Finran
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Posts posted by Finran
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Hzark alerted me to this thread because wanted to know what I thought of it.
In my personal Opinion making APP more important by giving the Courtly skills + or - modifiers on them sounds nice for a oneshot, but not for a campaign. The oneshot it's good because you don't expect to do anything or interact with those characters again. For a Campaign as GM and as a Player it would be problematic.
Say you were in battle fighting valiantly for Arthur and took a major wound and lost APP for it and now all of a sudden your courtly skills suck, people snub you because your APP is too low and you might have had decent skills courtly skills before but they are now down too. As a result of being snubbed by your Liege and even Arthur as a GM I would say that is actually a personal insult and worthy of Loyalty Passion Loss. Because fighting valiantly, earning glory as a hero then being sat far away from everyone is a massive insult to you and your service.
That's the first detriment I see which would be Passion Loss. Due to your skills being modified you cannot make the rolls you used to and thus are snubbed, insulted or shunned by those you knew which in some cases is something which should not happen.
A second would be Antagonistic Trait/Passion Gain, Traits and Passions are great and awesome things in my opinion, but if you are constantly being shat on for not looking good you'll grow resentful, envious, cruel, arbitrary or being to harbor passions such as Hate (Lord) Hate (Lady) Hate (Arthur). Which in the long run unless all the Party has them will be detrimental to Party interaction, which in turn escalates party infighting which can leave players feeling sour and ruining the experience.
Early Retirement is another one which I can be seen done by players left right and center. "Ah so bad rolls which lead to the enemy getting a major wounds over three or so years and aging means I've lost a lot of APP?" (Doesn't have to be APP but if it is then this seriously applies) Said player reads over rules "So wait at this APP which since mine was average and now half my face has been cut up so it is ugly as hell I take negs to courtly skills and now can't attend court because I can't make the roll to let people let me in? I think I'll just retire this character so he can stay home and I can play someone who is more than a murder hobo."
That or they just soldier on and lose Loyalty or even Love and gain Antagonistic Traits/Passions.
Personally I did do something as a Homerule (Well not really) when I looked at the Great Campaign and then Game Master Characters Sheets.
Ygraine had 32 APP, Guenever had 30 APP
They both incited Lustful rolls at +10 to all who saw them, meaning that there is something to that.
So I myself decided to sit down and do the maths because hey APP has to be worth something, the more beautiful a lady or Knight is has to give them some benefit, I mean that's what the GPC has for these two why not expand on that.
So I came up with and this is the original draft I copied it from
'Going to say since APP 30 was +10 lustful , so I'd say
16-17 +2 to Lustful
18-19 +3 to Lustful
20-21 +4 to Lustful
22-23 +5 to Lustful
24-25 +6 to Lustful
26-27 +8 to Lustful
28-29 +9 to Lustful
30-31 +10 to Lustful'
I capped it at 10 because I feel that +10 modifiers to trait rolls is more than enough in my opinion and it works the same as when you're first in someones sight (Or if the GM forgets, when you talk to said character or when they talk to you). Basically it can give them a directed trait or passion towards your character. Or the other way around making APP something more useful say when you try to insight the lustful roll in a young knight if you play a lady or if you want to seduce a young lady as a knight. It's a house rule that I used from established events and rolls in the GPC. It's not perfect but it does make APP more than a dump stat in the games I run, sometimes I use it to negative the resistance as in Chaste of a Lady or Knight, but more often than not my players are looking for more than one night stands.
DEX I agree needs more importance but not too much. From the way I run/play DEX and APP are the seasoning to the STR, SIZ CON because lets face it we're playing Knights not Ambassadors or Ninjas. They are there and have competency (Above 12 for me) is good enough to make the game more interesting but they should not be the focus of skills in any shape or form. Because that brings me to another that I believe should be given more thought before mods are made to stats
If One Attribute is directly linked to skills, other Attributes must be linked to appropriate skills or ChecksIf I were to rule for the negative penalty and positive gains for Appearance, If I were to accept Dex/2 for certain skills. Should I then add +1 or -1 Bonus Dice for Strength, should I then add +1 or -1 modifiers for CON checks. Should I add positive and negative modifiers for weapons, Appearance, traits because of SIZE.
I'm not sure about you guys but when I run or play my games I want them to be one thing Fun. Adding in things to punish players for me would ruin the Fun both as a GM and as Player. Adding negatives based on Attributes which are actually quite hard to change would make the system antagonistic which in turn would make everyone play balanced Knight which would be very boring since they'd all have similar Attributes meaning they'd be a new baseline that most people would go for because it has the least penalties. When players start the game thinking like that, it will surely damage how the game is going to go if they are fretting like "Oh I could roll my passion and take on this Saxon. Or I could not and not risk losing another Attribute that will net me penalties for losing it more so than other stats.
If a system punishes players for not investing points or simply because they had bad luck on aging rolls or wounds that would make it seem antagonistic towards players which in turn would turn people away from playing. What's the point of playing a Generations game about collecting Glory if you have mandatory switch Knights because they can't be seen at court or what not.
I'm all for NPCS or even players not wanting to talk to someone because they are ugly and scarred enough to be hideous. I am not for saying "Those skills you invested, time, energy and effort are now null because you neglected to increase your APP."
I said it before but I believe games are simply meant to be fun so if a system is set to punishes players in these ways. It's not going to be fun.
Alternate Chargen Test Challenge
in Pendragon & Prince Valiant
Posted
I'm using what the Great Pendragon Campaign uses. 30 for Guenever having +10 was what I used and stats of 13-15 are above average but not something not worthy in the same way Traits are only famous and net you glory once you hit 16+. I don't want it to be too easy.
This is entirely moot because it is far easier to raise sword skill than it is to raise your Attributes. At a point you can't increase them without glory, don't believe me check out aging and what it does as well as Racial Caps for Attributes while skills can be raised beyond 20. There are alternatives to swords there are no alternatives to having low Attributes though.
Thing is SKILLS can also be increased by checks, ATTRIBUTES can't. For the Four Unique points during Char Gen there is a reason why skills go up 5 and Attributes go up on, it's because they are not equal so comparing the two of them as if they are is utterly pointless. Especially considering that Attributes LOCK until you get glory to get past the racial lock while Skills do not. So yes while all games do punish the player, not all games are scourging them and then crucifying them in the way the described system would propose.
I think I made out that SIZE and CON are the main dish, but ever played in the romance period? You'll find that causing people to lust after you can actually get you more Romance than most and net you glory from it.
What is suggested in character creation though is wanting to make the Knights mince meat for Saxon Axes, no seriously if you're going to add those modifiers in for skills because of DEX and APP. What do you want the players to do 3d6 damage so they can have decent skills?
It is punishing players in character creation no less, which in turn means that you'll have people who would have enjoyed the game not enjoy the came. Having starting stats for 5 damage makes sense because those Saxons aren't going to give a damn about your courtly skills. But they are going to care about how much you can hit, saying starting skills for weapons are Dex/2 is crippling Knights abilities. These are people who've trained all their life to fight and defend their homeland, not some third division school team. Even at the age of 15 when it comes to sports, the children who put in effort to train day after day are the ones who were more skilled. Tying skills to DEX is completely ignoring the years of training they had to get to that stage and saying that's all they have is just wrong.
I'm not sure about you but actually being capable of dealing damage to armored saxons who you can face based of rolls sounds like more fun than being killed every single battle, which there are a lot of especially early on and later on. The agency for SIZE and CON is there for a reason, trying to add more agency to DEX and APP is just punishing people saying "Well do you want to be able to hit people and be liked by your allies but do no damage" or "Do you want to be capable of being hit hard by people who can deal 6d6 or more damage (Which is as much as most horses) and hitting them hard"
What is proposed is trying to wipe clear the established working formula and add in something which left unchecked would not only make Pendragon more complex and more difficult to get into than it already is. Don't believe if you interview over a thousand randomly selected people from across the globe in different nations and states, how many would know of the King Arthur Pendragon System. How many would know Dungeons and Dragons, Patherfinder, Exalted, Star Wars. You'll find that we fall into the minority.