I apologize for the pie analogy. My point was supposed to be that skills which require an extended investment of time to obtain a successful result are not then repeatable without the repeated investment of time. A pie was the first thing that came to mind. I knew even while I was writing it that it was a poor analogy--it probably takes twenty minutes to "make" most pies and then another hour to "bake" them, and it probably does not take much longer to "make" and "bake" two or even four pies at once, and you can certainly overlap the "making" of the second with the "baking" of the first. However, assuming you have put the first pie in the oven, making the second does not take (much) less time than making the first did. O.K., that's enough of me trying to justify the analogy. The point, ultimately, is that if a skill takes necessary time (as Scott says) it requires that time to "repeat" it, and "chaining" is not really other than repeating a skill without lapse of the effect. I could have used firebuilding skills, but the extension of igniting a fire is a different skill, maintaining a fire, and doesn't really require the same kinds of time factors. It does, however, illustrate the notion that you can't chain it initially--if you put more wood on the fire when it's fading you will extend the duration, but if you put more wood on at the beginning it will probably just burn hotter and brighter for the same amount of time.
Maxx:
Do I have to add anything to the character sheet regarding the description of the skill?
As I see it (Scott may disagree) you are under no obligation to keep any information on your character sheet. The character sheets are what in theory terms are called "authorities", that is, references to which we refer to support statements we make in game. Since you can't hand your sheet to me or to Scott, we are obliged to keep copies of your character paper for our reference, and to keep them up to date. You need only maintain a sheet so that 1) you have the information you need to run your character and 2) if we forget to update something you can inform us of the current status. If you don't wish to maintain a character sheet at all, you're welcome to play without one; you'll suffer a disadvantage, though, as it is unlikely you will remember all the details of your skills otherwise. Even with a character sheet, players sometimes forget what exactly their skills do--as the famous story of Chris and the Teleporting Spaceships graphically illustrates.
That said, I have updated my copy of your sheet to read
1@1 Spirit Travel P5@10 with 30:00 preparatory concentration in which body is placed on sleep-like autonomic process time measured by mental countdown, allows spirit to sever all connection with body and travel independently for RS minutes or until terminated, skill may be chained on difficult will power check with cumulative -1 penalty after first chaining and -10 cumulative SM on each attempt including first chaining, +59SM
I think that describes the adjustment accurately, and I commend Scott for his solution on this (although I didn't realize the skill had already been chained, and would have been satisfied if he simply said it was not chainable and that any previous indication that it was was simply that you didn't realize how much longer you had).
What about force bar?
I have chained it multiple times before without prep time but that is mainly to change its properties with the side effects of prolonging its active time.
This I think is easily resolved. As you note, the "extended time" was never the purpose of any of those rolls, and was simply a bonus tossed into the mix; I'm not certain whether it ever extended the time beyond what would have been the maximum possible on the first roll, but since your character does not know how long it can be maintained and that time grows as your SAL increases and is dependent on the very random roll of the dice, it's simply stated that you never really increased the time (how could you know if you had done so?). The rolls were required for your efforts to manipulate the force, to determine how well you did so. That rule remains in effect. If you were telekinetically flying and you wished to accelerate (or subsequently decelerate) or perform a sharp turn or tricky maneuver, you would be required to roll your telekinetic flight skill check to determine whether you succeeded in doing so. In the same way, if you are manipulating some aspect of the skill you need to roll for whether your skill ability is sufficient to make that manipulation. Presumably when you reach professional level such rolls will be required less frequently (that is, you can do more things within the initial roll). With the force wall, it's particularly awkward because the skill is supposed to be for a force object that does not move, so your ability to move it by making another roll suggests that you're in essence "canceling" the skill and "restarting" it in a new location; but I have always treated it as manipulating the force by "moving" (or in some cases "coloring") it, and maintaining it during the interim, and that's not really unreasonable. In some sense, your initial concentration validates the greater ability to manipulate the force, and thus perhaps validates transferring the sit-mod to the manipulation. Striking the extension of time from it is simple--it never happened that way.
Maxx, quoting Scott:
(b) require that you know when the skill is going to end - which in this case means half an hour's advance warning
Intuition check instead of willpower check?
An intuition check suggests that there is something to notice--to notice subliminally, but still that there is something. Half an hour before a skill faded out of existence there would not be anything to notice about it that would tell you it was going to fade. I could see it maybe if we were talking one minute, but I already give what is in essence a one-minute warning that a skill is fading, so requiring the intuition check would make it more difficult.
Maxx suggests several possible alternatives for comment. First:
1) Variable concentration which need only 1 minute of concentration to have any chance of succeeding on doing the skill but can be added up to 30 minutes so that the skill is reliable enough.
Personally, I hate "variable time factor" skills and almost universally disallow them. If you have a skill that requires one minute of concentration, you get the bonus for one minute of concentration, and if you concentrate for three hours, you get the bonus for the last minute of concentration, the rest of it being anticipatory because you weren't sure when you were actually going to launch the skill. If you want versions of the skill that have different sit-mods based on different time factors, you have to create them as separate skills--as Harry well knows from his several variants of the same magic skills.
The problem is not just that it's a bookkeeping nightmare for the referee; it's that it gives an unreasonable advantage to a player who is then taking advantage of the distance between the real world and the game world. That is, were I to say that you could get +10 for a minute of concentration and +10 more for every doubling of that time, you could then tell me that you were going to concentrate for three hundred minutes, and I would be forced to acknowledge a bonus of (256=+90, +44 more is roughly 19% of 256) +92 on your chance of success on the assumption that your character was able to sit and concentrate for five hours--when I've already stretched my disbelief suspenders by imagining a toddler sitting still and focusing on one idea for thirty minutes. Besides, if you make the time variable, you can "trigger" it whenever the time ends--that is, you can say, "I'm going to concentrate up to the moment I must activate the skill, and that throws it on me to determine when that moment comes and to give you the bonus for however long you were able to concentrate. I've been through this with John Cross: tell me how long you intend to pray, because I'm working out the probability of success based on that time. One of the practical reasons why variable time factors are disallowed is exactly this, that if you must concentrate for five hours to perform the kill and you are interrupted at four hours fifty-nine minutes fifty-nine seconds, you failed. There is no partial bonus. The bonus itself is justified by the fact that you are required to spend the time to have any chance at all of success.
2) 30 minutes of dedicated concentration which can be only used for specific skill but can be omitted (which will work like magic skills that is penalized without sound but still can work). (If this is a separate skill, how is it calculated and how does it effect the other skill?)
Well, that's a clever suggestion. The analogy is not compelling but is plausible. The first and most obvious difference is that in the "sound" example the character is not doing anything different--he is still saying the words, it's just that no one can hear them. This gives him the slight advantage that a "silence" spell won't prevent him from performing the spell, and he can do it if he is (somehow) in space or other non-atmosphere environment. If he can't move his mouth, it still doesn't work, because he must still say the words. Further, in that example it does not matter whether the words are audible or not; that is, the sound of the words becomes superfluous to the performance of the magic. In theory, the character could mouth the words so silently that no sound was audible and it would still work (provided "loudly or forcefully" was not also a factor).
The more serious problem I see here is that if you include concentration as an element and then you allow that it can be omitted, you must cancel the full value gained from the concentration and take a penalty for performing the skill differently from the stated norm. Mechanically, I would prefer to treat that as a completely different skill which accomplished the same objective--that is, you have one skill that enables you to spirit travel after half an hour of preparatory concentration that has a +59 sit-mod, and another skill that allows you to spirit travel at the snap of your fingers that has no sit-mod. Your skill ability level at each tracks separately.
Even were I (emphasized because it is up to Scott, not me) were to allow such a treatment, I would insist that the skills you have learned to date were not learned with this possible variant in view, so if you were to learn these variants they would begin as new skills anyway, and you're better off learning them as zero-sit-mod variants.
3) Just as magic have manipulate magical skill, I do not see why Psi cannot have an equivalent manipulate Psi skill. In this case, the thing that is manipulated is the active time. (How effective is this method and what is the limitation?)
I agree that there "ought to be" a psionic skill that enhances ability at other psionic skills--and in fact there is such a skill:
(A) Alter Abilities
Psi 14@5
Any skill which directly changes the attributes or skills of an individual, either the user or a target character/creature, which is not explained by some other psionic skill, is a skill under this heading. It includes direct increase or decrease of attributes, psionically enhanced skill ability levels, and instant instillation of skills from one character into another. The baseline suggests that these results are temporary, lasting from hours to days, but permanent changes should be possible at a -20 sit-mod. The baseline also suggests that the skill use follow the limits suggested under skills and attributes concerning the amount a skill or attribute can change from a single event, or be penalized. Reverse result and misdirection are common botches, but enhancement (or handicapping) of the wrong skill or attribute is possible.
Although I cannot find the reference, my recollection is that the recommended limitation is RS/10 skill marks. Accounting for level, if you were 1@ at the concentration skill and rolled a successful 45 on it, that would give you +5 marks, sufficient to increase a 1@5 skill to 1@10, a 1@8 skill to 1@10, a 1@9 or 1@10 skill to 2@1, a 2@1 to 2@2, and have no effect on a 2@10 skill. If your concentration skill was 2@, it would give +10 marks, which would increase a 1@1 to a 1@10, 1@4 to 2@1, 1@8 to 2@2, 2@1 to 2@3, and have no effect on 2@10. If your concentration skill was 3@, that's +15 marks (again for a roll of 45), which would increase a 1@1 to 2@1, 1@3 to 2@2, 1@7 to 2@3, 2@1 to 2@4, and no effect on 2@10.
I would also note that such skills are nearly always limited to specific categories of skills, and the degree of limitation is entirely at the discretion of the referee. I would be inclined to follow the broad divisions of psionic skills--telepathics, informations, metabolics, alterations, telekinetics, devices--but I can see several other potential divisions. (It could be made skill-specific, although my inclination would be that using this skill for attributes or non-psionic skills ought to be specific, and using it within the psionic bias area should have a bit more leeway.) It could be made level-specific, and I would certainly not suggest that Scott can't devise another system that determines the divisions of psionic skills.
I note that it is actually easier to create magic skills that will enhance your chance of success at psionic ones; but that's not the question, so forget I said that....
--M. J. Young
