House Rules And Homebrew

[Sanctaphrax]

I'll add a note saying that a summoner must generally overcome the level of consequence that a creature will take in his service.

[devonapple]

I'll add a note saying that a summoner must generally overcome the level of consequence that a creature will take in his service.

Should the guide explicitly suggest that creatures with Recovery powers should automatically accept some level of Consequences, just to make use of their Recovery abilities? Or should that be left up to the GM to adjudicate?

[Sanctaphrax]

Method 2 example:

Binder wants to create a horde of minions. He chooses Mouth-Handed Men as his minions. Mouth-Handed Men have a skill cap of Good and 2 points worth of powers. Their best stress track is three boxes long. Binder sees no need to add any positive or negative aspects or qualities.

The GM decides that minor minions like this will not take any consequences at all.

That gives a complexity per minion of (3 for skill cap) + (2 for powers) + (4 to take out best stress track). That's 9. But Binder doesn't need these guys for long: just a few hours. That's two steps down the time chart from one day, so it reduces the complexity by 2 to 7.

Binder could just summon his minions one by one with his base complexity. But he's not that patient.

So he decides to summon 10 in one go. That's 7 complexity for the first Mouth-Handed Man, 3.5 for the next 4, and 1.75 for the other 5.

That's a final complexity of 29.75, which rounds up to 30. A lot, but doable for a pro like Binder.

[Sanctaphrax]

Good question. I'm inclined to leave it up to the GM so that I don't have to deal with it.

[devonapple]

That's a final complexity of 29.75, which rounds up to 30. A lot, but doable for a pro like Binder.

Both methods result in the same Complexity!

[Sanctaphrax]

Yes they do. By pure luck, believe it or not.

It's quite heartening, actually. It means that the two methods are at least somewhat balanced against each other.

[Tedronai]

Yes they do. By pure luck, believe it or not.

It's quite heartening, actually. It means that the two methods are at least somewhat balanced against each other.

Just because they happen to coincide at a single point does not indicate that they are 'balanced'. (not saying that they're not, just that that is not an indication of such)

[Sanctaphrax]

"Somewhat balanced against each other."

That was a major concern during the development of these systems. They would return wildly different responses, so to see them roughly equal now is very nice.

[Tedronai]

"Somewhat balanced against each other."

That was a major concern during the development of these systems. They would return wildly different responses, so to see them roughly equal now is very nice.

At a single point.  Seems to be setting a rather low bar.

[Sanctaphrax]

Hence the word somewhat.

Don't deny me my small victories.

[sinker]

@sinker: Do you mean the part where you skip a scene for +1 thaumaturgy complexity? I'm not really how to tweak that for this situation.

Was referring partly to that and also partly to the concept that someone can be compelled to be out of a scene (I.E. in exchange for a Fate point). Although isn't it a +2 to complexity? I'm actually asking the question as my memory is hazy and I don't have the book in front of me. The thoughts I had as far as tweaking is that perhaps one of those methods could be used in conjunction with others to achieve the desired effect. Seems like if we only use those methods then the downsides waay outweigh the upsides, so I was thinking maybe you take yourself out of the scene ala a compel or as part of the preparation step and then model a lot of the collateral damage with the defects then you might get a similar spell to the one mentioned earlier by Belial.

[BumblingBear]

@BumblingBear: Thanks. For some reason, I like to hear stuff like that from faceless people over the internet.

Hey! I have a picture!  And youtube videos.

[evileeyore]

Hence the word somewhat.

Don't deny me my small victories.

So how about running the numbers with a few other setups?

Like one really Powerful Demon, one weak but very tenacious (lots of consequences), and both with high and low Loyalty and Functionality scores? Do they still match up? (yes I are too lazy to learn your system and test-break it right now  )

Powerful Uncontrolled Animal Demon
Powerful Loyal Animal Demon
Powerful Uncontrolled Specialist Demon
Powerful Jeeves Demon


Weak 6 Stress Track Uncontrolled Animal Demon
Weak 6 Stress Track Loyal Animal Demon
Weak 6 Stress Track Uncontrolled Specialist Demon
Weak 6 Stress Track Jeeves Demon

[Sanctaphrax]

@BumblingBear: Wait, is that you in your profile picture? And where can I find those videos?

@evileeyore: Alright, let's give it a try.

The powerful being will be the Demon Lord from reply #84 of the Generic NPC thread.

The weak one will be the Poisonous Demon from reply #64 of that same thread.

The Demon Lord's base complexity before modifiers with Method #1 is 88 (26 skill points, 14 skill cap, 48 refresh).

The Poisonous Demon's base complexity before modifiers with Method #1 is 14 (6 skill points, 3 skill cap, 5 refresh).

The Demon Lord's base complexity before modifiers with Method #2 is 86 (5 stress, 7 skill cap, 48 refresh, 8 mild consequences, 4 moderate consequence, 6 severe consequence, 8 extreme consequence). This is slightly ambigous, because the Demon Lord has True Shapeshifting and could get more or less consequences by shuffling his skills.

The Poisonous Demon's base complexity before modifiers with Method #2 is 15 (5 stress, 3 skill cap, 5 refresh, 2 mild consequence). You could pump this up to 19 by deciding that the Poisonous Demon goes to moderate consequences. Method #1 unfortunately has no way to simulate that effect.

So they look pretty even right now. But that'll change once we start incorporating modifiers.

[Sanctaphrax]

Duration, defects, and multiple summonings will be ignored for the purposes of this analysis because the systems are the same in both methods.

With Method #1, the Demon Lord costs 44 complexity if you don't want to bother with control and 264 complexity if you want him to be your Jeeves. Animal vs Specialist is just flavour.

With Method #1, the Poisonous Demon costs 7 complexity if you don't want to bother with control and 52 complexity if you want him to be your Jeeves. Animal vs Specialist is just flavour.

With Method #2, everything is very ambigous. Sorry, but I don't really understand the quality system. But on the upside, you can add qualities to make Specialist and Animal different.

Method #2 is not my work. It's UmbraLux's. I summarized it, but that requires no real understanding.