Empty Slots

[Ben Lehman]

Looks great.  Thanks for posting this.

What is the knack?  What is the effect you get?  That's up to you, and to some extent your setting.  The stat-pushing of Morfedel's "Legendary" could be a knack, as could being better at a skill or in combat.  Perhaps each nationality has a knack, or set of knacks, that are appropriate for it (if I knew Weyerth better I'd suggest a list).  Perhaps you want a couple knacks per element, or want to relate them to vagaries somehow, or perhaps astrological signs.  Perhaps you'll even let the player choose, or base it on their SAs (and have them change over time).  It's all up to you.

BL>  In particular, I was looking at the "attribute pushing."  Essentially a knack allows you to blow dice out of your sorcery pool to add dice to a specific effect (for instance, your strength, or your sneak skill, or somesuch.)

Example:  Horace the Brute is Knackishly strong.  He has a sorcery pool of 8.

Horace can spend all 8 dice to get a +8 to his strength for one action.  In addition, he will suffer 8 points of sorcererous penalty.  Ouch!

He can also spend some of the pool to soak.  For instance, he can spend 3 dice to push his Strength +3, and then spend his remaining five dice to soak.  The difficulty for this would be soak 3.  (This seems a bit light.  Perhaps it should be "effect x2?")

He can also spend his pool in little bits.  For instance, he can always spend two dice out of it to safely get a +1.

Further, since his pool regenerates as a normal pool, it is advisible for him to leave one dice in it.

I'm trying to decide how to handle the timing of this in combat.

Of course, if you wanted to have this go beyond Attributes and Skills, you could without difficulty.  For instance, one could give a Wuxia hero access to "movement 1" effects on himself only.  I don't think that this would be an overly game-breaking level of sorcery.

In Conclusion

I hope this is suitably generic enough that it can be accepted.  I don't know the game well enough to flesh out the mechanics, but at least this is another option, another way to look at it.  I'm less enamored of the "no cultural bonuses" part of my suggestion to ben, but am leaving it in for completeness.

BL>  I, on the other hand, hope that this is interesting and fleshed out enough that some people will use it, and adapt it to their campaign worlds, but that there continue to be all sorts of adjustments to the Race/Magic column.  It has a lot of potential.

[Nick the Nevermet]

I respectfully disagree with the notion of filling in the empty slots.  I support creating numerous half-magic, half-fey racial preferences, but I do not agree that the A through F spectrum should be fully used.  One has to ask why race needs the empty slots filled on.  I don't personally buy the argument that racial priorities need to be as adjustable as skill or social class.  If anything, I think they should be less.

Priority chargen allows for a distribution.  Admittedly, the distribution is intentionally in blocks (ie.e, attributes in intervals of 4), but a distribution of sorts is created.  This allows compromises to be created to a degree.  Be excellent at something, be kind of good at something else, and be bad at a third.  Priority systems usually remove 'average in everything' as a possibility.

The racial preferences intentionally under-utilize the possible spread.  Instead of having 6 ranks, it has effectively 4 (D, E, & F all are 'human').  The potential compromises involving racial preferences are much, much smaller.  There is no 'just a little magic' preference.  If you want anything magical about your character, it is at least priority C.

Jake does not appeal to game balance to justify this.  It is about rarity, the inherent 'specialness' of magic.  Any magic.

By filling in the empty slots for racial preference several things happen.  By adding more categories, magic becomes a bit more systematic, and a little bit less mysterious.  A martial arts black belt is a lot more mysterious if there are no white belts.  

I am very, very hesitant to make not just a system, but an extensive hierarchy of racial and magical characters for TROS.  I believe that would fundamentally shift some assumptions it makes about color & setting.  A full spectrum of wizards, sorcerers, enchanters, and dabblers would work fine in other game worlds, but that's not the 'feel' magic has in TROS.  

A third aspect of my concern is the link with SA's and character exploration.  At the moment, if a character has a preference that is not 'normal' human, there is IMHO, a good chance that his nature (be it as a wizard or a fey or whatever) will be expressed in his/her SAs.  Creating an extensive, detailed, and hierarchical system of difference kinds of people will weaken that link.

Creating new kinds of racial preferences are advantageous only when its existence adds detail to the color?  Gols, sure.  More changelings based on local myth? Sure.  Living emobidments of a nation's ethics? Quite possibly.  The point is they need to START with these rationales, not 'what is appropriate for slot D'

[Morfedel]

I respectfully disagree with the notion of filling in the empty slots.  

...

Jake does not appeal to game balance to justify this.  It is about rarity, the inherent 'specialness' of magic.  Any magic.

...

Creating new kinds of racial preferences are advantageous only when its existence adds detail to the color?  Gols, sure.  More changelings based on local myth? Sure.  Living emobidments of a nation's ethics? Quite possibly.  The point is they need to START with these rationales, not 'what is appropriate for slot D'

And here i'm going to rebut your rebuttal.

Saying that a slot is selected for its rarity is all fine and dandy, if it isnt for two facts.

Fact #1: ALL FIVE OF THE OTHER SLOTS SCALE IN POWER AND EFFECTIVENESS WITH PRIORITY!

there is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. the higher the priority in any of the other five areas, the more powerful it is, PERIOD!

And yet more than one person seeks to argue that this one case of race being based off rarity, while the other 5 clearly scale in power, is, frankly, a bit weak. If that were the case, perhaps the other 5 should do likewise.

I admit that there is a certain attractiveness in going based on rarity. However, the other five priorities do not support the thesis of this one. Race, often effectively becomes a dumping ground: If I do not want to play a sorcerer, etc, its an automatic F.

another curiosity, in that being a slave becomes unfeasible unless you are one of the other three priorities, unless you choose one of the other three races or voluntarily choose an F in social class anyway; regardless of the fact that most slaves would, in fact, be human.

And frankly, it might be odd to have a sorcerer slave. :)


Fact #2: A and B in race are very, very powerful. We all know how powerful sorcery is, and saying the racial picks have no effect on power, but more due to rareness, is clearly false in these two cases. Its only priority C, non magical halflings, that represent a rarity while having little to show in terms of power escalation.


Because of these two facts, I find that A) Halflings glare out like a daisy amidst a field of roses, and B) that leaves two more priorities that could be use to address this situation, just waiting for a bit of fleshing out.

Perhaps you disagree, but do you at least see my point?

[Nick the Nevermet]

Oh, I completely understand your point.
Or, actually... let me see.  If I understand you, your points are:

1) All other elements of characters exist for A to F, get more powerful the closer you get to 'A'.  With that as the case, why shouldn't race work the same way?  Leaving it the way it is now is inconsistent, and makes it ludicrous for any player to have an "F" in something when D, E, and F for Race are all the same.

2) The rarity argument only really applies to choice C, As full blown mages and their ilk are potentially godlike.  

Are those fair?  Just trying to make sure I can put in in my own words.

[Lxndr]

I'd change "ludicrous for any player" to "ludicrous for any player not playing a non-human or gifted human."  Obviously, if they're playing C, B, or A, it's not so ludicrous to put something else in F.

[Morfedel]

Basically, yes.

Maybe its just me. Maybe its just my intolerance for inconsistancy. Some people might say "So its inconsistant, so what? Its just a game...."  I just like a game to be as consistant as possible. And I see that these areas could be more consistant without harming, and in fact, helping, the game.

I also am not fond of plain jane vanilla ice cream; at the minimum, it has to have chocolate syrup, if it isn't another flavor entirely. My brother, on the other hand, likes nothing else... maybe this is just a flavor thing.

But the point being, a choice of C in race is very under rated compared to what you get with a C in any other priority, or compared to what you achieve in A and B in race. Meanwhile, where everything else has all these choices, there is this big gap with D and E for race. It just... glares at me.


---
James

Oh, I completely understand your point.
Or, actually... let me see.  If I understand you, your points are:

1) All other elements of characters exist for A to F, get more powerful the closer you get to 'A'.  With that as the case, why shouldn't race work the same way?  Leaving it the way it is now is inconsistent, and makes it ludicrous for any player to have an "F" in something when D, E, and F for Race are all the same.

2) The rarity argument only really applies to choice C, As full blown mages and their ilk are potentially godlike.  

Are those fair?  Just trying to make sure I can put in in my own words.

[Nick the Nevermet]

I won't have time to post something thought out until tonight, but James, it is partially a flavor issue, which means it is for you & me both.  That being said, finding people who completely and utterly disagree with you are good times to refine what you actually mean.  Being around people who agree leads to sloppy thinking :)

[Nick the Nevermet]

You know, I was going to post something longer, but I changed my mind half way through.  The only possible goal I would have is to try to beat people into submission with my POV.

Morfedel, I think it is safe to say you & I are concerned about different consequences.  You are concerned about giving players more chargen priority options, and making race preference D & E something other than pointless.  I, on the other hand, have been focusing on how changing the racial preferences affect the setting & color of TROS.  I would argue they are both a form of conistency, but different kinds.  You're looking at the internal consistency of the chargen mechanic, and I'm looking at its implications on other things.  Both are valid points of view.

As I doubt consensus is possible, and I think both of us have been pretty clear, I erased a post praising the virtues of what I was doing, blah blah blah.

Does anyone else have an opinion about this?

[Morfedel]

Agree to disagree, eh? :)  Works for me ! :)

[Ben Lehman]

As I doubt consensus is possible, and I think both of us have been pretty clear, I erased a post praising the virtues of what I was doing, blah blah blah.

Does anyone else have an opinion about this?

BL>  One of the things that I really like about TRoS is that it is maximally customizable.  I don't know WHY, exactly, but you can really get in there and tweak around with the system in interesting, colorful ways, and still come out with a decent finished product.
  Thus, I think of these alternate rules discussions as offering alternatives for those who want them, but in no way saying "this is a superior way to play."
  The race column as printed works fine.  The race column with other things added is also interesting to some.  This is all cool.

yrs--
--Ben

[Brian Leybourne]

I've always played it kind of loose with E and D priorities. If someone takes them in one of my games, then it does mean something special, but they never know exactly what. I just tailor it to the campaign and character.

One guy who took E turned out to have a very special gift with animals, who would all trust him and (in one case anyway) die to protect him. One D turned out to have a familiar, as if he had taken the Weires/Familiars gift.

The Hameh in OBAM also sprang from a priority D figure who was murdered in one of my games as well, I knew of the old Arabian legend and just adapted it. Worked really well which is why I put it in the book.

Etc. Just have fun with it, that's my advice :-)

Brian.

[Morfedel]

Actually, thats a neat idea brian.