Flexible Priorities and Insight

[Bob McNamee]

NIMBY-not in my back yard

[edit: oops cross posted with Lxndr]

[Brian Leybourne]

::edited to delete my use of Brian's name as an acronym to poke fun at him...

Aww... why? The worst I could do is delete your account and put NPC's in The Flower of Battle with insulting variations on your name and nick... nothing really :-)

Alex, Bob: Cheers, should have clicked on that one.

Brian

[Ingenious]

Because discretion is the better part of valor I guess. That and I didn't want to offend anyone. Which is the same cup of tea I guess.

As to Lx's post he is partially correct. At the time I was not thinking outside of the box enough. I just set down my 15 points, knew that I could have an A, and only one A.. and then proceeded to write down priority letters via the remaining 10 points.
The ABBDFF character can in fact be egregiously over-powering in the sense that A can be attributes B can be race and also vagaries, and then D can be skills and the two F's devoted to social class and flaws.
So instead of having a starting character with 6 vagaries, I would have an additional 3 to use. And if this character was from Gelure.. he's have 3 more... for a grand total of 12 vagaries, or 4 vagaries mastered. That's pretty damned impressive to me.
Oh, and to your comment about a character from Picti having -1soc. You are incorrect sir, as on page 147 is says *(+1 AG, Wit, Soc; -1 TO, ST)*

IF we werent using option 3 I'd make something like AABDFF. Which would make an even more powerful sorcerer than the one shown above... both A's being attributes and vagaries, B being race, etc etc. This would make me have 47 total attribute points and 17 vagaries(if from Gelure).
That's nuts for a beginning sorcerer.
As follows:
ST 2 AG 2 TO 6 EN 6 HT 6
WP 6 WIT 6 MA 6 SOC 2 PER 5
That's 47 points right?
Derived sorcery attributes then:
Kaa=9
Form=5
Art=6
Discipline=6
Draw=4
Base sorcery pool is then 14.
Spells of 1 casted with 14 dice
Spells of 3 casted with 20 dice..
spells of many casted with 26 dice.
Tell me that would not be easy for a spellcaster to cast a spell.
And with 14 base vagaries, that is 4 mastered vagaries and a level 2 vagary on top of that.  4.66 vagaries mastered out of 9 available. Right.(the .66 being that 2/3 of one is exactly that.)
All of that is without national modifiers of course, and a player might not want to use them. 17 vagaries would result in 5.66 out of 9 masteries.
I hope you see my point now with a bit more clarity.

-Ingenious
Random note, the guys at theforge obviously did not take into account that one can just click on that 'last post' button on a topic and just run up the page view count..... Or they did and just did not care... or didn't feel like coding in something that takes into account one's IP address upon clicking the thing. It's just merely a matter of accuracy really. That and I was bored, so I tried it. You don't even have to hit refresh when you push Back after doing it... all you gotta do is re-click the same button.. then push Back, then click again... etc etc etc. And then again you would have to count additional clickage should someone stay logged in forever with a dedicated ISP and be able to click after each new reply to a post... *shrug* Still irks me though.

[Lxndr]

(To comment on your aside, I was under the impression that "# of views" was something that was considered too big of a PIA to remove, but was mostly meaningless.  I've really never looked at it myself, other than to see if it's gone up from the last time I looked at it... which would mean that AT LEAST ONE other person had clicked.)

First off, sorry about misinterpreting the Picts.  I apologize.

Next: AABDFF isn't possible for a starting character using my system - AABEFF is what you'd have (5+5+4+1). That would be a prisoner sorcerer with flaws up the wazoo and rather poor skills, though.  Really, 4 vagaries mastered is impressive, but sorcery is impressive no matter how you build it.  Although if you throw all those proficiencies into vagaries, then your sorcerer is completely unable to defend himself in a fight.  Remember, casting spells takes time, and your sample character only has FOUR dice in his combat pool.

Although I'm not sure which attribute of that guy is supposed to be primary.  You got a lot of sixes, but no 7.  Remember that rule?

And with an "F" social class, if this starting character isn't already in prison (gagged and bound to prevent you from using gestures and/or voice, which as a starting character you're almost definitely dependent on one or the other) then you're a wanted criminal, likely with a price posted on your head. Bounty-hunters would be coming after you all the time.  It doesn't matter how proficient you are in sorcery if an archery sniper puts an arrow through your chest.  Which is easy for them to do if they've got appropriate SAs firing, and what successful bounty hunter doesn't have at least one SA in line with his work?

Finally, sure, you've got a guy who can cast Spells of 1 with 14 dice.  But if you throw all 14 dice into that spell, then that's IT until your draw fills you back up (4 dice an hour).  Sorcery has its limits.

[Ingenious]

Yes I realize my mistake in the character creation, however you say that as a sorceror with no combat ability I would be limited to 4 dice.
This is false logic, under the sample spells of book six.. there are spells of NONE that are especially helpful in combat situations. The whole lightning thing where the sorceror throws his whole combat pool into attacking... That is a far cry better than 4 dice for combat situations.

Also, being that a sorceror is weak on combat makes sense somewhat.. he's almost vulnerable there. He IS vulnerable while casting a spell however, as his sorcery pool is currently being used... leaving him no shot to use the lightning spell... unless he wasnt using his entire combat pool....

My most recent character example was only to illustrate my point, in that under your system there still can be alot of min/maxing going on.
You forget that flaws are mostly easy to buy off through SA points also I think... which is why it isn't hard for most people to min/max and then put flaws as an F. Just roleplay your character, use his SA's often.. and he'll rack up the points sooner than you might think. And then that major/minor flaw just because a major, or a minor, or nothing at all.

-Ingenious

[Lxndr]

There are two spells of none.  One of them destroys the sorcerer utterly, and the other completely empties his remaining Sorcery pool in a single blast.  One shot, against one target, that's the best he gets.

Anyway, I've never claimed that min-maxing won't happen.  I'm just saying min-maxing won't create an unplayable character.  

I'm still more concerned about the people who want to do CCCCCF (in race, obviously).  Imagine how boring that would be - nothing exceptional about the character, totally average...

[Ashren Va'Hale]

Ashren, if it's not your cup o' tea, so be it.  

Now where would you get that idea? oh yeah, I repeated it on every post so far....
[/quote]
I'm not even sure if it's mine.  But I think you're slightly exaggerating what this change can do, which might be on purpose...  but it might not be, and I don't want you making your judgement based on an improper interpretation of the mechanic.[/quote]

I was being hyperbolic, which by definition is exageration to make a point. I think your elaboration, especially now that I tried a few sample characters using your rule three, was very good and to the point and in fact may be great for players who prefer it. I look forward  to hearing how it goes in actual play.

As a note, I minmaxed a character using the basic rules only to have him fail miserably in actual play which provided much humor.

[Ingenious]

To throw in my two cents worth yet again, I find it isn't so much that a min/maxed character is 'unplayable', it's that they are uncooperative. They generally don't need anyone's help, and they can raise all kinds of hell in that regard. At least that has been my case with this topic.

-Ingenious

[Tim Alexander]

I'm still more concerned about the people who want to do CCCCCF (in race, obviously).  Imagine how boring that would be - nothing exceptional about the character, totally average...

Hey Alex, I think you've hit upon a pretty decent conversion system. As for your above statement I'm not even sure this is too much of a concern either. With SAs being such an integral and character defining mechanic in TRoS, I'm not sure that even complete Cs across the board would make for an uninteresting character.

-Tim