I'm going to try and not wax lyrical in this reply, so hopefully this doesn't come off as brusque. That is not my intent.
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 2 2023, 11:12 AM)
That was SR4
... [snip]...
For reference, I haven't played/GMd SR since the days of SR2 back in the early-to-mid-1990s, so the notion of "system knowledge" and making mistakes is simultaneously laughable and totally true. I had last night started to read through SR4 as some quick Googling seemed to suggest that this was the most popular edition, rightly or wrongly. (This is where I noted the "one stat at 6" thing, not because it was in some other book in another edition or buried in another 4e setting book: just right in the core book.)
Oh, the original SR4--not the
Anniversary edition, FWIW.
On What I Want to Achieve... What I had wanted to achieve here was to get SR-fan eyes on to my "project" to offer a different perspective from my own and the system specialists that I've been working with. The latter tend to get flummoxed when I say "That doesn't fit the setting" even if for them it's a completely satisfactory mechanical solution.
As this is an interpretation in a different system, there are going to be some changes including two mentioned herein:
- Shamans are not going to work as they do in the original system, primarily because I think that the authors did great disservice to anthropological examples of "shaman". Herein, I will deal with "Spirit Sworn" which will actually include Earthdawn's "Questors".
- The system exploits in SR (or ED or EQ) are not going to be present in this interpretation. Different system after all. (And why take the sorrows with the sweets, as it were.)
A part of the above is in how I handle character generation for (especially) online games: I use a semi-subjective system supported by
Fudge's adjective ladder to guide player's for creating their concept in the setting at hand. This tends to mean that character's give subjective, in-setting reasons for having a "thing" rather than mechanical ones that may focus around effect or niche optimisation.
So... ...This probably means that asking for a character that might explore mechanical exploits is not as useful to me than having someone going through what I might consider a more usual character generation process. ("Throwing the book" at a player, whether they know it or not, is one of the bigger crimes in TTRPGs IMO.)
And this is likely too big of an ask here as I still have numerous decisions to put into play to make this an efficient process, e.g. skills (how detailed a tree is it going to be, how are deatailed skills going to relate to Wildcard skills etc.).
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 2 2023, 11:12 AM)
Edit: ok, SR4 Adepts could have Totems and Seductress was indeed used, but the fact remains that you’re thinking of something entirely different.
I think that I answer this in the above insofar as:
- I have not worked out how I want Traditions to work and, regardless, preferences for subjective character generation make mechanical enforcement less relevant;
- "Seductress" is a mechanical premise that could be rebuilt, but would likely make it a very different beast to the SR3 version. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective.
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 2 2023, 11:12 AM)
SR4 says that, but SR4 also values stats (and skills) entirely differently from SR3... [snip, etc.]
As above, I think that this goes beyond both my specific knowledge and what I need to succeed in this project. Knowing what a "seductress" concept is happens to be different to how SR achieves it.
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 2 2023, 11:12 AM)
If you want to go down that road, anyone who doesn’t drop their bones and empty out their blood (calcium and iron) suffers +Successes TN up to Force, and this is in addition to rather than instead of the test to not drop what they’re holding.
TBH, I had never heard of the spell. With that said, my reaction to the Googled summary was, I feel, quite reasonable. Not accepting that modern weapons contain non-metallic handles (etc.) doesn't require the pivot to Ca and Fe in the bloodstream to substantiate its existence.
Again, though. Never heard of it before you typed it up and had to Google it. The reaction was knee-jerk.
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 2 2023, 11:12 AM)
The breaks are in service of doing something really weird effectively. Honestly, the instant you saw Gecko Crawl instead of Levitate you probably should have been tipped off
Why? I have absolutely no basis to make this determination. "Levitation" would imply floatiness, while "Gecki Crawl" implies reptilian side-to-side crawling on the ceiling/wall (and occasionally into cooling fans in a restaurant to cover its patrons, or at least so experience tells me).
QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ May 2 2023, 11:20 AM)
Couple of magical characters from my games in case they are any use, on our standard character sheet...
Thank you. The link to the Fire Bringer Shaman is the same as for the Aspected Sorcerer, BTW.
* * *
TL;DR -- I may have to find someone willing to go through the character generation process, or perhaps just use the old text-based conversations of my players as they were--some time ago--going through the subjective character generation process.