Re: [HOE] Why is Blastin' a Knowledge aptitude?

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

> Sykers are already pretty well limited to choosing
> powers that are either within their specialty mode or
> in the main rulebook.  The archetype Sykers generally
> picked most if not all of their starting powers from
> within one mode.  Spreading the types of Traits used
> to "power" certain Modes gives players a reason to
> save up some chips to boost those Traits.  

Yeah, but you wind up limiting them even more. There are already limits
imposed on them by the rules (can only choose freely from within
specialty, or from general powers in main book, or something like that).
As far as saving up chips to raise low stats goes, I don't think that's
going to work. The player is gonna but a d12 in his primary stat, maybe a
high die in another one that he likes and then pick powers for those two
stats, maybe one random one from another stat. Ok, now he's played for
awhile and got some BP's saved up, should he raise one of his other mental
traits? Not really, since he can't learn new powers outside his specialty
and he didn't pick any others for that stat to begin with ('cause he put a
d8 in it) there's no reason (as far as his syker abilities go) to raise it
now.

There's also the argument that this creates a bias against the syker AB.
The templars can pick their powers freely, as can the doomsayers, rad
shamans, etc. because they only need that one trait. While the syker is
stuck because he's trying to raise 5 (well probably more like 2-3) traits
to "stay even". If you were going to use a similar system for all the AB's
then it would be fair (but it would be a headache to divide up all the
other powers, since they aren't categorized like the syker powers), but
just doing it for sykers doesn't seem right to me.

> I'll agree with you there, and this is my argument as well.  My
> argument is that Sykers shouldn't have to be geniuses to USE their
> powers once they've learned them.  Almost anybody can learn almost
> anything if they put sufficient time and effort into it.  I learned
> that during Advanced Calculus.  I wasn't very good at it, and I'm not
> going to win the Nobel Prize for Mathematics anytime soon, but I
> could, at the time, work calculus problems.

Right, they don't have to be geniuses, they just have to have the training
and knowledge. Hence the knowledge trait being used to activate powers and
not the smarts trait.

> The "breaking" for Hucksters isn't the multiple Traits, it's the sheer
> randomness of the cards.  Most Hucksters can usually get Fair (5)
> needed to use their powers.  The kicker comes when the cards are
> drawn.  It can be hard to get even a pair on five cards, much less
> Jacks, Two-Pair or higher.  With Sykers though, achieving a (5) will
> get you at least a minimal success much of the time.  

Yeah, but the problem could be fixed if the huckster was rolling d12's all
the time which, let's face it, is pretty much what all the other AB's get
to do. With d12's the odds of getting 6 cards are pretty good and even
higher numbers aren't horrendouly unlikely. But if you're rolling d8's,
forget it. The big advantage for hucksters (and disadvantage for marshals)
is that they can keep trying over and over (no strain), but this really
slows things down in the middle of combat with all that card shuffling. If
I had a huckster in my group I'd insist he had AT LEAST two decks of cards
for hexslinging.

> Somebody rolling 5d6 will probably get a (5) most of the time.

Yeah, but what does a 5 get you? About 1/2 the syker powers are opposed,
so a 5 is fairly useless there (unless you're trying to brain bomb a
scrub-ganger, in which case you're mostly just wasting strain). Of the
direct combat powers: the blastin' roll is also the roll to hit, so again
a 5 sucks -OR- a 5 gets you the minimum effect (a 2d6 TK Storm, wee!) -OR-
the TN is higher than 5, so the power flat out doesn't work (like arson or
slow burn). Out of the rest of the powers you have a few that have a
variable TN (like skinwalker or fleshknit) where you generally need more
than a 5 anyway, or that you get more out of raises (like force field).
Granted there are few powers that "just need a 5" (like predator) but not
THAT many (I counted ~9).

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab, Safety Warden (Bldg. 85)


	"There's your problem, someone had this administrator set to
	 evil."

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