[For small questions to Paul that do not deserve a seperate thread.]

What happens when the dice pool contains no dice or only one die?

The rules currently state:

Dissolution

Not being able to pay down your Used Capacity when your failure calls upon you to do so results in a horrific and enduring adulteration of your identity.

In the 'death' section, it still says:

Readying the new character for play is a matter of the player dividing points equal to the amount of Power the destroyed character spent on the throw down with Ephactha across the new character's Flesh, Voice, Imagination, Memory, Ambition, Rage, Clarity.

Hey Victor,

What happens when the dice pool contains no dice or only one die?

If you have one die, you roll the one die with no low die to subtract. It works the same whether the character is a new occultist, or one whose Clarity has been reduced to 1 by failed resolutions with Underlings. In the former case, it's like the beginner occultist is unhampered by an awareness of his limitations. In the latter case, it's that he's been reduced to a state of unpredictable and erratic faculties.

If you have no dice, the result is automatic failure. Players are advised not to request or frame scenes where they have no dice.

The rules currently state:
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However, contrary to this statement, the result of not being able to pay your UC seems to be that you have to humanise a human; and dissolution results from failing to victimise a human. Which of these readings is correct?

The formulas are correct. The Dissolution text should be: "Failures at dominating the power dynamic with Nobodies result in horrific and enduring adulterations of your identity."

In the 'death' section, it still says:
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But one can die without having confronted Ephactha. Should it read "the amount of Power the destroyed character spent on the roll that killed him"?

Yes, another good catch, the amount of Power spent on the final roll that produced the character's demise.

My goal here game-wise was to give the player a leg up with the new character, so the new one isn't too deep in a hole relative to the other characters. Can you think of a better way to achieve this? If he spent less than 12 Power on his final roll, this actually disadvantages him. So, minimally I'm thinking he should have points equal to the amount of Power spent on the final roll, or 12 points, whichever is greater. But I'm open to alternatives.

(Also, I'm toying with the notion that player character death is just color, merely a state change for the character who maybe continues as an undead or something, and that what the rules need to concern themselves with is the destruction of the character as a force of will. This section might well get retitled "Destruction".)

Paul

Playtesting will have to show whether I am correct, but it seems to me that twelve Power is a lot. Hm - nope, I don't have any suggestions until I've actually seen the game in action and gotten a better feel for what is a lot and what is little. (But we'll play with the "at least 12" rule.)

Paul wrote:
If you have no dice, the result is automatic failure. Players are advised not to request or frame scenes where they have no dice.

Hey Victor,

If Power appears in the formula, are you allowed to spend enough power to get the target number to 0 and win anyway?

My gut says you have to roll. If you don't have at least one die in your pool, you can't succeed.

But damn if this doesn't expose a dead end in the formulas. If your Clarity hits zero, and you don't have any Underlings, there's no way to increase your Clarity. And you can't create any Underlings. You're stuck.

There are myriad ways to fix this, but I'm not sure what makes the most sense. And I'm hesitant that adjustments prior to your playtest might be premature, since there's a likelihood you'll discover even more significant issues with the balance of the formulas. But, anyway, options for fixing this include:

• If Clarity hits zero, you wash out of the occult tradition or something.

• I could remove "lower of" from the formula for Resolution against Teachers, so the player chooses whether to roll Clarity or Flesh/Voice/Imagination/Memory. Or I could specify that if Clarity is zero, the player rolls Flesh/Voice/Imagination/Memory.

• I could create some sort of "Horror Revealed" that keeps the player from losing his last point of Clarity.

• I could change one of the formulas for creating Underlings.

What do you think?

Paul

Wash out. Make a new character.

Mike