Coordination spirit spell, plus Vigor, Strength and Glamour

[PhilHibbs]

The Coordination spell is a bit odd:

Quote

...increases the target’s DEX by 3. This decreases the target’s SR by 1 and increases all Agility, Manipulation (including weapon skills), and Stealth skills by +5%.

Should these effects be considered compound - i.e. if the +3 DEX happens to increase your category modifier anyway (which it won't always do), do you get +10? Or is the +5 just to guarantee the bonus even if it just goes from, say, 13 to 16? Likewise Strike Rank, if it goes from 9 to 12?

If they are compound, then that makes it easy for me. My character management spreadsheet has a section for entering stat mods, and it recalculates everything automatically. If they are instead of, I guess I need to add extra columns and more complex calculations. Yay!

Edited June 18, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[jps]

I don't think they are: you get a +3 DEX and, regardless of your new DEX you'll get the other modifiers. Thus, you don't have to recalculate everything.

[PhilHibbs]

54 minutes ago, jps said:

I don't think they are: you get a +3 DEX and, regardless of your new DEX you'll get the other modifiers. Thus, you don't have to recalculate everything.

So ironically in trying to make the spell simpler in calculating its effects, it has made my life harder! Oh well, serves me right. Glamour has a similar description, so I guess in general if a stat-boosting spell has other game mechanics, then they are instead of what the natural change would be.

Bear's Strength does not have such mechanics, and states that it "should cause its damage bonus (page 56) and Agility and Manipulation skills category modifiers (including weapon skills) to increase".

So I need at least two more sections on my sheet - one for characteristic bonuses that do not have knock on effects (but show up on the sheet and affect the stat*5 roll), and others for adding in the secondary effects of Coordination, Glamour, Strength, and Vigor, probably will need separate ones for attributes such as SR and spirit combat damage, and for category modifiers.

I think this is a good rule though. Keeps it simple, one spell gives you a bunch of bonuses with no unlucky characters who are edge cases missing out.

Seems rather odd that if you have a strength of 13, that adding 3 to it gives you an additional +10% to your agility and manipulation skills, likewise Glamour gives someone with CHA 13 an additional +10 to magic, whereas someone with  I'm sure that is a mistake, and 9+ should just be +5. The 13+ should clearly be "instead of", except that someone with 25 CHA already has +15.

Edited June 18, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[styopa]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think this is a good rule though. Keeps it simple, one spell gives you a bunch of bonuses with no unlucky characters who are edge cases missing out.

Seems rather odd that if you have a strength of 13, that adding 3 to it gives you an additional +10% to your agility and manipulation skills, likewise Glamour gives someone with CHA 13 an additional +10 to magic, whereas someone with  I'm sure that is a mistake, and 9+ should just be +5. The 13+ should clearly be "instead of", except that someone with 25 CHA already has +15.

It's almost like stepped stat bonuses are something that should have been left in the 1970s?  😐

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Seems rather odd that if you have a strength of 13, that adding 3 to it gives you an additional +10% to your agility and manipulation skills, likewise Glamour gives someone with CHA 13 an additional +10 to magic, whereas someone with  I'm sure that is a mistake, and 9+ should just be +5. The 13+ should clearly be "instead of", except that someone with 25 CHA already has +15.

Ah, Strength and Glamour both add 8, so it is correct. 25 goes to 33, which is two steps higher on the chart.

[PhilHibbs]

Ok, next corner case: if you have a DEX of 19 and thus a DEX SR of 0, and you cast Coordination, I'm going to rule for the purposes of my spreadsheet that it does not reduce your DEX SR to -1.

[styopa]

51 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Ok, next corner case: if you have a DEX of 19 and thus a DEX SR of 0, and you cast Coordination, I'm going to rule for the purposes of my spreadsheet that it does not reduce your DEX SR to -1.

That's an irreparable artifact of the backwards initiative system (where "better" decreases your SR).  Past a certain point, all DEX is the same in terms of SR.  Dex 19 or 99 = SR0.  Same with SIZ - SIZ22 and SIZ220 have the same reach.

I've said for years that "the next RQ" would be a great place to fix that but for RQG backwards consistency was deemed more important than mechanical soundness/extrapolatability.  It's entirely logically consistent with Jeff's earlier comments of wanting to gimp "big monsters" to be easier to kill by players - capping DEX and SIZ SRs removes advantages from having extraordinary values of either.

[PhilHibbs]

Ok, I think I've got it working:

v1.4 beta 1: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1spBdtWl_gIH-o5UJ-uSMvYkzSV0w4nYIZn3Q-robF3E/edit?usp=sharing

So now it has two sets of "temp value" columns: regular Temp Value that affects everything (e.g. Bear's Strength or Charisma), and "No-ko" columns which means "No knock-on effects", for bonuses that should not affect derived attributes, such as DEX that is boosted by Coordination, or Hit Points that are boosted by Vigor. The secondary effects of these spells are all figured into the derived attributes separately.

Don't worry, you don't need to know about any of these details! Just ignore those columns, and tick the boxes and watch the changes happen on the CharSheet!

I'm calling it "beta 1" for now, since although I think I've got all the effects right, I'm not 100% sure. I'd appreciate an independent test.

Player: I cast Strength!

GM: Ok, tick the Strength box on the CharGen sheet

Player: Ok... right, my damage bonus has gone up from 1D4 to 1D6, and my attack skill goes up from 86 to 91".

Edited June 18, 2018 by PhilHibbs