Author Topic: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?  (Read 8988 times)

Offline Conor

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Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« on: May 09, 2013, 10:09:17 PM »
Hey folks,

One thing that comes up from time to time in discussion as we build Ragnarok NYC is: are there any powers etc we need to house rule so they don't break the game?

Things I've heard people be worried about so far:

Evocation
Higher levels of Incite Emotion

And then things like combination of Evocation and Enchanted Items for incredible Defense, stuff like that.


I'm generally pretty easy on this stuff and my default position is to not want to limit whatever's in the book, but I thought I'd invite people here to comment to get the benefit of your experience.

Thanks a lot!

Offline polkaneverdies

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2013, 11:32:01 PM »
The only thing I would outright suggest barring is mental damage evocation attacks. It is a matter of some debate here whether or not spirit would let you do it. I tend to think it is probably legal by the book, but it gets stupid really quickly.

A new wizard can one shot kill the vast majority of bad guys with it. (If you are already concerned about the strength of normal evocation, this is that only it bypasses all the toughness powers. Unless of course all the baddies start inexplicably showing up with inhuman stoicism, etc.)



Offline Conor

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2013, 11:42:24 PM »
The only thing I would outright suggest barring is mental damage evocation attacks. It is a matter of some debate here whether or not spirit would let you do it. I tend to think it is probably legal by the book, but it gets stupid really quickly.

A new wizard can one shot kill the vast majority of bad guys with it. (If you are already concerned about the strength of normal evocation, this is that only it bypasses all the toughness powers. Unless of course all the baddies start inexplicably showing up with inhuman stoicism, etc.)

Thanks Polkaneverdies, also I only realized what your username is when I had to type it out!

Offline wyvern

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2013, 11:49:17 PM »
Things to watch out for: focused crafters - while you can't take rituals and then add refinements for specializations, you can add refinements for focus items... and focus items can improve enchanted items.  The results can easily be absurd.

Thaumaturgy in general - I'd strongly suggest setting specific expectations for time & effort required to accomplish various power levels of rituals, so you don't get some munchkin wandering in and assuming that they can spend half a day making discipline maneuvers of "gathering power" (or, for the creative munchkin, invent 15 different aspects that all completely coincidentally use the character's apex skill to create) and then toss off a thirty shift ritual of doom.

Evocation is - at the refresh level you're starting at - actually much less dangerous, mostly due to the cost of throwing around high-power spells.  However, if people can advance to, say, mid-teens refresh, evocation can get rather ridiculous as well.

Another thing to watch out for is stunts - there's some disagreement over how limited a stunt needs to be, particularly in regards to making attack & defense bonuses.  Skill swap stunts can also be dangerous - a typical munchkin move is to find a way to skill swap all of their attacks and defenses to a single apex skill, then add stunts that boost that skill in a "limited" set of circumstances... that, on closer examination, turns out to not be actually limiting.
A really obvious example of an overly broad stunt might be "+1 weapons skill when in combat", though most munchkins will go with something subtler - like "defend with discipline when I can see the attack coming", which seems fairly reasonable for a wizard until you consider that, one, if you can't see the attack coming you automatically defend at +0 anyway, and two, physical defense is really about two-and-a-half trappings (defense vs. melee attacks, defense versus ranged attacks, and the one-half is defense versus unarmed attacks - which is included in defense versus melee, but can also be granted on its own, e.g. by the fists skill.)

Alas, much of this advice can be boiled down to "don't let players make hyperfocused characters", and "watch for munchkins", rather than any easily-house-ruleable flaws in the game system.
Oh, and look really carefully at any 'refluffed' powers, or powers taken from OW; while these are often just fine in their original context, many of them are very easily abused.  See, for example, the most recent thread about A Few Seconds Ahead - a power which I'd strongly suggest explicitly banning; while it's okay on a low lore character, it's just silly on any of the PCs that would take it.  There are better ways to work the mechanics of a precognitive power anyway.

Offline Tedronai

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2013, 11:53:02 PM »
A strict reading of Incite Emotion combined with Emotional Vampire may allow for two simultaneous mental attacks (or an attack and a maneuver/block) against the same target, seriously messing with the action economy.
While I do believe this to be a valid literal interpretation of the rules, I also believe that it is a dangerous one where game balance is concerned.  Tread carefully.

Aside from that, polkaneverdies and wyvern both gave good advice.
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Offline wyvern

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2013, 12:00:05 AM »
Related, but not actually quite on topic:

I would strongly suggest banning both Demonic Co-Pilot and Feeding Dependency.

Demonic Co-Pilot because it's just annoying to track and deal with all the extra rolls - plus it's trivially easy to get the same feel off a -0 power that allows use of the sponsor debt mechanic for appropriate actions.

And Feeding Dependency because it just, mechanically, does not work.  Really, it doesn't.  Note that one of the rules for it says you can clear your hunger stress track by succeeding on a discipline roll to control your hunger after a scene in which you've used your powers... meaning the best way to recover isn't to go off-camera and feed, it's to be on-camera, make some trivial use of powers, and then succeed at controlling your hunger when the scene ends.
While it may be possible to house-rule the power into some semblance of functionality, I, personally, would prefer to replace it with a combined temporary power / sponsor debt mechanic - essentially, the powers you've bought and are on your sheet are assumed to be what you can reasonably sustain from your current lifestyle, and you can go beyond that temporarily at the cost of having to deal with the associated hunger later.

Offline crusher_bob

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2013, 04:49:14 AM »
Another power that is potentially abuseable is beast change.  An aggressive player can construct their character in such a  way as to have very good skills in all areas and steal the show from the other players.

Sample:

+5: Rapport, Empathy
+4: Investigation, Burglary
+3: Stealth, Presence
+2: Athletics, Fists
...

+5: Fists, athletics
+4: alertness, stealth
+3: endurance, investigation
+2: empathy, rapport
...

powers:
-1 echoes of the beast
-1 beast change
-2 inhuman recovery
+3 the catch: silver (common, researchable)

+1 human form, covering:
-2 inhuman strength
-2 inhuman toughness
-2 inhuman speed
-1 claws

(-7 total)

Offline wyvern

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #7 on: May 10, 2013, 05:21:22 AM »
Another power that is potentially abuseable is beast change.  An aggressive player can construct their character in such a  way as to have very good skills in all areas and steal the show from the other players.
I'm not sure I agree - the proposed character is certainly very strong... but only when they're prepared.  A simple mugging could take out the human form before he got a chance to shift, and it's not hard to imagine fights where going animal form just wouldn't be acceptable (for example, against vanilla mortals with cameras), while the animal form would be very vulnerable to intimidation or other mental attacks.  In fact, hit them with a typical White Court vampire, and they just lose - either physically stomped by the WCV's always-available powers, or psychically stomped if they try to go animal form.

It's definitely competitive with a wizard... but I don't think it's more than competitive.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #8 on: May 10, 2013, 07:00:06 AM »
There's nothing you absolutely need to house rule. The game is generally well balanced, as long as you make sure to interpret the rules in the right direction.

To elaborate:

I think Beast Change is fine. Evocation is fine too. They're both really good, but they're not mandatory.

Evocation cannot be use to make mental attacks. I have decided to ignore arguments to the contrary because they lead to an unbalanced conclusion. Doublethink is doubleplusgood.

Incite Emotion is fine as long as you believe that the +2 bonus does not apply to attacks. Again, use doublethink if necessary.

Thaumaturgy in general can be problematic, since its mechanics involve a lot of GM fiat. It's as strong as the GM lets it be. (True of everything, but doubly true of Thaumaturgy.)

Enchanted items can get incredibly powerful if people specialize heavily in them. Watch out for them.

Don't use Powers from Our World.

In theory Mimic Abilities could be broken in certain special circumstances, but I have never actually seen it be a problem. Nobody seems inclined to try to break it.

Rebate Powers can be easy to exploit, depending on how the game goes. Item Of Power can be free Refresh if the GM doesn't make it otherwise.

Don't get too attached to the Catch formula; it can give some pretty silly results. If you think the number it spits out is wrong, trust your instincts.

Powers in general, especially ones written for NPCs, are often annoyingly vague. Be prepared to use your judgement.

PS: If you decide to houserule, we've got oodles of homebrew stuff to share with you.
PPS: I'll second wyvern's comments on Demonic Co-Pilot and Feeding Dependency. And I'll add that Feeding Dependency is unclear in at least one very important way.

Offline Bedurndurn

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #9 on: May 10, 2013, 08:19:37 AM »
Things that break your game's skill cap on attacks are probably a dumb idea. Things that can get you an entire combat's worth of attacks at double your game's skill cap (Oh hi, focus items!) are a super dumb idea.

Be upfront with people about what you're going to let them do with thaumaturgy. The ability to do anything with essentially one skill, especially where one of the explicitly listed uses is 'Do impossible things',  has the potential to get way out of hand. :-)

If your group has a 'that guy', maybe encourage him to not be a wizard.

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2013, 10:50:20 AM »
Incite Emotion is fine as long as you believe that the +2 bonus does not apply to attacks. Again, use doublethink if necessary.

I believe this is actually RAW. The entry for the Nixie, a monster with Incite Emotion, specifically states that it makes attacks at <Skill Rating> and not <Skill Rating+2>.

Offline InFerrumVeritas

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #11 on: May 10, 2013, 12:02:48 PM »
Really the only thing I've ever had to worry about was control bonuses with evocation.  My houserule works like this:

Your attack roll and your control roll are the same, but the bonuses to your roll do not apply to the attack.  So if you wanted to do a 7 shift attack with Superb discipline and +2 offensive control, you'd roll (say you get a +1).  Your attack is "only" Fantastic, but your control is 8. 

Offline Conor

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #12 on: May 10, 2013, 02:00:24 PM »
Things that break your game's skill cap on attacks are probably a dumb idea. Things that can get you an entire combat's worth of attacks at double your game's skill cap (Oh hi, focus items!) are a super dumb idea.

Be upfront with people about what you're going to let them do with thaumaturgy. The ability to do anything with essentially one skill, especially where one of the explicitly listed uses is 'Do impossible things',  has the potential to get way out of hand. :-)

If your group has a 'that guy', maybe encourage him to not be a wizard.

That's one issue Bedurndurn, out group is going to be a large-scale online chat with a high number of players and multiple GMs, we haven't opened yet and we already have 30-something registered users, that number is only going to grow. I'm inclined to trust everyone but in a group that big you can't keep an eye out for 'that guy' as easily as you can in tabletop.


Thanks for the advice so far everyone, if anyone has more to add please do.

I found that discussion about shifters interesting, their disadvantage of having to shift form really is a nice inbuilt limitation.

Evocation with Focus Items is still one of the biggest worries, yeah. But the more time passes, the more I'm inclined to let things go as they are in the books in most cases and watch how things develop for the first few weeks of the game.

Offline Wordmaker

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #13 on: May 10, 2013, 03:51:14 PM »
One power I've found worth paying attention to is Cassandra's Tears. Sure, you can stop NPCs from believing what the character says, but you need to watch your players and make sure that they're not meta-gaming too much, especially if you have a larger player group and less need of NPCs.

Offline Tedronai

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Re: Game-Breaking Powers To Worry About?
« Reply #14 on: May 11, 2013, 04:19:55 AM »
One power I've found worth paying attention to is Cassandra's Tears. Sure, you can stop NPCs from believing what the character says, but you need to watch your players and make sure that they're not meta-gaming too much, especially if you have a larger player group and less need of NPCs.

The best way to handle this is with Compels.  Everyone likes FPs, even metagaming munchkins.  Often, especially metagaming munchkins.
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