Tutor me please

[Team8Mum]

Give me a power level and I'll take a shot at statting these fellows.

Chest deep.

[crusher_bob]

Skills:

4: Fists, Guns, Weapons
3: Alertness, Athletics, Endurance
2: Discipline, Deceit, Lore
1: Presence, Conviction, Empathy

The problem with this build is that you've put almost all of your skill points into combat related stuff.  When there is not combat going on, which we assume is most of the time, this guy would have to use fate points to do much of anything with his other skills.

Here's a sample different build, which gives you some abilities outside of combat:

Great: Fists, Guns, Deceit
Good: Alertness, Empathy, Endurance
Fair: Discipline, Athletics, Lore
Average: Presence, Conviction, Driving

Stunts:
Footwork
Armed Arts

These two stunts mostly remove the need for a high athletics and a high weapon skill.  You lose the ability to use thrown weapons well, and you can't run as fast, but notice that the change allows you to raise up Deceit and Empathy, making you much more useful in social situations.

---------------

Skills:

4: Conviction, Guns, Weapons
3: Alertness, Athletics, Endurance
2: Discipline, Deceit, Lore
1: Presence, Contacts, Empathy

Powers
Bless This House -1
Guide My Hand -1
Righteousness -2
Holy Touch -1

I'd think about dropping the guns skill from this build, and spending a stunt to use weapons in place of athletics for defense.  This would free up your skills slots. 

So something like:
Great: Conviction, Deceit, Weapons
Good: Alertness, Empathy, Endurance
Fair: Discipline, Athletics, Lore
Average: Presence, Contacts, ??

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Skills:
4: Discipline, Lore, Conviction
3: Athletics, Alertness, Endurance
2: Deceit, Weapons, Empathy
1: Presence, Fists, Resources

You don't need as much conviction if you are only going to do thaumaturgy.  Full wizards can sort of get away with having all their top skills taken up by the 'wizard skills' because the evocation/thaumaturgy package is a very potent tool set by itself.  A wizard can almost always come up with something to do outside of combat.

-------------

As for thaumaturgy disrupting gameplay, there are two potential reasons for that.
1
The rules for thuamaturgy aren't very well defined, so anytime you want to do something, you have to stop the game and have a (long) discussion with the GM.

You can try these rules for thaumaturgy prep to reduce the GM discussion time.

2
Thaumaturgy is a very versatile tool, which means that clever players will always be trying to use it to just to the 'end of the mystery' or whatever.

When running the game, try to make sure that using thaumaturgy to solve a problem is (almost always) the 2nd or third best solution, and should almost never actually be able to solve the problem outright. 

[hitokiri523]

glad to see we have lots of people jouining this topic.
so mum whats next for me?

[Team8Mum]

We hold all of our LARPs indoors, and boffer weapons are not a component of the game.

Ah sanity - have you also solved the the inter-player becomes inter-character  and visa versa conflict issue.?

[Team8Mum]

glad to see we have lots of people jouining this topic.
so mum whats next for me?

Chest deep gives 30 points for skills, with Dresden you have to build in a pyramid so you can't have a lot of high level skills and few low levels.
To make it easier in the rule book there are a few example skill trees
For chest deep these role in at:
5 good, 5 fair, 5 average (15 skills in all - and a bit of a jack of all trades)
2 great, 3 good, 4 fair, 5 average (14 skills)
3 great, 3 good, 3 fair, 3 average (12 skills)
2 superb, 2 great, 2 good, 2 fair, 2 average (only 10 skills but 2 areas he is brilliant at)

So decide what sort of person he is- is he focused on one area that he is expert in, or is he more likely to be a generalist
(option 2- which is the same idea but from the other side - List the skills you think he would have and count them up. If it's only a few then he can afford to be very good at the key ones, if it is a lot the your probably looking at the 5 good line)

Skills in DFRPG are:
Alertness, Athletics, Burglary, Contacts, Conviction, Craftsmanship, Deceit, Discipline, Driving
Empathy, Endurance, Fists, Guns, Intimidation, Investigation, Lore, Might, Performance
Presence, Rapport, Resources, Scholarship, Stealth, Survival, Weapons

Now just to complicate matters, as Crusher_bob has been pointing out. Some times there are stunts that let you use one skill in the place of another, so the skills you actually need might not be as you expect.

So you might want your guy to be good with his fists and a knife. Normally you would expect to take Weapons and Fists. But you could just take fists and the stunt Armed Arts and select knife as one of  the weapon you have trained with. Then you use your Fists to attack with knives.
Similarly Rule with Fear means you are so 'scary' you can use intimidation in stead of presence (of course people might not like you very much, but they will do what you say)

As stunts are only 'a set of guide lines' this meant in FATE you can pretty much use ANY skill for ANY other skill as long as you can blagg it in the description of the stunt you create and give a set of circumstances where it seems reasonable to the GM. - some are just more obvious than others.

Other style of stunts give bonus to a skill in a set of circumstances e.g. Hunter giving a bonus to survivial for when tracking

Or they make things happen quicker or effects last longer (e.g.safecracker reducing the lock pick time for burglary or jury rigger meaning improvised stuff made with craftsmanship doesn't fall apart so quickly)


So assuming you want to keep some refresh back to give you fate in the game (and recalling 0 refresh means you are an NPC and events in the game can inflict changes on you) you probably 5 or 6 stunts to come up with.

Go play - be inventive. Then Jaytee and crusher-bob can help you short out the power levels and make sure the things you have come up with are not over or under powered for the game mechanics.

[hitokiri523]

decided to go for the 15 skills since hes just an infantry grunt going on a road trip hes no special forces van hellsing so a jack of all trades thats been turned from fighting terrorists to monsters seems to fit
Good:Guns, Driving, Discipline, Alertness, Endurance
Fair: Fists, Survival, Weapons, Athletics, Deceit
Average: Lore, craftsmanship, intimidation, might, scolarship

these made sense to me. lore being one of his weakest skills since basically when it comes to his experience its basically " well in my supernatural experience it is defenately not a zombie" Guns, discipline, alertness, and endurance because of the grunt life. driving because his pontiac is his most prized possession now that hes on the road. Fists are a fair skill because of marine corps as well as survival weapons and athletics. Deceit just because he is on a road trip and has to do what he has to to survive.
Craftsmanship because the marine corps gets secondhand equipment most of the time and e have to learn to adapt, scholarship too because he knows he has just found the tip of the supernatural iceburg and needs to learn more, intimidation and might because again hes a marine and nows how to throw his weight around.

skills hmm. ill go with five since like i said he isnt a crazy special forces monster basher
1) Hail to the Pontiac < helps with anything that involves his car or a similar model, from driving to repair
2) squeeze the trigger dont pull < hes a good shot >
3) Survival Guilt < he feels a bit of remorse for living when some other people died in afghanistan so in situations where people are dying he feels a need to fight
4) So how do i kill it? < he has an eye for detail in figureing out how to kill supernatural monsters >
5) Adapt and overcome < he is quick to use whats at hand in out of the box ways to overcome a situation >

So how is this?

[JayTee]

The problem with this build is that you've put almost all of your skill points into combat related stuff.

This was my intention, Hitokiri mentioned he was looking for an Action/Horror game, I built my stats accordingly as I'm basically just tagging along. xD

That said, your builds are much better and more flexible, I will likely be using them once I get a steady GM, thank you!

The rules for thuamaturgy aren't very well defined, so anytime you want to do something, you have to stop the game and have a (long) discussion with the GM.

This strikes me as odd, as from what I can tell Thaumaturgy seems to be nothing more (system wise) than a glorified Simple Action, Assessment, Block, Maneuver, Declaration, or Skill vs Skill roll with a few extra factors (such as Thresholds, Durations and Ritualwork. Is this just my lack of experience talking?

Thaumaturgy is a very versatile tool, which means that clever players will always be trying to use it to just to the 'end of the mystery' or whatever.

When running the game, try to make sure that using thaumaturgy to solve a problem is (almost always) the 2nd or third best solution, and should almost never actually be able to solve the problem outright.

I agree with this completely, I tend to view it as a support or fallback option rather than a means to an end.


EDIT: One other thing, can I get some feedback on my Aspects? I tired to make them either as neutral (so they could be invoked/compelled with equal ease) or as interesting as possible, comments?


EDIT 2: One other other thing, I am assuming this will play out like a standard game. That said, who will be running it, and what can I do to help? 

[crusher_bob]

Good:Guns, Driving, Discipline, Alertness, Endurance
Fair: Fists, Survival, Weapons, Athletics, Deceit
Average: Lore, craftsmanship, intimidation, might, scolarship

1
System wise, the skills you can count on are those that you have at good (+3) or better.  Any other skills you will generally need to invoke an aspect to get some use out of them.  For a pure mortal, who has a lot of refresh sitting around, you are perfectly capable of invoking for a few skill rolls each game session.  But if you use up a lot of refresh on stunts, this may not be possible.

2.
Note that this build has a very low base physical defense (athletics are only +2), and since you don't have any toughness powers, you can very easily be hurt.

It can help to list out your 'combat' abilities, to make sure your character doesn't have any gaping mechanical holes.

Physical:
Initiative: +3 (Alertness)
Defense: +2 (Athletics)
Best Attacks: Targeting 3, weapon 2 (pistols); targeting 3, weapon 3 (hand cannons or rifles)

Social:
Initiative: +0 (Empathy)
Defense: +2 (Deceit) or +3 (Discipline)
Best Attack: +2 (Deceit) or +1 (Intimidation)

Mental (Defense) +3 (Discipline)

Stress:
Physical: OOOO
Mental: OO
Social: OO

------------------------

Now, let's take a look at an alternate build:

4: Athletics, Deceit, Guns
3: Alertness, Discipline, Endurance
2: Driving, Survival, Weapons
1: Conviction, Lore, Presence

You lose the following skills:
2: Fists
1: Craftsmanship, Intimidation, Might, Scholarship

And gain:
1: Conviction, Presence

And your 'conflict stats' looks like:

Physical:
Initiative: +3 (Alertness)
Defense: +4 (Athletics)
Best Attacks: Targeting 4, weapon 2 (pistols); targeting 4, weapon 3 (hand-cannons or rifles)

Social:
Initiative: +0 (Empathy)
Defense: +4 (Deceit) or +3 (Discipline)
Best Attack: +4 (Deceit)

Mental (Defense) +3 (Discipline)

Stress:
Physical: OOOO
Mental: OOO
Social: OOO

--------------------

Now, personally, I'm still not that happy with the build because your best (and only) social skills is deceit.  All your ability to interact with other people is based on lying or concealing the truth form them.  If you ever wanted to have a truthful conversation with someone, you'd not have a real idea of what to do.

Of course, you can always just give up in the social arena, and concentrate on some other non-combat area.

For example:
4: Athletics, Investigation, Guns
3: Alertness, Discipline, Stealth
2: Burglary, Driving, Weapons
1: Conviction, Lore, Survival

And taking a stunt 'Mind Over Body' that lets you use discipline to determine your physical stress track, whould let you be 'the sneaky' guy, in addition to being the gun guy.

--------------------------------------

Remember at this refresh level, your likely other party members are things like young wizards, white court vampires, and various shapechangers.  You'll need to be able to have your own area of expertise in a party at that power level. 

And you'll be facing stuff like:
Malk:
Initiative: +7
Defense: +4
Best Attack: Targeting 3, weapon 2 (Claws)
Stress: OO(OO) Armor: 1 (catch: iron)

Zombie (assuming it has inhuman speed):
Initiative: +7
Defense: +4
Best Attacks: Targeting 3, weapon 2 (Fists)
Stress: OOO(OO) Armor: 1 (no catch)

Ghoul:
Initiative: +7
Defense: +5
Best Attacks: Targeting 4, weapon 4 (Claws)
Stress: OOOO

[Team8Mum]

One other thing, can I get some feedback on my Aspects? I tired to make them either as neutral (so they could be invoked/compelled with equal ease) or as interesting as possible, comments?

I like these two-
Terrible Planner, Fantastic Improviser;  
A little Knowledge can be a dangerous thing;
both give me a good idea of what is going on I the characters head

Obfuscating Stupidity;
I'd like to see the story fragment that this one comes from to get my head around what you mean by it, because I can see a number of ways it could pan out.

With the others being depending on the specific of the character it's harder to see what is going on. We could do with deciding which flavour of character to use, and then the background, rising conflict and first story so hitokiri can do his guess star (and you can see how you'd fit into his first story)

EDIT 2: One other other thing, I am assuming this will play out like a standard game. That said, who will be running it, and what can I do to help? 

When I do a PBeM I prefer to write longer segments than you would get sat around a gaming table- mainly because unless you are all on line at the same time it all goes very slow as you wait for people to respond. As a result it all gets very rules light, which makes it a bit useless as a tutor session.
Also being in the UK chances are I'm not going to be one line at the same time as every one else.
So all in all I'm not really suitable. Sorry.
(Plus I'm running 3 PBeMs ATM and working full time so I cant really promise I'll be available for any more than the odd evening)

[hitokiri523]

hmmm ok bob i get where you are going with this.
but i think since this is my first game i will stick with the stuff i picked.
you did bring up the fact that i can get hurt easily so i will take your advice.
i am gonna get rid of survival gui;lt and replace it with Mind over Body which sounds very good to me,

thank you for the advice bob.

[crusher_bob]

The 'mind over body' stunt on the sneaky guy build was only necessary because I dropped the endurance skill to make way for more sneaky guy skills.  It's the endurance skill that normally determines how many boxes of physical stress you have (while presence does social stress, and conviction does mental stress).

It works like this:
Endurance: 0, stress: OO
Endurance: 1-2, stress: OOO
Endurance: 3-4, stress: OOOO
Endurance: 5, stress: OOOO + 1 extra minor consequence

All the human builds, like reglar mortals and wizards, have to worry about defenses because they hurt relatively easily and don't have any real way to heal quickly.

Examples:
Our characters are being hit by a ghoul, ho exceeds our defense roll by 3.  So we are looking at a 7 stress hit.
If you are just a regular mortal with stress: OOO, you'd take a moderate consequence (-4 stress) and then a 3 stress hit, and you'd have that consequence for the rest of the adventure.

Next, compare that to a white court vampire, with inhuman recovery.
They take a moderate consequence too, but as they recover faster, the consequence will be gone by the end of the next scene.

Lastly, compare to a shapeshifter with both inhuman toughness and inhuman recovery.
Their stress meter looks like OOO(OO) armor: 1.  Their natural amor reduces the 7 stress hit to a 6 stress hit.  They take minor consequence (-2) and soak up the remaining 4 stress.  And if they really want to, they can remove that minor consequence in the next combat exchange.

Carrying around consequences during the game is somewhat 'dangerous' because it means you might have to take a big consequence from even  small hit.  If your minor and moderate consequences are filled, the next hit is going to break some bones, or something because you won't be able to reduce the stress with any smaller consequences.

-------------

Next step is to look at your aspects, and come up with two or three ways to invoke or compel each one, except for your trouble, which can only be compelled.  This will make things easier for both you and the GM during the game, in that each of you will already have some idea about what the aspect can be used for.

------------

Next thing to do is, once the other players start getting their characters put together, is to make sure that the characters don't overlap too much.  No characters should completely eclipse the others.  Shapeshifters can be real skill monkeys if put together in a certain way, and it's possible for combat focused wizards to completely overshadow any other sort of combat character.  Even two mortal characters can have a lot of skill overlap.

--------------

Example:

A shapeshifter build could look like this:

Powers
-1 Beast Change
-1 Echoes of the Beast
-2 Inhuman Recovery

+1 Human form, covering:
-1 Claws
-2 Inhuman Strength
-2 Inhuman Speed
-2 Inhuman Toughness
+3 the catch: silver (+2 common, +1 researchable)

(-7 refresh total)

Skills:

Human Form:
4: Empathy, Investigation, Rapport
3: Athletics, Discipline, Presence
2: Endurance, Fists, Lore
1: Alertness, Conviction, Stealth
           
Animal Form:           
4: Athletics, Fists, Investigation
3: Alertness, Discipline, Endurance
2: Empathy, Presence, Stealth
1: Conviction, Lore, Rapport

Notice how this build covers fighting, talking, and investigation all reasonably well.  If the other (we'll assume 3) characters have Contacts/Resources,  Scholarship/Craftsmanship, and Wizard skills as their main shticks, it doesn't matter much.  But it's also totally possible for this shapeshifter build to stomp all over the other players characters too.  I don't know until they've been brought to the table.  And then, there may need to be some negotiation.

--------------

And a combat focused wizard may show up with something like targeting 6, weapon 6 attacks and power 6 blocks with armor 3 for backup.  And anything that could be a threat to him would totally flatten the other characters.  And there would need to be some negotiation, again.

-------------

So, don't fall so in love with your character concept that you would be willing to make the game less fun for the other players by sticking to your character exactly as originally defined. 

[Sanctaphrax]

Looks like I'm not needed here. Which is actually a good thing, since I don't think I'd handle this as well as it is being handled.

Anyway...

I noticed that Mindflayer94 is starting up a Neutral Grounds game on the PbP forums. I'm sending him a PM to see if he'd be interested in running it as a tutorial of sorts for newbies.

[JayTee]

Obfuscating Stupidity;
I'd like to see the story fragment that this one comes from to get my head around what you mean by it, because I can see a number of ways it could pan out.

I'll be completely honest, when writing them up I didn't fill in a story for each aspect, partially because when i tired i found I sucked at it and partially because I tend to use a kind of "Jigsaw puzzle" approach to character building. Meaning I have different names, histories, personalities and abilities that I like for characters, so i mix and match them whenever I need to make a new one.

That said, I'll break down each Aspect you mentioned so there is a better understanding of it.

Terrible Planner, Fantastic Improviser
The character is clever when adapting and improvising, but any time he is either engaged in a formal plan or simply thinking one out things go bad. Compelled to fail actions related to plans, "forget" to bring the proper equipment or just not think something through properly. Invoked for things that have been given no forethought or using minimal resources and materials.

A little Knowledge can be a dangerous thing
The character is nosey, and just likes knowing things in general. Not everyone likes the fact that he's always sticking his nose into their affairs, so this comes back to bite him. Compelled to have someone try to "silence" him, to try and overhear something that'll get him in trouble somehow or maybe even violate the Seventh Law by failing to resist temptation to read a particularly nasty looking occult book. Invoked to recall information about someone/thing, have a prior understanding about something or perform better on knowledge-based skill rolls (could also be used like Exposition and Knowledge dumping related to mystical stuff)

Obfuscating Stupidity.
The character, while being clever, does not like people KNOWING he is clever and will feign ignorance/incompetence at times. Compelled to fail a roll, have someone not take him seriously (who would believe an idiot?), deliberately disrupt something and making it look like an accident. Invoked for critical situations when failure is not an option.


Hope this helps!

I noticed that Mindflayer94 is starting up a Neutral Grounds game on the PbP forums. I'm sending him a PM to see if he'd be interested in running it as a tutorial of sorts for newbies.

I would love to join in if he's willing, thank you Sanctaphrax.



EDIT: Hitokiri, I would strongly suggest you take Crusher_bob's advice, skill ranks 1-2 suggest someone who only has some training (for example, someone who has gone to the gun range a few times would have such a skill rank in Guns). Skills at 3-4 imply someone who is well versed in that skill. (for example, someone who has been formally trained by a military organization such as the US Marines would have Guns at that level)

[Team8Mum]

Obfuscating Stupidity.
The character, while being clever, does not like people KNOWING he is clever and will feign ignorance/incompetence at times. Compelled to fail a roll, have someone not take him seriously (who would believe an idiot?), deliberately disrupt something and making it look like an accident. Invoked for critical situations when failure is not an option.

Hope this helps!

Ahhh. Like Columbo....
Got it thanks

[crusher_bob]

EDIT: Hitokiri, I would strongly suggest you take Crusher_bob's advice, skill ranks 1-2 suggest someone who only has some training (for example, someone who has gone to the gun range a few times would have such a skill rank in Guns). Skills at 3-4 imply someone who is well versed in that skill. (for example, someone who has been formally trained by a military organization such as the US Marines would have Guns at that level)

I think you are short selling low skill levels a bit too much.  At skill level 2, you are capable of doing whatever it is, but you just aren't good enough at it to do it well under pressure.

Skill level 4 and 5 are for scary skilled people.
Michael has lived (or, if you prefer, not died) by the sword for around 20 years, and he was weapons 5.
Murphy, by the later books, is very good at both guns and kung-fu, and she has both of those skills at 4 or 5.

People at these skill levels are rare, and possibly a bit nuts.  Most regular people probably top out at +3.

That's one of the reasons I don't like the write up of Molly in OW.  She's written up as discipline +4 fer cryin out loud.  And she's presented in the books as having problems maintaining her self control! So if you go by that metric, your character, who you imagine can coolly do the whole put your hand into the box thing has gotta have, like, discipline +7 or something, right?

Of course, the villain write-up are also pretty bad, but there's the unspoken understanding that 1 villain is supposed to be a challenge for the party, so they have to cover a lot of skills that would normally be covered by other people.