Sarachim

Originally Posted By: Rowen I am interested in what will be shown tomorrow. I do hope for a Baldur's Gate 2 but wont hold my breath for it. Good news!

Click to reveal.. Player: Sarachim Name: Chantico Race: Lacewing Female Occupation: Sage Alignment: Explosive Level: 3 Strength: 3 Dexterity: 2 Intelligence: 7 HP: ?/19 STM: ?/10 Speed: 5 Magic (Evocation): 5 Magic (Conjuration): 4 First Aid: 3 Nature: 2 Artifice: 2 History: 1+1 racial Religion: 1 Perception: 1 Thievery: 0+1 racial 2 points banked New spells to come before the next session.

Still alive! http://whenisgood.net/tjfs4ds I think you got 12 points last time.

Originally Posted By: Rowen Originally Posted By: Just what the doctor ordered Yeah, and there'll always be that guy in the Pentagon who could snap and hit the big red button; the trick is to keep those people out of the system. Rowen, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip-up.

Originally Posted By: Lilith given that people are already routinely pulled over for Driving While Black under the current system, how do you propose to give police even more discretion without it being abused black police

I'm shocked that nobody has nominated Byron. Consider: -he's mad, bad, and dangerous to know (presumably, he is also dangerous to fight) -he knows that the secret to winning a dogfight is to bring a bear -he single-handedly defeated the Ottoman Empire and won the Greek War of Independence -he's described by wikipedia as "a competent boxer" -he probably fought a duel at some point, I guess. That seems like the sort of thing he'd be good at

Next session is Tuesday, Feb 28th at the usual time! Logs and such coming soon, for realsies.

Originally Posted By: Nioca ...You know, looking at Yemirrr's inventory, he's starting to look less like a Nephil Berserker/Heavy Tank, and more like a walking storage unit. Heh. If anyone wants to trade with the bandits as a between-session thing, PM me with what you want to get rid of and what you're trying to acquire.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon Our social constraints have eroded, but that shouldn't do away with love. Many of those constraints were obstacles to love.

The session begins in just under half an hour! Come to SWAbyss to watch! (also, sorry about the ongoing lack of logs. Expect some soon.)

Originally Posted By: Getting to the Chopper Edit Reason: Double bonus if the people you'd like to be taken with are doubtlessly necking with their (not-you) other at this very moment. Triple-points if the other is also your best friend. I win at losing at Valentine's day.

Originally Posted By: Thin Gypsy Thief I should ask, since it's probably going to be important tomorrow: what exactly are the dual-wielding mechanics? That is an excellent question. Let me think on it and get back to you.

Originally Posted By: Lilith So if we want any kind of character advancement at all (do we?), how do we handle it without falling into either of the two traps of "bigger numbers for the sake of bigger numbers" or "more complexity than we can handle"? In the status quo, advancement takes three basic forms: 1. You can have points in a wider variety of skills. 2. You can have more spells/techniques as your relevant skill goes up. 3. The spells/techniques you have access to become more powerful (sort of, because this is vague and nonstandardized). The first is strictly noncombat, and still exists in Nibiru as far as I can tell. The second can easily be added, and is probably simpler than adding more perks, so I think it's a good idea. The interesting question, I think, is the last one: is it practical to add this to Nibiru, and if so, is it desirable? On one hand, it creates a whole host of new balance problems; on the other, part of character advancement is learning to do things you couldn't before, not just to do the same things better. One think we could do is allow spells/techs with variable effects at higher levels. For instance, Lephista traded Solid Shot (normal damage to 1 target) for Wall of Missles (normal damage to any number of targets, each beyond the first costs 1 stamina). I pick this example because both abilities cost exactly the same in Nibiru, but the latter is clearly more powerful because the player can choose a number of targets.

Everything Nalyd said, plus this: rules that only apply in very specific situations are hard to remember, and perks are especially prone to this (which is why I keep reminding you to apply Lephista's ). If I had to remember several unique mechanical elements for every PC, I would make a mistake every combat round.

Click to reveal.. (Chantico!) Player: Sarachim Name: Chantico Race: Lacewing Female Occupation: Sage Alignment: Explosive Level: 1 Strength: 3 Dexterity: 2 Intelligence: 6 HP: ?/16 STM: ?/10 Speed: 5 Magic (Evocation): 5 First Aid: 3 Nature: 2 Artifice: 2 History: 1+1 racial Religion: 1 Perception: 1 Thievery: 0+1 racial

Originally Posted By: Lilith hey nioca friendly reminder: you haven't actually posted amadan's latest levelup yet. you're entitled to 16 skill points for a total of 230. also i double-checked lephista's skill point allocation and i'm pretty sure her latest levelup would give her 231 skill points instead of 230. i'll just take one point off abjuration if i don't hear from sarachim before next session i guess fixed

If switching weapons is a minor action, then dual-wielding seems like a poor strategic choice. You give up using a shield just to occasionally save yourself a minor action.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Maybe some benefits that make being reduced to 0 HP less serious for Endurance strategists than for others, since their whole shtick is taking damage and surviving it? That's okay for balance purposes, but not much fun. Doing cool stuff is fun, surviving the cool stuff others do to you less so. Also, it doesn't really expand the design space, because all this ability would do is encourage the Endurance player to throw his character into the thick of things, same as more HP would do. If we can't think of something cooler, we might as well just give Endurance more HP instead; it's functionally pretty much the same and simpler to balance.

Originally Posted By: Nioca I propose the following: Halve the starting HP for each strategy, and reduce the gains-per-level by 2. This reduces the HP inflation drastically, and also makes the difference between Endurance and Evasion/Ranged strategies more noticeable. This also makes Evasion a slightly-less appealing strategy to take, since its high defenses is actually balanced by low HP. HP only matters relative to other HP. Functionally, if you halve each strategy's HP you haven't actually changed anything, except aesthetically. Now, aesthetic preferences do count for something (it is a form of entertainment, after all, and maybe even an art), but they vary so much from person to person that it's unlikely your arbitrary notion of what constitutes "huge damage" is reflective of the community as a whole. We should probably leave them for each GM to decide on their own.

Click to reveal.. (Lephista) Lephista ?/28 HP, ?/10 stamina Magic (Conjuration): 15 Melee (Aikido): 7 Composure: 7 First Aid: 6 (+1 racial) Athletics: 4 Magic (Abjuration): 3 Alchemy: 3 Arcana: 3 Acrobatics: 2 Perception: 1 Stealth: 1 New spell: Righteous Bulwark: Creates a suit of divine armor over the target, temporarily boosting their armor score.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Yes, that's my point. They wouldn't use it if they didn't have enough widespread support for detaining people, and if they had that, they wouldn't need the law to justify doing so- and since it's either totally useless or completely unnecessary, why would we care if it's on the books or not? The same logic can be applied to pretty much any legal check to the power of the government. Each time I call you a fascist, I'm a little less sure I'm joking.

Next session is Tuesday, January 31! Marra's techniques are approved. Also, two characters have earned perks! First, Urgdnebbot: Root "Two? Ah, one to offer the deal and one to threaten consequences? The technique your people call 'the root and the branch', yes?" Urgdnebbot has learned how much easier it is to be persuasive when one has a little magical help. She gets +2 to Composure rolls when speaking to characters that Chadat has used Deep Magic on. And of course, that means Chadat gets. . . Branch "Carrot and stick, Chadat." Mind-altering spells work better when you've got someone to lull the target into complacency. Chadat gets +2 to Deep Magic spells that target a character Urgdnebbot has rolled Composure against (non-combat only). Watch the thread for logs.

Monday is fine.

Calendar for next time: http://whenisgood.net/x4x44mp Logs and other unfinished business coming soon.

We've had this conversation so many times that I'm kind of shocked that this part still needs to be said, but here it goes: the problem with STR/DEX/INT (and with having combat and noncombat skills overlap) is that there's an inevitable trade-off between making a fun, interesting, unique generalist and an effective specialist. The problem becomes especially acute in high-level campaigns like ATCT- even without stats, there's a pretty clear difference in combat performance between, say, Lucia and Amadan. If we take it as a design principle that, if all characters spend an equal amount of time fighting, they ought to be about equally good at it, then something needs to change. Of course, all of the above presumes that having a character who's fun but kinda useless is a bigger problem than having a system whose complexity is possibly off-putting to people who don't have the meaty left-brain of an engineer. That's a question of taste, and not really worth arguing over.