Markdoc

Re: Arabia What about the Sabeans and their neighbours? They lived in what is now Yemen, spoke Sayhadic languages (related to but distinct from Arabic and the other semitic languages - it is/was afro-asiatic though) and had a flourishing civilization with trade routes linking them with Africa, the Med - via the Nabateans, Egypt and India (probably via intermediaries). Their script, which was modified version of phoenician, went on (it is thought) to be the ancestor of Ge'ez, the Ethiopian amharic script. cheers, Mark

Re: Mad Skills Semantics. If the players are sitting around discussing how they're going to get information on the Hieropomp's personality and speculating on who's going to be best for information gathering, I'd call it roleplaying.

Re: Mad Skills

Re: Mad Skills Like any sort of social interaction, it's highly context dependant: there are times when it's best to go all-in, for a single gamble. There are times when it's better to chip away at the problem. However, in the kind of skill vs skill contest I outlined, remember that rolls are typically opposed: that changes the odds dramatically. Unless your target has no skill at all (and most social skills are everyman skills), a -5 is almost certain to be a very substantial (probably fatal) penalty. Moreover, by breaking a large task into multiple small tasks, a single failure typically only creates a small setback. In the example I gave, failing to convince the Hieropomp that the Duke's new girlfriend is suspicious probably (depending, of course on, context) isn't going to derail your whole smear campaign. On the other hand, if your whole attempt rests on one roll success/failure at a substantial penalty, the odds are very good you're just going to fail. If we assume that our PC has a 13- roll, even if the Hieropomp has no opposing skill roll, he still gets an EGO roll (see 6E1, page 84), and even if we assume he only has an average EGO and gets 11-, with a -5 penalty, the PC has an 8- roll to work with: 25.9% chance of success vs the Hieropomp's 62.5% chance of disbelieving. His chance of actually beating the Hieropomp's roll on a single contest is 0.5%. Under the same numbers, 5 rolls at -1 is still no sure thing (in fact the odds are still heavily against you) but you still have about 20x the chance of success, that you'd get going with a single -5 roll. Equally relevant, of course, is that when you engage in this sort of extended skill contest, you are hopefully piling up bonuses as each successful roll makes your target more inclined to see you as trustworthy (of course multiple failures will have the opposite effect!). The trick then becomes roleplaying your way to better bonuses. If the Hieropomp is vain flatter him, if he's greedy, bribe him, if he's pious, get a church father to support you, etc etc. Even where you are not using opposed rolls (like in the crosscountry travel example I gave) making a single roll and failing means you can't find your way to Tobermorey. Using the extended skill contest just means your first failure sets you up for more rolls: it make take more time (and more roleplaying) to get the result you want, because the failures are not necessarily final. Of course, if the players haven't invested many points in skills, then the whole thing is moot, because you'll likely just end up with multiple failures. There's a reason players in my game have multiple PCs with skills in the 15+ range, including social skills (the highest skill is 20-, even though this is a heroic campaign, built with 50+50 starting characters): they're heroes, and after 5 years of playing this campaign, they're the best there is at what they do And they know that skills matter. That's the key point. If the GM doesn't make skills matter the PCs won't buy them. If he does - well, we already have a very flexible system that does all the stuff Sean asked for in his first post. cheers, Mark

Re: Anyone using 1 pt per Dex in 6E? Hmmmm. That's actually a pretty good idea. Might be worth considering for my next game. cheers, Mark

Re: Mad Skills Haven't we been over this? The skill vs skill mechanism already covers "skill combat" and the GM and can make skill use as granular as his players can tolerate simply by breaking skill use down into smaller segments of time. For example, the PCs want to go to the village of Tobermorey. The GM can say: 1) "Sure. OK, you go to Tobermorey. Now what?" 2) "Tobermorey's a fair distance on the other side of the Goss wood - make an AK: Jugwold roll. OK, with an 11 it takes you three days, but you find your way there without trouble" 3) "Tobermorey's on the far side of the Goss wood. You can make an AK: Jugwold roll to see if you know one of the paths that run through it at -3. No? OK, well you can try information gathering among the merchants at the market .... by the way, do any of you have survival: temperate woods?" Alternatively, even short tasks can (and often should) be broken down. Convincing the Hieropomp to declare the Duke of Wallash a heretic on a persuasion roll, might be a -5. ("He's always given generously to the church!") Breaking it down into tasks (Convincing the Hieropomp that he associates with enemies of the church, that he hasn't attended high holy day at the capital for a long time and why is that?, that his mistress is said to be a sorceress, that young girls are disappearing form local villages and that a new Duke of Wallash could actually be expected to be more generous in gratitude for attaining his positions with the Hieropomp's support, etc etc ... with appropriate evidence (faked or not) those rolls could be at -1 or even +1, depending on the people involved. They would probably involve multiple conversations with the Hieropomp and a deal of roleplaying (and a deal of adenturing, setting up evidence, finding witnesses, etc - all of which call for more skill rolls) but multiple rolls at +1/-1 is probably a more viable strategy than one roll at -5 .... especially since the Hieropomp is probably pretty persuasive himself. But either is a viable approach with the rules as is. It depends on whether the players want to play "How do you convince the Hieropomp to isolate the Duke politically, so that you can safely force him to yield the sword?" or "That head priest guy has said it's OK to attack the old guy with the magic sword you need, so how are you going to get into the castle?" cheers, Mark

Re: Which is easier to swing, an axe or a sword?

Re: Which is easier to swing, an axe or a sword?

Re: Which is easier to swing, an axe or a sword? Yes, but not by hacking. Against a heavily armoured foe, you thrust, going for the weak spots. Remember the old adage: "The edge wounds. The point kills" That's made plain by surviving fechtbuch and also by contemporary accounts.

Re: Political/Religious Space Colonies? Well traditionally, you then pick whichever part suits the argument you are making at the time. cheers, Mark

Re: Spell Resistance The problem with force wall (or barrier, in 6E) is that it does nothing to stop mental attacks or adjustment powers, or indeed, as written, physical magic attacks. Since it has no PD, the first physical attack that did 1 BOD would take it down (you should add transparent to cover this). cheers, Mark

Re: Spell Resistance The problem with this is that it affects the caster's spell roll, so it doesn't model D&D style spell resistance at all (though it's an interesting idea for a spell sink who actually disrupts casting: I may well use that ) In D&D, the spell still goes off and takes its normal effect - it just specifically doesn't affect the spell-resistant target. So if the party is fireballed, everyone gets a little crispy - except the spell-resistant guy. If the party runs through a blade barriers, it isn't dispelled, it just doesn't affect spell resistant guy: everyone else bleeds. Last off spell resistance to spells simulated by affecting the casting roll would have no effect on spells once they were cast: so if the caster uses a spell like spiritual weapon, he casts it (not attacking anyone, therefore spell resistance should have no effect) and then three rounds later attacks spell resistance guy - at which point the spell may fail, in D&D. As it stands, affecting the spell casting and the "Only targetting the caster" means that spell with a duration or area affects (and there's a lot of those in D&D) will affect the spell resistant guy normally. In this case, I'd use the much-maligned desolid trick: Spell resistance: Spell resistance: Desolidification , Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates; +1) (100 Active Points); Custom Modifier: only vs spells and spelllike abilities (-1), Requires A BOD Roll ((Note: roll is modified by attacking power); -1), Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects (-1/2) (100 points active, 25 points real) The way this works is that any time spell-resistant guy is attacked with a spell or spell like attack, he makes a roll, with appropriate minuses for the power of the incoming spell. If he fails the roll, the spell takes effect. Otherwise the spell passes right through him without effect. He can allow himself to be affected, just by deliberately failing the roll. I've based the roll off BOD, since a) pretty much any spell resistant creatures/things have BOD and that way no specific skill roll is required. You can buy up the roll by buying up BOD with the -1 1/2 limitation: only for spell resistance. This has the side effect that really big monsters will start with a higher roll and tiny creatures like færies a small roll, but since you can buy it up or down ... no biggie. As GM, you set it where you want it anyway. Spells which are unaffected by spell resistance, should buy "not affected by spell resistance" for a +1/4 advantage added to the spell (That's costed as Affects desolid: only vs spell resistance -1) Last off, since we are modelling D&D spell resistance here, I have given the desolid a healthy -1 1/2 limitation, since it specifically affects spells: not magic items, not supernatural abilities like Dragon breath, vampire's energy drain or a Swordsage's ki powers - and not even all spells.. It pretty much only affects human/human-like spellcasting. If you wanted a more generic anti-magic ability drop it back to -1. cheers, Mark

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Ok, that made me laugh! It's nothing to do with shileds, but is actually short for "Saussicon de Targe" or Sausage from Targe: the old name for an area around Lyon. And yeah, 30 € per kilo is pretty steep, but I'm assuming it's hand-made gourmet sausage, made from free range pigs fed on the fine herbs of provence and air-dried ... or something. That'd match the upper level of text which says "Nothing but the best". The French take their food seriously, in case you hadn't noticed. And thinking about it, I bought three sausages from the amusing French guy at the big Christmas market here (after getting a waffer-thin slice of about 16 different types to try) and probably paid about 30 dollars for around a kilo. Tat might sound expensive, but these are hard salami-style sausages, not something you drop into a pan with two eggs. So what I have been doing is slicing them thinly and serving them as snacks prior to dinner or slicing them thinly and adding them to meals to give an extra zing - so far after making three big dinners for friends, and two dinners for me, I have about a third left. So as a nice treat, the cost works out about 2-3 dollars per dinner. Not really exorbitant. cheers, Mark

Re: Quick question about oxygen!

Re: d20 feats in .hdc format

Re: Fantasy Art Thread He's learning. though - last night he tricked the PCs into having a meal with him: one of them got the body-switching potion, and he took off with a nice new human-looking body, leaving the PC stranded in his monstrous one. They're now hot on his trail trying to get it back! cheers, Mark

Re: d20 feats in .hdc format Yeah, and I have lists written up myself - I just wanted to avoid re-entering everything into herodesigner. Sigh. cheers, Mark

Re: NND vs Barrier Which is, in fact, exactly what we do cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread It's called a Dragon Dog. When the players first stayed with Macharian, he warned them not to go wandering around at night, since to discourage raiders, he let the Dragon dogs out to roam around. Cheers, Mark

Re: Fantasy Art Thread And two more from last night. The guy in the Fez is Macharian, Khatz's mentor (Khatz is starting to learn magic) and the guy without the Fez is Gehennan, tonight's major bad guy cheers, Mark

Re: NND vs Barrier This is what I mean, and also it is correct. You don't cancel advantages and limitations off against each other. First you add +1/4 (real cost/active cost 12.5 per d6) then you apply the limitations (real cost 10, active cost 12.5). The "based on OCV/DCV" was simply so that it would function like a regular EB (you don't actually need it to generate this effect) - and it makes the point that the most cost effective way to build an NND is often not to start with EB, but with Mental blast. And yet, I haven't seen that mental blast is generally considered unbalancing - even though it can be built to have the same cost and utility as EB, NND .... plus LoS, IPE and Indirect! It's one of those things which - by RAW - looks unbalanced: indeed, in the build up to 6E discussions that point was made repeatedly. But in real life, it really doesn't seem to be. The same, in my experience, applies to letting NND be somewhat indirect. In theory, it looks unfair. In practice, it's had no discernible effect apart from avoiding arguments like "Yes, I know your NND will go through any amount of armour and forcefield, but you still can't shoot him through the window" (note, this has not only actually occurred, in my own experience, it occurred three times with three different players in three different games, run by two different GMs). I like consistency in my games, but there are times when slavish adherence to RAW starts to interfere with fun. So yeah, by RAW walls and barriers stop NND/AVAD attacks ... except mental blast. As a house rule, allowing NND/AVAD to bypass them - based on special effect - appears to be no biggie. cheers, Mark

Re: NND vs Barrier I'd simply translated this the same way I had translated the fact that NNDs are not stopped by conventional defences

Re: NND vs Barrier

Re: NND vs Barrier Right and this is part of the reason we're OK with NNDs that can (in some cases) ignore walls, because as they stand the +1 usually makes such attacks annoying rather than deciding - making them weaker doesn't seem to justify the extra cost, in this instance and as noted up-thread, allowing them to penetrate Barriers is both an advantage and a disadvantage, so +0 seems a reasonable number.

Re: Quick question about oxygen!