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 Powerful Sprites, Are helpless on my wristwatch? |
 Jun 16 2006, 04:08 AM
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#26
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,266 Joined: 3-June 06 From: UK Member No.: 8,638  |
I'm not really convinced that burning edge in that way is possible withint the spirit of the rules.
I certainly wouldn't allow a player to automatically win a contest by 4 successes by burning edge when they were so utterly outmatched in dice to begin with. Karma was never that powerful and I don't believe Edge is either. But if you want to run it that way, fair enough. *edit* in fact I recall that burning karma gave you a free success, not as many successes as you need to get four more than your victim. I've not got my RAW on hand, so I can't check, but I can't believe that is what the Edge rules suggest. |
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Jun 16 2006, 08:03 AM
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#27
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Target Group: Members Posts: 81 Joined: 19-May 06 Member No.: 8,576 |
I'm not even sure if it would be a house-rule or not as I don't have access to the book right now, but burning edge could be like essence. Once burned your total possible edge is lowered by one.
Still a lucky human with maxed edge could go a long way towards summoning some pretty hefty Sprites safely so that might only shift where the problem comes from and tone it down a bit. |
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Jun 16 2006, 01:17 PM
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#28
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 984 Joined: 15-June 06 Member No.: 8,717 |
You can burn Edge to get a critical success. Cain is right in this instance. This is what I was expressly worried about when my PCs started burning Edge. If you don't need to be lucky to be successful or evade death (all you need is about 2 Edge to burn) than are you really lucky?I'd say saving you hoop in dire situations or excelling beyond all odds would be particularily lucky, yet you can do either of those with 1-3 Edge without a major Karma hit. It's infinite lives. blech, i hate it.
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Jun 16 2006, 01:24 PM
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#29
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Horror Group: Members Posts: 5,322 Joined: 15-June 05 From: BumFuck, New Jersey Member No.: 7,445 |
Consider it Hand of God for Dummies.
But it's certainly a major karma hit. If they burn themselves down to zero Edge, they're in deep kimchee, and you can't really spend Karma to improve an attribute in the middle of a run. So the Downtime Ultimate Registration Act? That can work. But doing it in the middle of a game? That's a lot more of a problem. |
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Jun 16 2006, 08:12 PM
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#30
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Target Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: 16-February 06 Member No.: 8,272 |
This is really interesting... I've never thought about burning edge for that.
Although, I'd point this out to the GMs against the would-be abusers. Just because someone loses a point of edge permanently, doesn't mean that he would be able to buy that point back for a lowered price. Assuming the character started off with 2 edge and burned them for getting the sprite and resisting fading, I'd say that the character would have to pay 9 karma just to increase his edge back to 1, the same cost as if he's trying to improve to 3 edge prior to burning his edge for that stunt. Basically, I'll treat it the same as the losing magic attribute permanently due to cyberware. You're not getting a discount for improving your next point of magic. |
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Jun 17 2006, 01:34 AM
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#31
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 349 Joined: 16-January 05 Member No.: 6,984 |
Firstly, for gods sake, use the same terminology as everyone else man. EDIT: Just to clarify this is regarding Cain using otaku to refer to technomancers, the name has changed, lets use the same terms for the same things to avoid confusion. Secondly, in order to burn edge for a critical success, you have to be capable of achieving success in the first place. (same paragraph where the burn edge for a critical success rule is) If the sprite rolled more successes than you could possibly soak, then you cannot burn edge for a critical success, you could Hand of God, but you could not walk away unscathed through achieving a critical success. |
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Jun 17 2006, 01:42 AM
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#32
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Grand Master of Run-Fu Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,840 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Tir Tairngire Member No.: 178 |
Actually, according to the RAW, that's *exactly* how it works. It doesn't matter how many times the stat has been reduced, you spend the same amount of karma to bring it back up. So, regardless of how much cyber you've implanted, you only need to spend 6 karma to go from Magic 1 to 2. Technically, this isn't a discount, it's only a buyback. So if you factor in the cost of originially buying up the stat in the first place, it doesn't seem quite as bad.
1 burned karma pool = 1 free success was a SR3 rule, with the caveat that you needed to have scored at least one success on your own. 1 burned Edge = 1 *critical* success (pg 68), which is defined as scoring four or more /net/ successes (pg 59). The rules prevent you from trying to pull off the impossible; but a Force 12 sprite isn't impossible if you have a Resonance of 6. It *is* impossible if you only have a Resonance of 5, because there's a cap of 2x Resonance. Since that's such a solid dividing line, we can say that the force 12 sprite is only improbably, not impossible.
That's the first thing that comes to mind as a completely fair, by-the-book, penalty for this trick. There's a few others that come to mind. Since you can't really get said ubersprite for more than 8 hours at the moment, I don't see this as being too serious of a problem-- it's 9 karma for a temporary power boost, nothing more. Once the Downtime Registration rules come into play, I'll have to think of something else. Of course, there is one more little detail.... When you burn Edge, you're burning the stat, not the pool. So, technically you can do this trick when you've already spent all your Edge pool. The rules go into a fair amount of detail separating the two, and it's pretty clear that you're burning the stat; the current amount of Edge in the pool doesn't really matter too much. With that in mind, there's really no reason to not blow your entire Edge pool on the summoning and drain rolls first, before burning Edge. Edit:
Since we're discussing using Edge anyway, there's no theoretical cap on the number of successes you can roll. With the Rule of 6 in mind, you could concieveably keep rolling ad infinitum. There are certain hard restrictions that you can bring into play, like the resonance/force limits, but this isn't the same thing. And assuming that the player isn't totally stupid, the chances of the sprite rolling enough successes to make survival impossible is remote. A force 12 sprite can score, at most, 12 successes on the opposed roll, leading to a whopping 24P wound. Assuming that the player had a willpower of 7 (and would require a Resonance of 6 to ever attempt summoning such a monstrosity) then he'd have 13 dice to soak with, and 12 boxes in his condition monitor. Sure, it's unlikely that he'll walk away unscathed, but he'll point out that it was equally unlikely that the sprite would have rolled 12 successes. Since you would have done what essentially amounts to a *less* probable roll, we can't deny him this use on the "impossible" grounds. |
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Jun 17 2006, 11:46 AM
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#33
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Target Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 31-May 06 From: Greater Frankfurt Member No.: 8,628 |
@Cain: Good post.
I'd personally handle it like this: Let the sprite roll, see how many successes it achieves, check whether the TM can walk away unscathed, and then decide according to this if he's allowed to burn edge to do so. |
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