spell even on a failure
..
On a critical failure, you must spend the full energy cost
M11 (melee)
roll against spell skill at the end of the final turn of concentration, and pay the energy cost
M12 (missile)
On a success, you may invest one or more points of energy
So basically you determine the baseline energy cost while casting (if there are variable amounts, based on parameters) but since you don't know the final energy cost until you actually roll the skill, you don't end up paying those costs until the skill roll determines what the costs will be.

Missile spells however, suspends the choice ("may" invest, not "must") of spell parameters (how big is your fireball) until the roll is made.

Presumably "one or more" means "not zero" though, so you need to do at least one. But there's basically no risk of throwing away 3 energy meant for a 3d fireball if your roll failed: you only lose 1 energy for the 1d fireball.

Getting back to "steal skill", I wuold assume that you would have to determine your intended skill (and how many points of it you want to take) and resulting energy cost at the start of casting.

For example: "I want to steal 20 skill points" costs 20 energy. If you crit-fail your roll then you lose 20 energy. Crit fails are what matter since normal fails just lose 1 energy regardless of the full cost.

If you need to decide on targeting 20 skill points at the start of casting, then you're at risk of 20 energy throughout (less likely to abandon your casting)

if however (like a missile spell) you can wait until the last minute to decide on your energy costs (ie after your skill roll) then you're only risking the minimum cost (10 energy) on a crit fail, since you can wait to see if you crit fail or not before deciding your effect/energy.

I don't really think magic is meant to be done that way, it makes it a lot less scary. The effect of "Spell is cast on caster (if harmful)" is much scarier if you have to decide up-front you're making a 10d damage spell. If you can wait until after you roll (after you know if you crit-failed or succeeded) to decide whether the spell does 1d or 10d then it's a lot less scary.
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Old 10-17-2021, 05:55 PM   #34
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Pretty sure you don't pay the FP until the casting is completed, so if you break it off early for whatever reason then you don't lose any energy.
Usually. The Steal Skill spell notes "The caster may abort his casting at any time; the energy is still spent."
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Old 10-17-2021, 06:51 PM   #35
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane;2400048
But in the case of missile spells it seems to swap it around
[INDENT
1) cast spell
2) make skill roll
3) decide energy cost
3) spend energy[/INDENT]
.
Missile Spells are unique in that you can decide to spend energy and build your Missile on a per Turn basis.

For example:You cast Fireball and put 3 energy in it on the first Turn (You probably take any discount for high skill then too). Then on the 2nd Turn you can decide to take an Attack Action and throw it or spend another Turn building it up (and spending the energy for that then).

You may say that you spend the energy on the Turn you decide to cast the Spell but Missile Spells have multiple decision Turns possible.
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Old 10-17-2021, 08:04 PM   #36
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
<shrug> It may be in a 4e book but it was written for 3e and was not re-written de novo for 4e. I suppose that's the root of most complaints about the book.
IIRC, they wanted to get it out the door ASAP, and Kromm didn't get enough (any?) time with the final version to fix things. Thaumatology took longer, and thus is better. I'm not sure if there's currently enough customer interest in a new edition of Magic for SJ Games to make one, but some sort of Errata/Companion book might work.
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Old 10-18-2021, 04:13 PM   #37
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Default Re: How is Steal Skill supposed to work?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
Usually. The Steal Skill spell notes "The caster may abort his casting at any time; the energy is still spent."
Huh... good point... this is unusual for a spell. Can't find another case like it.

Aborting casting is usually no-fee I think, per M8's "no penalty". I think Steal Skill is literally the only spell which mentions abortion policy.

- -

The "when do you spend the energy" question also overlaps that whole problem w/ burning HP (instead of FP) since the choice to do that penalizes the roll, yet you don't know how much HP you're going to burn (full for success or crit fail or info fail, 1 for normal failure, zero for crit success) until you actually make that roll... meaning you don't know how much you'll penalize that roll by.

For that reason I'm wondering if there's some way we could just say that HP can't fuel spells directly but instead make burning HP to provide temporary FP for casting some kind of basic "least of spells" which most mages have? Like some kind of "free action casting" you can use to setup other spells?

Seems a lot easier to do stuff like design an ER w/ "costs HP" to cover this idea rather than applying limitations to magery.
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