Author Topic: Break my character! Part 2!  (Read 3832 times)

Offline JayTee

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Re: Break my character! Part 2!
« Reply #15 on: May 19, 2011, 11:47:14 PM »
So, here he is, my new character!

Yes, I know all I did was change around his High Concept and skills and stunts, but I've got a good handle on how this guy thinks and acts so I don't want to change that.

My ultimate goal when making him was a Jack-of-all-trades type character, simply because my GM should be able to plan his/her games without having to worry too much about if my character can handle things or not. On the flip side his Stunts are somewhat focused on combat simply because if you're a Pure Mortal hanging around with the Supernatural something is going to want to eat you, or worse.

The two Stunts I'm worried about are Fast and Deadly and Trust your Knowledge. The former represents what happens if a character who lived a normal life was suddenly and irrevocably thrust into the Supernatural. He's going to lean through Trial by Fire just how vulnerable he is to some things out there. If he wants to stand a chance he's going to have to learn to strike fast and hard while making sure he's not cornered.

The Latter Stunt represents one of the major advantages Mortals have: Organization. Having been exposed to the Weird he's going to want every advantage he can get, so he'll likely do some research on a few of the more hard sciences that the mystical has a harder time affecting simply by existing.

So, that said, thoughts? Questions? Comments? Disparaging remarks about my looks?

Offline Becq

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Re: Break my character! Part 2!
« Reply #16 on: May 20, 2011, 08:16:12 AM »
In my opinion, some of those stunts are overpowered.  In general, a stunt is supposed to give you 2 shifts of benefit some of the time 
"Fast and Deadly Use Athletics for combat rolls, provided you are unarmed or useing a weapon that can be held in one hand."

Basically, what you've done here is collapse four skills into one.  With this stunt, there is really no reason to have Fists, Weapons, or Guns.  And since Athletics is the default skill for defense, literally every roll for offense and defense is covered by one skill.  Ok, you are slightly limited in that rifles and zweihanders aren't covered, but that's a fairly minor consideration.  Consider that most skills list 4-6 trappings, thus when a stunt borrows a trapping it should gain about 20% of the utility of the (one) skill it borrows from.
How to fix this?  Perhaps something along these lines:

Fast and Deadly: Whan a narration of the character's Weapons attack showcases his athletic prowess, Athletic complements Weapons.  Alternately, if the character makes a Weapons attack after making a supplemental move, he can ignore the penalty for the supplemental move action.

With no more than a modest effort, this should allow you to claim a +1 on most of your weapons attack rolls, which is within reason for a stunt.  (Note that the second option is only different than the first option in semantics.)

Small Weapons Expert when using a weapon that can be held in one hand, inflict 2 extra stress.

This translates to +2 damage whenever you attack with melee or ranged weapons (since you plan on using only one-handed weapons anyway).  It needs to be re-worded to affect only one type of attack skill, and should either give you a +2 bonus *occasionally* or a +1 bonus routinely.

"Trust your Knowledge use Alertness when making Declerarions or Assesments, so long as its something that could have been researched or read up on."

This seems too broadly defined ... and really doesn't make much sense.  What does Alertness have to do with memorization of facts, orthe capacity to trust in such knowledge?  Based on your description of what you intended for the stunt, perhaps it would make more sense for the stunt to allow you to roll Contacts in place of Lore when performing Arcane Research?  (Or mayby Scholarship for Academic research, I wasn't too clear on your wording...)

That's my opinion, at least, others may have different views.