Now, let us deal with game posts from Harry, John 2, and Adam.
Harry is ending his shift and has to pass his information to the next shift. This will help move the game to the next step, I think.
John 2 has questions.
We have worked through several steps in Adam's story, and I'm not sure what the next step is, but perhaps he also lost the thread of events. We'll get back on track.
--M. J. Young
I posted my thoughts on the spinning backhand punch before you posted the above. I just wanted to make sure you saw it.
(Doing Therapy)
Thanks for calling my attention to that, John; I would have missed it.
Knocking someone down is always an intended part of an attack.
Not true. In Sumo, victory is only achieved by driving the opponent out of the ring; lying down is a potential defense which makes it more difficult to achieve. Flopping Fish is a fictional martial arts style which is created for fighting from lying down, so that the opponent is disadvantaged. Many sword styles are geared to kill or win surrender, and in many of them the honor of the fighters is such that if one falls the other waits for him to regain his feet. That aspect of knocking down an opponent is incidental in Multiverser combat, unless made part of the style.
Top end amateur, knock the person down.
Top end professional, break/dislocate their jaw
Top end expert, break their neck.
There actually is a really logical reason why you don't get three levels of damage with special maneuvers. That reason is that the lowest level is never used--you are already bonused by virtue of the fact that you are in style, and that gives you +DC. You can get +2DC, but if you get +3DC, the third damage category turns to +10 points. (This prevents lethal attacks from becoming obliterative, no matter how good you are. For an attack to become so potent it is demolish-or-miss, it must be at least base fatal.)
Think of it this way: with a gun, you have a base damage, say damaging. If you have a 2@ SAL or a 2@ RSV you get +DC, which makes it dangerous. If you have both of those, you get +2DC, which makes it lethal. Now let's suppose your spinning punch is base damaging. If it gets +DC it is dangerous, and if it gets +2DC it is lethal--but because you only use it in a martial arts style, it already gets +DC for style, making it dangerous even for an ordinary amateur. Thus if you have a 2@ MSV or a 2@ SAL, you've got +2DC to make it lethal, that's as many damage category bonuses as you can credit that way. (Additional damage category bonuses still benefit you: they counter damage category penalties created by defender defenses, and as many as remain are converted to +10 damage points.)
In any case, I'm thinking that this should probably be base dangerous, which makes it lethal for an ordinary amateur in style, and fatal if you've got an extra damage category bonus. Points above that would increase the damage inflicted. The penalty should be a +10 bonus to the opponent's attacks, because you are leaving yourself open. You have to declare the use of the skill at the beginning of the minute, because it will affect initiative rolls.
You want knock-down to be part of it. That gives us two options:
Clockwise Spinning Backhand Punch B7@3 must be declared at beginning of minute, character spins clockwise (turning to his right) in place and can strike any one opponent for base dangerous (+DC) damage, provided opponent is at least one hundred eighty and not more than three hundred sixty degrees away, gives opponent +10SM on attack including initiative roll.
or
Clockwise Spinning Backhand Punch B7@3 must be declared at beginning of minute, character spins clockwise (turning to his right) in place and can strike any one opponent for base damaging (+DC) damage, provided opponent is at least one hundred eighty and not more than three hundred sixty degrees away, and opponent must make agility check (RS=S/D/N) or fall for base damaging (+DC) damage, gives opponent +10SM on attack including initiative roll.
The differences:
In the first case, all the damage is done on impact, but there is no tactical aspect: the opponent only falls if the damage is sufficient to kill.
In the second case, only half the damage is done on impact, and the opponent only takes the second half of the damage if he fails an agility check (difficulty based on the attack roll); however, if he falls, he must deal with the tactical consequences--he might not be able to strike from the ground, and he might need time to rise.
I keep thinking that of course any opponent skilled in fall impact absorption would be able to avoid the damage of such a fall; but then, any opponent skilled in blow impact absorption would be able to avoid the damage from the blow, so you could lose either way.
Thoughts?
--M. J. Young
In the second case, only half the damage is done on impact, and the opponent only takes the second half of the damage if he fails an agility check (difficulty based on the attack roll); however, if he falls, he must deal with the tactical consequences--he might not be able to strike from the ground, and he might need time to rise.
I like this. I realized that you probably shouldn't list the damage it is expected to do. I was just trying to give you an idea of the power of the punch. That sounds pretty good to me.
I would be stepping clockwise into the spinning punch. Turning to the right.
I think that's everything.
(Doing Therapy)
I have just started a thread for a new player, Maxx, and so can continue with Harry, Scott, John 2, Adam, and Graeme. I do apologize for being derailed yesterday; I hope I can make up for that by catching up today, although there are a lot of things on my plate at the moment.
Harry continues his investigation; now he has superior assistance.
Scott has kindly done all the math for his new magic attempt, for which I roll 54, noting that his mag bias is 11@1 and his BRA is 2@6 against a 5@1 skill, so we'll add 1@2 Deflect Notice (Enhanced Ritual) M5@1* Caster sits crosslegged in a circle of five wingnuts and sings the following in Spanish (to the tune of God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen) (sound necessary): "El sonido de un abancio, mientras enfria; el poder de una locomotra, mientras viaja; el trabajo de un mago, mientras asombra; ¿qué calidad comparto con éstos, por ahora (por dos horas)? / ¿qué calidad comparto con éstos, por ahora? / La presencia de un mayordomo, mientras sirva; las cuerdas de un títere, mientras baile; la telaraña de un araña, mientras espere; ¿qué calidad comparto con éstos, por ahora (por dos horas)? / ¿qué calidad comparto con éstos, por ahora? /. . . Los sietes estan mejor cuando desapercibidio", which roughly translated means, "The sound of a fan, as it cools; a locomotive's power, as it travels; a magician's labor, as he astounds; what quality do I share with these, for now (two hours)? (question repeated) / A butler's presence, as he serves; a puppet's strings, as it dances; a spider's web, as it waits; what quality do I share with these, for now (two hours)? (question repeated) / All seven are best, unnoticed." On the final line the caster raises seven fingers in front of his face, then draws his hands to one side as he turns his face to the other side and casts his eyes downward. Prevents casters activities from being noticed by others not directly involved, duration 2:00:00, TF 1:00, +7 SM. He follows that with the detect, 12 rolled, I need not look up the numbers. Interestingly, he now has both protections running, but his detect is somewhat weak, so I don't think he would know that.
John 2 has given me enough work for several days, but let's see whether I can get it all answered in one swoop. He rolls 21 GE on the requested rifle. He also wants to teach himself this spinning backhand, his roll is 47 which requires some number crunching on my part. Since he invented it himself but claims to have seen it, I'll give him +11 for a 1@1 example, his B7@5 Bias, and a 1@9 BRA against what is a 7@3 skill, clearly a failure. Also, he has been finding all sorts of extremely archaic weapons, but they've almost always been things he had to special order; now he asks if he has "seen" any shotguns, and it seems to me the answer is no, he doesn't usually see archaic weapons, he usually asks about them and someone looks them up. A GE 18 supports me in this.
Geneice rolls 36, and with Merlin's example that will be sufficient for her to learn 1@1 History of Place P11@3. I'm not entirely certain what Adam will do next, but this is a good start.
O.K., time finally to tackle that anti-detection spell Graeme has been devising. After much consideration, I have decided that this is a M1@9 Spell Protection/Immunity, not a M4@8 Affect Detects, because it specifically works against magic. He has control over the size of the area, which is an unusual factor so -10; but he has made his spell directional when it could be total. That means he needs six spells to do the work that might have been done by one, and that's two and a half halvings of the power, so +25. The casting takes one hour plus ten minutes; there is a -10 penalty for splitting the ritual, but against a 1:00 baseline TF there's a big bonus here, +61. Much of that is going to be consumed by the duration, which is 24:00:00 against what would be a 10:00 baseline, -70 brings me to 21:20:00, and another -2 will round that up. We have +5 appropriate words, and the action includes cleaning the mirror. The mirrors are very specifically described and would have to be crafted specifically for the skill, because of the designs on the frames--no, that's wrong; the mirrors must have frames, but the designs are part of the ritual, and thus I'll give +4 for the mirror. Rags and water are +1 each, although I'll allow that the water is consumed in the casting. I think we'll say that the ritual requires two hands, +3. Thus I am looking at +1 on sit-mods, quite close to the baseline for casting this. Graeme rolls 04 and so learns to do it, 1@1 Protection against Detection Magic M1@9, a special mirror must be prepared through 1:00:00 of ritual, after which it may be stored until needed and the activation ritual cast 10:00. The mirror must be at least one twelfth the dimensions of the object to be hidden, which itself cannot be larger than 40' in relevant dimension. It must be framed, and preparations include marking the frame with symbols of the moon, sun, planets and stars. Before activation, the mirror must be affixed to the object or vehicle to be hidden, facing the direction against which protection is desired, and as an activation ritual washed by the caster with water and a rag while the caster says "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all. Now you see me, now you don't!" The mirror creates the protection of one side of a cube, that is, blocking all detection magic from any point perpendicular to it. Protection lasts 24:00:00, +1 SM.
And it is only now that I notice that Graeme left out a detail. Oh, well--it works as described.
The next question is whether the Azmayincan with him has any detection spell he can use against it to test it. I was thinking this somewhat but not completely unlikely, and I got a GE roll of 10, which goes against my thinking rather strongly.
--M. J. Young
Could the mirror spell be activated a second time without re-preparing the mirrors?
Scott--the answer has to be no, because the preparation time of the mirror is part of the casting time. I noticed that in typing his description, Graeme omitted what would be used to place those symbols on the frame, but I decided it was not relevant to the casting. It might be relevant, though, to whether the mirrors are reusable at all--if the placing of the symbols is done by carving or other means that deface the frame sufficiently that it could not be used, then the mirror would be considered "destroyed in the casting" (or at least the frame would) because you could not put the symbols on it again. I assumed for my purposes that this was not the case, that the symbols would fade or be removable by washing or some similar means.
If the mirrors could be reactivated, that would make them magic devices with a separate ten-minute complex activation ritual. The creation of such magic devices is something Graeme has never attempted, and which I think he is avoiding because at least his character thinks such magic well beyond him.
We have our new player, Maxx, starting us, followed by Harry, Scott, and John 2, if I caught everyone.
Maxx is going to attempt to sense the world beyond himself. He's going to have to give me a lot more information before I can give him a result.
Harry makes a suggestion in his continuing investigation, and I need to know whether he is going to stick with the developments now or let others do it and leap ahead (which would be a GE roll for what was discovered in his absence).
Scott is developing an interesting new defensive skill; we're discussing how to make it work.
I seem to recall that I actually did roll for the Ruger yesterday, so since John 2 is asking about it today, I'm going to have to abide by the previous roll--no such gun available here. I will roll for a "12 gauge survivalist gun", and 12 is good enough.
I think I got it all.
--M. J. Young
I seem to recall that I actually did roll for the Ruger yesterday, so since John 2 is asking about it today, I'm going to have to abide by the previous roll--no such gun available here. I will roll for a "12 gauge survivalist gun", and 12 is good enough.
I thought that roll was for whether or not I actually saw the gun in the store, not for whether or not it could be ordered. This second roll for the shotgun is exactly what I'm talking about. I think it deserves a second roll, because yesterday, I was just asking whether or not I saw it in the store.
(Doing Therapy)
No, I made a roll based on the question of whether they existed in this world, with the expectation that a highly favorable roll would mean you had seen it and a bad roll would mean that they did not exist. For one thing, were I to split that into two rolls I would be creating not merely extra work but a serious chance of conflict--because a 30 on whether you saw it would have to mean at best that there are none on the station, and a 3 on whether it is available would have to mean that the salesman has been pushing you to buy one. Those outcomes are incompatible, so once the roll has been made, interpretations are based on the same roll. That is, even had I rolled merely for whether you had noticed one, if I used a GE roll, that roll would determine whether there was one to notice as well as whether you noticed it. Had I already known that there was such a thing somewhere you might have noticed it, I would have used an intuition check instead.
Maxx, Harry, Scott, and John 2 are playing.
I am giving Maxx a 1@7 persuasion, 1@9 intuition, and 1@8 will power, based on his statements; the intuition will be his BRA for psi. He is attempting a 5@10 non-corporeality, and has no bias but can claim a 1@1 example. That means his chance of success is is -30 plus the world area bias level, which even if it is 15@ is still going to put him at -15. A roll of 59 is not high enough to botch. We'll try to push the time forward a bit, but I don't want to move too fast.
Harry is going home--he thinks.
Scott and I have, I think, come to agreement concerning how his new skill will work.
John 2 is doing a lot of shopping--a lot more than I can grok at the moment, with everything else happening here, so I'm going to ask him to straighten it up for me.
It suddenly occurs to me that John 4 was going to drop me an e-mail to ask me to bump his thread to the front page, but I did not receive that e-mail. I think I'll go look for his thread real quick before I call it a night.
--M. J. Young
Maxx is adrift, but attentive; Harry, Scott, John 2, and Adam are also in motion.
We'll move Maxx forward to day 6 of his new experience. For those keeping score at home, he went from Zygote to Morula in a couple hours, then on the fourth day shifted to blastocyst, and now has undergone implantation. I have added physical attributes to his chart, which right now are strength 0@0, stamina 0@3, resistance 0@4, density 0@7, flexibility 3@1 (and falling), agility 0@0, and hand/eye 0@0. Those will all change in the weeks ahead.
I can roll Harry's bloodhound olfaction for him, because nothing in the botch condition prevents him from using his other psionic skills. The roll is 71, which fails. More complicated, though, is he wants to try his "night vision" skill, to see if it will reboot his eyes. Normally one cannot use a skill just botched to correct a botch situation (if your fall impact absorption botches resulting in greater damage from the fall, you cannot mitigate that damage by using fall impact absorption); but he has two separate skills for this, one of which botched. I need to backcheck which one botched, because he could use the other here. It is the short-term one that botched, so I will permit a roll on the extended one. He rolls 26, for 260 minutes of terribly brilliant lighting conditions. That's 4:20, making it difficult for him to manage until lunch.
Scott has brought to mind an interesting bit of trivia. Recent research has determined that when we strike or otherwise physically attack ourselves, it does not hurt as much as the same force would hurt administered by someone else. It seems that our minds anticipate the contact and shut down the pain receptors partially. (I wonder if this is why head butts don't seem to hurt the one delivering them as much as the one receiving them.) In any case, he wants to bite himself hard enough to feel, and then do so again after attempting this skill. The "second" question is whether he can gauge the force of the second bite, for which I'll require an intuition check. First, though, we have to roll the skill learning attempt: 26, an easy success on our 1@1 Reduce Damage from Kinetics, all types, P5@1 RS=SM toughens skin to reduce injury. Now for the simple intuition check: 16 rolled, a solid success for his 1@7 intuition.
John 2 gets a 14 on his GE roll for his shopping list, which is favorable but not desired.
I was not understanding what Adam was intending, but I think I caught it finally. If I'm right, we'll move forward into the occupied castle.
--M. J. Young
Arriving, I had the impression of many, many game threads; but it apparently was not so many, as it comes down to Maxx, Harry, John 2, Adam, and Graeme, and hopefully that will be manageable even in the short time I hoped to spend here tonight.
Maxx might be able to guess on the flow of nutrition, but a 27 simple intuition check is way out of the ball park.
Harry gets an 18 GE roll on the case, which he had put in the hands of non-player characters. 18 is the not favorable result, barely off center in the negative direction.
John 2 throws some challenges my direction.
I seem to have gotten confused in connection with Adam's sequence of events. Hopefully we can straighten it out.
I also have a miscommunication with Graeme to correct.
--M. J. Young
It looks like I have Maxx, John 2, and Adam here.
Maxx is asking a lot of the right questions, and considering the right possibilities, but has no way to devise an answer. For the sake of explanation behind the screens, the theory is that his fully adult, mature, and sentient spirit has engaged a new body which is presently too undeveloped to have sensory abilities of its own, and thus he can think, the thoughts disconnected from the body. We will move him forward to day 14, when he is officially an embryo, having essential body shape. I have another ten-day jump before he can actually recognize much of anything, though.
John 2 keeps trying to put the other versers into his program; they have their own programs. However, we'll roll John's persuasion against Derek's will power, John rolls (d30+10=)11 against Derek's (d30+10=)20, and Derek's will power at this point is 1@10, so he just lost.
I seem to be having a terrible time figuring out what Adam is doing in this situation, but it appears that we may be embarking on a "dungeon crawl". That's cool; I can do that, and hopefully make it challenging and interesting while keeping it consistent with what is known of the milieu.
--M. J. Young
I'll be addressing posts from Maxx, Harry, John 2, Adam, and Graeme, if I manage to squeeze everyone in today.
I don't know whether Maxx is playing fair here--the player knows that this is the Zygote experience, but the character has been working on the assumption that it is a simulation. Of course, simulation or not, he might be thinking that if it's a good simulation he can make it work as if it were real. In any case, he wants to tune into the thoughts of his mother, and he's claiming that this might be possible because of the connection they have between them. I'll agree that he can make that work, if his roll is successful; I am hoping it will be successful. I've made some decisions about the world he is entering, and so as I roll 48 I think that's close but not successful. With a 0@0 bias he is attempting to learn a 1@1 skill, I'll give him +5 for the connection to his mother, and he has a 1@9 BRA, which is 35-11 for 24% chance of success. He can try again another time, though, as it will become interesting if he gets connected here.
Harry is taking good steps toward discovering what he wants to know. I don't think we need a police sketch artist to create pictures of the two dead men--we have their faces, after all. The more difficult matter is making multiple copies, but the world does have books so it does have printing. It will just take a bit longer.
He is going to use two psionic skills; the base for these is his 1@9 BRA plus his SAL, because the bias is flatlined. The telescopic vision SAL is 1@7, which gives him a decent 36% chance of success, and he rolls 71 so no luck there. He's going to attempt to read surface thoughts, and as long as he can see individuals distance does not matter. We'll need a GE roll for how many individuals, and who, he gets to try, but the minimum would be the man on the gate, but with a 35 GE that's about it. 32 is rolled; his 1@1 SAL means that he just missed it, with a 30% chance of success.
John 2 wants an explanation for why I used a persuasion check against a will power check to determine whether he managed to persuade Derek. The point is that you cannot always win every argument, even if you have a 3@10 persuasion--after all, your target might have a 3@10 will power and be too stubborn to change his mind. But that shouldn't mean he always wins, either. Thus the game works something like this: you need to roll a check that falls under your own persuasion score, because if you roll higher than that you've failed to be persuasive at all. But he gets credit for his stubbornness--him sticking to what he would have done had you not tried to get him to do something else. But if it were simply that you have to beat his will power attribute score, there would be some people you could never persuade of anything. Similarly, if it were just whether your persuasion or his will power is higher, it would be a matter of you always win or you always lose. Thus he has to roll as well, and his roll creates a target number you have to beat while remaining below the ceiling you cannot exceed. If you beat his will power roll and stay below your persuasion roll, you've succeeded in persuading him.
But there is still color: by how much did you beat him, or fail to beat him? In this case, you rolled the very lowest roll you could that would still succeed, being just barely persuasive at all; but he rolled the failed roll nearest to success of any he could roll. That means you beat him by the very slightest of margins--he really would rather continue doing what he is doing, but has decided for whatever reason that he's better off taking the time to spend with you. You don't know why. It might be because Lauren made such a point about how you should all teach each other, and he has that background from the world in which they met. It might be because he thinks if he says no you'll be offended or will continue to annoy him about it and want to know the reason. Whatever it is, it was a fine-line decision. My job is to color it so.
Derek rolls 95 on his attempt to get into style; he has a 7@ bias, 1@3 SAL, and 2@2 BRA, which means 49%, 51% chance of failure is 5% chance to botch, he simply failed.
Adam begins with a light spell on his katana, but I don't see one.
I am assuming that Graeme taught himself the anti-detection spell by casting it; we've already agreed that the Azmayincan has a detect life skill, probably at a low 2@ level, and he's probably an ordinary person so we'll give him a 1@7 BRA, 2@2 SAL, and his bias doesn't matter because he's on Roma soil and so limited to 7@, 53% chance of success, he rolls 31, the roll for the anti-detect was 04, the detection wins.
I'm nearly out of time here, but I've finished the games, so it's time to go.
--M. J. Young
Hey MJ, I was wondering if you could post character sheets on Derek and Lauren. I'd be interested to know what they are capable of doing.
Two Posts
Suppose I became a heavyweight boxer in my next world. Obviously, I wouldn't be try to kill my opponents. Or would damage intensities to zero mean a knockout from which they would recover in a few minutes?
(Doing Therapy)
I hate to say that I am pleased at a low turnout today, but the fact is that I'm working on little enough sleep that I can't figure out how little it is. I should be able to manage posts from Maxx and John 2 easily enough.
In fact, I am so tired that I did not see the posts on this thread.
Answer to the first question: no. If I remember, I'll give the explanation for that when I finish this. If not, you have permission to ask for an explanation.
Answer to the second question: well, that's something I would have to assess at the time. My immediate inclinations are 1) gloves create a damage category penalty, making your attacks annoying, and 0 would be a blackout from which they would slowly recover; 2) most professional boxers would have 2@ damage values, and most fights are won on points, not knock-outs. Beyond that, I'd have to pull in some special rules if the game is going to center on non-lethal combat--but I've got the toolkits for that.
Maxx gives a good post: he will try seven more times, on separate periods of wakefulness, to connect telepathically to his mother, unless he either succeeds or something else happens. I calculated the chance of success last time as 24%, so we'll roll 7 times if we do not get <25 or >93. Rolls are: 37, 18. That means that Maxx has ways of finding out information about his situation he did not have before, but also that the information he gets is going to be confusing, because it is the thoughts of an unknown person.
John 2 has mostly questions, which I think I can answer.
--M. J. Young
Regarding the character sheets for Derek and Lauren, posting them would be a nightmare. They are in a format similar to your sheets, but very different in a very significant way: they mark off the books and chapters in which any score or ability is mentioned, established, used, or changed, well into the fourth novel.
Thus for example Derek's strength reads:
- 1@4 (II.71) 1@7 (II.72) much better after working with Lauren in gym 2@2 (II.116)
- 2@2 Much better after working with Lauren in gym (II.116)
- 1@5 Bypass Computer Security T11@3 (II.60) (II.63) including electronic door locks 1@6 (II.66) and card coding systems 1@7 (II.69) and all post-apocalyptic consoles 1@8 (II.72) courses in software 1@9 (II.77) 1@10 (II.80) including sensor systems 2@3 (II.100) 3@1 (II.105) 3@2 (II.110) (II.116) (II.119) (II.122) (II.125) (II.146) (II.155) (II.159) (III.115) (III.118) (III.122) (III.124) (III.126) (III.127) (IV.2)
1@10 General Science including relativity and quantum theory T12@0 (II.86) Doppler spectroscopy, orbital geometry 2@5 (II.116) (II.133) (III.58)
1@1 Use Laser Blaster T12@1 practiced 1@2 (II.69) (II.72) with several new techniques 1@5 (II.73) in close combat 1@6 (II.80) over a decade, practicing two shots in succession on moving target 2@5 (II.92) pretty good shot 2@6 (II.116) on dragon (II.150) (II.156) (II.157) (II.158) (III.115) (III.117) (III.121) (III.127) (IV.2) (IV.3)
Some of that has not yet happened to him, but I don't want you figuring out what is coming to you based on what is common to their sheets, and I really don't have time to edit down what is there.
--M. J. Young
I hate to say that I am pleased at a low turnout today, but the fact is that I'm working on little enough sleep that I can't figure out how little it is.
Glad to be of service... ;)
Sorry I've been out for awhile. Last month I took over as caretaker GM for Eric with the Worldwalker game on RPoL while he takes a long overdue sabbatical, and my hands are pretty full. So it may be awhile before I can post regularly here.
But I haven't forgotten y'all. And I certainly haven't forgotten Multiverser! :D
And I still have your gems. Heh.
I have game threads from Maxx, Harry, and John 2 today.
Maxx continues to read the mind nearby as practice, and is deducing bits and pieces from it. He is looking at a 19 GE roll, so the information he will acquire incidentally is going to be somewhat limited. On a roll of 19, he just fails a simple intuition check, so that's one piece of information he misses. It is now day 24.
Harry is going to give his psionic abilities a few tries; I'm assuming he means he will retry both the telescopic vision and the mind reading, so I'll roll each of them twice more, 07 works for the vision, 47, 34 do not. The question, though, is whether the telescopic vision benefits him at all, and a GE roll of 10 suggests that it does.
Derek will not leave the station, and neither will Lauren, so if John 2 wants to travel somewhere he will be on his own. It might also have significant impact on everyone's future, but we'll deal with that as it arises. He got a 10 GE roll on whether the weapon is available somewhere, but Derek rolled 98 on his operate computer skill for that. His Tech BRA is 2@3, bias is 12@, and SAL for this kind of application is 2@7, 74% chance of success, 2% chance to botch, not a botch. Too bad, really, because had it been a botch I probably could have finagled the scenario such that John was facing the big disaster alone.
--M. J. Young
Too bad, really, because had it been a botch I probably could have finagled the scenario such that John was facing the big disaster alone.
Probably fortunate, actually. John doesn't get involved, remember? If the disaster hits, and John is facing it alone, John will probably just let it happen. Not my problem, as you should recall.
(Doing Therapy)
(PD)
Oh, I would love to say how I know that John would get involved if he was there alone--but that would be telling much too much. So let me see what I can do for Maxx, Harry, John 2, and Adam.
I'm working from the GE roll Maxx had last time concerning what he is able to get from the mind of his target; I have some very narrow guidelines on some of those points. Reading his mother's mind is a bit of a stretch, except of course that no matter where he looks he is looking "at her", and the fact that he cannot see her does not negate the fact that he is looking at her. Reading someone else's mind is far more difficult, because technically he must either know the frequency, develop some highly advanced skill for scanning for mind frequencies, or be able to look directly at the target. Thus I don't have to roll for whether he can contact another mind; until he can do one of those three things, he cannot.
We'll advance him to day 28, four days at a time. Hopefully we'll get his intellect on paper next time, and that will enable us to determine whether he can do the calculation on chance of success with mind reading.
I know how Harry feels about not knowing quite how to move the story forward; but with a bit of reflection I can develop some possibilities.
John 2 has decided to try to break a world that was supposed to give him a lot of possibilities if he stayed where he was. Ah, well, we'll let him go. Kiss Derek and Lauren good bye on your way out, John, as you'll never see either of them again.
I'm having a very frustrating day here, and expect a much more frustrating one tomorrow, but let me not take it out on the patience of my players. Adam is designing a new spell to create light.
Since he is using his holy symbol, I take it to be alliance holy magic. It is a 9@1 create light. Instant activation is baseline, which is the same as 0:06 activation. His area is 60' radius, which I will count as one doubling for -10; he's also increasing the duration drastically from the baseline 10:00 to 8:00:00, which is 4800 minutes. I get 2560 minutes on 8 doublings, 4800-2560=2240; 2240/2560=87.5%, so that's -89 total for duration. Against this we have +5 appropriateness, +5 for magical language, +10 for including his holy symbol, and he claims that there is total body involvement here, but does not say how. That would be +15. I can reasonably justify a bonus for an alliance holy magic spell creating light, perhaps +10. There are a couple of unanswered questions. I'll do the math after I have those answers.
--M. J. Young
John 2 has decided to try to break a world that was supposed to give him a lot of possibilities if he stayed where he was. Ah, well, we'll let him go. Kiss Derek and Lauren good bye on your way out, John, as you'll never see either of them again.
How would leaving for a few days do anything like that? It's not like I'm planning to never return to the station. (Or is the scenario set up so that the player automatically dies if they try to leave?) Besides, the manure collides with the box of whirling blades in less than 2 weeks. It's not like I was going to be here much longer anyway.....
MJ, I'll tell you right now how the scenario would have gone if Derek and Lauren not come into it. We would have started skipping along like a couple of young broads on a schoolyard. (To paraphrase Lawrence Teirney) I'd probably be a 3@10 in OkyDoky Smokey by now.
MJ - when you stop in for tonight, would you mind going and un-closing Doug's game thread and fixing whatever it was that auto-locked it?
Harry, I do not see anything entitled "Doug's Thread" and you didn't give me a link. I'd be happy to fix it, but I don't know what I'm seeking. (I know that I can close and "unclose" topics, but I've only ever done it once.)
The clock just struck midnight, and I'm seeing posts from Maxx, Harry, Scott, John 2, Adam, and Graeme. I'm afraid this may have to be one of those nights when I don't get to the games. You can blame Brock, if you like, but please don't--not nice picking on the new kid.
--M. J. Young
It appears that Maxx posted despite the fact that I only wrote a partial on his thread, so I'll finish what I started, and then tackle Harry, Scott, John 2, Adam, and Graeme, the same threads I failed to address last night. Again, I apologize--things are in flux here, with a lot of serious problems that require my frequent attention, but I'm still trying to get here as well.
Maxx' lastest comment strikes me as out-of-character for a dozen of the people I thought he might be; but that's not really the point of the game, so we'll continue. We had agreed on a 1@8 intellect as the basis for determining whether he was able to get a ratio of his rate of success at the mind reading trick. He rolls 15 on a simple intellect check, which is a strong success. I neglected to list the mind reading skill, but looking back it was learned as 1@1 Read Minds P1@1, and I'm marking down familiarity with his mother, but not yet sufficient for a bonus. With his 1@ bias and his 1@9 SAL, he's looking at 32% chance of success, so I'll give him a close approximation of that. Now he wants to tap more into the conversations by figuring out "where the thoughts go"; that would take him to the speech center, I would think, but not necessarily to the hearing center. As referee I have to decide whether tapping into the part of the brain that forms speech is another application of reading surface thoughts (the default read minds skill) or a distinct skill. I'm going with the former, so he has a 32% chance of successfully doing this, and I roll 37, which is a failure.
Harry is going for another mind reading attempt himself, and he rolls 78--not near a success at all.
Scott pulls out an example, and then when he could have used any high roll at all gets 03 on learning 1@1 Psionic Focus P1@0 one minute of concentration gives +RS/10 to immediately subsequent skill attempt. That means he gets +1 on his next skill learning attempt, but he surprises me by turning his attention to a P5@2 Heightened Persuasion skill, drawing intensities from Willpower and Resistance. I'm reluctant to allow the detriment to be split that way, but I'll allow it at only -2. I'm reading RS/10 intensities and also seeing roughly one hour duration adjusted by relative success and level, so I think I'll make it RS minutes. The roll is 97, which is not a pretty roll--I need to do some number crunching, because we might have a botch. Let's start with his 7@1 bias, add the 15@ bias of the world and his own 2@1 BRA +1 for the psionic focus. I do not see any mention of an example, and there's a -2 sit-mod on the skill which has a bias of 5@2, so it's 108-54=54% chance of success, 4% chance to botch, and 97 is a botch. I think we need a botch list.
- Reduce persuasion (increasing will power and resistance)
- Psionic Shockwave
- Brain Burn
- Neural Breakdown
- Psionic Beacon
- Permanent persuasion increase (reducing will power and resistance)
John 2 is insisting on trying to find some other space in the universe to visit. I'll let him go, of course, but it's going to be difficult and costly for a lot of reasons and in a lot of ways.
We can add a few factors to Adam's light spell that will help him. He gets an additional +5 because the sound is necessary and the words are forcefully spoken (that's two bonuses which total +5). His example gives him +11 for learning it. Standard ranges are listed as 20':50':75':100':+1/1', and he's calling for 30 yards=90' as baseline range, but since here he is using it as touch, I will give him standard ranges and credit him +20 for doing it at point blank. That makes the spell's sit-mod -49, and it's bias 9@1, -140 to learn. In his favor, he has his 15@1 bias, +6 for religion, +10 for alliance, +20 for point blank, +2@6 BRA=213, -140=73% chance of success. He rolls 90, and is not going to learn the spell this time. Merlin rolls 05 on a light spell, which will give him 30 minutes of light (because he's 3@ with it, and it's baseline 10 minutes). Adam and Geneice roll 16 and 13, respectively, on their stealth skills, so they are moving silently. Merlin is not so stealthy, but we'll let him take up the rear. Now let's start creating this place.
Graeme is using a scry spell that is specific to people to attempt to detect the presence of a car. We'll see about what has to be done to adjust that. I do agree that attempting to hide the vehicle would be a new use of the anti-detection skill, but first we have to see what we're doing with the detect.
--M. J. Young
What's funny is that for my purposes, that's a better result than I could have really expected from a "success."
Incidentally, I was envisioning not a split of the detriment but an enhancement of it - plus x to persuasion, minus x to resistance and minus x to willpower. I'll make an effort to be clearer the next time I venture off the baseline.
That's an interesting approach to the skill. It would increase your chance of success by +10 (because you've doubled the detriment), but it might make unexpectedly deep cuts in your abilities otherwise.
I am looking again at Maxx, Harry, Scott, and John 2, so let's see what we can do.
Maxx is doing some very interesting things. Interesting things will happen to him, as well--it is now going to hit day 32, and that means his first sensory abilities are going to come online. Also, he failed an intuition check a few days ago, but it makes sense for him to get another one now. He rolls 7, which succeeds.
He rolls 94 on an attempt to read his mother's speech center, which is not going to botch. He also wants to use mind reading to hear what she hears, which I think will be a different skill, but 76 fails. I always make reading memories a separate skill from reading thoughts, but 72 fails on that, as well. His notion of lucid dreaming and performing a psionic skill from that circumstance intrigues me.
I think Harry would benefit from a GE roll right now. 13 is barely good enough--so much for my idea of having patrol ships bring in members of the real crew of the stolen ship. But I think I can devise another idea.
Scott abandons his skill development efforts for the present and heads for home, which is simple enough at the present time.
John 2 is advancing to the next day, but this day was so confused for me that I'm going to need a bit of help clarifying the situation.
--M. J. Young
That's how you know I'm not powergaming: I picked half of my Damage Value to hose in exchange for a single area's BRA. In-game, this was definitely not envisioned as a struttin' around town and impressing the ladies kind of skill; it was to be performed in carefully controlled settings where it mattered more that my skills or experiments succeed than that I was left weak-willed and vulnerable.
And that +10 would be quite valuable in preventing at least one-quarter of my botches. (I like the botch; keep the botch and your mechanical design of the skill along with it. Just saying.) I might have preferred double effect on the attribute increase, but that doesn't seem quite balanced - perhaps even being worth a minus ten for including a "second skill" (two P5@2 attribute improvements in one).
I'm looking at posts from Maxx, Harry, Scott, John 2, and Graeme, whom I just missed yesterday.
Maxx is still working on reaching his mother's mind and finding out more about her.
Harry is going to bonus his olfaction into a new more reliable skill, by putting a one minute preparatory concentration period on it. When he did this with the night vision, I allowed that increasing the TF ten times would enable him to increase the duration ten times with no adjustment to chance of success. This time he does not want to change the duration, but only increase the chance of success. A ten-fold increase in TF is 3.25 doublings, so we'll give him +32 for that. 14 is rolled so we'll give him 1@1 Reliable Bloodhound Olfaction P5@1 (reduces other senses) one minute of concentration (and I need a bit of information to complete this) +32SM. That's going to help him significantly in this investigation.
Scott rolls 02 on his Cleanliness: Other skill, so it will work, and I will give him +1 mark for a 1@2 SAL since I do recall the original use was on another person but the skill was designed to clean objects as well.
I'm still straightening out the missing pieces of John 2's day, but we'll finish that soon enough.
I was thinking that Graeme would have to recast the detection protection skill, because he wouldn't have a car handy; but he got a GE 7, so I think we can have a car. Still, I think he can't change the object hidden once he has activated it, so he has to spend the time to recast the spell from scratch. The roll on the anti-detect is 23, a success; the roll on the scry is 82, which even with its inherent +15 sit-mod fails.
--M. J. Young
I know it doesn't look like it's late, but I am on the end of a long day and not feeling too well, so I am going to attempt to wrap up and get some rest.
If it doesn't work, well, I apologize. If it does work, I should probably apologize anyway, but my apology will be less heart-felt.
Let me note for tomorrow that Brock is starting a character, and I have posts from Maxx, Harry, John 2, and Graeme.
--M. J. Young
I know it doesn't look like it's late, but I am on the end of a long day and not feeling too well, so I am going to attempt to wrap up and get some rest.
Glad you got some rest, and I really hope your time travel theory can sort out why days are longer in New Jersey than on the rest of the world. (You know, like how things are "Heavy" in the future.) There could be a Nobel Prize in it for you.
Yeah, well, I wish I had gotten some rest. Now I only hope that I manage to get through all this in a timely fashion while also making and serving dinners.
Having answered a character generation post already, all this appears to be Maxx, Harry, John 2, and Graeme, which should work pretty well.
Maxx is definitely challenging me here. To my advantage, though, Eric Ashley created a somewhat similar skill some years back which is still on his character sheet, as a P1@4 Invade Dreams skill. The tricky difference here is that Maxx wants to do this by using lucid dreaming, not by some sort of telepathic mind reading. I think, though, that this means he loses touch with his senses for the duration, and so I'll treat it as a trance-like skill, +10 to perform, and roll: 99 is definitely going to botch, let's make a list:
- Swap minds with target
- Wrong target
- Brain burn
- Psionic shockwave
- Neural breakdown
- Mind meld
- Reverse effect
I can complete the description of Harry's 1@1 Reliable Bloodhound Olfaction P5@1 (reduces other senses) one minute of concentration with eyes closed and deep rhythmic breathing +32SM and add that to his sheet. Let's set up the next scene.
John 2 missed part of the day, I think--one way or another--so we'll have to cover that before we can continue.
Graeme needs up to five rolls for the detect spell; I need to pick up the note that says what the protection level is 23; the scry spell is 1@1 SAL+15SM+2@2 BRA+2x7@ bias=62%, and he rolls 83, 65, 50, that's a success.
--M. J. Young
MJ, I'm almost positive that Lauren didn't teach me any psionic skills. Post my psionic sheet that you have. (Just the psionic skills) and I'll let you know. I'm fine with just going to day 10 and learning whatever skills she has to offer that day. We did fighting, not psionics.
I love that there are multiple people dabbling in dreaming all within the same week.
I have been pulled away a couple times tonight, and will be again, and am falling asleep at the keyboard in daylight; but there are only two posters at this point--Maxx and John 2--so I might as well see if I can keep my eyes open long enough to clear the boards.
Maxx thinks this was a good thing, but undoing it is not going to be so simple. Still, he might be concocting a solution already.
It looks like John 2 will allow us to remedy the oversight. On a roll of 42, Lauren projects the skill pattern for Clairaudience into his mind, and on a roll of 51 he learns it at 1@2 Clairaudience P3@5.
I'm still losing it here, but at least I've finished it before I lost it completely.
--M. J. Young
Maxx, Harry, and John 2 are in play.
Maxx is going to attempt a sort of psychic surgery, attempting to undo the fusion of minds that occurred in his previous botch. This is going to be dangerous, but he is doing a few things that are suggestive. I have a thousand questions--but perhaps I can ignore them, since we have a character with a 1@1 bias attempting to teach himself a 6@8 skill. Even given his 1@9 BRA and the 15@ world bias, his chance of success is in the red, and the real question is not what will happen if he succeeds, but what happens if he botches. The roll is 29, so I am comfortable that it is not a botch; just to assure everyone that my seat-of-the-pants estimation of chance of success is valid in this critical instance, I'll start with the 6@8 target bias, subtract the 1@1 character bias for 57, the 1@9 BRA for 38, and the 15@ world bias for 23--that's -23% chance of success. He's going to have to build up to that before he can accomplish anything--and meanwhile he has the problem that he is now joined with Lelach, and she is going to interfere with him in spots.
Harry gets a 13 Barely Good Enough GE roll, and so will get what he wants not so quickly in this case.
I was sort of hoping that I could put off the sparring one day--after all, Lauren would object to the same workout every day, particularly since John 2 is not much of a workout for her--but a GE roll of 8 means that she's available and willing to try it. As to the psionics lesson, she rolls 11 on her project skill pattern, and he rolls 60, which will give him 1@2 Clairolfaction P3@7.
I think that's the story.
--M. J. Young
I was sort of hoping that I could put off the sparring one day--after all, Lauren would object to the same workout every day, particularly since John 2 is not much of a workout for her
Not much of a workout is better than no workout at all. Besides, 2 more new uses, and I'll be (literally) twice the opponent I am now.
Maxx is now running his game in two threads, but I'll assume it's not to confuse me but to help him. It's going to take me a bit of work, though, to figure out what to answer where. I also have Harry and John in play.
I am combining my answers to Maxx' two threads into one post; hopefully that will work for the moment.
Harry now has backup. Let's see what he does with it.
Lauren does have experience fighting in near total darkness, but unlike John 2 she compensates by using a skill to increase what she can see--either her magic cat's eye or her psionic sensory enhancements. She rolls 59, which means that she has very clear vision in the near total darkness. As to whether he can surprise her, that's going to be an intuition check on her part, which I will roll when he attempts the surprise--but since she can see, and she can also perform such a jump, it might be he who is surprised. She rolls 04 for getting into stance.
And that is, as they say, that.
--M. J. Young
She rolls 59, which means that she has very clear vision in the near total darkness.
That's hardly fair MJ. I'm relying on the natural ability that I have to see in near darkness. Is Lauren not willing to do the same?