Not having a Referee's handbook on hand or accessible, I was wondering if we could have some stickied glossary on the boards, especially for those of us new to the game but trying to better understand the mehanics (in the hopes of running eventually).
What's BRA?
How do I figure out my bias?
What's SAL?
How do I figure out when to roll for improving a skill, and what would the chances of success be?
Thanks, I hope others can contribute useful stuff to this FAQ/Gloss too.
I can answer some of these. Good idea BTW.
BRA Best Relevant Attribute. If you're doing a body skill, and your BRA comes into play, it would be the highest body score you have.
Your bias is the highest level you have in a particular area. My character has psionics 5@10 non-corporeality. So, my psionic bias is 5@10. If your highest skill is a 4@1 TK pulse, then your bias would be 4@1 in psionics.
SAL Skill Ability Level. It's how good you are in a particular area. If you have 1@5 TK pulse, your SAL for TK pulse is 1@5.
On the last one, your guess is as good as mine. Scott, AKA William T Woodium can probably explain that one.
I just realized I didn't make that very clear. However, I'm not certain how to make it any more clear. Let's let one of the others explain it better.
Thanks, that was helpful. I knew I'd heard the terms, but seeing them on the page was different from hearing them at the table.
I'll try to figure out my bias and BRA values and put them on my sheet. Will help me I think, when thinking through the character and the mechanics.
I find I enjoy the game even more when I understand how things work, and what's going on.
I'm glad that you're enjoying Multiverser, but I'd like to say something from personal experience.
Multiverser isn't like D&D, and I don't mean that in an elitists or snobbish way. All I mean is that because you play as yourself, the less you (as the player) know about the game, the easier it is to have seamless play. Later in the progression of your games this temptation to meta-game becomes less of an issue, since any information you might know is supplemented by the knowledge your character gains by going through the verse. I'll be going into my fifth world soon, and I still don't fully understand the bias system.
Of course, this is all null and void if you're planning on being a referee for the game in the near future. If this was the case, I would just encourage buying the Referee's Handbook as soon as possible.
Oh and as to your last question that John couldn't answer, that's really the referee's discretion. There are two systems that work on improving skills; new uses and practice. Practice is a fairly simple system governed by a few dice rolls and some number of uses per time allotment formulas. New use is when the referee comes into play; for example, using telekinesis to pick up a rock is different from picking up a person. Generally, if you haven't done it before you get a new skill use which improves your SAL in that skill. It's still all up to the referee though in instances when it'd be hard for you as a subjective player to make the call. The difference between using telekinesis to lift a conscious person (in which they get a resistance check) and using telekinesis to lift a semi-conscious person.
Good answers, and thanks to those who gave them. I'll provide a bit more detail, since Max is trying to fill in the blanks on his character sheet.
BRA, Best Relevant Attribute, as mentioned, is the one attribute in a bias area that you use for skills in that area when you do them. Each bias area has three relevant attributes; it's assumed that whichever one is your best is the one you use in that bias area. Thus for tech it's intellect, intuition, and education level, so whether you are learning or doing a skill, one of the factors is whichever of those is the best for you. Intellect means you do it because you're that smart, intuition because you're good at figuring things out by the seat of your pants, and education level because you've picked up so much information about everything that you know something about this. In psionics, it's persuasion, intuition, and will power; in magic, animal magnetism, intellect, and intuition; in body, strength, agility, and will power. Note that for each bias area you use your best of those three attributes, even if you don't see how it works--like, what difference does strength make to smelling something? This keeps the playing field more level and simplifies the game, since you're not searching for the right attribute for each skill.
The bias of the highest skill you have in any bias area is your bias level, with a caveat: @0 skills do not count. Thus if you have a P0@1 teaching skill and a P8@0 posturing skill, your bias is 0@1, not 8@0. This is because the @0 skills don't really use the essence of the bias area. Another good example is in technology, where your general science skill (and many other sciences, such as computer theory) is an @0 skill--it doesn't actually mean you can do anything, only that you understand the theory behind it.
SAL is skill ability level, how good you are at doing something. On the On the Fly sheets, it's the number in the left column; the number in the right column associated with the bias area name is the bias of the skill.
You never roll to improve a skill, specifically. You do roll to use the skill in a new situation or a new way, and if it is clearly a new use of the skill and you use it successfully, you get a "skill mark" or "mark" on that skill. When you have amateur level skills, a skill mark is an increase of one intensity; at professional level, an intensity costs four skill marks, and at expert level it costs twenty-seven skill marks (experts do not really improve very quickly by thinking of new ways to use their skills). You tell the referee if you think what you are doing constitutes a new use; he decides if you are right, depending on how different he feels it is from what you've done with it before, combined with how many different things you actually could do with it. (New use for 180 degree skid turns is going to be a lot more generous in its definition than new use for driving motor vehicle, particularly if the latter includes doing 180 degree skid turns as a new use.)
You also improve a skill by practice. The rule of thumb in the book is that it takes sixty hours of specific practice over one hundred days to improve a skill by one mark; you can't on your own shorten the number of days, although if you intensify the program you can earn multiple marks for improving upper level SALs (a "double doubled" program can earn you four marks in one hundred days, advancing a level two intensity; you can double the number of hours spent practicing, and any other aspect of what you are doing, or you can quadruple the number of hours). If you have a skilled teacher or trainer overseeing your practice efforts, that automatically cuts your time (both hours and days) in half, and if that teacher/trainer makes a successful roll on his teaching/training skill, that cuts the times in half again.
The referee has the discretion to determine that your ordinary activities in a particular world or situation constitute ongoing practice of a skill. For example, John Cross is currently working as a blacksmith. He's not said anything about practicing his blacksmithing skills, but after a hundred days he'll improve that because he has been doing it every day. In the Mary Piper scenarios, there is a skill and attribute improvement track for each job description on the ship, such that just by being in security you improve your weapons skills, or by being in medical you improve your medical skills.
It's a bit different with attributes.
Generally if you decide you want to work on improving your skills, you write up a "training program" that describes what you're going to practice when, and commit your character to spending that time, and I tell you whether that is going to be sufficient to improve your skills and attributes as desired. Usually three hours in five days will get you advancement in about three months on skills, at amateur level.
I keep thinking of threads I should create and make sticky, but I don't usually get to them, and I don't really want to clutter up the top of the board with stickies, so I always err on the side of neglect.
--M. J. Young
How do I figure out when to roll for improving a skill, and what would the chances of success be?
Speaking of damage values, how do those get figured out? Should I write anything down, or wait until it becomes relevant?
Damage Value is one of four Averaged Attributes, along with Target Value, Martial Strike Value, and Ranged Strike Value. Ordinarily, I would say to wait until it becomes relevant, but since you've already defined all fourteen of your other attributes, I don't see any real reason why you shouldn't go ahead and calculate it if that's what you want to do.
Damage Value is the average of your decimalized* Stamina, Resistance, Density, and Willpower. With your 1@4 Stamina, 1@5 Resistance, 1@1 Density, and 1@5 Willpower, your DV rounds up to (14+15+11+15= 55, /4= 13.75 =) 1@4. Of course, that might change in the near future - your Resistance is in the process of improving, and if it gains as many as 3 intensities, your DV will rise to 1@5 (because 14.5 rounds up).
Your other averaged attributes are calculated in the same way:
Target Value depends on Agility, Density, and Intuition,
Martial Strike Value depends on Strength, Hand/Eye, and Intuition,
and Ranged Strike Value depends on Hand/Eye and Intuition.
__
*Multiply the level by ten and add the intensity; 1@10 = 20, 3@2 = 32, like that.
Thanks, I've put those on my personal sheet version (since you can't edit posts over a week old on these forums apparently). I assume MJ has them or can easily make them when needed.
My next question is how does the level of a skill (like my Computer Programming Tech 11@1) change? Should I worry about that at all, since I'm playing catch-up on the technology side?
Actually, the bias level of most skills never changes. I saw you asked this in the other thread, but it's easier to answer it here and not clutter the game thread.
Bias level works generally like this: each bias level is about certain fundamental principles in the bias area; each bias intensity represents more advanced applications of those fundamental principles by kind, not by degree. Thus for example T3@ skills are all about stonework, levers, and inclines/wedges. Any skill that uses a simple lever or a simple wedge--a club or a hammer--is a T3@1 skill; any skill that combines two such concepts becomes 3@2--an axe, combining a simple wedge with a simple lever. The more complex the applications, the higher the intensity, but all lever or wedge technologies are T3@ concepts.
In the same way, computers and planetary travel skills are T11@, and programming is T11@1. It doesn't matter what you are programming--programming is programming. You will get better at it, and when you are 3@10 there will be nothing you can't do with programming in your field (specialization--area narrows as skill ability level increases), and very few things you can't program if they are programmable computers (generalization--you broaden your ability to work with the unfamiliar).
There are computer hardware/software skills above programming, such as designing and building computers (I think you have something in this area), creating or defeating security, and some others, including biocomputers (designing and building computers whose circuits are more like DNA than electronics); but they are always T11@ skills.
Cooking similarly is always about applying heat to food; operating a microwave oven is a separate skill (as is operating an oven that burns fuel to produce heat), but assuming you can do that part, the question of how well you cook remains the same, and the cooking skill itself is all about using heat to prepare food.
The exceptions appear in the tech area with those skills which are clearly technological in nature but which build on information from other bias areas. Medical skill does fall into this category: as you move from, say, splinting broken bones to doing cardiopulmonary resussitation, you've moved from what is essentially lever concepts to pressure system concepts, and the bias level of your medical skill rises accordingly. A T15@1 medical skill indicates that you know about treatment of temporal disorders. General science and mathematics skills also do this, because they are connected to the understanding of technology. Note that you can have a specific science skill and a general science skill--for example, you can have a rating in T11@0 computer science and a separate rating in T11@0 general science. This would usually mean you have a higher number in the specific field but a lower understanding of science outside that area.
I hope this helps.
--M. J. Young