it's confusing language. people expect certain things when you say "magnitude" in a discussion on earthquakes. why be confusing, when you can just as easily say "destructive power" or something?

Nah, some of us are in the 150-200 area already. With Edge burning I couldn't really kill them unless I tried REALLY hard. Not that I try to kill my characters. I enjoy the history and character development we've had so far. A better example:

'Giving a PC anything that emo samurai cooks up on his DS threads.'

Samaels, with your last example, I got the unpleasant sensation of my soul shuddering in fear. Do you have any idea what that feels like? It's worse than looking up and seeing a Thor-shot drop bear about to hit you.

A Thor-shot drop bear. Sweet salvation!

I wouldn't say "anything." emo has had good ideas. They just tend to get lost in the miasma of anime-land.

I tend to steer away from said miasma so I haven't seen any of those good ideas. From what I did see there were powersuits and plasma punches, so...

Don't forget the Mechashiva rigs. Chaos spirits sound kinda cool though, although I'd probably have to massage the idea to make it fit in our campaign style.

Mechashiva rigs? That sounds a bit blasphemous...

Power suits? Plasma punches? Sadly, I see those as U.S. military weapons. Keep in mind the U.S. military is trying to get portable railguns for soldiers.

Considering there's at least one military out there crazy enough to pay money for it, maybe we better keep an eye on his crazier ideas. Never know who'll decide it's a good idea and stick some poor soldier with piloting it.

Are they 8s or 7s? The answer to that question could be very important from a comfort standpoint.

I really don't like the Quake power, and not just in a "can atomize all structures in its radius based upon certain interpretations of the wording" sort of way.

I think that a better solution would have simply been to make Storm possess different effects based upon the spirit type employing the power, rather than creating this new (and potentially overpowered) Quake power as a "Earth Storm" effect and leaving other spirits kind of out in the cold.

You know, wind spirits create hurricane effects, fire spirits create massive firestorms, earth spirits create earthquakes (which work just like Storm but perhaps have some sort of increased knockdown or DV versus structures), water spirits create tsunamis, cold spirits create raging blizzards, toxic spirits create massive gas attacks, acid storms, etc...

But I guess if the term "magnitude" applied to seismic events has a different meaning in the SR cosmos, then that's fine. As long as an exponentially more potent effect isn't associated with a linear increase in success, the potential for real global devastation is minimized. It's still not how I'd have done it.

massive gas attacks *giggle*. I couldn't contiue reading after that.

I blame the American educational system.

Even for the non Americans? I know we're the whipping post of the political world right now, but isn't that going a bit far?

yep it's your fault.

I hope you weren't too disappointed. I'd hate for it to have levelled a city.

But is the power unbalanced? Seems reasonably hard to get devastating effects. You have to be able to Invoke a high force spirit and get lots of hits on the Invoking test, then you have to get lucky with the Quake roll. That is assuming any number of other things might not go wrong. GM-magic being a balancing factor.

Maybe. But then again, so would following the reference to the chart. But you already knew that (or at least it's already been said).

So, basically, SR players are too stupid so don't bother with the ones who actually know something.

Gotcha.

... FrankTrollman, try everyone who lives in an area with fault lines or at least paid attention in class.

Here's a simple fact, Frank: The moment anyone sees magnitude in the description, you can bet they're going to ignore than handy table. Why? Look up the words "earthquake magnitude" on the net. In your "the players are too stupid to know the difference," you're assuming they're smart enough to read the rest of the sentence once they see a term that even most Americans are at least basically familiar with. So, really, your entire argument that everyone who plays SR are a bunch of idiots falls apart when you stop and realize that everyone who is actually that stupid won't look at the table because they probably have a very, very rough idea of magnitude according to the Richter scale. Thus, they play it according to mfb's complaints, use the Richter scale, and we end up with Force-11 spirits blowing up Earth enough times that DMs simply outright ban the Earthquake power and whine to Fanpro that the Earthquake power is perfect for munchkins, which in turn leads to Fanpro nerfing it.

And, yes, the word "power" is associated with the word "earthquake" in a lot of minds. Why? Because every news story, every documentary, every media conversation about earthquakes uses the word "power" at least twice in talking about an earthquake's destructive force. If anything, the word "power" is used more often in association with earthquakes than "magnitude" is. There.

Want to solve the problem and keep us poor, stupid SR players from confusing things? Change "magnitude" to "power" and go on about your life. Or, better yet, you can sit there and simply continue to insult everyone who plays the game.

Mfb, you forget. According to Frank you're supposed to be too stupid to know the difference, but smart enough to not fall for the assumtion that "magnitude" refers to something you already know about.

No, seriously, when I first wrote the power, I had a formula for generating actual earthquak magnitude - and a lot of people did not understand what that meant.

Yes, everyone knows that magnitude describes the strength of an earthquake. But really a lot of people do not know what any particular magnitude actually means. I was surprised to discover this, but it's true.

So the old rubric was scrapped, the power was put on the same dicepool mechanic as Weather Control, and a completely arbitrary table that makes for decently good drama was put in. And you know what? This is a game, that's seriously OK.

Shadowrun isn't about making rules that anyone can use. It's about making rules that everyone can use. And that means that the scientific measurements do unfortunately have to be scraped out when they involve interactions that many people do not understand (such as engineering and materials technology confronted with erratic fault movement).

I know many of you do understand it. But I also know that it's no skin off your ass to use an arbitrary table to explain what the power does. Weather Control was allowed to be strictly hand-wave because everyone understands that water falls out of the sky. Quake was not because people were genuinely confused by the Richter notation.

-Frank

no, he's not referring to me. i don't play SR4!

FrankTrollman has a decent point. most people don't know earthquakes. however, those who do--or who spend five minutes googling them--stand a decent chance of misreading the text. hell, it happened to me.

i don't think that those who don't know earthquakes are going to be put off by not using "magnitude" as a game term. i think that those who do might be put off by it.

i'm a rules lawyer. any trace of ambiguity should, in my opinion, be staked through the heart and burned with fire. i mean, uh, avoided.

/me rubs forhead.

Frank, okay, let me try it like this. Yes, it's true that most people don't know a lot about any particular magnitude. Unfortunately, people tend to know enough about magnitude to assume they know what it is. Most people know that a magnitude ten is pretty much armageddon for where it strikes. Considering how many movies and TV shows have made it a point to feature earthquakes of that level (just like a lot of people are going to assume anything less than a 4 just rattles the windows because of certain movies), plus news coverage of devastation of earthquakes with a magnitude of 8 and above, I would say they're going to simply assume they know enough and wing it when it comes to the rest of the numbers.

Oops. You just handed a power that uses the word "magnitude" to a bunch of people who get most of their information about earthquakes from grade school, movies, and the occasional news story. Now, factor in human stupidity, human arrogance, and then swallow your own ego as the writer of it just long enough to stop and think of how bad a move that easily is.

If someone educated about it can make that mistake, imagine what someone with the education I mentioned above will manage to do. They'll not only make the mistake but, sans rules lawyers (and even potentially with them around), will assume it's the correct decision and promptly begin levelling cities with force-8 spirits. Naturally, GMs won't exactly bother to read any more than they need to, and rather than check it, the same ones who allow this problem are going to complain to FanPro about it being overpowered. That's why most games with an earthquake spell don't use the word "magnitude" in the description.

Keep in mind the average person gets most of their education about natural disasters from the media. That's why many comedians get huge laughs out of making fun of people in Tornado Alley.

Right.

Many people don't know how earth quakes work and will have them produce tremendous, world-ending effects no matter what the ability says. Really, it doesn't matter what it says, just the fact that it says "earthquake" means that some people will flip out about how you just gave the players a nuclear bomb.

But seriously, it says that:

"the number of hits represents the magnitude of the earthquake as noted on the Quake Table"

It doesn't say that the number of hits equals the magnitude, it doesn't say that the magnitude of the quake does anything. It says that it is represented as noted on the table. And yeah, some people won't be happy with that, but it's totally explicit and not gam breaking as written.

This is one of those "you can't make everyone happy all the time" moments. You're not happy, I understand that, and I do care. But there isn't anything Fanpro can do to make you happy without making an equal or greater number of people unhappy, so you're going to have to get over it or stay unhappy with the phrasing of the rule.

-Frank

Actually, I'm perfectly happy. I'm just a little annoyed that you are failing to see something.

Okay, let's do a logic test: You see the word "magnitude" in a spell that causes earthquakes. You have a rough mental estimate of what an earthquakes does from movies. Are you really going to look up some lousy table just because it says so when you figure that, this being a game after all, your knowledge is sufficient enough? After all, so much else is movie-like, so why wouldn't the earthquakes be as well?

My point is that a lot of people will assume they know enough to ignore the table. Thus, the problems start. I never excluded the table at any point.

Now, me? I'm going to use the table. But that's because what I know about earthquakes mostly comes from movies, but I'm smart enough to know that movies are not the best education on this subject.

This sure is a lot of fake whining by a lot of people to shift the blame and cover up their embarassment at not reading to the end of the sentence.

Best part is, I can't read it because I don't own the book yet ^^ You people just post too much information

Now, if we're doing it, imagine how many others are going to. That's my point. Difference is, we'll whine on a forum, get the mistake pointed out, and then whine to the author about the wording allowing it. Others will whine to FanPro until the next edition or the power is errata'd to change the language/effects happens.

How mature of you.

I fail to see the connection when the table correlates close enough to the Richter scale that, as someone who does understand what the word magnitude means, I might be so stupid as to interpret that as Richter magnitude. It was a poor choice of wording.

But thank you, Slithery, for pointing out that I am a stupid, whining baby.

In any case, I wouldn't want to offend any of you, so I'll stop debating this before I slip and express my real opinion of the validity of your arguments.

At least I'm not stupid enough to make the power last (Force) minutes, as well.

If 4 is powerful enough to destroy a minefield in, say, 6 minutes that's one thing. If it does it in 15-20 seconds, which is as long as even most powerful quakes last, then the actual power is more because you're applying that much energy continually for (assuming Force 6) 18-24 times as long, it makes things considerably worse.

Science is your friend.