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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Abilities past 5

« Last post by Damien Eneas on March 25, 2016, 01:02:35 PM »

This feels less like a debate about ability levels and more like commentary on the disconnect between MET abilities and Tabletop abilities.  A die that is rolled every time the ability is used in Tabletop is inherently different from a retest that can be used once per session.

I wonder if the better solution might not be to refresh all retests per scene (or refresh a smaller number like say 3).  This would give more retests based on proficiency without upping the numbers.

Meditation is the only ability off the top of my head that gets really strange if this suggestion was used.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Abilities past 5

« Last post by Nike 'Slays the Patriarchy' Strilakos on March 25, 2016, 12:52:49 PM »

i am not sure messing up pretty sheets is reason enough to discard something as per book.

especially in favor of something that is completely made up and not in the book. 


right now we are basically saying "you got a 5 sure but you are only good in the first fight"  since by the second one you are out of retests.  its not a matter of comparing who has a 5 and who a 6, it is a question of having more retests, at a higher cost, as the rules are designed to do.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Abilities past 5

« Last post by Marc (Admin) on March 25, 2016, 12:33:58 PM »

I am of the opinion that the degradation of the value of 5's in the Org is the real problem, that opening the floodgates beyond 5 will be a Pandora's Box, and that for all of this, it is simply a bandage on the underlying issue of people constantly NEEDING to be THE Best At The Thing (Erm.. "BETTER Than THE Best At The Thing?")

Lets say we start allowing 6's.  How long is it before inflation drives the value of 6's down to the former value of 5's?  Then 7's?  8's?  9's?  Where does it stop?

How does all of this affect those who pace themselves according to the general notion that 5 is already "world-class?"  Should people just accept that there's something called "Extra World Class?"  What about the "Super Deluxe Extra World Class" that comes after that?

In a game system like this, obviously everyone wants to achieve the most that they can achieve, but we're already way out of balance in that respect.  I just don't think it is valid to simply keep upping the ante on what's considered a world-class level, simply because folks just have to keep getting that extra trait up on others around them with similar ability. It's a never-ending arms race.  I can't help but picture the two kids arguing back and forth: "I'm better than you times a hundred!"..."I'm better than you times a million!"..."I'm better than you times INFINITY!"  When you add new levels for the few, you simultaneously lower the scale for everyone else.  Are the people who were world-class no longer world-class by virtue of the introduction of a new standard of world-class?

Not to mention how this will (or in most cases won't) be accepted at other games - if people consider inter-org play and travelling to still be a thing.

The only cases where I see Abilities above 5 as valid are cases where an extra trait comes from something like a Totem, and when the Totem goes away, so does the trait.

TL;DR: Allow adding of Abilities to contests, sure, but keep Abilities capped at 5 for sanity reasons, please.  Also, it makes a mess of the sheets, like Tom said.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Abilities past 5

« Last post by Nike 'Slays the Patriarchy' Strilakos on March 25, 2016, 10:41:50 AM »

oh yes.  fi we pass that other rule, it is more precious to have a 7.  personally i would rather have a 7 then add abilities. 

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Abilities past 5

« Last post by Matt (HST) on March 25, 2016, 10:29:30 AM »

There's some stuff to unpack for this one, and it's probably the issue that I am most ambivalent on of all our possible house rules.

- First, what does having a 5 really mean? In the books it seems to indicate that such a person is world-class, a true master, etc. In practice in the Org, it just seems to mean you've been around a while. Pretty much every Garou seems to collect some selection from among Brawl, Dodge, Melee, Survival, and/or Martial Arts at 5 by the time they're Adren or so. Maybe this makes sense, Garou being Gaia's super-powered warriors and death winnowing out people who aren't really awesome. But, when everyone's really awesome...no one is.

- I did a quick survey of currently active RAtC characters. We have 10 characters currently with at least one 5 on their sheet, with ranks from Fostern to Athro and spent XP totals from just over 100 to just shy of 700 (mean: 331, median: 309, stdev: 167). The number of 5's ranged from 1 to 14. The mean was 5.5, the median was 5, and the standard deviation was 4.09. I don't really have an agenda with this info, it's just something I want to put out there as to the prevalence of 5's and whether we feel they are more prevalent than we'd like from a genre perspective, or not prevalent enough, or what. There does seem to be quite a lot of individual variation, which with a sample size as small as 10 is not surprising.

- This discussion is linked to the discussion about adding abilities to contests. If we pass that rule, 5's and 6's become more valuable. That will probably affect how we feel about how many 6's or 7's or 8's we feel comfortable about people having, or what they have to do in order to get skills at that level.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Persuasion

« Last post by Marc (Admin) on March 24, 2016, 07:01:18 PM »

I just went looking for the text of the old house rule in the archives but can't seem to find it.

If I remember correctly, there was definitely a tone of "Persuation, the Gift, gives you bonus traits and nothing more."  I'm pretty sure that the driving force behind the rule, though, was to assert that the Gift, Persuasion itself didn't do anything else, and that it's use wasn't going to "make you more likely to win" subsequent social challenges in any way other than the sum of any bonus traits achieved.  The Gift doesn't make your words any more influential, rather the Gift gives you traits for a leg up on trying to make your words more influential.  And, if I remember correctly, the rule came about because of a number of people's interpretation of just the following portion of the Gift description, as if it were itself a complete statement:

In addition to the game-mechanical effect, your words are more influential
than usual...

And so we added a rule.  I don't think the intent was ever to discourage (and certainly not to prohibit!) good roleplaying of the social challenge.  The actual outcome of the challenge still comes down to two players and their traits.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Persuasion

« Last post by Berek (ST) on March 24, 2016, 04:24:35 PM »

Because it's a hard thing to police - unless you are talking about something like Dominate, which is a command that has to be followed, you have an argument about the nature of the order/suggestion, whether or not it is contrary to the receiving PC's nature or code of honor or whatever, just how much weight something like persuasion adds to a suggestion, etc.

Health levels can be marked on a sheet. Degrees of changing your mind are massively harder to quantify.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Persuasion

« Last post by Seven Mountains on March 24, 2016, 04:01:40 PM »

This will always be a tough point for me so here goes.

You can't ignore health levels of damage from a physical challenge

Why can you ignore the impact of a social challenge, especially one powered by a gift such as persuasion?

How does this make sense?

It would be similar to me to say, I don't like that this puzzle is too challenging for my character and it's not fun for me so just give me the answer.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Spirit speech

« Last post by Nike 'Slays the Patriarchy' Strilakos on March 24, 2016, 03:31:36 PM »

and yet i was told this by an ST.  the spirit narrator at the time in fact.  so you know, monkeys.

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House Rules & Rules Discussions / Re: Spirit speech

« Last post by Conor (Former ST) on March 24, 2016, 03:28:48 PM »

oh to muddy it FURTHER - i have also been told that even with spirit speech you need ot be a glasswalker to understand weaver spirits.

This is categorically untrue.