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Nifft
post May 8 2010, 08:01 PM
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There seems to be some difference in interpretation regarding how this power works, which can be excused since it's so vaguely worded. The wording in question:
The adept is capable of tuning out a single distraction to her task at hand. When using this power, the adept can ignore a single situational negative dice pool modifier of a value up to her Magic attribute. This power requires a Complex Action to activate and maybe be[sic] combined with the Adept Centering metamagic.


Yes, "maybe be" is in the original text. Combined with my observations of contention regarding meaning & intent, this leads to my first assertion:
Assertion 1: This power was poorly written and edited. Reading deeply for hidden meaning will be fruitless.


- - -

Now, there are two ways people seem to read how the power works, RAW. To some, it looks like "task at hand" = "one test", and thus the power allows you to take a Complex action to negate one penalty to a single dicepool. To others, "task at hand" = multiple tests, and thus the power allows you to take a Complex action to negate one penalty to several dicepools.

There is a very significant power gap between these two interpretations. The first interpretation makes Heightened Concentration hardly worth its price, while the second (arguably) makes it among the best in the game.

Neither seems very balanced, though the latter could be if "task at hand" were defined. But it isn't.

- - -

So, how strong should Heightened Concentration be? Let's look at what you could do with the same 1 power point:
- Attribute Boost 4 + Magic 5 = 9 dice (+ Edge if you really care) = expected 3 successes (+ Edge) = +3 dice to something you care about for 3 combat rounds. Simple action, Stun drain to soak.
- Enhanced Perception 4 = +4 dice to something you care about several times per combat, always on, no drain to soak.
- Combat Sense 2 = +2 dice to something you really care about several times per round, always on, no drain to soak.

In contrast, the most liberal interpretation of Heightened Concentration grants you:
- Magic 5 = +5 dice (limited by situational modifiers, but it's not like it's hard to put yourself in situations where such modifiers exist). Complex action, always on, no drain to soak.

The closest direct comparison seems to be Attribute Boost, so let's consider using the duration limit on that.

- - -

Proposal: Revised Heightened Concentration
Cost: 1 pp
The adept is capable of tuning out a single source of distraction for a short time. When using this power, the adept can ignore a single situational negative dice pool modifier of a value up to her Magic attribute. This power requires a Complex Action to activate and lasts for (Magic +1) / 2 combat rounds. This power has the following limitations:
- You cannot use this power on a situational modifier to which you are not subject: i.e. you must be wounded to ignore wound penalties.
- Does not stack with Psyche: if you have 5 Magic, you can sustain 3 spells for a total penalty of -1 dice, which is still pretty darn good.

Thoughts? Thanks, -- N
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Karoline
post May 8 2010, 08:36 PM
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I think something that should be kept in mind is that it says a single situational negative. This is different than Adept Centering, in which you simply pull off any and all penalties. If for example you are taking a penalty from running, bad vision, recoil, and sustaining a spell, you can only drop one of those penalties with HC, but can potentially take all of them out with AC.

So yeah, HC can in theory take out (magic) worth of penalty, but in practice, very little actually gives such a large penalty all by itself.

So yeah, I think the first sentence is simply fluff, and the second is the actual rules. Complex action = one particular penalty does not apply to you until you pick a different penalty (or maybe go to sleep or lose the power somehow).

I don't see this generally giving you more than a couple of dice back on tests, and for a full power point, it seems about right. The one thing it can be very powerful for, is letting you fight blind with little to no penalty, but that doesn't happen very often with cybereyes and contacts with thermographic, and would at least require you to most likely burn a turn switching from whatever your biggest penalty was, to complete darkness.

Edit: To limit the power of mystic adepts, you might want to count each individual spell as its own separate penalty. Ie: sustaining levitation on myself and sustaining levitation on bob are two different penalties.
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Zyerne
post May 8 2010, 08:43 PM
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I think this came out of my biker adept thread and the suggestion you could use it to get rid of the -6 penalty for acting in meat space.

running in hotsim for the easily obtainable IPs then negating the penatly for acting in meat space does seem slighly overpowered.
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Karoline
post May 8 2010, 08:45 PM
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Doesn't that only cover perception checks? I thought it was -6 to perception and no word on anything else because it wasn't doable?
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Zyerne
post May 8 2010, 08:47 PM
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Perceiving the VR Matrix in its full glory overwhelms the physical
senses. Any action taken in the physical world while in VR suffers a –6 dice pool penalty.

That's from 4A and seems to suggest you can do anything you like, just with a large penalty.
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Demon_Bob
post May 8 2010, 08:51 PM
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Wanted to read over the full power before answering, but can't seem to locate it in my books. What page is it on?

I would say that it would be for one type of test, ongoing or otherwise.

For example: an adept could use it to help listen in on a conversation in a noisy enviroment; to make several perception rolls while looking for suspicious characters while on watch at night; texting a conversation in a mosh pit.

1 pp per mp at character creation = 10Bp. Considering that it is only a short term boost that you have to take a pass to activate it doesn't seem unreasonable. Giving the duration limit as Attribute Boost seems fair. Although Attribute Boost lasts for a number of combat rounds (number of hits generated)*2 in a Magic + (Attribute Boost) test, (Your way gets a average 1 combat round instead of 6.) and this would almost rule out using Heightened Concentration in longer interval non-combat situations.
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Nifft
post May 8 2010, 08:56 PM
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QUOTE (Demon_Bob @ May 8 2010, 04:51 PM) *
Wanted to read over the full power before answering, but can't seem to locate it in my books. What page is it on?

It's on the last page of Digital Grimoire.

I reproduced the power's full text up in the first post, in orange.
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Mongoose
post May 8 2010, 09:44 PM
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QUOTE (Zyerne @ May 8 2010, 09:43 PM) *
I think this came out of my biker adept thread and the suggestion you could use it to get rid of the -6 penalty for acting in meat space.

running in hotsim for the easily obtainable IPs then negating the penatly for acting in meat space does seem slighly overpowered.


Do you get extra IPs for meatspace actions? I though, if you rolled matrix Init, you effectively had more IPS to do stuff in the matrix. So yeah, you would might go first a bit more often (or not), and you could hack and fight at the same time, but you couldn't do any more fighting than normal.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post May 8 2010, 09:46 PM
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QUOTE (Karoline @ May 8 2010, 02:36 PM) *
I think something that should be kept in mind is that it says a single situational negative. This is different than Adept Centering, in which you simply pull off any and all penalties. If for example you are taking a penalty from running, bad vision, recoil, and sustaining a spell, you can only drop one of those penalties with HC, but can potentially take all of them out with AC.

So yeah, HC can in theory take out (magic) worth of penalty, but in practice, very little actually gives such a large penalty all by itself.

So yeah, I think the first sentence is simply fluff, and the second is the actual rules. Complex action = one particular penalty does not apply to you until you pick a different penalty (or maybe go to sleep or lose the power somehow).

I don't see this generally giving you more than a couple of dice back on tests, and for a full power point, it seems about right. The one thing it can be very powerful for, is letting you fight blind with little to no penalty, but that doesn't happen very often with cybereyes and contacts with thermographic, and would at least require you to most likely burn a turn switching from whatever your biggest penalty was, to complete darkness.

Edit: To limit the power of mystic adepts, you might want to count each individual spell as its own separate penalty. Ie: sustaining levitation on myself and sustaining levitation on bob are two different penalties.


Out of curiousity, Why? Sustaining is a single penalty that increments up depending upon the number of spells being sustained... there are lots of other things that could result in a single -6 to a task... Lets assume a Magic of 6. Blind fire is a -6; with heightened concentration, the penalty would go away... Sustaining 3 Spells simultaneously... Ditto... Combined wound penalties (9 Stun and 9 Physical) of -6... Gone with Heightened Concentration... Even Muliple Targeting Penalties for shooting at four targets (-6, again an incrementing penalty based upon number of targets)... handled... that is just three or four very quickly...

The problem as I see it is in the description of a "Task"... What is that? Is it a single action? Is it a single task? Is it a single dice roll? I prefer to interpret it as a single Task... I am repairing my car... I am Programming a piece of software... I am Taking the critical Shot to eliminate the Director of Foreign Relations for Mitsuhama... I am Flying a Helicopter in a Combat Zone From point A to Point B...

All of the above examples are of a single task, but they each last a varying amount of time, from a simple action to possibly a month or more... this is where the clarification must be made... not on what penalties are involved, but what exactly a "Task" truly is...

For the record... I prefer the interpretation that a Task is a grouping of actions, possibly as little as a single action, and possibly as much as multiple rolls made over many weeks... this does not lend itself to being very overpowered in my opinion... after all, it is only for a single penalty... and there are myriad penalties that can accrue on both the short term and long term, for any task that you may take...

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Udoshi
post May 8 2010, 11:11 PM
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QUOTE (Karoline @ May 8 2010, 01:36 PM) *
So yeah, I think the first sentence is simply fluff, and the second is the actual rules. Complex action = one particular penalty does not apply to you until you pick a different penalty (or maybe go to sleep or lose the power somehow).


I, for once, and glad to see this given its own thread - and some crunch to boot - because this power has been crapping up almost every thread i've seen this week with adepts.

After researching the heck out of the penalties it can save you from, it gives you about 2-3 dice back on average - and for a full power point, it ought to be good. Furthermore, it can be used for some powerful things, like blind fighting, spell sustaining, and Extreme range shooting - can all be done comparably with the proper training or equipment selectiion. For blind fighting there's a martial art, a martial maneuver, and various enhanced senses/sensors. Spell sustaining has foci and spirits, and vision magnification/enhance aim spell/smartgun improved range finders helps take care of long range shooting. The point being, that it has a comparable benefit to other things - except, like all adept powers, its magic-based and always on.

That being said, I read it the same way karoline does. There are a few things that I keep in mind that make it a lot more balanced. The first being that you can't target a penalty that doesn't exist yet - or one you don't know about. As a personal rule, you can't use it on the 'Extended Test -1' rule, because that's -made- to nerf extended tests specifically. And the last is that you can't use it on more than one thing at a time - if you, for example, take a complex action to ignore one penalty, then immediately after take another complex action to ignore a different penalty, only the newer one applies - because then you'd be ignoring two situational modifiers, and heightened concentration only lets you ignore one. (It also doesn't have Levels, so you can't take it more than once to get around that.)

I'm away from books right now, but I think it'd be a good idea to get some ideas/lists together for common stuff/rolls a prospective player -would- be using heightened concentration on - so we can see how much it would cost to do the same thing through other means. It ought to help with balancing the power.
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Ancient History
post May 8 2010, 11:17 PM
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As one of the people involved in DG, I believe the second interpretation (i.e. more than a single test) is the one we were going for. The general idea is that you could combine it with Living Focus, have a magician cast a buff spell on you, and then you could sustain it on yourself while kicking ass.
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Zyerne
post May 8 2010, 11:33 PM
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Full auto burst from a modified Enfield AS-7 with no recoil comp gives a -18 modifier.

Not a terribly practical applicaton of the power, but possible I think.
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Ol' Scratch
post May 9 2010, 12:12 AM
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It should work exactly as described, and in reference to exactly the same wording used throughout the rules. A task is a specific action or, in rare cases, a block of closely-related actions.

No basic, single power or ability should be as powerful as some people around here desperately wish Heightened Concentration was. Being able to negate a single (and often very large) penalty in exchange for focusing one's concentration is more than powerful enough, especially when combined with Adept Centering. In no way should it be more powerful than a metamagic technique. Which is exactly what it becomes with the nonsense "interpretations" some people are making. A reduction of cumulative penalties equal to your initiatory grade at the cost of requiring a specific type of action to be performed along with the normal action (plus one grade of initaition and one metamagic technique), vs. an effectively permanent penalty reduction equal to your Magic rating in exchange for one little Complex Action you took ten years ago (and only costing you one Power Point)?! Insanity. Allowing you to exchange a Complex Action for a large penalty reduction? Definitely more appropriate for an adept power.

If I were to change anything, it'd be to lower the Power Point cost to 0.5 or so. If it were to work the other way, it'd need to cost more like 5 Power Points at least.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post May 9 2010, 01:14 AM
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QUOTE (Ancient History @ May 8 2010, 04:17 PM) *
As one of the people involved in DG, I believe the second interpretation (i.e. more than a single test) is the one we were going for. The general idea is that you could combine it with Living Focus, have a magician cast a buff spell on you, and then you could sustain it on yourself while kicking ass.


The Great and All Powerful Ancient History has spoken... So let it be written, so let it be done...

Kind of what I expected, and generally how we use it...At least I know I was not all that wrong with waht I was thinking...

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Nifft
post May 9 2010, 02:44 AM
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QUOTE (Ancient History @ May 8 2010, 07:17 PM) *
As one of the people involved in DG, I believe the second interpretation (i.e. more than a single test) is the one we were going for. The general idea is that you could combine it with Living Focus, have a magician cast a buff spell on you, and then you could sustain it on yourself while kicking ass.

Thanks for your insight.

May I ask about how long you envisioned the power working?

IMHO, "all or most of a combat" is reasonable, but I could see arguments that it wouldn't be unbalanced if it also allowed the PC to remove one situational modifier from an extended test. (Not the cumulative penalty, of course, but some other penalty.)

Thanks, -- N
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Ancient History
post May 9 2010, 02:50 AM
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I can't remember who originally wrote the power - I was mostly playing with Enchanting at that point - but I don't believe a specific duration was ever in mind. The important bit was ignoring one, specific distraction/penalty.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post May 9 2010, 03:12 AM
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QUOTE (Ancient History @ May 8 2010, 07:50 PM) *
I can't remember who originally wrote the power - I was mostly playing with Enchanting at that point - but I don't believe a specific duration was ever in mind. The important bit was ignoring one, specific distraction/penalty.


I would say you ignore the penalty as long as it exists... which is to say that once the task has been completed, there is no longer a penalty, so there is no need for the power to be on...

Pretty simple I would think...

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Yerameyahu
post May 9 2010, 03:39 AM
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I said in the other thread: I feel like it's pretty clear that 'task' should mean, *at most* a couple of closely-related tests, and usually just one Test/Extended Test. I'm not addressing RAI, but what seems balanced and reasonable.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post May 9 2010, 04:27 AM
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QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ May 8 2010, 08:39 PM) *
I said in the other thread: I feel like it's pretty clear that 'task' should mean, *at most* a couple of closely-related tests, and usually just one Test/Extended Test. I'm not addressing RAI, but what seems balanced and reasonable.



Which is definitely okay... opinions will vary, and not everyone will agree...
But with AH's input above, it seems like it is pretty cut and dried in my opinion...

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Ol' Scratch
post May 9 2010, 04:32 AM
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To be fair, while AH is really good with the fluff stuff, he's never been very good with the rules. Especially coming up with balanced ones.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post May 9 2010, 04:37 AM
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QUOTE (Dr. Funkenstein @ May 8 2010, 09:32 PM) *
To be fair, while AH is really good with the fluff stuff, he's never been very good with the rules. Especially coming up with balanced ones.


Perhaps... but the intent is pretty obvious once he chimed in... Fortunately, it jived with what I was thinking...

The biggest limiter to the power is that there are no penalties that are inherently applied all the time... so once you have completed your task, the penalties will no longer apply, and the power will be extraneous... and I would say that at the least, it "drops" once the character goes unconscious either voluntarily or involuntarily...

I do not see it as being as powerful as some are making it out to be... could you construct an edge case and then argue it is broken? Sure... but you can do that with almost every rule in the book... Edge Cases are not the mainstream useage of any power or ability, so it is not really that big of a deal...

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Ol' Scratch
post May 9 2010, 04:49 AM
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It comes down to balancing it with Adept Centering. One requires a minimum of one initiatory grade and a metamagic technique, plus the freedom to perform whatever the centering action is, and then only lowers penalties up to your initiatory grade (so just -1 to -3 for most runners outside of power games), versus a single power point that reduces up to a -6 penalty on a whim, simply at the cost of a single Complex Action. That is in no way balanced except in the case where it only applies to a single action or very closely related set of actions for a short duration.

Consider also the same threads where the people advocating the superpowered version come in and recommend it. Every time it's for rather munchkiny purposes, like completely ignoring the huge penalty you suffer when using VR. Every single time as of late. That's a huge indicator of how broken it is under that interpretation.
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Ancient History
post May 9 2010, 12:48 PM
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QUOTE (Dr. Funkenstein @ May 9 2010, 04:32 AM) *
To be fair, while AH is really good with the fluff stuff, he's never been very good with the rules. Especially coming up with balanced ones.

Ow. And I didn't even write that one.

's not true, either. I've had my missteps (Runner's Companion [I'm sorry]) but the bulk of my rules work in Street Magic, Arsenal, Unwired, Running Wild and Digital Grimoire is pretty solid. The FAQ...well, I'm not perfect.
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Falconer
post May 9 2010, 02:02 PM
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I'm reading that, and Ancient's reading is solid. Also, Ancient's had a lot more good work than bad, and to his credit he has always taken his lumps as well as his accolades in defending his work. And the most recent FAQ is an order of magnitude better than the old one. (there's only two points where it directly contradicts the rules... splitting dicepools as there's no such thing as pre-split modifiers and post-split modifiers in the core rulebook (good one for errata, but then every single dice pool mod would need to be defined as pre/post), and the use of the full magic attribute in MysticAdepts).

The power at hand.
Name 'a single situational negative dice pool modifier'... IE: if it's a nasty visibility penalty... that's great... but if you suddenly end up in a well lit area... then that specific penalty is no longer a problem... then you'd need to change the penalty as appropriate. The living focus combo is kinda neat AH.

A sniper... I could see called shot for damage getting used... but it's very easy to name those as individual single situational modifiers if you find them abusive. IE: Call shot, concentrate, fire in the next pass. Now that called shot action is ended, so the single situational dice pool modifier is gone. Adept now needs to concentrate again for a second shot. Recoil comp is similar... recoil comes and goes each and every pass. Though something like ranged attacker in melee is something which you concentrate for, then find yourself in an extended melee (and ignore the -3 ranged attacker in melee, while still getting the +2 point-blank bonus).


I'm also on board with treating each sustaining penalty as a separate distraction. Put simply, MysAdept w/ 1 point in this power, 5 points in magic. As per the RULEBOOK (not the updated FAQ which is directly contradicted by the printed SR4a rules), the full magic attribute is used for all other purposes. IE: he can ignore up to 6 points of penalties... that's *3* sustained spells... and the 'specific task' at hand doesn't really end until he drops the spells. So effectively the Mystic adept is his own living sustaining focus w/ no penalty and has only dropped a single die compared to a straight magician.

The other reason, is that initiations now cost a lot less than raising magic... so if the Mystic adept raises his initiate grade to 4.. that's now 2 spells sustained since that power specifically doesn't name individual sources, and it's a much more gradual and balanced growth in abilities.

Other potential examples.. monster summoner. As a mystic adept... increase attribute 2 drain stats to max (and maybe increase reflexes as well just in case things go to hell). Use concentration to ignore the penalties. Now instead of having to pick between 'adept centering' and 'centering' as the free action during summoning/binding. You get the best of both worlds. Between those heavily improved stats and edge... binding a force 12 is quite doable.

So yes, I strongly suggest that individual spells be treated as individual sustaining penalties.
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Yerameyahu
post May 9 2010, 03:30 PM
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I'm not sure I follow. If each sustaining penalty is separate, that means HC negates one -2, right? It's true that the worst imbalance of a 'long term' HC reading is that you can ignore -6 of 'bundled' sustaining penalties by calling them a single penalty. Is that what you're addressing?

If not, then the balance (with Adept Centering) is still the problem.
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