Adepts and Centering, what skill to use? Options

[Yum Donuts]

Ok, so we all know that adepts can center for many skills, but all of them learn to center athletics and stealth.
now, I am playing an adept, and I have to decide what skill to make my centering skill.
Any incantation is out, since it's hard to enhance your stealthyness by talking out loud.
and if I want to center athletics, I can't be playing a musical instrument.
So I guess my two options left are meditation and dancing.
meditation is overused, and it's not at all in character.
so looking at dancing, I could center combat like that (i.e. capoera), but how do I use dancing to center my athletics(running)? also, is dancing a specialization of athletics? and if so, wouldn't I be using athletics to center athletics? Dancing as a knowledge skill just sounds a bit odd.

[Raptor1033]

with my adept i used chanting in salish as my centering skill. IIRC the book suggests the gm choose something that requires an extra knowledge or active skill that's generally rarely used. doesn't the book also say it should be the gm's choice and not the players'? some logic along the lines that each character's link to magic is different and doesn't always link itself to something the character knows yet. i personally liked the idea of chanting in an old native language so i convinced the gm to let me use that.

[Tanka]

You could take a gesture centering skill, like hand motions and such.

[mike_the_fish]

gesturing like a kata or something? I don't think so. Say someone is using Athletics to make a running test. If he was running along, frantically making hand gestures - quite frankly, I would think he was stupid or retarded or something.

Plus how are you supposed to make hand gestures while climbing or something. Nah, doesn't work I think.

[Yum Donuts]

both of those work great for casters, but how do I chant in an ancient language to move more quietly (i.e. enhance stealth)? and how do I do hand gestures when using my hands (i.e. enhance athletics(climbing))?

I think I'm going to take dancing, either that or a form of meditation that I'll call "induced revelry" where the character just gives himself over to a state of mind where his emotions are in complete control.

[toturi]

The centering skill need not be a Knowledge skill. It may also be an Active skill. Pistols, unarmed combat etc can all be centering skills.

[Jason Farlander]

No, nowhere does it say that the GM chooses the centering skill. Furthermore, it mentions that the character can invent a new centering skill. In the past ive had players choose things like "rythmic breathing," and the meditation section specifically mentions katas, so some other form of ritualized gesturing should work as well. Something like "music appreciation" would work too... listening to some fine (or not so fine) music in your headphones and focusing on all of the detail... Hell, I'd even let a player take "drinking" as a centering skill (some people really make drinking seem like an art form...and it kinda fits with a drunken master sort of character) basically, anything that can be used as a means of focusing your attention on a very specific thing can be used as a centering creative skill... the only thing that matters is that it not be an otherwise particularly useful skill.

[Veracusse]

Well it is possible that the character can go through a routine of gestures, Katas, a dance, or chant something as a complex action and then perform his centering test.

One of my players had a centering skill that was linked to poetry with a specialization in Shakespearre. Every time he was about to cast a spell he would use an action to recite a short poem, or quote some shakespearre that would pertain to the spell he was casting. The cool thing was the player was a shakespearre buff and would do the recital and everything for us.

There is no canon reason I know of where a character must be performing the linked skill while centering and casting. They can be seperate actions, but are linked through the metamagic technique.

Just my thoughts and how I rule it. Plus it allows for more possibility for choosing really unique centering skills that aren't awkward to use.

Veracusse

[Yum Donuts]

[Yum Donuts]

[mike_the_fish]

that does seem a bit lame.

[Veracusse]

[mike_the_fish]

Actually I wasn't referring to the poetry thing. That is fairly inventive IMO.

Rather I was referring to Yum-yum's comment where he used the example of someone using shooting to center a stealth roll, or something like that. Seemed pretty silly.

[Rice Bowl]

An adept in my group who was a re-enactment of Billy the Kid (improved heavy pistols 6 + Quick Strike) and who was a big western old flicks fan had following Centering skill:
"Recite greatest western citations of all time".
Of course he had Knowledge skill: western gunslingers lines at level 6 + Eidetic memory.
He also had to develop Active skill: Acting, coz if the tone was not right, he had to tell it again in the right way...
Very funny when people didn't understand what he was rambling about and all the players were going for Delayed Actions.
"it's now between you and me, sherif"
"now it's personal"
"give me your horse, your boots and your fire"
"what rules we use, George?"
"the dust hasn't settled yet in the sierra, amigo"

An adept of mine had Gesturing: glyphs tracing (he would gesture symbols in the air of what was going to happen to ennemies or about some emotions).

Another, an Apocalypse Now fan, had his adept run an air check (Improved Scent + Knowledge skill: Chemistry) to ascertain the "mood of the moment and of the place" to be in symbiosis with it. Yeah, it smells like napalm this morning!

[toturi]

I have got one: Vulgar Language(Gestures) 6( 8 ).

Imagine giving the other guy the beating of his life while cursing all the time.

[3Threes]

had a character whose centering skill was Poetry(Haiku) - whenever she used it she had to make a new haiku that related to what she was tryng to accomplish - her centering focus was a little book she would write the haiku inside - granted she couldnt always use her centering in ever instance she may have wanted the bonus, but imo centering is kinda like a geas - where it is there to enhance roleplaying, break up the sameness of the game, and add flavor - imo it is better to pick a centering skill that would be fun to play than to worry too much about getting every last ounce of usefulness from the particular skill

3Threes
(yeah most of the haiku were really bad - but once in a while you get inspired, and it was always fun)

[3Threes]

I think part of the idea of centering is to take yourself out of the moment and distance yourself from your needs and the urgency and stress of the situation, allowing you to act with a zen-like calm and control. So, anything substantially different from what you are actually trying to accomplish should be an ok centering skill as long as it is sufficiently distracting but not so different that you can't then perform the action. Try thinking of what would relax your character.

Any kind of knowledge skill could be used as a form of centering. I can see an ex-cop going over police procedures in his head because they comfort him and bring his mind to a place of order; a Professor of Mathematical Magic reciting the Taylor Series for Sine because it connects him with the mathematical nature of the world; a ninja using finger exercises to give his mind balance and tempo; an athelete running to clear his head (dunno about the others, but this one works in RL btw); an assasin with a knack for art who focuses by drawing the intended victim (because he is kinda sick); or a gang leader who flashes gang signs to center himself or goes over his turf in his mind because it reminds him who and what he is.

[Siege]

There isn't an everyman centering skill as proven by all the different scenarios proposed by the responders.

That means your centering skill should reflect your character's theme or schtick -- something unique and meaningful to your character.

For all practical purposes, a character could argue for "Flame and Void" centering trick (shamelessly stolen from tWoT) which is nothing but a mental discipline.

Athletes today take deep breaths to steady and center themselves -- Breathing as an Active/knowledge skill? :grinbig:

"Quick! Make a breathing test!"

"Oh frag, I fai.....ack...gasp...wheeze..."

-Siege

[Cray74]

I kinda liked Unarmed Combat as a centering skill, representing going through tai chi calming motions or something. Obviously, you can't center and actually engage in unarmed combat at the same time, but it's a change of pace from dancing, meditating, etc.

[Sargrak]

[toturi]

I can see it now...
"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the mind-killer. Ki-ya!"

[spotlite]

Centering only takes a free action, right? I reckon those Tai Chi movements are fine. If someone wants to use Katas or something in our game its fine with me, but I make them buy it as a specialisation of the martial art, or they can't use it as their centering skill. You have to spend karma on it, amigo!

If you have difficulty imagining how it might fit in, then say for a moment you have learned Centering for Unarmed Combat Skills. You have Tai Chi 6. You also have distance strike and for the sake of argument killing hands (L). FOr the sake of argument you learned Tai Chi (Katas) when your main skill was only base 5, so both skills are at 6.

Forgive me for a moment, I'm going to get all geeky and draw strange comparisons for a moment :wobble: Bear with me:

Now, think Street Fighter 2. Rrryu-Ken! Ahem. Right before Ken lets of that ranged energy bolt thing (which is simply the visual 'special effect' of a Distance Strike/Killing hands combo in SR), he does a wind up movement. You even have to bash out a particular sequence of buttons. In SR terms he's Centering, focusing his energy and thoughts into the attack. See?

That's our game though, and our interpretation. Its designed to be fluid. Just don't let it get out of hand. Spend karma on the centering skill, even if its a skill you buy before you get Centering but rarely use, and then have to improve. Don't try to get 'round' it, try to make something that fits the character.


In your case, if meditation doesn't work (I agree with you, it is overused), I see no reason at all why a form of dancing wouldn't. It would be more like tumbling to avoid detection and that sort of thing. Rather than think of it as conspicuously prancing about, look at it from a different perspective - perhaps you're just incredibly graceful in the way you move, and lightfooted because of it, see? Buy traceless walk to go with it and that's a perfectly reasonable combination and a bit more consistency in the character.

hope that was of some use.

[Siege]

The ninja use the finger magic techniques (according to fiction, anyway)
There's a Chinese form of active breathing -- check out "The Corrupter" with Chow Yun Fat for a thirty second aside when he does this.

I always found working kata, even short forms, to be very calming.

Basically, any action you associate with inner calm, peace and focus can be used -- frag, smoking a cigarette could be used.

I could even make a case for shooting someone, but for game balance, let's forgo that, shall wel? :grinbig:

So the Streetfighter pause before unleashing a super attack could easily be termed centering -- or the required "anime entrance" of any character. (You know, 'strike a pose, recite our team chant' and so on).

-Siege

[Zazen]

[Shadow]