Re: [HOE] Munchkin maker

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

At 05:28 PM 1/7/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>I have a problem with a member of my posse.
>He's a nice guy, but he's also an accountant by trade and he has a real 
>knack for tweaking rules to create super munchkins and get them all kinds 
>of nice stuff.  He's great at bending the rules just enough to make things 
>iffy, but not illegal.  Case in point, he once designed a Vampire that 
>didn't have to drink blood, and he would have gotten away with it if I 
>hadn't put my foot down.
>Anyway my problem is his current HOE character, (a Blessed, Cyborg, 
>Veteran of the Weird West) figured out that if he saves up his blue and 
>red chips, he can spend them to knock up his Story Telling roll and nab 
>myself a Legend chip.  Using this method, he managed to turn 2 red chips 
>into a Legend.  My question is, do you think I should allow him to 
>continue to do this, or should I figure out a way to reign him in? For 
>that matter, how many chips should I let anyone spend on a single roll?
>I'm asking because the other posse members are already starting to juice 
>up their story telling skills, and I'm afraid there is going to be alot of 
>one shot legend chips floating around soon.

Hmm... couple things come to mind here, but first things first, the 
question about how many chips you should let anyone spend on a single role...

I'm pretty sure this is in the rulebook somewhere, but you can only spend 
one red, one blue, and any number of white chips on a single roll. Thus, if 
he's already spent a red chip on his Tale-Tellin' roll, then he can't spend 
another one. He could spend a blue chip at that point (or toss in any 
number of white chips) but after that no more red or blue.

Now, there's a lot of different ways to deal with munchkins... very very 
few of them ever work. Odds are the reason why he makes min/max power chars 
is because that's what he wants to do, either as part of some sort of wish 
fulfillment thing or overcompensation for certain inadequacies... anyway, 
if you want to try and reign him in, some things you could try:

Get really anal about the sinnin' rules for Blessed. Best way to do this is 
to throw moral quandaries at him where there is no easy way to do anything 
without committing some sort of sin. Savage kids starving to death steal 
food from a convoy... give the food back to the rightful owners, or let the 
kids starve? Either way, make him roll for sinnin', and eventually he'll 
blow a roll.

Then you've got the Cyborg thing. Few things you could do there... EMP 
spells/grenades. Send dreadnoughts, assassin droids, junkers after his can. 
Screw with his ROE. Heck, sick some Rust Monsters on him.

Finally... VotWW. If this guy is converting legend chips on a regular 
basis, then word is definately getting around to the Reckoners, and they'll 
probably start sending some "special attention" his way. He's been around 
long enough that Stone would probably want a little chat with him.