Typo thread

[iago]

Well, that more validates "holy stuff" than anything else, and even then it's shaky. Sunlight clearly doesn't *damage* Susan, and I don't know that the "blood-belly" really exists until you're looking at a full-fledged vamp.

Right now the adjustment to the template reads:

"For the Recovery and Toughness abilities, it’s unclear how extensive the Catch (page 185) needs to go. It could involve sunlight, holy stuff, and a weak spot in the belly, valued at +1 or +2 depending on whether –2 or –4 of refresh is spent on those abilities, or it could be zero value."

[Deadmanwalking]

Sounds reasonable enough to me. 

[iago]

Sounds reasonable enough to me. 

It'll go through some revisions from there, but it's a start.

[KOFFEYKID]

Its mentioned that they can be compelled to be affected by such things under the part that talks about their high concept.

Musts: A Red Court Infected must have a high concept that addresses the character’s infected status (e.g., Once Bitten, Twice Red or Infected Insurgent). This aspect may be compelled to inflict watered-down versions of the Red Court’s weaknesses on the character— he will experience aversion to holy objects and sunlight and, when exercising his powers, he may even be damaged by them. On the other hand, these can also help him resist his vampiric urges when he isn’t using his powers.

So it seems that they are only vulnerable to the catch when they are using their powers. Otherwise it helps them control their urges.

-edit-

As for belly wounds, probably defeats the catch after they've succumbed to feeding.

[iago]

Its mentioned that they can be compelled to be affected by such things under the part that talks about their high concept.

So it seems that they are only vulnerable to the catch when they are using their powers. Otherwise it helps them control their urges.

Yes, that helps.

[Deadmanwalking]

Non-Typo potentially major issues that have come up in various threads:

1. Can you apply the original Catch as well as the Stacked Catch to Physical Immunity? It would seem by the rules that you can, but that results in this:

Physical Immunity (-8)
The Catch: Water Magic (+3)
The Catch (Stacked): Non-magical attacks (+5)

And a character immune to all non-Water Magic for a single point of Refresh. Which seems a bit cheap for the effect.

2. Can a character with Mimic Abilities come into play with someone (likely a dead someone) already mimicked? Because that can result in badness like the character with 11 Superb skills (he ate Doc Savage's brain), and never using Mimic for anything else. He just has 11 Superb Skills.

3. Can a character with Mimic Abilities mimic more than one person at a time (say, a single skill from each of nine people)? Everything about the ability screams at me that you can't, but others disagree and it's somewhat unclear.

[arentol]

Non-Typo potentially major issues that have come up in various threads:

1. Can you apply the original Catch as well as the Stacked Catch to Physical Immunity? It would seem by the rules that you can, but that results in this:

Physical Immunity (-8)
The Catch: Water Magic (+3)
The Catch (Stacked): Non-magical attacks (+5)

Related to this is also the fact that if you have more than one power from Toughness the exact refresh cost of each power is not clearly defined because the Catch is applied across all of them.

Example of an issue this causes:

Supernatural Toughness (-4)
Inhuman Recovery (-2)
The Catch: +3

Human Form +?
Applies to Inhuman Recovery
How much is "Inhuman Recovery" worth at this point? Is it -2 making Human Form worth +1, or is it -1, making Human Form worth 0?

[iago]

I think some of these questions come from a willful misinterpretation of the obvious spirit of the rules. As such I'm gonna get a bit snarky about it. Fair warning.

#1 - The Stacked Catch only applies if you already have another catch applying to your other Toughness powers. There are no other Toughness powers in #1, so the principle of biggest value catch applies, netting only a +5 value.

#2 - If an NPC, yes. NPCs do things off camera all the time. If a PC, no.

Mimicking someone should come off a lot like the process of prepping a Thaumaturgical ritual does: you gotta build the story. No story*, no mimic.

* By which I mean a story which everyone agrees is a good one, passes the sniff test, and sounds like a good fun thing to include in the game.

I could see maybe someone asserting it through a combination of aspects and backstory from character creation, but even then the 11 Superb skills is clearly someone trying to game the system in a way that destroys fun and fair play. (Also, if someone has 11 Superb skills, we're talking about someone who very likely had enough going on that they should have trounced the mimic. Have you done the fucking math on that? This person had 55 skills out of 25, so that's a trick, totaling 165 skill points. Rule of thumb -- if a skill comes from pre-game "eating", the best it can be is two lower than the skill cap for the game. In a Superb-cap game that limits you to Good.)

At my table, people who do that should be shown the exit; they are a committed abuser, interested in aggrandizing their own power fantasy, not in playing a game with other people. I am uncompromising on this perspective, and draconian when someone tries to pull that kind of a rude and disruptive fast one on the game.

#3 - I might bend the rules for a Big Bad NPC, but on a PC I'd say it absolutely is only one victim at a time.

[Deadmanwalking]

For reference, I don't think anyone who brought that stuff up (in the aforementioned threads) thought it should work that way or would've allowed it in their games. They were just finding potential abuses of the rules as written, in at least one case specifically so as to avoid them.

And thank you very much for the answers, that should help keep things from getting out of hand. 

Any chance of #s 1 and 3 making it into the book? #2 is a clear intentional abuse, but #1 might come up accidentally and #3 could do so really easily.

[iago]

Oh, I might be upset about the line of thinking, but I'm definitely aiming some ICBMs at 'em and nuking it from orbit. For example:

HARRY: For Mimic Abilities, can a PC mimic more than one person at a time? Or someone from before the first session?

BILLY: I’d say no. It’s a bit of an “evil people eater” power, so it should be treated very strictly when in PC hands.

[Deadmanwalking]

Awesome. 

[iago]

Stacked Catch now reads:

Stacked Catch [+varies]. Normally, all your Toughness powers can only receive the refresh rebate effect of one Catch, so you line them all up and choose the best one. If you take Physical Immunity, and have other Toughness abilities already covered by a Catch, you may also receive the refresh rebate of a second Catch. This second Catch may only affect how the Physical Immunity works, and it’s called a Stacked Catch. If you take a Stacked Catch, the first Catch covering the other Toughness powers does not include the Physical Immunity as one of the abilities covered.

For example, let’s say a fire demon has Supernatural Toughness with the Catch that he’s vulnerable to cold. Normally, this would give him a refresh rebate of +3: +2 because cold is easy to come by, and +1 because research would normally uncover it.

In addition, he has physical immunity to damage from any kind of fire. The Catch is that it only applies to attacks with fire. Normally, this would give a rebate of +5: +2 for protecting against only one specific thing, +2 because “not fire” is easy to come by, and +1 because research would normally uncover it.

Because you can stack these two refresh benefits, the demon gets a total of +8 toward his Toughness powers, so his total refresh cost is only –4 (–4 for Supernatural Toughness, –8 for Physical Immunity, +8 for the stacked benefit).

A character with a Stacked Catch that that inverts the conditions of the first Catch is strongly discouraged. A Physical Immunity to Fire layered on top of Supernatural Toughness that can only be pierced by Fire just never happens in reality, and if it did, one or both Catches would be rightly valued as worth zero.

[arentol]

I think some of these questions come from a willful misinterpretation of the obvious spirit of the rules. As such I'm gonna get a bit snarky about it. Fair warning.

#1 - The Stacked Catch only applies if you already have another catch applying to your other Toughness powers. There are no other Toughness powers in #1, so the principle of biggest value catch applies, netting only a +5 value.

From a pure wording standpoint it says that you get a catch for "your toughness abilities" and PI is a toughness ability, therefore you should get a catch for the general group of abilities known as "toughness abilities", then you should get a stacked catch for PI, even though PI is the only ability you have. OBVIOUSLY this is not what is intended, but it is still a way in which it can be interpreted by someone trying exploit the system and should probably be clarified.

Another issue:
"Catches cannot reduce the cost of your Toughness powers below –1."
Because "Toughness" is the name of the sum of all powers in this heading it is not completely clear whether this applies to your toughness powers as a whole, or to each individually. Obviously you meant individually, but that is not clear from the text as written.

This also brings up another issue. By looking over how various creatures in OW are set up it is obvious that it doesn't matter how much the "The Catch" is "worth" if the only toughness power you have aside from PI is Inhuman Recovery then "The Catch" MUST be reduced to +1, and this applies before a Stacked Catch is applied. Similarly, if you have Inhuman Recovery and Inhuman Toughness then "The Catch" MUST be reduced to +2, no matter how much it is actually worth, all before a Stacked Catch is applied... Supernatural toughness and Inhuman Recovery and a Catch worth +5? Nope, must be reduced to +4.

HOWEVER, that is not what the text actually says. It merely says that Catches cannot reduce the cost of toughness powers below -1. It doesn't actually say that you can't have a catch worth more than the powers value.

I can forsee someone doing the following without realizing why it is wrong:

Inhuman Recovery -2
Inhuman Toughness -2
Physical Immunity -8
The Catch +5
The Catch (stacked) +5
Total: -3 (minimum -1 per power)

Should be:
Inhuman Recovery -2
Inhuman Toughness -2
Physical Immunity -8
The Catch +2
The Catch (stacked) +5
Total: -5

[iago]

"Catches cannot reduce the cost of your Toughness powers below –1."
Because "Toughness" is the name of the sum of all powers in this heading it is not completely clear whether this applies to your toughness powers as a whole, or to each individually. Obviously you meant individually, but that is not clear from the text as written.

Come again? Obviously we meant *as a whole*.

That's why the text reads "This will give you a discount on the overall cost of any and all Toughness powers that you take, "

"Overall cost" means total cost. Total. Of the powers in the Toughness category. I'll warrant that we should make it more clear (despite explicitly referencing Recovery abilities later in the Catch description) that Toughness means Toughness Category, and that will happen tonight. But I think anyone claiming that we're muddying whether it applies to powers individually is failing to read the above quoted phrase correctly (or simply failing to read it, period).

This also brings up another issue. By looking over how various creatures in OW are set up it is obvious that it doesn't matter how much the "The Catch" is "worth" if the only toughness power you have aside from PI is Inhuman Recovery then "The Catch" MUST be reduced to +1, and this applies before a Stacked Catch is applied. Similarly, if you have Inhuman Recovery and Inhuman Toughness then "The Catch" MUST be reduced to +2, no matter how much it is actually worth, all before a Stacked Catch is applied... Supernatural toughness and Inhuman Recovery and a Catch worth +5? Nope, must be reduced to +4.

Er, no, if you have Inhuman Toughness and Inhuman Recovery, a total of -4 Refresh, then your maximum Catch is +3.

If you have Supernatural Toughness and Inhuman Recovery, a total of -6 Refresh, your maximum Catch is +5.

We see no problem here.

[arentol]

Come again? Obviously we meant *as a whole*.

That's why the text reads "This will give you a discount on the overall cost of any and all Toughness powers that you take, "

"Overall cost" means total cost. Total. Of the powers in the Toughness category. I'll warrant that we should make it more clear (despite explicitly referencing Recovery abilities later in the Catch description) that Toughness means Toughness Category, and that will happen tonight. But I think anyone claiming that we're muddying whether it applies to powers individually is failing to read the above quoted phrase correctly (or simply failing to read it, period).

Okay, Overall cost of the powers in the toughness category, so this is acceptable then:

Inhuman Recovery -2
Inhuman Toughness -2
The Catch +5
Physical Invulnerability -8
The Catch (Stacked) +6
Total = -1

Also still not resolved is how Human Form applies when used with only one of the two toughness powers and therefore the exact value of that power is not known.