The Catch: True Love....

[jybil178]

pg. 185,

The Catch [+varies]
Description: Your Toughness abilities are
limited in some way.
Skills Affected: None.
Effects:
The Catch. You must specify something that
bypasses your Toughness abilities. This will
give you a discount on the total cost of any
and all Toughness category powers that you
take, based on how likely it is that the Catch
will be met in play. Add all the relevant
discounts from the list below:
*  If your abilities only protect you
against something specific, you get a +2
discount. If they protect you against
everything except something specific, you
get nothing.
*  If the Catch is bypassed by something
that anyone could reasonably get access
to, but usually doesn’t carry on them
(like cold iron), you get a +2. If it is
bypassed by something only a rare class
of people in the world have (like True
Magic), you get a +1. If it is bypassed by
something only one or two people in the
world have access to or could produce
(like a Sword of the Cross), you get
nothing. Even the mere presence of the
thing that satisfies your Catch will cause
you discomfort (and may be grounds for
a compel or something similar).
*  If almost anyone with an awareness of
the supernatural knows about the Catch
or could easily find out (like from the
Paranet, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula if
you’re a Black Court vampire), you get a
+2. If knowledge of the Catch requires
access to specific research material
that could be restricted (like a wizard’s
library), you get a +1. If knowledge of
the Catch requires knowing you personally
to learn about it (like the effect of
Judas’ Noose on Nicodemus), you get
nothing.

Basically, with this big list of potential discounts.. how does True Love fall under as a +0???  Was it a balancing issue?  Or am I maybe missing something?

[BumblingBear]

Probably because you cannot beat somebody/something up with true love.  It just acts as a repellent.

[Drachasor]

Yeah, I don't see that.

Seems like:
Rare Class of People: +1 (undoubtedly more common than wizards)
Researchable: +1

Now, I can see how they might think it is almost impossible to run across this in a game, but I have to disagree if that's why they have it at +0.  You can just get a symbol of that true love to use as a weapon.

On the other hand, confirming that something is true love and not almost true love is hard.

Frankly, this falls under "GM's prerogative" to me.  He can decide how hard it is to get an item that symbolizes true love or how hard it is to otherwise acquire.  Certainly though, I don't think it is necessarily harder to get than Inherited Silver (you either got it or you don't, and I don't THINK it counts if someone who didn't inherit that silver uses it).  That's +1.  Given that, seems like it should be +1 or +2 to me and the GM determines which one it is (researchable depends on creature, but for White Court Vampires, it should be researchable in an arcane library).

[Drachasor]

Probably because you cannot beat somebody/something up with true love.  It just acts as a repellent.

Sure you can.  Easiest for a Wizard, I admit, but doable...how hard it is depends on what items representative of True Love you can find (finding weapons would be very hard, but not impossible, but you could potentially weaponize non-weapon items).

I mean, ideally you find a CIA couple who are operatives and truly in love, and get some knives and guns they romantically gifted each other.  Maybe a sword from somewhere.  Even if you find just wedding rings though, you could make a primitive sort of flail using them.

Edit:  Maybe the guidelines need to be adjusted though.  I mean, it isn't much use if everyone knows the weakness to an evil guy if there's only one person in the world who can get past it.  I mean something like "Catch: Harry Dresden" isn't going to do your random group in Florida or wherever any good even if you need no research to know that (we're assuming for the sake of argument here).

Edit2:  Maybe the writers of the books are cynics though.

[jybil178]

The only thing I can think of honestly, is the somewhat difficult time someone might have attempting to weaponize something like true love...

But that in itself should then be mentioned on the catches, as another modifier... Because as the rules go, it DOES gain a catch bonus, regardless of how difficult it may be to use...  At the very least, as difficult as it is to weaponize, you could probably at least get a few Hundred people clever enough to find a way to do it.  And while it may be difficult to find out about, there ARE other people, besides the ENTIRE families of White Court Vampires that know about their weaknesses.  Its not at all comparable to the +0 example, of only one person alive in the world knowing about your weakness...  And I'd say more, but I'm really making a poor argument... >.<  Too tired to write as well as I'd like.. *sigh*

edit: and i mean, maybe even a small addition, stating that if the catch isn't really usable to attack the creature, and is mostly just for flavor, and a way to prevent the creature from feeding or something like that, then the catch won't provide any bonus.. something simple like that would be fine >.<

[jadecourtflunky]

TRUE love is really rare.. but it should still get a +1 due to research.

[bitterpill]

Yer it should be one but when you get down to it there are going to be no times in game that anyone actually uses the catch unless character go to a lot of trouble and give themselves aspects like true love. That may be the biggest weak point of the true ... catches that pc can get them with aspects.

[Drachasor]

TRUE love is really rare.. but it should still get a +1 due to research.

I have a lot of trouble believing it is as rare as true magic in the Dresden-verse, which has wizard-level talent numbering at best around 1000 or so people in the entire world, and maybe 100 times that if you count practitioners who can have almost no real talent.  IMHO, it's a pretty cynical outlook to think fewer than 1 in 10,000 people experience it.  (To say nothing of that fact that things touched by true love could last for thousands of years, potentially).

[luminos]

Treat the catch as something that you will deal with as players.  That way, if you think true love is common enough, you can give it both a +1 on the catch AND have it show up frequently enough to represent that fact.  The catch guidelines are misleading, because it makes it seem like you have to judge it on some kind of grounds of fictional reality.  But the spirit of the rules (how the catch is priced in the examples) makes it clear that the catch is rebated according to its game significance.

[luminos]

Or think of it this way:  Fate, and the world you create with it, runs off of story logic.  In this imaginary world, True Love may outnumber magic users, perhaps by a large margin.  But if you apply story logic to it, True Love will only show up when its significant to one the protagonists.  True magic is bound to show up all the time.  Thus, by story logic, true love is rarer than true magic.

[sinker]

Yeah the catch's value has more to do with how much the player/gm feels it should be there. I can see a large variety of different values for true love, each being just as valid as the last.

Personally I'd probably assign it +1 for rarity, and +0 for how easily discovered. But that's just my personal thought and it might change based on how often I wanted it to come up in a campaign.

It occurs to me that as far as the novels are concerned it really only comes up once or twice in a beneficial way and a bunch of times in a dramatic compel style. Seems appropriate.

[Sanctaphrax]

This has been discussed before.
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,22280.0.html