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Messages - Monkey Bloke

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DFRPG / Re: Thaumaturgy question (another newbie!)
« on: December 02, 2010, 04:43:50 PM »
Quote from: Haru on November 29, 2010, 05:55:29 PM
I think what you are trying to do is a social conflict (the interrogation), and for that you are trying to get some advantages. Instead of trying to figure out how to cast the spell, lets have a look at what you want to do.

A polygraph helps you to sort out lies, not a 100 percent, but it can be pretty useful. In a manor of speaking, it protects you from being lied to, or in other words: it protects you from a deceit attack. So a regular polygraph would be an armor:1 or armor:2 against deceit attacks in a social conflict (mostly interrogation, obviously).
<SNIP>

I think that Haru answered my question and made me realise something about the best way to use magic in DFRPG, I was caught up with trying to model a specific effect, when modelling the overall desired result and filling in the details with wahtever colour is needed is a better way to go about it.

Thanks.

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DFRPG / Fun with quick wards... or... blocks, really?
« on: November 29, 2010, 11:21:30 AM »
I posted a little while ago about thaumaturgy at speed in combat.
This specifically came up about wards.
In our game three hexenwolves came upon the PCs, but their howling game the PCs a little warning.
Given about 1 exchange the PCs fired up a strength 6 ward.
Fair enough, I figure that's fine, the Hexenwolves managed to tear through that (does weapon damage assist when damaging wards? I assume so).

Anyway then the idea came up that since a ward can last until sunrise, why not drop that for more strength?

Assuming a lore 5 and a focus item, you can default to a strength 6 ward without prep right? And assuming this will last for "An afternoon" and a combat isn't likely to take more than a few minutes, why not drop 5 levels of duration and pump that into strenght.
Then you still only need to control 6 shifts for an 11 strength ward, with a quick invoke that seems do-able in 1 or 2 exchanges.
Or to make it simpler, a 9 strength ward for 4 shifts of power.
Is this correct?

Why would anyone throw up an evocation block in the face of this?

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DFRPG / Thaumaturgy question (another newbie!)
« on: November 29, 2010, 11:10:48 AM »
Hi all,
I was planning to begin running a DFRPG campaign in a few months when our WFRP game has wrapped up.
With our current GM away for a couple weeks, we took the opportunity to run a quick DF scenario, mostly to familiarise ourselves with rules etc.
Most of the time of these two sessions degenerated into flipping through the magic section.
We even got the the point where we were considering no magic users or only being able to use spells we have pre-"sorted out" due to the time it took to figure out spells.
Since neither of those ideas is appealing, I figure the best idea is to use the next few months to get a proper handle on spellcasting in DFRPG.
I figure my easiest option is to ask a buch of questions here.

So, one of ideas that we had trouble with was the following:
The players have a local criminal who they suspect works for a black court vampire. They want to question him and to develop a lie detection method, a kind of "magical polygraph" I guess.
Trying to avoid the laws of magic, the goal isn't to control his mind, simply to detect lies (the polygraph analogy is reasonably accurate).
They drew some of his blood for the spell and then we hit a hurdle on how to model this spell.

We considered a few ways to do this, but couldn't figure out the best way to model it. One this that did come up was temporarily increasing the PCs Empathy to detect lying, but other than creating a huge load of taggable aspects via a magical manuver we couldn't suss out how to increase a skill, even temporarily.

How would people here want to model a magical polygraph on an unwilling (but secured) target, and what sort of numbers would be involved?

Thanks.

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DFRPG / Re: Dresden Dice..... Arranging large order to the UK
« on: November 09, 2010, 02:50:19 PM »
I'd be interested in a set in the UK at £10

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DFRPG / Combat Thaumaturgy?
« on: November 02, 2010, 10:05:14 AM »
I recently ran a DFRPG one-shot as a rules and game "feel" test run before we embark on a campaign later, one thing that struck us was using Thaumaturgy in a time-sensitive situation, for example, combat.
The rules say that you can start a ritual up to your Lore without additioal prep, but we could not figure out how long that should take to execute.
The magic chapter talks about it taking "minutes" at best, but with enemies attacking and one player holding them off the Thaumaturgist is setting up a strength 5 ward (his lore is 5).
Basically I let him make a disclipline roll every exchange and it took 2 exchanges to fire up the ward.
This is now a strength 5 ward until sunrise, which seems way better than the equivilant strength 5 block that an Evocator could do while taking stress etc.
This makes me wonder what other evocations a thaumaturgist could replicate quickly which seems out of the spirit of the Evocation/Thaumaturgy split.

Is this correct, or did I misread the rules on magic?


As a side question, when it states enemies can attack the ward to bring it down, does that include weapons scores? When a Hexenwolf attacks the ward, should I be including the Strength and Claws weapon rating in the attack to damage the ward?

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DFRPG / Dracula in the Dresden Files
« on: September 28, 2010, 02:24:16 PM »
This weekend I am looking to run a one-off RPG session for some friends who haven't gamed recently.
Since we used to play a lot of Mayfair Games 'Chill', I thought I would run an old Chill adventure, but to use the Dresden Files game since I want to test run it a bit for the campaign I will run next year.

The adventure I'm running is "Vengeance of Dracula", a Victorian-era adventure that is a sequel of sorts to Stoker's novel.

What I am trying to do is to stat up Dracula using the DF.
In the chill adventure he is listed as very powerful (but the Black Court vampire template covers most of that), but it is the powers he has that I am figuring out how to model.
Some like changing the weather or darkening a room are pretty much adding an aspect to a scene.
Summoning swarms of rats, bats, insects or wolves are a little trickier, as is his ability to hold a door closed with his powers so it cannot be opened for a while short of destroying the door itself.
The ones that concern me are Influence (a kind of mind control), sleep (to send someone to sleep) and Steal Memory (to remove a recent memory, for example, of being fed upon). I imaging that most of these will be a form of mental conflict, but am not sure about the details.

Also, the adventure has a possibility of a PC being fed upon and possibly being turned into a vampire, either by Dracula or his new vampire bride. How best to handle this? Dracula's usual M.O. is to use the above Sleep power on people while they are in bed and then feed on them, slowly weakening them and increasing his influence over them. After a while they either die and return as a vampire or he needs to be dealt with (killed or destroy all his hidden coffins and he flees back to Transylvania).
Any ideas how to model this sort of slow attack against a (ideally, well, for Drac) defenceless opponent?

Also, any suggestions for skill levels and especially Aspects for the King of the Undead? "Creatures of the night, what music they make"

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