Re: [HOE] Why is Blastin' a Knowledge aptitude?

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

> Probably not.  The Toxic Shamans have can't recover
> Strain without Spook Juice.  The Blesseds' powers are
> fairly subtle and internalized, generally geared
> toward support, defense, healing and indirect offence.

Well Toxic Shamans have the advantage that they can get strain back
instantly if they need to, I think that's meant to counter-balance the
need for spook juice.

>  For Doomsayers, I've been thinking of putting
> together a kind "Sinnin'" table or a special Backlash
> table for when they mess up.  Also, even Doomsayer
> miracles aren't quite as nasty as a lot of the Syker
> powers.  Atomic Blast can hurt, but most Brain Blasts
> will hurt a lot more.  

Have you had a Doomsayer in your posse? When we did he dominated every
combat (granted he was pretty much a one trick pony). Atomic Blast sucks,
I agree. But our doomie went for MIRV, which is insane. Sure it costs 3
strain, but you get a minimum 5d10 damage with that (he found it more
effective to generally fire most/all of the missiles at one target at a
time). Then add powers like Glow Stick and Molecular Cohesion and you have
a pretty unstoppable killing machine. Then there's the obvious: Nuke.

It's been my experience (as a player and a marshal) that sykers are not
the most powerful AB's out there. Maybe the syker players were just a
little more sane than the doomsayer players, I dunno. But it still doesn't
seem fair to make such a major change to one AB (that reduces their power
significantly) and not others/all of them.

> Really?  I disagree.  Think about most horror movie
> when the folks are going through the Spooky
> house/spaceship/whatever.  Watch how the atmosphere of
> the place eats into their souls and ratchets up the
> tension.  When the big scary thing comes, it's almost
> a relief because now the fear has a definite target.

It's a relief just after, but when the thing jumps out, that's when the
"hero" jumps, shoots his gun wildly and wets himself. The guts checks have
penalties built in [player takes 1d6 wind and suffers -2 to all actions
for the rest of the encounter]. If the player starts with penalties then
he's more likely to fail his guts check and get more penalties stacked on
top of it. This could create a pretty nasty downward spiral that the
player won't be able to escape. 

Think of it this way: the character enters a Fear Level 4 area (not too
uncommon in HoE). I think that was a -2 to all rolls. His guts isn't
great, but they it's not pathetic either (3d8) so he doesn't get any help
there. Suddenly something jumps out at him, he rolls his guts (now 3d8-2)
and doesn't do well. He winds up getting the (-1d6 wind, -2 to all
actions) result on the scart' table (a fairly innocuous result for that
table). Now he's got a -4 to all rolls for the rest of the encounter
before taking darkness/wound/whatever penalties into account. That means
he's going to be almost useless. Seems like something like that would lead
to a lot of player frustration.

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab, Safety Warden (Bldg. 85)


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