Full Version: Attributes are-a-changing
| QUOTE (Dawnshadow) |
| To be fair, you almost have to see it in action to realize it.. My "awakening" to the ungodly power was: pitch black, smartlink, and TN 4, on 10 dice, for the first shot. And being able to NOT shoot the invisible magician's way adept. He wouldn't have survived if I'd hit him. Not to mention just dropping down a hole in the ceiling, straightening up and being able to see who the mage was perfectly through the dust cloud. Poor mage didn't know what hit him. I already knew just how much of an advantage it outside of combat.. didn't realize how helpful it would be in combat. |
Hey DS ... could you explain this short story thing of yours a bit to me please? I'm not sure I get the gist of it given what little you've dropped in.
Thanks in advance.
Steve's not in on SR4??? Not that I'm surprised to hear that he's not, but in truth it saddens me. The reason for this is odd and counter to what a couple others opinions have been here so far I've read.
While I do not agree with absolutely everything that Steve ever did, I did find that the one thing I enjoyed about Steve's works (mechanical or fictional) was that it left the field open to individual interpretation just enough as to allow for multiple possibilities (fiction). While in mechanics he detailed things heavier (at least I think) so as to try and answer all the would-be tweaker questions that were sure to arise otherwise.
I'm not saying that what he dev'd for SR in the past didn't help the flow of the game. For us at least here, it gave us a viewpoint that told us not only what couldn't be done in magic but why it couldn't be done in the current system. Steve also (to the history that I know of at least) has never shot down individual player interpretations save where those interpretations were just outright incorrect or destructive for overall game play. I know of several other developers that have done that in the past and who have posted/been (mis?)quoted as saying/declaring things that were outright hypocritical and based entirely upon a singular bias/viewpoint but not that of a developer. They were certainly from a game master/referee ... but not a developer. At least not mine own interpretation as such (shrugs).
While I do not agree with absolutely everything that Steve ever did, I did find that the one thing I enjoyed about Steve's works (mechanical or fictional) was that it left the field open to individual interpretation just enough as to allow for multiple possibilities (fiction). While in mechanics he detailed things heavier (at least I think) so as to try and answer all the would-be tweaker questions that were sure to arise otherwise.
I'm not saying that what he dev'd for SR in the past didn't help the flow of the game. For us at least here, it gave us a viewpoint that told us not only what couldn't be done in magic but why it couldn't be done in the current system. Steve also (to the history that I know of at least) has never shot down individual player interpretations save where those interpretations were just outright incorrect or destructive for overall game play. I know of several other developers that have done that in the past and who have posted/been (mis?)quoted as saying/declaring things that were outright hypocritical and based entirely upon a singular bias/viewpoint but not that of a developer. They were certainly from a game master/referee ... but not a developer. At least not mine own interpretation as such (shrugs).
Alright
We were in the arcology, trying to swipe something from Renraku. We cut a hole in the floor, lots of dust, no lights in the little alcove. We'd arranged for a power blackout, and no emergency lights worked in that small area. They were probably on the ceiling section that we cut through.
There was a bunch of suppressive fire, a couple grenades got dropped down the hole.. suppressive fire stopped. Street Sam, wearing light security armour and a force 8 armour spell, with astral perception on, dropped down the hole.
At the other end there was 2 Red Samurai guards, and one person glowing like mad on astral. Mage, no masking. In the surprise round, astral perception negating the light penalties, and a working smartlink (because the other vision mods were working too, so he could see without astral perception, just not as well -- artificial thermographic).. gave TN 4. On 20 dice, since it was surprise round, skill 10, 10 combat pool. The mage didn't have a chance -- he went first in the combat round after, and killed the two Red Samurai as well. Didn't even need the armour spell, although he'd been expecting there to be more than 3 left. Turns out most of them had been turned into salsa.
As for the Not shooting the MWA.. invisibility spells show up on astral, so the adept can be killing people in melee.. and the Sam shooting everyone who isn't engaged, because he can see where the MWA is. No risk of shooting him in the back while he changes opponents.
We were in the arcology, trying to swipe something from Renraku. We cut a hole in the floor, lots of dust, no lights in the little alcove. We'd arranged for a power blackout, and no emergency lights worked in that small area. They were probably on the ceiling section that we cut through.
There was a bunch of suppressive fire, a couple grenades got dropped down the hole.. suppressive fire stopped. Street Sam, wearing light security armour and a force 8 armour spell, with astral perception on, dropped down the hole.
At the other end there was 2 Red Samurai guards, and one person glowing like mad on astral. Mage, no masking. In the surprise round, astral perception negating the light penalties, and a working smartlink (because the other vision mods were working too, so he could see without astral perception, just not as well -- artificial thermographic).. gave TN 4. On 20 dice, since it was surprise round, skill 10, 10 combat pool. The mage didn't have a chance -- he went first in the combat round after, and killed the two Red Samurai as well. Didn't even need the armour spell, although he'd been expecting there to be more than 3 left. Turns out most of them had been turned into salsa.
As for the Not shooting the MWA.. invisibility spells show up on astral, so the adept can be killing people in melee.. and the Sam shooting everyone who isn't engaged, because he can see where the MWA is. No risk of shooting him in the back while he changes opponents.
Honestly, while I realize its power in combat (well illustrated by your example), it's its power out of combat that I found unbelievable.
The power out of combat.. well.. that's something that everyone by now should have figured out -- mages and so on should be showing it very very readily. But.. most mages aren't combat experts. They're spell-slingers, magic is their focus, not combat.. so the combat power of it isn't as noticed because it's never given the chance to shine so much.
A little like giving a decent weapon to someone who's only moderately skilled with it. It looks good.. but you don't realize how good it is until you see it in the hands of a master.
A little like giving a decent weapon to someone who's only moderately skilled with it. It looks good.. but you don't realize how good it is until you see it in the hands of a master.
| QUOTE (Wireknight @ Apr 19 2005, 04:57 PM) | ||
It's not that you're a bad writer, Steve. I, unfortunately, have not had opportunity to check out your works for other systems. I understand that you are involved on a very high level in Mutants and Masterminds, among other things. However, without impuning your ideas as a writer, I think the directions you took Shadowrun, and the feel you imparted to it with your works, just wasn't where Shadowrun ought to have gone. I'm a big fan of high magic, ancient conspiracies, and high adventure, but I think that they should share an equal slice of the pie with street-level situations, events where the outcome, while shaping the future, won't necessarily result in the salvation/damnation of the world, and where the main players are canny, cruel, ambitious, but mortal and metahuman, rather than being powerful spirits, ancient dragons, or immortal elves. I know that you didn't write only about that sort of thing, but it definitely got a lot of focus. And the perfectionist in me really didn't like some of the rules you wrote (though not all, I won't make that claim). I was also very dismayed by the fact that, in certain adventures that it appears you wrote, rules inconsistencies in NPC statistics were abundant, with quite a few screwups made with rules that you yourself initially wrote. I don't know how much of the editorial process resulted in adding these things (magicians with the wrong Magic rating given their initiate grade, adepts with impossible choices for their centering metamagics, characters with vastly lower Essence than their cyberware would account for, lots and lots of characters armed with an assortment of weapons for which they have no skill), but they made a poor impression on me. I also disagreed with the (at the time) disregarded idea that otaku should be magical, though I am apparently in a minority with that belief. I don't know how to say these things without coming off like I'm telling you to stop writing for RPGs and go live in a cave away from people, but I haven't heard throngs of people saying that you've wreaked havoc on the settings Green Ronin produces, so I'd have to say that it looks like whatever idealistic differences or lack of careful adherence to the rules were something that was specific to Shadowrun, and not really a sign of poor game development skills, but rather a sign of what can happen when someone writes for a system whose rules and setting are not really a good fit with the writer in question. |
Holy crap, man. That's the most brutal dressing-down I've ever seen an author given.
In any case, it's been years since I've read them, but I seem to recall his novels with Talon (his first PC, if I remember correctly) having a fair amount of non-epic street-level backstory to them.
really? that's pretty tame, compared to my usual posts about the author in question. and it wasn't really all that brutal--the author's not being called a bad writer, he's being called a not-shadowrun writer (or, a not-shadowrun-as-the-poster-prefers-to-play-it writer).
Indeed. I'd call it more love-taps than brutal.
~J
~J
That really was aboout as gentle as you can expect to get. Perhaps a little moreso.
I've definately got that beat for "brutal dressing down," but it's not really on topic so I'll keep it to myself.
i could say something, here. but i'm not. i hope you appreciate that!
| QUOTE (Synner @ Apr 20 2005, 12:49 AM) |
| I suggest people take a look back at Steve's Awakenings before making blanket judgements about his writing for SR. There are restraints and limitations of all sorts put on an author's writing, and its even harder to tell where the writer's work was changed in editing not to mention what was originally dictated by the developer rather than the writer. |
That was the whole point of why I was careful to avoid making all-encompassing (though I suppose I did kind of suggest that they were almost-all-encompassing) and broad generalizations about his contributions to Shadowrun. I might have better qualified the particular things I disliked as being solely aspects of Shadowrun: Third Edition.
Awakenings was very well-done, and I was immensely pleased with the book. I mean, it had new adept powers (a first since the Grimoire!), new spells (and boy, were there ever a lot of them), new archetypes, and good in-character data to accompany the tasty and world-expanding rules. Heh, it even had a section written by our favorite Cyberzombie-Dragon-Savior-From-Space, prior to him undergoing cybermancy. Magic in the Shadows was also very good, though I think that, like most SR3 books, it suffered a bit for the lack of real setting-reinforcing in-character data alongside out-of-character data. Still, Magic in the Shadows was also a book that I was pleased with.
However, and I must add that caveat, I do not like where things went after Magic in the Shadows printed. Though I do like Magic in the Shadows, I also began to notice, with that book, the particular pattern in Steve's writings that made hermetics out to be misguided sorts, with their scientific formulae and highly structured and formal view on magic and its workings. While hermetics weren't exactly wrong, it seemed like every hermetic listing an academic or non-spiritual theory about a particular phenomenon got chastized by a shamanic type magician for their rational, rather than intuitive, magical view. I began to get the impression that, even if all magical types are created equal (or at least, no belief is "right"), there was an idea on the highest levels of development that certain basic magical practices were more right, than others.
When I started noticing these things was when Steve's ideas for Shadowrun started to diverge from what I, a player, wanted from the game and setting. He doesn't write bad rules, or anything like that, but the more he contributed to the setting's themes and plots, the less happy I was with the outcome. It's a personal bias, not a generalization that Steve's a bad game designer. Admittedly, it seems to be shared by a good amount of people I know, but their reasons are their own. This is just my opinion.
| QUOTE (warrior_allanon @ Apr 18 2005, 09:03 PM) |
| i'll tell you though blackie, if you diversify your spells, and have your power points at one or two with that magical adept, then through initiation raise your ability because you gain karma due to using your non spellcasting skills you will have a pretty kick a$$ character fairly quickly |
Oh ya, the power-roleplayer side of me likes the Magicians Way a lot.
I find with 4 Magic Power geas to a fetish (or whatever the GM prescribes), only costing 3 power points, gives you enough to buy lots of low force utility spells and a sustaining focus or two (hello +4d6 Init without spending PP). You can then put up a foci sustained Armor Force 3 along with the foci sustained Init boost, and those movement and scrying spells have a little better range. Or you can use the spell points to initiate if the GM lets you (the only canon way for Adepts to initiate at creation?)You do have to be careful with the foci. Keep your Spell Defense up and be ready to deactivate the foci because the GM is likely to zap your twinking butt from astral to try exploit the weakness of not being able to Preceive Astral (2pp is costly).
That is until you initiate and take Masking to camo the foci and also get through Astral Barriers without dropping the Init boost.I also find Will important because you usually don't have a lot of extra dice to toss into casting and conjuring drain tests, and you'll be taking on serious drain for the spirits that real mages just shrug about.
EDIT: The Magic Sense power can be a poorman's Astral Perception to keep you from blindly walking into astral barriers with your foci active, and has other benefits as well. It's tougher for Inivisibles to sneak up on you while you are unaware. Also depending on the GM's ruling you might know about spirits and the like approaching.
I see Pthgar mentioning about Magicians Way being popular with his Adepts too. Although it looks like they treat it more as a down-the-road thing, which it definately works for too. The MW Adept will likely never be the uber mage of the party, but pH3@r the Adept with a Great Spirit.
P.S. If the GM is feeling charitable about it you might want to geas a point of select cyber or bioware, for that new character kick that only 'ware can get you. But that's only if you are feeling extra min/max munchkin, and willing to live with a subpar number of skills to start with.
On the mismatched Essence and magic attribute ratings. Were they too low, too high?
There are other ways of affecting your magic rating, perhaps those NPCs suffered a deadly wound at some time (not an impossible leap for combat professionals) and lost a point. Maybe the Sam got drained at some point, or some other catastrophe. Point is, there may just not have been enough room to write down all the why's and hows of the odd ball stats.
There are other ways of affecting your magic rating, perhaps those NPCs suffered a deadly wound at some time (not an impossible leap for combat professionals) and lost a point. Maybe the Sam got drained at some point, or some other catastrophe. Point is, there may just not have been enough room to write down all the why's and hows of the odd ball stats.
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) |
| Holy crap, man. That's the most brutal dressing-down I've ever seen an author given. |
I've seen worse. Hell, I've gotten worse. Wireknight's has the benefit of actually having some constructive content, unlike most such rants.
Assuming (big assumption) that illusion spells work pretty much the same, which of the new attributes will resist them? Intuition or Logic? I can see a case for both, depending on the spell. For example, Chaos vs. Intuition and Phantasm vs. Logic.
| QUOTE (Pthgar) |
| Assuming (big assumption) that illusion spells work pretty much the same, which of the new attributes will resist them? Intuition or Logic? I can see a case for both, depending on the spell. For example, Chaos vs. Intuition and Phantasm vs. Logic. |
Given that Intuition is the new Perception, that's where my money is. But then just watch them make it Willpower or something.
Given the idea of dice pools being (Attribute + Skill), perception's dicepool will most likely either be Intution + Perception (as a new skill) or 2 x Intuition. The problem with the (Attribute + Skill) dicepool concept is that it necessitates the addiiton of a few core skills which will be universally useful. Unless many more skill points are possible in character creation, people are going to have trouble making characters that are both acceptable at their chosen area of expertise and possessed of decently high skills of ubiquitous use (i.e. perception tests, dodge/damage resistance tests, drain resistance tests, etc...)
A possible fix to this is to base certain ubiquitous dice pools, as I suggested in the last paragraph, off of a doubling the attribute in question rather than introducing a new skill to couple with the attribute for that test. I'd probably rather see an Agility x 2 dice pool for dodging, and Body x 2 dice pool for damage resistance, than Agility + Dodge and Body + Toughness. While the argument is valid that avoiding attacks, and taking hits, are both things that can be trained through knowledge rather than raw physical ability, creating new skills for these situations will result in that many more skills a character is essentially required to pick up in order to be useful.
Along with there being more skills to spread one's skill point expenditures thin, there is the added complexity of keeping track of and advancing new and vital skills, which may ultimately be much more useful than even combat and magical skills. Given that, I'm not sure how I think it should be done. Skill + Attribute is more uniform and cleaner, Attribute x 2 will induce less hair-pulling,
A possible fix to this is to base certain ubiquitous dice pools, as I suggested in the last paragraph, off of a doubling the attribute in question rather than introducing a new skill to couple with the attribute for that test. I'd probably rather see an Agility x 2 dice pool for dodging, and Body x 2 dice pool for damage resistance, than Agility + Dodge and Body + Toughness. While the argument is valid that avoiding attacks, and taking hits, are both things that can be trained through knowledge rather than raw physical ability, creating new skills for these situations will result in that many more skills a character is essentially required to pick up in order to be useful.
Along with there being more skills to spread one's skill point expenditures thin, there is the added complexity of keeping track of and advancing new and vital skills, which may ultimately be much more useful than even combat and magical skills. Given that, I'm not sure how I think it should be done. Skill + Attribute is more uniform and cleaner, Attribute x 2 will induce less hair-pulling,
If you only have to roll perception tests for pretty difficult things, and rarely have a threshold of above 1, then it might work out to just roll the appropriate attribute alone.
The problem with a fixed TN of 5, though, is that you need to roll a lot of dice or you're awfully unreliable, so 2x attribute dice, or attribute + skill is kind of necessary if you ever want getting a single success to be pretty common. (Heck, for that matter, attribute + 2x skill would probably be better still.)
The problem with a fixed TN of 5, though, is that you need to roll a lot of dice or you're awfully unreliable, so 2x attribute dice, or attribute + skill is kind of necessary if you ever want getting a single success to be pretty common. (Heck, for that matter, attribute + 2x skill would probably be better still.)
Well, we as yet do not know what the point cost for skills will be at chargen. it's very possible that skill point will be cheap enough to allow for a perception or awareness type skill.
Another idea is for certain background skills to be useful here.
Say you are looking for hidden security devices: Intuition + Security Procedures
I can definitely see a WoD esque motif, where the attribute used might change with the situation. If you're looking for where it makes sense to put a security device, use Logic, if you are trying to guesstimate or spot them as you go along, intuition.
Trying to fool a weapons checker doing pat downs, Charisma+Stealth to hide your weapon, trying to actually hide it, Intuition+stealth.
stuff like that. This means a more well rounded, less over specialized character may fair better in the day to day than a 20-dice before combat pool physad in every arena other than their 20-dice combat skill.
Another idea is for certain background skills to be useful here.
Say you are looking for hidden security devices: Intuition + Security Procedures
I can definitely see a WoD esque motif, where the attribute used might change with the situation. If you're looking for where it makes sense to put a security device, use Logic, if you are trying to guesstimate or spot them as you go along, intuition.
Trying to fool a weapons checker doing pat downs, Charisma+Stealth to hide your weapon, trying to actually hide it, Intuition+stealth.
stuff like that. This means a more well rounded, less over specialized character may fair better in the day to day than a 20-dice before combat pool physad in every arena other than their 20-dice combat skill.
| QUOTE (Dawnshadow) |
| At the other end there was 2 Red Samurai guards, and one person glowing like mad on astral. Mage, no masking. In the surprise round, astral perception negating the light penalties, and a working smartlink (because the other vision mods were working too, so he could see without astral perception, just not as well -- artificial thermographic).. gave TN 4. On 20 dice, since it was surprise round, skill 10, 10 combat pool. The mage didn't have a chance -- he went first in the combat round after, and killed the two Red Samurai as well. Didn't even need the armour spell, although he'd been expecting there to be more than 3 left. Turns out most of them had been turned into salsa. |
wait, wait, wait...so let me get this straight, your GM allowed you to use the Smartlink while you were astrally perceiving?
that is so not an argument for this thread. if you want to debate it, please consider not doing so here. this thread's been hijacked by enough SR4-related stuff; it doesn't need hijacking by SR3-related stuff.
If you'd care to explain why that wouldn't work, feel free to.
Edit: or what mfb said
~J
Edit: or what mfb said
~J
| QUOTE |
| wait, wait, wait...so let me get this straight, your GM allowed you to use the Smartlink while you were astrally perceiving? |
Why yes, yes I did. His physical eyes still worked (and it wasn't blind-fire due to thermographic vision), and the smartlink was still showing him where the gun was aimed, so how hard would it be to point the smartlink dot where the astral perception says there's a person and the thermo agrees? I figure not very, and the smartlink offsets the problems of doing things while perceiving. Call it a house-rule for a game where, only minutes later, the entire team was almost completely wiped out by spider-drones.
la la la la! not SR4, not listening!
| QUOTE (mfb @ Apr 20 2005, 01:13 PM) |
| la la la la! not SR4, not listening! |
What do you mean? I hear nothing but the buzzing of flies.
Baalzebubzebubzebubzebubzebubzebub…
~J
~J
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| that is so not an argument for this thread. if you want to debate it, please consider not doing so here. this thread's been hijacked by enough SR4-related stuff; it doesn't need hijacking by SR3-related stuff. |
kamsamni-da.
personally I love all of Kensons's SR work (especially awakenings). I also really love the direction he seems to take the game. Personaly I'm a fan of more magic and fantasy elements in SR, not less.
it's not even the push towards higher fantasy. it's the type of fantasy--the "oh, you hermetics are just silly" fantasy.
I would not be unhappy if Shamans got the Psionicist treatment, personally.
~J
~J
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| I would not be unhappy if Shamans got the Psionicist treatment, personally. ~J |
Er, no... reverse discrimination is still discrimination. No one wants to be told that their character's worldview is wrong. It's just as bad to say shamans are stupid as it is to say hermitics are stupid.
I think it's currently just about right; it's ambiguous if shamans have the phone number of a higher power or if it's all just in their head.
I know it's still discrimination. Your point?
Nah. I don't want it to be that way, but I still stand by my statement that I will not be unhappy if it is.
~J
Nah. I don't want it to be that way, but I still stand by my statement that I will not be unhappy if it is.
~J
I figured that was your point. Consider me hopelessly naive for hoping that pointing out the injustice of your statement might bring you to soften your stance. 
| QUOTE (Steve Kenson @ Apr 19 2005, 01:49 PM) | ||||
Ah, Crimson (may I call you Crimson?) |
i don't want shamans or hermetics to be nerfed. i don't want psionicists to be nerfed. i don't wany any path of magic provably better or worse--in either game terms or in-character study and experimentation--than any other.
If they're all the same, then can a magician just make up whatever they want and have it work, too, just as well as anything else works?
They should be able to.
If you're a mage who's spent a dozen years casting fireballs 'cause you really think chanting in Klingon and waving a toy Star Trek phaser around is the way to do it, then that's the way to do it. As long as the character invests the same amount of time and karma in research, etc, as everyoen else has to (or in comparable extracurricular study/effort), the how and why of magic working can be as individualistic as a good GM and player can explain.
If you're a mage who's spent a dozen years casting fireballs 'cause you really think chanting in Klingon and waving a toy Star Trek phaser around is the way to do it, then that's the way to do it. As long as the character invests the same amount of time and karma in research, etc, as everyoen else has to (or in comparable extracurricular study/effort), the how and why of magic working can be as individualistic as a good GM and player can explain.
in-character? maybe, maybe not. out of character? yeah.
| QUOTE (Crimsondude 2.0) |
| Anyway, if you actually have a question as to why I said that, then it has been answered here and here. Wireknight was easy on him. |
So, basicly what you are saying is that you are a perfectionist, and that you dont like Kenson because he isnt.
1. Yes I am.
2. That is part of the reason.
2. That is part of the reason.
Y'know, if you think about it, it's not like it's a bad idea for game developers to be perfectionists.
Y'know, if you think about it, it's not like it's a bad idea for game developers to be perfectionists.
says the double-poster!
Look how perfectly he double-posted!
~J
~J
Perverse.
I didn't know I could type that fast !!
I didn't know I could type that fast !!
In regards to the double posting which seems to be happening frequently today ...
If you receive any kind of error message upon posting, do not hit refresh. Instead, check the thread in question, as odds are that your post did in fact go through.
If you receive any kind of error message upon posting, do not hit refresh. Instead, check the thread in question, as odds are that your post did in fact go through.
It's a little off-topic, but I am a perfectionist when it comes to the written word. It's an impossible standard to be perfectly grammatically correct, but I try to be grammatically correct and coherent in my writing. I'm not always perfect, and like I joked to someone the other day I sometimes feel like I was half-conscious just writing a page-long post. I do expect something closer to perfection and coherence from a published author in published material. It is not an impractical expectation that for my $20 (or however much MitS was at the time) that I am getting $20 worth of writing.
I'm also an anally retentive speller, and the only reason my head hasn't exploded reading these forums is that I know that many of the worst offenders aren't posting in a native tongue. I can appreciate that, although in that case were I trying to post in German and given a German spellchecker for every post I'd use it. It's also why the only time I did blow up at someone here for poor spelling it was because I expected better from a poster who's older than I am and is a native English speaker, and it was part of a pattern of poor spelling on their part going back to this forum's early days in the late 1990s.
Since I live by the mantra, "clear, concise, correct" in my writing (although I've also had to write things that were a lot more important IRL that MitS is), it is the minimum standard by which I expect from any written material, whether it's the local newspaper or the SR core book, that I purchase. It's not an unreasonable expectation except that with SR it is.
I'm also an anally retentive speller, and the only reason my head hasn't exploded reading these forums is that I know that many of the worst offenders aren't posting in a native tongue. I can appreciate that, although in that case were I trying to post in German and given a German spellchecker for every post I'd use it. It's also why the only time I did blow up at someone here for poor spelling it was because I expected better from a poster who's older than I am and is a native English speaker, and it was part of a pattern of poor spelling on their part going back to this forum's early days in the late 1990s.
Since I live by the mantra, "clear, concise, correct" in my writing (although I've also had to write things that were a lot more important IRL that MitS is), it is the minimum standard by which I expect from any written material, whether it's the local newspaper or the SR core book, that I purchase. It's not an unreasonable expectation except that with SR it is.
| QUOTE (Ellery) |
| If they're all the same, then can a magician just make up whatever they want and have it work, too, just as well as anything else works? |
| QUOTE (Critias) |
| They should be able to. If you're a mage who's spent a dozen years casting fireballs 'cause you really think chanting in Klingon and waving a toy Star Trek phaser around is the way to do it, then that's the way to do it. |
| QUOTE (mfb) |
| in-character? maybe, maybe not. out of character? yeah. |
What if the character thinks they can summon both nature spirits and elementals? What if they think they can take the critter power movement as a metamagic? Does it work or not? Why or why not?
The problem with sameness is that the magical traditions we've already got are not identical. It's really hard to be the same (balanced) and not nearly identical. While it is possible to do, with enough attention to balancing, that's a heavy burden for an individual GM, and tacit approval of "anything goes" is liable to lead to everyone creating their own min/maxxed supertradition that is just a little bit better than what "everyone else" does. So I think if you start down this path, you'd better make very clear what is kosher and what is not.
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