[UA] Re: Pharmomancy

[Peter Hindman]

From: Chris Milne <khris at clara.net>

>On Tuesday, April 04, 2000 3:36 AM, Peter Hindman
>[SMTP:strev at arches.uga.edu] wrote:

<snip>

] How about:  For the minor blast, the rank of the madness check is equal
]to the tens die of the aleetheiamancy check; for the significant, make 
one
]check at a rank equal to the tens die and another at a rank equal to the
]ones die.  Thus, the minor blast is unlikely to force more than an extra
]rank-5 check unless the adept is very skilled, but the significant blast
]has a decent chance of forcing a check at rank-6 or greater.


>I like it. I reckon it'd take a bit of playtesting to
>choose between the "fixed" and your "variable" method in
>terms of balance, but it's a nice idea. Thanks. Just one
>question: is the adept allowed to flip-flop the minor blast
>roll? If they can, then they've got a much better chance of
>forcing a high-rank check.

   It's a magic skill check, magic schools are automatically obsession
skills, so yes, it's flip-floppable.  Notice, however, that if for example
an adept had a skill of 55%, the minor blast wouldn't force a check any
higher than rank 5--if the adept rolls a 12, a flip-flop makes it 21 and
forces a rank 2 check, but there's no way to flip-flop a 39 and make it a
rank 9 check.

>I have two concerns about the blast effects.
>Firstly, that it's going to be very ineffective against
>hardened targets. I'm not sure whether to include a
>Distraction Penalty for the target, even if they pass their
>madness checks. The question is: would Eponymous ignore the
>hallucinations completely, or would they still have a
>disorienting effect upon him?

   Well, being a sociopath should be good for _something_.

>Secondly, that I envisage any significant charge as being
>precious to the adept. A formula requiring multiple
>significant charges comes at a serious cost to the adept,
>and I don't like the idea that it could have little or no
>effect thanks to the luck of the dice.

   Three answers come to mind:  1) No matter what, you force a rank-5
check.  With the significant blast, that means the single attack is really
_three_ attacks.  That's not bad at all.
   2)  Apropos of 1), the attack is almost certain to be devastating on
any 'normal' (i.e. average Mind, few Hardened notches) person.  If you use
it on Eponymous, or on an experienced Duke with a high mind score, well,
that's like trying to shoot the Killdozer.  Bad strategy.
   3)  Maybe the Significant blast does minor blast-style damage in
addition to the madness checks?  Hmm...how about, the Significant blast
forces a second madness check based on the _ones_ die rather than the tens
die--the statistics will depend on the duke's skill level, but that will
make the average check somewhere around rank 6 or 7--plus minor blast
damage from brain trauma, stress hormone secretion, etc.  This makes it
comparable to the Pornomancer blast (minor blast damage that you _can't
heal_).


_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua