I dislike them for the same reason I dislike the spell creation rule, they don't offer enough framework to make balanced traditions.
Something like exclusively associating certain spirits to certain spell types would help.
For example a guardian spirit may only be selected associated with combat or detection spells or spirit of man only with illusion or manipulation.

Maybe a list of suggested tenets and strictures?

I don't know, I'm not a game designer. Which is exactly why this kind of framework is appreciated.

I disagree about Specific Spirits for Specific categories. I could probably make arguments for a Guardian Sprit in any of the categories, dependant upon the Tradition. It is all about the Fluff. The problem is making sure that the Fluff you are going for is properly represented. *shrug*

Uh. Right there in your previous post, hence my utter confusion.





And that's fine, which is what the pre-build traditions are for. The advanced tradition rules are for the rest of us.

If I played Awakened more, then I probably would want more comprehensive Tradition building rules, but I don't, so I could care less one way or the other there. As to Advanced Lifestyle, ever since I started using them, I prefer the customization of lifestyle that comes with them and using the base lifestyle stuff just seems too blase any more.

No, I mean, where did Lifestyle enter the question? It looks like you brought it up from left field.


Why? We already have a set of build-your-own tradition rules. Why complicate them? What does it add to the game?

Some people would like it to be more comprehensive (and delineated), and really it should be there as an option for those who want it. He's not saying to tie you down and force you to use it after all.

Also with the create your own traditions you might want to have some points system to keep things balanced. However, my big concern is that it not become a min/max thing and is there to help with role playing.

But that's not a reason not to do something. Sure, there will be some people who will find the workarounds and loopholes to exploit and abuse just about anything, but the ones who go that far are the minority.

Everything! In every system, can become a minmax thing in the eyes of a munchkin.
It's never a good argument for not including something, it just ends up neutering potentially great things for fear of the worst case scenarios.

Have....have you not been reading this thread?

It's risk vs reward. What benefit is there for adding free edges/flaws to a tradition? Not many that I can see. What are the disadvantages? Unneeded complexity, more min/maxing, less roleplay, and others.

I don't see why traditions need this. If you want to play a pacifist Buddhist, you're already rewarded by earning bonus points for the pacifist flaw. Why should you get double points for taking the same flaw twice?


I just jumped in today. So no, I wasn't responding to a post from four days ago.

So don't use them. QED.



That may be, but I've been talking about the comparison to the advanced lifestyles rules for four days. As has everyone else.

Again, as Lionhearted said, that's not a reason to not include something. If you want a system that is totally "min/max" free, then you need to find a system with no mechanics (this means no rules, which means no book other than 'setting') and this would just lead to the type of shenanigans from early childhood with "I shot you! Did not! Did too!"

One gives you points to build the character, the other would only be 'points' for putting the Tradition together (while having no effect on the rest of the character).

How does that differ from the existing tradition rules? If the existing rules work, why complicate them?

I spent two pages discussing Buddhism with TJ. So no, not everyone else.

Some people would like it that way. You don't. That's a valid opinion, but they're view of wanting it is just as valid. Why refuse to introduce something just because some don't want it when it's plain that others do want the option?

Again, I could really care less if it were to happen or not--I would prefer it be an Optional Rule if it did though.

Game producers only have a limited amount of time and resources. Why should they bother inventing something unless it adds significantly to the game?

I, for one, do not thinkt he current system works.

Right now, you pick a Drain attribute; you assigne a bunch of completely arbitrary spirits to some arbitrary roles; and maybe you also say "by the way, Possession".

I would rather see you pick:

• Drain/Arcana attribute;
• Thematic package of pre-selected spirits (from a fairly comprehensive list);
• Conjury mechanic (Hermetic, Shamanic, Possession, ___, ___, ___)
• Mentor Spirit category;
• Miscellaneous (various tweaks and quirks, assigned a numeric value, and required to balance out to zero; one option would be "an extra Mentor Spirit category", or flipside, "no mentor spirits allowed");

And I'd like to see it done so that every "Official" tradition used the exact same balancing mechanic. In the core book, you'd see 3 or 4 Traditions offered - and not a peep about the mechanics of designing a Tradition yourself. In the first Magic supplement, you'd see those mechanics, including the already-presented Core traditions and an explanation of how they were built using the "new" mechanics.

What this would do is, one hopes, provide a "language" for people to use when discussing homebrew Traditions, which put them all on roughly equal footing with each other, power/balance-wise.

They only have to come up with the system before producing the core rules, so that (if they followed the outline I just posted), any FUTURE additions they made would be generally in line with the original 3-4 Traditions. As would most player-made Traditions.

The Official ones would satisfy folks who don't want to dive into the fiddly-bits of making new ones.

The fiddly-bits system would satisfy those of us who do want to dive in.

And in the meantime, we would not have anything like 3E's "Voodoun is superior in all ways to Hermetics and Shamans" snafu.

...

...

And this is where it ties back into the Lifestyles thing. In the cor book, the Street / Squatter / Low / Middle / High / Luxury, pick-one-and-no-tweaking rules work fine. But, then they came out with the Advanced Lifestyles rules, introducing a way for you to tweak your lifestyle around. And it was 100% backwards compatible with the Core rules for Lifestyles. So if the package-only approach works for you, great, use it. If the a-la-carte system works better, great. Two characters in the same game can use either/or, and still be balanced, still pay the same overall costs for the same overall lifestyles.

I want the building of Traditions to do that.

You really nailed it there Pax

Again, why? Currently all traditions are balanced more-or-less against all other traditions. Why add more tweaks? What good does that do? All I can see this doing is making a tradition into even more of a min/max exercise.

So, it doesn't bother you that a Possession mage can take out multiple NPCs with a single summoning, with even less opportunity for the opposition to react than usual?

It doesn't bother you that I could make an Ork or Troll Posession-tradition Mystic Adept, and use Conjury only to cheaply pump attributes up into impossibly stellar altitudes?


I believe I already answered that question.

Isn't it about time to realize that neither of you is going to persuade the other side and stop repeating basically the same points over again?

I totally agree with your points in your previous post, and you presented them well. This point, though, is more about how the actual Possession mechanics need to be tweaked, and not about tradition-building rules in general.

...

And on that note, I agree that Possession should be tweaked. Maybe something like Possession can only occur on willing people or prepared vessels. If the character wants a spirit to Possess an unwilling victim or unprepared vessel, it's possible but really, really hard. Victim gets WIL*3 to resist? Spirit must beat OR * 2? Just spitballing these numbers...

On the Possession-attributes front, I disagree. The character gets a lot of bonuses, but they also lose a "free" NPC in the form of a Materialized spirit and are going to need to spend a metamagic to get the full benefits. I think the tradeoffs work.

Possession aside, all of them are exactly 100% identical.

I mean, why should I be a hermetic mage over a chaos mage?

Hey! Hermetics are at least as good as chaos mages in all situations

I do believe that they are exactly identical, excepting a slight variation in drain stat (which is a "pick one, whore it") and spirit selection (largely meaningless*).

*Last I checked "this is your defense spirit" doesn't actually mean anything at all. So a Plant/Fire/Water/Air/Guardian and a Guardian/Air/Water/Plant/Fire selection are 100% the same.

Exactly this.

Chaos, Hermetic, Hindu, Islamic, Gardnerian Wicca, Wu Xing, and Zoroastrianism. All non-possession, Logic Traditions. Only difering in which specific spirit they summon for which specific role ... and sometimes, teh same spirit is available to two or more, just "for different rroles", which really makes zero difference on teh business end of things anyway. (Example, Spirits of Earth ... available as Haalth, Manipulation, Manipulation, Detection, Manipulation, Detection, and HEalth, respectively. Yes, EVERY Logic tradition gets to summon Spirits of Earth. No exceptions.)

So, if you want to make a Logic-based spellcaster ... there really is precious little to choose between for any of these. Oh, some things get shuffled around, maybe one or another offers a spirit the others don't.

But for all practical intents and purposes ... they're all mechanically indistinguishable from each other.

Does "role" ever come up other than "this is what this tradition thinks about this spirit"?
And that nothing stops you from summoning "outside" that role.

As far as I know, you are correct: "role" is purely "flavor".

And, I've gone and looked at all of those non-Possession Logic traditions I listed before ... and they are REMARKABLY identical:


A: Fire, Air, Earth, Man, Water, _____, _____, ________, ________; Chaos
B: Fire, Air, Earth, Man, Water, _____, _____, ________, ________; Hermetic
C: ____, Air, Earth, ___, Water, Plant, Beast, ________, ________; Hindu
D: Fire, Air, Earth, ___, _____, Plant, _____, Guardian, ________; Islamic
E: Fire, Air, Earth, ___, Water, _____, _____, ________, Guidance; Gardnerian Wicca
F: Fire, ___, Earth, Man, Water, _____, _____, Guardian, ________; Zoroastrian

Seriously. There's only two that have something ONLY they offer - Hindu, which offers Beast spirits, and Gardnerian Wicca, which offers Guidance spirits. And even counting them, only two differ in more than one spirit.

Draco missed the winky face

No, I think he just saw what a good opening you'd made for him to knock on the point again.

But what you haven't explained is why the Tradition needs to carry the individual differences.

Honestly, I've never run a by-the-book tradition. I've always created my own, and finished the rest with roleplay and edges/flaws. I don't see why adding mechanical complexity and min/max potential will help that.

Because they are there. They might as well do this:

10BP:
You're a bloody mage.
You sling spells and summon spirits.

--DONE--

Why choose a Tradition at all, if it's not going to make any difference in how the character plays?

What reason does anyone ever have, to choose the Chaos tradition, instead of Hermetic? Or vice versa? They are absolutely 100% identical and indistinguishable, aside from completely non-rules RP. And sure, RP is good ... but shouldn't there be MORE to it, than that??

As Draco says, why not just say "Poof, you're a mage, go cast spells and stuff" ...? Why have you pick an entire Tradition, instead of just saying "I want to use <attribute> for drain" and calling it good enough?

...

And, let me turn that question around on you: Why does a Tradition need to NOT "carry individual differences" in it's mechanics?



The current system already has min/max potential. It had it, the instant they chose for Drain to be resisted with Willpower "and any one o the three other mental stats" ... instead of, say, "Magic + Willpower".

How many PC Elves (or Naga, or Eagle Shifters) follow a non-Charisma Tradition, out there? How many PC Orks (or Fox Shifters) follow a non-Intuition Tradition?

Easy if you're an elven charisma whore you take chaos... if you're a human logician you take logic.

And I noticed how you tried to sneak arcana out of the logic stat Pax... which is a mistake. If all traditions have to deal with intuition for perception/assensing... logic for arcana works fine. (I'm so utterly charismatic the spell just writes itself... yeah right). And charisma has a lot of mechanical benefits as well in it's spirit limitation... that makes all 3 relevent to any caster. I'd rather not see that go away.


Quite frankly.. mentors are already step one to powergaming a magician... your customization stuff is just step two (and probably even more problematic).

Why do you think when I suggested mechanical benefits for traditions they should be SMALL and INCONSEQUENTIAL but flavorful. Because I don't want to see a return of the bad old days of each tradition with it's own full blown rules. If they're minor... those who care and like them can use them... the rest can ignore them without a big impact on overall game play mechanics.


The main problem right now with traditions is there's simply not enough spirit types... so of course most of them end up using the exact same ones. If we could get say 20 different ones... then there'd be far less overlap between them.



Any and all traditions should be something a player does WITH the GM to make sure it fits the game world... not something you pull out of thin air... then force on the GM because the rules say so. I'd rather see the rules stay more or less the same... with a heavy part about GM approval.

Because a tradition is not the be-all, end-all of a character's relationship with magic. It's a general overview. At best.

Let's look at Native American shamanism. In reality, that encompasses many different beliefs and practices, enough so that saying they all need to share the same five spirits is ridiculous. Their outlooks change from area to area, tribe to tribe, and individual to individual. It doesn't make sense to force one tradition to cover pacifist shamanistic healers and berserking warriors.

The one constant in esoteric traditions is this: the individual's view is individual. Everyone walks their own path. So expecting a large group of people to do things exactly the same way is silly.


The elf in my game is Logic based. So, they're out there.

*Cough*
Let's put it this way:

Would you miss it if it was removed from the game (except as fluff), if so, why?

(I just know I'm going to regret this, but ...)


I didn't try to sneak anything. It's an optional rule presented in Catalyst's own books: Street Magic, p31.


Yep. There's that regret. **sigh**

Doesn't answer the question. I asked, why does any one Tradition need to not be mechanically distinct from other Traditions? What benefit does the game derive from all the Traditions sharing much the same ... sameness, as each other?


Exactly so. So why not have a means by which each kind of Shamanism can be distinct, yet still have an underlaying theme to connect them together?


I didn't ask "have you seen any", I asked, how many have you seen - meaning, of all the Elf magicians you've seen, what portion of them followed non-Charisma based Traditions?

Game balance.

That already exists. Build a tradition by the current rules, and add edges and flaws to round it out. No need to reinvent the wheel, especially with a square peg.

It'd be easier to go the other way. Of all the elf magicians that have crossed my table since SR4/4.5 came out, I think I've seen two that were charisma linked. Intuition is much more common for all metatypes. Logic is the least common.

Maybe if your idea of "game balance" is strictly going by the D&D4e definition where everything must always be equal to the point that there's no point in having more than one option to play.

Thank you for the nonanswer - which is exactly what that is, because you are assuming (without supporting facts) that the addition of more points of differentiation between Traditions, woudl automatically lack game balance.


Edges, flaws? I know of no way to add those to the Tradition itself.

Let me be clearer. Take a Human character. Give him the Magician quality. Then add Mentor Spirit, College Education, and two levels of PErceptive.

Now, tell me what difference there will be, if that character chooses teh Chaos tradition, or the Hermetic tradition?


Then you, Sir, have nothing to worry about where min/max is concerned, because clearly you'e never seen anyone min/maxxing their Magicians. Anyone making an Elf magician who intended to min.max, would choose a Charisma tradition. Period. Because Cha8 plus Will5, is going to be numerically better than Int6 plus Will5. Every time.

Yes Pax... game balance.

Past performance is an indication of future gains... and given the history of the current crew at the helm of writers and line dev. I don't trust them to adequately playtest anything they do. I half expect the fluff men to be given a long leash and them to make a muddle of mechanics like they always do. Style over substance, like so much of the recent product has been doing.

Same thing I mentioned earlier... it's the right time for a new edition and a clean up of the rules. I just don't think they have the right people to do it.... so I take a wait and see attitude with all this.

I think I'm about this close:
[........]
To just block-ignoring Cain. I think he and I have agreed on a single issue, ever. And I'm getting sick of trying to have a rational discussion with him. And I think the above-quoted statement is why.

Also, the traditions that exist aren't balanced with each other already. There are some spirit types (cough, air) that are "just better" than other types (cough, concealment, cough, endowment).

As already stated, even with the current system, not all traditions are balanced. Adding more options is far more likely to unbalance it.

You don't have to. They're individual choices, so belong to the character, not the tradition.

Umm... you do realize that you didn't quote me on that one, right?

SO, out of fear, you would counsel inaction.


See my example above. Two human magicians, everything identical EXCEPT Tradition, both with Perceptive (2), College Education, and Mentor Spirit - the SAME mentor spirit (whatever it happens to be). All skills, NQs, etc are completely identical. They know the same spells, own the same gear (especially foci), etc.

One is a Chaos mage, the other is a Hermetic. What is the systemic difference between the two? What makes one, mechanically different from the other?

...

C'mon. Money where your mouth is. Answer the question, this time.

Not fear, extrapolation. There's no benefit and a lot of room to lose.


Why is it up to the tradition to make them different? Come on, making characters different is up to the player and the roleplay.

Honestly, he does have a point. There should be some difference other than "fluffy" considerations.

There are differences. Spirit types, drain stats, etc. The rest is flavor, which is up to the player to provide.