Powers = Tools ?

[Silverblaze]

Well a wizard could take an IoP to get his toughness, if Madrigal can find a IoP with physical immunity over the net then a Wizard who has been round a while could almost certainly have found one that grants toughness.

Can't use what happens in books as a basis for agame.  Authors do what they want; (as well they should) games have at least some rules.

Or gain it by way of skill with transmutation magic, possibly even as represented by Modular Powers (alongside True Shapeshifting) to represent the kind of skill seen from LTW.

I tend to agree here.  I do know a charactr with modular abilities and a fair bit of casting + refinement would be a very efficient character.  This could be good or bad depending upon the game.

[Silverblaze]

@Silverblaze: You're mostly right, but there are a couple of problems with what you just said.

First, making all powers available with various flavourings does not diminish uniqueness. No matter how you flavour Strength and Toughness, the dude with them is a tank.

Second, there's no danger to game balance from reflavoured powers. Because balance is mechanical, and flavour is flavour.

The danger comes from unintended interactions, which should be stopped with mechanical techniques. If ACaEBG is unbalanced when used with spellcasting (and I think it probably is) then not being usable with spellcasting should be part of ACaEBG's mechanics. Using narrative things to keep it away from casters is not a good solution at all, since players have the freedom to narrate as they wish. They shouldn't have to worry about having the mechanics crap out on them as a result.

Sometimes a mechanical limitation can look like a narrative one. As an example, I present to you the possibility that spellcasters be prohibited from taking ACaEBG. Looks narrative, but it's mechanical.

First: The more common powers are just that. Common. I'm referring to things like : holy powers, spell casting (which is borderline for rarity to be honest), shapeshifting, and powers listed only on items or NPC's in the Our World book.

Second:If you reflavour some powers they cease to be the same power. 

Back to the narrative thing? 

Fine. 

 "The player can narrate a they wish"  - (I am tempted to say "No they can't" but I'll tone it back.)

Only within reason; within the confines the game set up in the rules.  This is where the narrative and mechnics blend.  When a narrative starts to effect the mechanics (which it will in any game) and that narrative breaks the game.  The player losesthe ability to narrate as they see fit.  it ruins/breaks the game.

You see, here is where reflavouring becomes a problem.  If a power is intended  to be limited in scope by (narrative, theme, compels, or the rules simply saying - no) the book should say so.  What we have here is in my opinion a series of mistakes on behalf of those who wrote the DFRPG. 

To me it is clear holy powers should not be reflavoured to fit every character.  They are unbalanced when combined with certain powers.  Greater Glamours says only Fae may take this power.  Why doesn't Sacred Guardian - ACAEBG - Super Potent Emotion - Myrk etc.?  Lack of foresight?  Assumption that players would not try to reskin them?  Maybe in playtesting no one played Lenny the  mythic strength holy giant 1/2 temple dog with evocation and sponsored magic and 42 points of refinement who uses custom stunts and dual wields swords of the cross...because the character concept is rediculous. 

The rules allow for as much freedom as you can take.  Or as much freedom as you can hang yourself with.  Depending upon how you look at it.

At a certain point you have to limit your players and yourself and say; this doesn't make sense.  This will break the game. This should not happen. You need to look at context and say, this must have been an oversight in the writing process.

I've played in games with that kind of character.  I've played in games where if everyone didn't do that they got sidelined or became wall paper.  I learned how to do it.  That is not fun for me.  I don't play with people like that anymore. 

[Becq]

@Becq: That just isn't true, dude. Divine Purpose isn't a Catch, it's a guide to Compels. It says so right in the description!

I guess I was hoping that putting "Catch" in parentheses would be enough to make it clear that I wasn't talking about a literal The Catch but rather a more mitigating Catch-like feature.  I guess not.  But in any case, I agree that Divine Purpose is not a The Catch (heck, only Toughness powers officially have The Catch, amirite?) and I agree that compels are the mechanism by which Divine Purpose operates.  But I absolutely think that Divine Purpose is a balancing feature that plays a role in making the Swords work right.  Ie, a balancing feature.

Also, the templates aren't balanced. At all.

Also, I never claimed that the templates were entirely balanced (or even nearly so).  I'm claiming that the use of templates is a balancing feature.  You know, as opposed to not having them.  Because a optimal wizard with Inhuman Recovery would be far worse than an optimal wizard without, and an optimal wizard with Inhuman Mental Recovery would be worse than either.  Luckily, both of those require house rules and/or an additional template added to the character.

Adhering strictly to the templates given makes the game less balanced, not more.

This fact is quite important to the game's balance. If you include templates in the game's balance, then people making non-traditional characters have to be careful lest they accidentally break the game.

This bit mystifies me entirely.  Noting that I have never supported "adhering strictly to the templates given" (RAW allows for custom templates, dual templates, and changing templates, all of which I'm fine with if done judiciously and with an eye to preserving both fun and fairness as best possible), how does putting thought into balancing a character concept (in terms of the template used for the concept) in advance make it less likely to result in a balanced character than not giving even a moment's thought to it?

All I'm saying is that a WCV can bump Inhuman Speed up to Supernatural Speed without much of any discussion.  A wizard who wants to add Inhuman Strength needs to convince the GM that his new custom "Genomantically Engineered Wizard" template is reasonable.  And at the very least, the fact that the GM can now use the character's new high concept to make compels relating to the strain that the magically powered musculature puts on the wizard's otherwise mundane system is a balancing factor.  Not necessarily 100% balanced, but more so than just slapping the power onto the sheet without any thought whatsoever.

[Sanctaphrax]

@Becq: You need to pick better examples. Putting Inhuman Strength on a wizard is incredibly stupid from an optimization perspective. A better balancing factor for it would be to add the +2 stress to spell damage.

Inhuman Recovery is better, but I'd still rather have Refinement. (Amusingly, Inhuman Recovery on a wizard is totally legal by the canon templates. Just have a fast-healing parent.)

Using templates is not the same as putting thought into a character. Templates are recipes, they make some narrative and mechanical choices for you. That's all they do.

Some of them are stronger than others. If you adhere strictly to them, those imbalances will be locked into your game. But if you ignore them, then you need not worry about such imbalances.

Divine Purpose does not make a Sword weaker. Compels are not bad, Divine Purpose is just compels. Divine Purpose has no more effect on your power than CODE OF HONOUR as a trouble aspect does.

@Silverblaze: How can narration break a game? That ought to be definitively impossible, on account of it being narration.

There are balance mistakes in the game. They can not be fixed narratively. They can be fixed mechanically, and without too much trouble.

Greater Glamours is poorly written, as are most of the powers and stunts in Our World.

And yes, reskinning powers can make them look very different. This is good, it makes a wide variety of character types possible.

Optimizing a DFRPG character does not encourage you to make an incoherent character all. So you don't need to worry about that, the game is better-designed than that.

PS: I'm not saying that every character concept should be allowed to take every power in every game. I'm saying that no character concept should be prohibited from taking any power by the rules. Leave working out the narrative limits of the game to individual groups, and make sure that there are no wrong decisions for them to make.

[Silverblaze]

I can agree with everythign you said but this:

"I'm saying that no character concept should be prohibited from taking any power by the rules."

We'll have to agree to disagree.  Perfectly fine at your table for a random guy to have temple dog powers reskinned.  Not at mine.  Some rare circumstances sure...not just any concept.

"@Silverblaze: How can narration break a game? That ought to be definitively impossible, on account of it being narration."

I can see how some maneuvers or aspects can mess with a game  or declarations made by spendign a fate point - for instant success.  That is still narration and could mess with a game.

[Sanctaphrax]

That ain't narration. Once FP spending gets involved, you move into the area of mechanics. And a GM is well within his rights to disallow invocations that seem too potent.

Even if you don't want to allow my Mystic Martial Artist to use Sacred Guardian, you shouldn't try to write that into the rules. Just say, at your table, "that isn't justified by your high concept".

PS: At my table, I don't think I'd allow anyone to take Sacred Guardian. I did once, and I think it was a mistake. So even Temple Dogs will have to do without.

[ways and means]

I can agree with everythign you said but this:

"I'm saying that no character concept should be prohibited from taking any power by the rules."

We'll have to agree to disagree.  Perfectly fine at your table for a random guy to have temple dog powers reskinned.  Not at mine.  Some rare circumstances sure...not just any concept.

Just because a power is only referenced once certainly doesn't make it unique so foo dogs have sacred guardian an ability that lets them spend mental stress to boost there fist skill well maybe they are the only creature with that particular power but we have no evidence to conclude this perhaps there are many other spiritual creatures can use this power and perhaps so can their scions.  There are a large number of character concept that could use this power and its current context sensibly within the Dresden file universe (Demonic Scion, Angel Scion, Spirit Avatar and my personal favorite the were human foo dog). So by balancing over strong power by narrative you make certain character concepts more appealing.

[ways and means]

PS: At my table, I don't think I'd allow anyone to take Sacred Guardian. I did once, and I think it was a mistake. So even Temple Dogs will have to do without.

Really ? unless you attache it to a feeding power it is still inferior to casting mind you when attached to a feeding power, a stunt, a fist boost power it is probably the most broken thing in the game  .

[Sanctaphrax]

I don't really agree.

Its defensive and Catch-satisfying effects are huge.

And it's super cheap. 1 Refresh!

Plus, casters can't boost accuracy with stress.

[ways and means]

I don't really agree.

Its defensive and Catch-satisfying effects are huge.

And it's super cheap. 1 Refresh!

Plus, casters can't boost accuracy with stress.

Well I agree it is too cheap I really like the power itself the idea of mental stress for a boost appeals I might just up its prices to two refresh and have done with it (Assuming most combat runs for 5 rounds or more then the bonus balance out).

The catch part I always ignored ghost aren't really that prevalent in any of the game I played.

PS: Casters have exclusive access to focus item and specializations which can far exceed the max +4 bonus for sacred guardian without costing extra stress.

[Sanctaphrax]

Well, it's not totally clear if casting or Sacred Guardian melee is superior in the long run.

Casting has such a high cap, you can just keep improving it. Melee caps out earlier.

But I can't imagine making a melee character without Sacred Guardian, if Sacred Guardian is available. It's just so powerful.

(Especially if you take a stunt giving 2 mild mental consequences that only work with it. Which technically follows the guidelines in YS, despite being super broken.)

And at lower levels, melee can actually compete evenly with spellcasting. Things only get really imbalanced after people invest 7ish Refresh into pure attack power.

PS: I don't have OW on hand, but can't you also use Sacred Guardian with Guns attacks and Athletics defences?

[ways and means]

Wow it actually just says attack and defense so there is no reason a foo dog couldn't use on his social attacks (barking loudly), uhm well actually looking at it again it needs serious reworking to be balance and a higher price tag (even for foo dogs).

[Sanctaphrax]

Wait, it doesn't specify physical attacks and defences?

Holy cow. I must have blocked that out because it's so unreasonable. Take what I said about it being broken and double it.

[Viatos]

The custom Stunt guidelines explicitly allow taking a Trapping from one Skill (its original context) and putting it into another Skill. In the examples? Using bullets to BLOCK. Powers are ramped-up Stunts which you are also explicitly allowed to make up. Also: Templates, again explicitly called out. DFRPG is a toolkit, not written in stone. Context is not implied to be sacred. Powers are tools. Everything is a tool.

If some tools are grotesquely superior to others, that's a game balance issue and need not involve narrative at all.

Wait, it doesn't specify physical attacks and defences?

Holy cow. I must have blocked that out because it's so unreasonable. Take what I said about it being broken and double it.

It implies them. It doesn't specify because whoever wrote it wasn't thinking about it using it in an argument or a Soulgaze. This is just bad design. It's not terrible design; terrible design are things like Zeal and Void Avatar Prana in Exalted, which are the DFRPG equivalent of one random writer inventing a power called "The Other Writers For This Game Are Lame: Pay one point of Stress to receive fifty times your Conviction in shifts to cast an Evocation rote with. [-2]". But it is bad, and saying "only Temple Dogs were ever meant to have it by the guy who wrote it without specifying that and in direct contradiction of the explicit assumptions of the game system as a whole" doesn't excuse it.

[Silverblaze]

Wait, it doesn't specify physical attacks and defences?

Holy cow. I must have blocked that out because it's so unreasonable. Take what I said about it being broken and double it.

I'm sure that was not intentional.  Sometimes players need to look at the spirit of the rules and assume the writers just had an oversight.   

"This only applies to flying monkey demons, or foo dogs, or swords of the cross.  "
"This only applies to full fae"
"This attack bonus only applies to physical bite attacks"

and so on...