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

[john tfs <johntfs1@yahoo.com>]

--- Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org> wrote:
> > 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.
> 

Sure he can learn new powers outside his specialty. 
He  just needs to find somebody to teach him, or find
one of the Syker manuals.  He has to go out and find
these people/things instead of gazing at his navel
while waiting to kill folks.

> 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.
> 

Well, what happens if I use a Huckster, or Blessed or
something else to put the whammy on your Spirit?

> > 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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