Snap-shot and Boost: Quick Question

[Henri]

I have a question about how the snap-shot penalty and boos interact.  Suppose my demon has Boost Lore and Power 6 and my base Lore is 3.  I want to slam a contain on a demon (and assume my demon is in a good mood and boosts me without argument).  How many dice do I get for my boost?  My guess is 1 +  6 = 7, but I can also see arguments that it should be 1 or 2.  

Also, what's up with Big?  The book says that it increases the user's Samina "for purposes of resisting damage and endurance only (not for attack or defense rolls)."  Sorcerer has no seperate "defend" and "soak" roll, so I'm not sure how to interpret this.

[Eero Tuovinen]

A traditional close reading of the rules on snapshots would indicate that you'll only get the one die: the bonus from Boost is a bonus on your ability, and the snapshot ritual explicitly replaces your ability dice with one die. Thus the only dice you get in a snapshot ritual are 1+(bonus dice). I'd personally find any other reading somewhat suspect in a horror game. Your interpretation would kick ass in an over the top anime game, though.

As for Big, read the combat rules. Stamina is used to determine the thresholds for staying up in battle, and for severity of wounds in general. There's no rolls involved. So Stamina indeed has no effect on the combat rolls, but does allow the user to take more damage before going down.

[Henri]

A traditional close reading of the rules on snapshots would indicate that you'll only get the one die: the bonus from Boost is a bonus on your ability, and the snapshot ritual explicitly replaces your ability dice with one die. Thus the only dice you get in a snapshot ritual are 1+(bonus dice). I'd personally find any other reading somewhat suspect in a horror game. Your interpretation would kick ass in an over the top anime game, though.

Thanks Eero.  I've actually only run Sorcerer as Demon Cops, and I let them use boost in combat to get the 1 + Power.  But since it was Demon Cops, I guess it was okay.  If I do a more standard Sorcerer, I'll do it your way, though.  In the Demon Cops game, it made boost Lore and boost Will really overpowered.

As for Big, read the combat rules. Stamina is used to determine the thresholds for staying up in battle, and for severity of wounds in general. There's no rolls involved. So Stamina indeed has no effect on the combat rolls, but does allow the user to take more damage before going down.

Thanks for clarifying.

[Trevis Martin]

Henri

My question about big cleared this up.  Take a look at this tread about it.

speaking of which my resource for finding rules threads on Sorcerer these days is Doyce Testermans Sorcerer Wiki

He's done a fine job of collecting all these clarifications into one easy format and having the thread references to boot!

best

Trevis

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The Big question is clarified, I hope, but I'm not entirely sure people have communicated about the Boosting.

The [1 + 6] is correct. The sorcerer gets his one die. The demon contributes dice equal to its Power.

I guess I really don't understand your proposed alternative, Henri. The "1 or 2" phrasing confuses me.

Best,
Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

The [1 + 6] is correct. The sorcerer gets his one die. The demon contributes dice equal to its Power.

Huh, that's a surprise! Doesn't that make demon-assisted snapshot wuxia sorcery rather overpowering compared to the unlucky exorcist? More generally, why did you decide to discount human skill in the equation, but allow demonic influence? I might come to the same conclusion now that I think of it, but is there some special reason?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I have no idea what people are talking about with all these genre references. Rather, I understand what the references are (wuxia, Demon Cops, etc), but I don't understand why they are playing any role in the discussion.

So I have this sensation that I'm missing over half of what people are communicating.

Could everyone try to make their points using at least twice the sentences they're currently using?

Henri, what is this "other method" you used, in detail?

Eero, what in the world are you talking about concerning wuxia vs. an exorcist? Please, explain as if I needed three sentences for every one you think is necessary, with very clear verbs.

Best,
Ron

[Henri]

Sorry about the confusion.  I'll try to spell it out more clearly.
In my Demon Cops game, I used the interpretation that for a snap-shot contain ritual, the Sorcerer's Lore is reduced to 1, but that a demon with boost gets to add his full Power to the Sorcerer's Lore, so that a Sorcerer with a demon with Power 6 would roll 1 + 6 = 7 in order to contain.  The other interpretation, which is what Eero proposed, is that if the demon were to apply a boost, that would add to the Sorcerer's Lore first, and then you would take the snap-shot penalty, which would reduce you down to 1, so that the demon's contribution would be irrelevant.  A third interpretation would be that the Sorcerer's Lore is effectively 1 and that the demon's Power is effectively 1 due to the snap-shot penalty, but that you still get to add them together, meaning that the effective boosted Lore of the Sorcerer would be 2.

As for the genre stuff, what Eero was saying is that if you are going for a wuxia / anime style, as is appropriate to Demon Cops, it makes sense that your Sorcerer's would be powerful and able to put some serious smack down on demons, so it makes sense to give them the benefit of their demon's full Power.  On the other hand, if you are going for something closer to the default setting of Sorcerer as presented in the core book, as in the Exorcist, you want the Sorcerers to be weaker relative to the demons, and so you might prefer Eero's interpretation.

In my Demon Cops game, I used the interpretation that they get the full Power of a boost.  I felt like this "overpowered" the character who had boost lore, since it was relatively easy for him to contain most demons.  I didn't bring this up in my original post because I thought it muddied the water, and my question was really about mechanics.  Whether "overpowering" is a problem at all is debateable in Sorcerer, where almost all of a player character's power comes from a demon who is its own free agent controlled by the GM with its own Needs and Desires.  I think that to the extent that it was a problem, the problem was more about using the demons as "utility demons" or "pokemon."  But since that issue has been well-covered in other threads, discussing that issue is not my purpose here.  Rather, I wanted to clarify the basic mechanic.

Although I wasn't intending to ask a "discussion" question, I do think that there is a somewhat interesting underlying issue.  Specifically, that there are at least three reasonable interpretations of the rule, and that rather than priveleging any of them as the "correct" interpretation, one might choose to customize one's interpretation to the goals of a particular Sorcerer game, using the more generous one for Demon Cops, and Eero's for an Exorcist-inspired game.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I disagree with your conclusion, Henri. There is one rule, period. I suggest that customizing it in any of the other two ways breaks the currency of the game and misses how the rule can be best customized (applied) to the different genres.

In my Demon Cops game, I used the interpretation that for a snap-shot contain ritual, the Sorcerer's Lore is reduced to 1, but that a demon with boost gets to add his full Power to the Sorcerer's Lore, so that a Sorcerer with a demon with Power 6 would roll 1 + 6 = 7 in order to contain.

Just to make sure everyone's on the same page, this is the correct and only rule.

The other interpretation, which is what Eero proposed, is that if the demon were to apply a boost, that would add to the Sorcerer's Lore first, and then you would take the snap-shot penalty, which would reduce you down to 1, so that the demon's contribution would be irrelevant.

This is an abomination which disempowers the Boost. In Sorcerer, no ability is ever disempowered; there are no "X doesn't work against Y" rules, and no "X won't work in situation Z" rules. Abilities are often limited to spheres (e.g. Warp vs. non-living matter), but within those spheres, no "oops, doesn't work."

The demon is not performing the ritual. It is providing Power. The sorcerer is performing the ritual, and his relevant score is penalized to one die as snapshots.

Please note that: his relevant score, not his roll.

A third interpretation would be that the Sorcerer's Lore is effectively 1 and that the demon's Power is effectively 1 due to the snap-shot penalty, but that you still get to add them together, meaning that the effective boosted Lore of the Sorcerer would be 2.

This is merely an add-on abomination to the previous abomination, and as such I won't address it.

Eero, it's not a matter of penalizing the sorcerer and not the demon. It's penalizing the ritual, and the demon is not performing the ritual.

Therefore the "1 or 2 dice" comment does not represent alternate and legitimate interpretations of the rules. It is a mistaken reading of the rules. It is bluntly, flatly, and straightforwardly wrong.

The genre issue is a red herring. The rules on this matter work the same throughout Sorcerer, regardless of genre. If your look & feel for Sorcerer requires demons which are very likely to resist Banishing, then make higher-Power and higher-Will demons. If you want them to be simple demons, although very likely to resist Banishing, then give them low Lore. No rules-changes are necessary.

Best,
Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

Eero, what in the world are you talking about concerning wuxia vs. an exorcist? Please, explain as if I needed three sentences for every one you think is necessary, with very clear verbs.

This is just conjecture, I haven't played the game enough to actually see any of this fall into place. But from where I'm standing it would seem that the prohibitive penalties on snapshot rituals work to favor strategic over tactical from a character point of view - kinda self-evident, yes? A good sorcerer is prepared, and if he needs to do a ritual, he has prepared it beforehand. Improvisation comes to play only in the most dramatic and important situations, because the price of failure can be so high, and the likelyhood too, when improvisation is so much harder.

This is how I'd understood the logic. But if demonic power can overcome the strategic nature of sorcery, good preparation is not really the issue - the correct utility demon is. It reminds me of some anime series, actually: exceptional persons take it down and gritty with sudden power-ups from their Guardian Spirits, which allow them to baattle! At first glance this seems to trump the good preparation -type play (probably just because what rpgs usually are like): it's hard to take constant naysaying of your primary strategy (having boost demons handy, in this case) from the GM if it's allowed by the rules. And if the GM does not limit such behavior somehow, improvisational sorcery becomes quickly the norm.

On the thematical level this favors superhero-like sorcerers, who react instead of acting. The exorcist type (per the movie of the same name, for example) of character is not that favorable compared to one with a good array of boosters, which allow the character to do all the cool summonings, bindings, contains and banishments with a snap of their fingers.

Does that make it any clearer? But in any case, it's not a big issue. And it's easy to rule it the other way, if I find out that I particularly dislike booster demons used in this way.

[Eero Tuovinen]

The above post is a crosspost (I had to finish the message after a HQ session, actually).

Ron: OK, I get your reasoning. I wouldn't find Boost underpowered even with that particular limitation (not usable for snapshots, or rather, under the same rules as the sorcerer's own skill), though. It's no worse a limitation than having Big limited to damage adjucation instead of all uses of Stamina. Boost is one of the best abilities anyway.

But in any case, I have no strong preference. Would have to get to play much more to see any uses or abuses of either way of using the ability.