Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Brand

Pages: [1]
1
DFRPG / Re: Mental Communication and Attacks.
« on: March 12, 2011, 05:01:45 PM »
Telepathy is a fairly tricky issue as it's one of the things that the Laws of Magic.  More specifically, the Third Law - "Never Invade the Thoughts of Another."  The general consensus I've seen says that you'd probably be okay with just sending thoughts and picking up the surface thoughts that were sent back your way, but anything deeper is the sort of thing that could get someone in trouble.

As for cost, it really depends on how powerful you want the mental communication to be.  Talking to someone a zone or so away (basically line of sight) would cost -1 Refresh in my game.  If you want to stretch that distance farther and talk to someone a few states away, I would keep the requirement of having to meet the person first (from your previous game) and push the cost up to -2, at least.  Keep in mind that Incite Emotion (a simple -1 Power) goes up to -2 in cost just to add the ability to affect targets one zone away.

Mental attacks are tricky.  They aren't a lot of ways to affect people mentally in combat.  Going back to Incite Emotion, you can create a mental attack with a range up to one zone away for -3 Refresh.  Such an attack adds +2 stress on a successful hit (basically, it's treated as a Weapon:2).  That's a pretty good guideline to use.  If you eliminate the stress bonus, I could potentially see the cost dropping to -2 Refresh instead.

2
DFRPG / Re: New Player, Quick Questions
« on: March 12, 2011, 04:12:26 PM »
1.  YS 326-338 has guidelines for creating NPCs (this touches on your third question).  There are different categories of NPC (mortal, supernatural, multiple opponents, etc.) and things like Refresh are based on how much of a challenge you want the NPC to be to your party.

2.  I'll have to double-check the book, but I give the FP directly to the character who was compelled.

3.  I'm not familiar with such rules from SoF, but there are guidelines for building NPCs based on how tough one wants them to be.  Basic "mooks" (nameless NPCs on YS 327) will typically avoid taking consequences and concede if facing the threat of death.  They typically just go off the end of their stress tracks and are taken out.

**Edit**
For your second question, YS 106 says:
Quote
The only thing to keep in mind is that, if you're invoking an aspect on another PC or on a NPC to gain an advantage over them, that character will receive the fate point you spent, either at the end of the exchange (in conflict, see page 197) or at the end of the scene (outside of conflict).

Since the book says the FP goes to the character, I reserve it only for that NPC's use.

3
DFRPG / Re: Hypothetical First Law/Second Law Problem
« on: March 04, 2011, 08:43:55 PM »
Quote from: sinker on March 04, 2011, 08:22:26 PM
Although why the wizard would kill the dog I have no idea.

Maybe the dog kept making messes on the wizard's lawn and it finally became too much.  :P

Seriously, though, it really depends on the GM and players since this seems to be one of those situations that falls into the grayer areas of the Laws.  I probably wouldn't say it deserves Lawbreaker since such transformation in the Dresdenverse fundamentally alters the target, so I wouldn't consider such a dog to still be human.

YMMV

4
DFRPG / Re: Giving teeth to enforcement of The Laws
« on: March 04, 2011, 08:38:07 PM »
Quote from: Tallyrand on March 04, 2011, 08:09:03 PM
While I agree that that sort of situation is completely within both the rules and the spirit of the game it is someone I would personally never do to my players for a very simple reason.  That sort of trap leads to the overly cautious player, which anyone who has played RPGs for a significant amount of time will probably have come across.  This is the guy who in a D&D game takes 20 on every 5 foot square searching for traps and create elaborate schemes to open dungeon doors from around the corner.  The guy who in a Shadowrun game kills every living thing he comes into contact with to ensure there are no witnesses and insists on spending the first two sessions of ever run going over hundreds of scenarios trying to plan the perfect entry.  I do as much as I can to encourage my players to be active and smart instead of choked by paranoia.

That's why time limits are a great way to keep the party moving (maybe there's a princess that must be rescued in the castle before she is sacrificed at midnight, etc.).  To be honest, the people I game with usually have the opposite problem; they're more likely to rush into a situation, guns blazing, than spend hours plotting the perfect angle of attack.  And to use your D&D example, there's a reason players become paranoid about doors, walls, torch sconces, and everything else that can be found in dungeons.  If no traps were ever found, they'd happily rush through without a care... sort of like how a magic user without the threat of the Laws will have no problem using the "Flaming Fireball of Fiery Fatalness" rote again and again.

Quote from: Tallyrand on March 04, 2011, 08:09:03 PM
Fundamentally I agree, I just feel that there are boundaries you shouldn't cross in the interest of fun and fairness.  I've had characters in other games die in there sleep or what have you, and it never makes anyone but the most sadistic GM happy.

Absolutely.  I'd never just kill a character while walking down the street (or sleeping), which is why I mentioned few would find such ends to be fair.  It really does fall on the GM to find the right balance of making the game interesting and dangerous to the players to keep them involved and not going too far and "cheating" the players just for spite or one's own selfish pleasure.

5
DFRPG / Re: Giving teeth to enforcement of The Laws
« on: March 04, 2011, 05:43:23 PM »
Quote from: Tedronai on March 04, 2011, 02:39:12 PM
I think the (potential) problem Sinker was concerned with was more one of 'by all accounts, everyone in the vicinity is a monster, so I'm going to torch them' being followed by 'oops, some of those monsters were actually innocents, disguised with magic as monsters...I guess my character is an NPC, now...I guess I should have opened my Sight on what seemed to be a horde of literally mind-crushingly hideous undead on the off-chance that one of them was actually a human with an item of power...'
But that very scenario happens to be a very real danger for spellcasters willing to use deadly force or break any of the other Laws.  Molly did so, unintentionally, and by the game rules she only stayed a PC because she was young and still had plenty of Refresh to give.  We're talking about a game/system that lays out in detail how to make a character fall over dead while walking down the street, so suddenly losing one's character is something that, by the rules, is perfectly fine.  In your example, you would have already needed to fail a Lore/Alertness check to notice something different about one of the baddies, at least in my game.  

What it really comes down to is how the GM uses these things with regards to the party.  Are you trying to track down a homicidal warlock?  It's entirely within the rules for said warlock to acquire a few stray hairs or some of your blood, set up a ritual, sacrifice a wandering vagrant or two, and make you fall over dead while walking down the street.  That's within the rules, but most players would find that a rather unsatisfying (and unfair) way to lose a character.  It's the same with deadly magic.  There should always be a way (or two or three) for the caster to avoid killing unintentionally, but removing the threat of the Laws altogether just makes using magic even more powerful than it already is.

6
DFRPG / Re: Giving teeth to enforcement of The Laws
« on: March 04, 2011, 09:53:33 AM »
Quote from: sinker on March 04, 2011, 07:19:37 AM
These seem like sort of "Surprise, you're dead" (or in this case your character has gone off the deep end) kind of situations, and I'm less a fan of those.
Everyone has their preferred methods of dealing with this matter, but for me the key with magic is that the caster has to truly believe in using lethal force.  Don't want to kill innocent mortals?  Keep your power in check if there are innocents by the fight.  The fireball you just threw at the bad guy with the intention of reducing him to ashes can also set the building on fire, possibly threatening innocents/mortals (especially if they're unconscious when the place starts to burn down).  The safest way for a caster to fight lethally is to always go for the knockout and just cut the target's throat with a knife afterward, if needed.  Any caster throwing spells and going for the kill every time is far more likely to run into unintended consequences, like when Harry went supernova at Bianca's party and burned all those people. 

I'm not saying such incidents as I described in my above post are normal, or have even popped up in my game yet, but the threat of killing someone accidentally is very real for wizards, especially those running around with just a single refresh.  I liken it to Knights of the Cross and not using one of the Swords for the wrong reasons.

7
DFRPG / Re: Giving teeth to enforcement of The Laws
« on: March 04, 2011, 06:25:37 AM »
I know I'm fairly late to the debate here, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

In my game, the players have control of Taken Out results (assuming they're reasonable) but people can still die accidentally.  The Laws, especially the First, can still be broken unintentionally.

For example, say Sorcerer X puts together a nasty spell with the intention of using it to kill the evil undead necromancer that is threatening the city.  The party tracks down the target and the sorcerer lays a trap.  Unfortunately, the person the group is actually setting up happens to be the NPC treasure hunter using his Item of Power (a ring that allows for Glamour-like powers) to casually make his way through the hordes of zombies that have infested that part of the city.  One big boom later and the group's sorcerer finds himself standing over the body of a dead human.

That's a bit of an extreme example, and it would really only be a danger after the characters failed an assessment to recognize someone was impersonating the Big Bad, but it's the sort of thing that could happen.  I also allow for redirecting incoming spell energy (think Harry causing the frozen turkey to fall on the BC vamp's head), so it's also entirely possible an enemy warlock/wizard could cause a lethal spell to be redirected onto an innocent bystander.

Pages: [1]