Duke Bushido

Man, that mermaid in the desert brings back some old school RPG memories! So many random encounter tables and random beast generators....

Maybe; I am not sure of where you are at with it, so lwt me try a rephrase: Striking Appearance is COM. It is the same thing, reserved dor what would have previously,been more elevated or lowered values of COM. Instead of buying COM, one buys the mechanic of COM. Similarly, if we do away with DEX amd declare that any rolls for physical coordination and deftness default to 11 or less, but can be raised by 1 by paying a cost of (the cost of ever-how-many points of DEX it takes,in 6e to raise a DEX roll, well... We're still buying DEX. Even at half the price, we are still buying DEX. Same with Steiking Appearance: we are still buying COM. Right. We are buying COM. We are just calling it something else, and we are requiring a bigger buy in, unless "wow; that guy is strikingly unstriking" or "stunningly unstunning" is an acceptable thing (don't see why it wouldn't be, but the name suggests otherwise). Fine. It's not a characteristic; I get that; I have no problem with that. My problem lies elsewhere, which I think may have been missed. However, as I said, we can do the same with DEX- remove the characteristic and just buy the mechanic. We can do the same with CON; we just brand it as "defense against being stunned" or change that mechanic as well and create a talent "healthy" that we roll against when exposed to disease and the like. We can get rid of the characteristic, but if we keep the entire mechanic, what the heck is the difference? (Except to people who just want specifically,a listed characteristic, of course). Is there a Comeliness score in this game? No. Too bad. I wanted a character with a very high Comeliness. Oh; I see. Here is how to buy the mechanic of a high Comeliness. Same thing. Yes; yes; point taken. However it is long-standing shorthand on this and other boards to refer to char gen decisions as being done by the character; it is in the very rules books themselves. And there, Sir, is my problem with Comeliness as a stat or any appearance based mechanic: Who _is_ the author with the say so here? "The player determines his character is shockingly, jaw-dropping my, car-crash-inducingly beautiful." So the GM has no say in his NPCs: all NPCs will now react according to the points spent in Stellar Appearance (or COM:30 or whatever). None will think "eeew! She looks like my ex, with whom I endured an agonizing divorce" or "meh; not my type" or "I don't care how many kartrashians she looks like, all I can see is the plastic and the head full of snakes" or anything else _except_ "oh, my; she is beautiful, and I will react favorably to her!" The complete load I find this to be hasnt changed since the 80s, and is the reason COM is free in my games: in the oft-repeated mantra, "you get what you pay for." And I say it's not really,your decision as to how the rest of the world treats you or reacts to you.,,if you want to control how people treat you, well, as I have mentioned, we have a mechanic for that: it's called Mind Control. Buy that. There isn't a guide. There's a mechanic. GM agency is lost here. Being fair: I am a competent GM. If a player tells me his character is very handsome, then it will come up now and again, perhaps quite often. But if there is instead a mechanic deciding that while there was a 52 percent chance that everyone he meets reacts favorably because he is pretty, but he bought a mechanic that means 68 percent of the people will, Well, I don't know exactly which part of a book is the anus, but it is more than welcome to stick that mechanic there. No. I do not believe a man can fly or shoot lighting from his anythinf but a Tesla cannon, and I am willing to bet good money that you don't, either.

There ain't no "might" to it, Bubba. Not STR. It makes you remarkably feeble, but not incapacitated. However, your point is taken. Agreed. This is my problem with COM costing points. A player wants to say "my character is tge handsomest man that ever put on tights!" Fine. Lots of people find him handsome. As your GM, I need you to be aware that not everyone you encounter will agree, and even those that do aren't all going to react to you in a special "Damn, he's pretty" kind of way. All that together- the lack of a truly universal "standard attractiveness" face and physique combined with the lack of a universal standard set of reactions to a given level of standard attractiveness, and the fact that with a COM stat, players can spend points for which a benefit is not assured and that, people being people, may even bite them in the foot now and again- is the whole reason I don't charge for COM. Pick a number. On average, a large percentage of the NPCs you encounter will think your attractive / unattractive, and that is about as far as that goes for me. Agreed. And this is somethinf that Striking Appearance doesn't really solve, as it is literally just assigning and buying a mechanic for COM in lieu of buying COM and working out the math. If you want to be so gorgeous that everyone reacts favorably to you, but Mind Control. That's the mechanic for "everyone does what I want them to do." Call _that_ "Striking Appearance" of whatever you want, but Mind Control is the mechanic for removing free-will and personal-opinion-based actions from other characters. Similarly, if you want to be so ugly people run away in terror while throwing shoes at you, then buy Mind Control. That's what it does. Though on that thought- if I have Shrinking Appearance: very positive favorable reaction of whatever it is, then I should be able to use that on my Summoned creatures and save a few points there, right? Not have to buy that extra bit on top of Summoned? And if I have to buy it for my one summoned creature, shouldn't buying the same versus all mankind be considerably more expensive?

Well, Prom kind of sucked, what with the no date and dancing by myself. Dating was kind of rough, too, now that I think about it...

Not sure who that is for, but I would, if I didn't play the way I do. I don't let PRE defend against PRE. It makes no sense: He isn't so scary / imposing / impressive if you are also scary / imposing / impressive! It makes no sense. When faced with someone who is one of those things to such a degree as to rattle you enough to affect your behavior, then you are working against your presence of mind- your strength of will- to keep your composure. With that in mind, I defend PRE attacks with EGO, and have done aince some point in the mid-80s. So by default, all PRE in my games is "attack only," so to speak. I also allow a build with EGO: only against PRE attacks, but not a lot of players buy it unless their concept doesn't have an improved EGO score.

Really sharp clothes will do that for you.

Hard to prove, but in this case, it is the other way around. I had a Cat torn down to the block some ywars ago- a modem no-glow-plugs type, though I cannot remember the model (it wasnt a 3208, so I wasnt in love with it. ). I was just staring blankly forward while pondering possible plans of action deoending on what the heads fluxed at in the machine shop when I really got struck by the shaoe of the piston tops. I put it out of mind, but eventually I was breaking down an exploded Cummins (dear Dodge (and to a lesser part, Ford) fans: that Cummins is an awesome engine _only_ because you are driving a pick up truck. Put it in its narive environment, and it is nothong but problems until the day it dies. Frankly, I could take a gas burner from a transfer truck (though I"d need a time machine), stick in your tiny little pick up, and you'd be just as amazed) ) Anyway, I had to wonder some things to keep from losing to boredom (yes; you can be bored even when you are too busy to keep up). I pulled one of the piston (one without a hole in it) and tossed it into a shelf instead of the scrap trailer and went about my day. Skupping to the end, a few years later, I had it in mind to visualize a compression-fired explosion. At one point. I was wrapping the piston against a sheet of saw-dust covered aluminum (looking for an oscillation pattern) and eventually plexiglass and what I saw there moved me on to a diffetent direction. I ground the piston down a bit and kept shaping it here and there until I was able to drop the piston onto the aluminum and leave little digits from the hersheys kiss in the middle. Then I had other things to do and back in a shelf it went. A,couple years later and I am cleaning out the shop, and run across my ground and cut and filed diesel piston and remember that I had not found a perfect oscillation board for it. I had a pretty flimsy sheet of acrylic, though, and dumped some metal dust from the collection bag onto it and tapped the acrylic with the piston. To my annoyance, the acrylic cracked, and fairly quickly. I woved to a different spot, and had a simialr problem. Anyway, experimentation demonstrated that this happened every time with a that piston (and a xouple of others), but only with that one was it the exact same crack patterns. More experimenting cofirmed the modificarions I had made to the piston before, in the hopes of capturing an oscillation pattern in sawdust were poorly concieved for producing rings of oscillation, but quite impressive at causing intersecting ripples, eight up until the tip cetter of the piston hit the acrylic. It was after that just a matter of remembering that when creating Dragon scale of chitin for one particular world.

That's the sort of thing I was referring to: If it is,being used for bonuses to rolls or modifting other rolls, then no; COM should not be used. All of those other rolls can be modified already: extra dice of PRE can be bought or PRE can be raised, for example. I have this exact same issue with Striking Appearance: we already have mechanics that do,everything this does. You have not gotten ride it COM; you have replaced it with a one-size-fits-all version of "if you look at all, you look this much" becauae people can only look in levels of look. If one is no good, then why us buying it bulk the replacement option? The problem from the outset is the you do not get to decide how appealing you are to other people. I used (and apparently completely,wasted) a crap ton of life and eyestrain above trying to demonstrate exactly this. We say beauty is in the eye of the beholder for a reason. There are peopl3 who think Steve Buscemi and Nicholas Cage and the Olsen twins are attractive, and hey- more power to them! But those people that though Dobby was cute did not think that because Dobby decided he was cute. They thought so because there was a brain malfunction unique to them that caused their hearts to zing over the grotesque. There is someone for everyone, etc. That is the biggest problem with both COM and striking appearance: despite what far too many winners od the various genetic lotteries might think, you don't get to decide how attractive other people think you are. If you still dind a need to whip 'em out and compare, then do what I do: I kept COM. It costs nothing. It provides nothing. It impairs in no way. It is nothing but an apprarance phallus to compare to other appearance phalluses. I did not adopt Stunning Appearance, is it is nothing but another appearance phallus without the granularity of COM, and is used pretty much the way most folks used COM. If you are going to get rid of it, then get rid of the lego; don't just rebuild it out of larger bricks.

O have a weapon in a can't say setting that has Piercing Points (2e's 'penetrating') with the limitation "only versus Dragon scale." This weapon was painstakingly researched and scientifically designed for the express purpose of turning the nature of Dragon Scale against itself and harnessing its defensive prorperties to instead aid the transfer of damage when struck with this particular hammer.

Agreed. I dont think,I ir should have an associated cost of any kind, but I never sae a reason to dump it, either. It's not like something else does exactly the same,thing if you werent using it for modifiers to something else.

It is for precisely this reason that I can totally get behind eliminating the STR characteristic: once the damage dealt becomes Hth damage bought on its own, and leaping is replaced simply buying up Leaping (or have the later editions already divorced leaping from STR? I don't remember), the only thing left is Lift /throw.... I can support buying those elements separately. Honestly, I think almost every brick I have ever made has tried to sell back his leaping or take a "does not increase leaping" on the largest portion of his STR. Now here is the thing: I _want_ COM to come back. What was it? Essentially, a hard number against which to compare the attractiveness of one character against another. Just another chance to "whip 'em out and get a ruler." However, I know enough to know that this is _all_ it was, and that this is precisely why I want it back: I need to know if my character has the biggest or not! Because I know that this is the only reason I want it back, I am okay with it going away. Don't get me wrong: if Strength went away, even if it was replaced with exactly everything I confessed to having tried before, I would still _use_ the STR characteristic, and again: just to know who's is bigger than who's. For what it is worth, that was how I landed on the idea of giving a Strength rating to each element, and averaging them for a final STR score. Though admittedly, I liked that this also modeled roughly equally-strong characters who were better (ie, more trained or practiced) at certain aspects of applying their STR than at others. Still, it could to completely away, replaced by purchasing its component parts. If nothing else, break damage out of it to eliminate the ever-repeating "but the free damage speed killing attack!" arguments. For what it is worth, CON can be replaced with a formula based doing damage equal to multiples of Defense or percentages of STUN. I have played with both. Again, I _like_ CON, as a moose-like constitution, _to me_, is the hallmark of the broad-shouldered, square jawed adventurer and her husband both. But, like it or not, I can see it being replaced by a mechanic based on something less transitory. As it is, without figured secondary characteristics, CON only exists to be the value inserted into its own mechanic. Rebrand it; make it a defense: Stagger Resistance or something. Told the world _exactly_ how pretty I was and _exactly_ how much prettier than every other character in the scene, of course! But gameplay-wise? It didn't do anything. In fact, it kind of broke one of the cardinal rules: having a physical form (should you so choose to), is a special effect for existing in one particular place at one particular instant, and special effects are whatever the player wants them to be- ugly cyborg. Freakish monster, drop-dead gorgeous acordian model- whatever. Moreover, special effects are _free_. Changes to Comliness were _not_ free. To be attractive-er, you paid. To be attractive-less, you picked up a couple of points. I saw this as a violation of the SFX rules back in 1e, once I got,into the swing of the system. I still use the COM score, but I haven't charged a single point for it since I became the GM back in the 80s. You should be free to decide how appealing your character is, and at my table, you are. This is probably why I was so underwhelmed with "Striking Appearance" as the replacement: you are still paying points to decorate your existence, only now we have added mechanics, too. So let's get real with it: how do we objectively measure what is attractive and what isn't? Can we score them, or can we at least say "this person is so strikingly attractive that everyone will instantly notice them?" Of course we can't, and here's why: I have never been attracted to blondes. Maybe it is because I used to be one, until about twenty years ago. Maybe it's because my mother was, too. I don't know. They do not trip my attention alerts. I _am_, however, and absolute sucker for brown eyes and coarse black hair. Suppose Hugh can't get rough of rhose charming Scandinavians and that wild mutation that makes eyes blue. Suppose he finds dark hair to be a bigger turn-off that scrubbing yourself down with a fistfull of fresh weasel amuses before hitting town. We are _never_ going to agree on who is strikingly attractive, and definitely not who has COM 14 and who has COM 21. Either mechanic requires that we force someone to replace their subjective evaluation with someone else's subjective evaluation. I will go you one further on the problem with CON- heck, I will go you _two_ further (though one the long-term members probably already are aware of, to varying extent). I have a brother who is gay. When he was in college, he had a boyfriend who, as you might have guessed, was also gay. I remember when Madonna was just getring on the charts, and my brother's boyfriend was just in love with her (you remember that game in the NGD a few months ago where of all the people on the board, I happened to know Madonnq' actual name because "I had a friend who was totally in love her?" This was the friend. Yeah; he was dating my brother, but he was still tons of fun to hang out with- he was very high-energy and hilarious). After he bought a couple of her albums, he commented "yeah; I am definitely gay, but Madonna has taught me that really skanky white women are kind of a turn on. I mean, I want a guy, but they get my motor running to go find one!" So what, precisely, is the correct COM rating for the people he's excited by? He is attracted to guys of (going on nothing but my brother and a couple of this guy's exes that were pointed out to me, and the guy he was dating after he and my brother broke up) rather average looks- not pretty; not ugly; lost-in-a-crowd-of-four kind of looks and Madonna and "swanky white women." What number is that? Do those people have Striking Appearance? So they not? Do they have it, bur only versus this one guy? Now for the second one, which some folks are probably aware of: I like strong women. Broad-shouldered women that can work next to me all day, keeping up without effort, then wrestle all night. Women with muscles and endurance and physical power. Not body-builders, mind you- just like with men, big fluffy muscles do not necessarily mean great strength; they mean you had enough spare time and patience to fluff up,each individual muscle, one at a time. Strong, muscular women. The late Joanie Lauer was a great example: dark hair, dark eyes, broad shoulders, and the physical strength to throw each other around for hours. I dont give a crap- I am sixty three, and have stopped caring about what other people think I should find attractive. That woman was awesome! Elle McPherson? She looks like a spoon. Christina Ricci? Also looks like a spoon. Gwenyth Paltro? A stick with freckles. But I garauntee if I built a character sheet for Joanie and gave her a 30 COM, there would be absolute _shrieks_ of protest. Unless we move to the end of her career when she got into the fluffy muscle type body building instead of just the powerlifting. I'd have to lower her COM considerably then. At any rate, COM doesn't hold water as something you should have to pay for, ever, and Striking Appearnace doesn't work because it demands that I get all torqued up over some Hollywood clone that I cant tell from the next Hollywood clone, and frankly, boney blondes ain't _ever_ gonna hit my "now that's an attractive person right over there!" target. Guys with a high score? Well, let me put it this way: I have in the local community here six guys that I consider friends. I couldn't tell you what they look like on a bet, but both T and S seem to be extremely appealing to the young ladies. All I can tell you is that T is swarthy skinned and has a chin mole I try really hard not to notice when we talk. So again- looks are too subjective to the observer to measure with digital accuracy, and I maintain that there are too many viewers for Steiking Appearance to work, either. You know what did work? Unusual Looks / Distinctive Features. Let's face it: you are foing to remember the guy with the faceted eyes,or the girl with the blue skin and no irises or the seven-foot-tall woman with the horns. You just will. And the best part is that neither of those are beauty or appeal based. It is simply saying that something about this person stands out to the point that it gets noticed, and it gets remembered. The lead-subjective measure of appearance, and it went away. I don't follow, but I do use it. I wanted to address more parts, but apparently I have to go pick up my son. You folks have fun.

I figured out pretty early on that since two and three are remarkably, unavoidably universal, I can do my initial "world building" on an index card and completely avoid dealing with number four. I enjoy watching the excitement of a new GM who has just spent an entire season filling two or more three-ring binders with more and locations and NPCs- sometimes I even like reading it, if there isn't a lot of political crap filling the pages-- _especially_ if there is _zero_ international or intercontinental or some other scale way beyond the scope of the first three sessions kind of political crap or tade agreements or anything else that.... Well, that's how you end up with Phantom Menace, okay? Fill your world up immediately with crap your players do not care about or need to know right away. Add that in as it becomes,relevant, and only _if_ it becomes relevant. If your players are content building a smuggling empire here in the heart of Port City with no real interest in a city on the other side of the world that has struck an alliance with dragons to learn six secret magic spells, then don't cram it down their throats, and certainly don't fill a fourth of your world document with it. The first thing the players want to do in _any_ campaign is to get a handle in their immediate surroundings, and then decide a few things for and about themselves. Then you can start pouring in what-nots. If you discover a detail or two that don't work for you or your players, _stop building on it_ and move on to something else. Leave it in, to be sure: someone may want to revist this in a game year or two, or you may need an unchased string way back over there for some unforseen reason, but if it isn't working for everyone, leave it alone, and be grateful that you hadn't already committed ninety pages of 'starter information' to the topic. After the last couple of decades, we are all familiar with the memes and alleged trope of "players ruined all the hard work I put into my campaign!" I built seven different kinds of magic, some subdivided! I built nine actual deities and four existential planes! I created nineteen types of spellcasting techniques, thirty forms of martial Arts, forty-nine playable character races, two of which are not based on elves in any way, created seven draconic alliances, tied the worlds and power of the undead to six compass points across the realm, and converted all the spells and weapons from no less than eight of the greatest FRPs of all time! I wove complex tales of intrigue and machinations between the most powerful states, and exposed the natural checks and balances of trade and location of the various routes and destinations, with the enigmatic Nomads always awildcard, always an unknown, and are they really celestial entities? Cosmic beings pretending to be flesh so as to freely move amongst us and control our destinies? Do they really possess an unknown magic? Are they sheltered by an unknown God? Do they really seek to revive the last Titan and trigger the celestial reset that will end existence as we know it? Or do they just smuggle a lot of dope under their wagons and their mysterious and never-repeating paths from place to place symbolize not a cleverly treacherous means of increasing their security, but instead advertise the quality of their illicit goods? You will never know! None of you! You will never know! You did not gaze upon your refection in the silver pool of Amorak! You did not quest through the icy climes of the Forlorn Plains! You did not choose a side when the Basharn swarmed the Fylestren Palace! You merely watched as the terms of fealty slowly strangled the people of Carlaih and the Hestern nobles made sport of routing the refugees away from their own lands. You cared not that Pious King Willyard was drugged and being manipulated by his childhood friend turned court sorcerer so that the vast fortunes could be plundered, then the people slaughtered in a demonic ritual, and the lands themselves be sold to neighboring Harklan! Well, in our defense, we never got to repel energy beams with out lightsaber, either, and not once were we offered an extraplanetary dogfight or the chance to cloud the minds of the weak willed, so.... Yeah. That's right. Now, I am not saying players don't wreck campaigns. I am most certainly not saying that it is the norm, but campaigns do periodically get wrecked. What I am saying is that I have noticed that just as many times as campaigns have been wrecked by oblivious players, they have also been built to collapse by tone-deaf GMs.

The joke was funny, but the subject matter was pretty meh. Seriously: the joke was funny, but as far as the pronunciation- it's hard to really pick a side. I mean, first I'd actually have to give a rip about how to pronounce a made-up word, and if I am not mistaken, having a strong opinion there just leads to arguments over the ethnicity of mermaids..... I just say it however the last guy I heard say it said it, because he might have a strong opinion, amd it is important to me to absolutely not waste three minutes of precious life hearing it.

I am not opposed to charavteristics remaining. Anything about removing them is, dor me at least, thought exercise. Here's one I have toyed with ona and off for years, but not too seriosly- in depth, but mostly for my own amusement. I have never posted it before, but it might be good for this discussion. I first encountered the "strength is underpriced" argument-- what? Twenty years ago? When was red October? Anyway, that's where I first encountered it. I disagreed vehemently, of course (I have an affection for Bricks, and while they represent somwthing viscerally satisfying, realistically,it takes,one heck of a brick to go toe-to-toe with any blaster or mentalist, and most speedsters. They are literally targets with muscles. At any rate, I thought long and hard on Strength, and on what it meant in game terms, what it provided, etc. The biggest thing I realizes is "Windmills do not work this way!" That is to say that even heavily-muscled people of identical weight (and therefore reasonably similar muscle mass) cannot all apply themselves equally in the same regard. Some will be brutal powerlifters; some will be acrobats and gymnasts. Some will,be runners, or leapers, or wrestlers, while others will be ironworkers and longshoremen. This is when I first hit upon the idea of simply not buying Strength at all. Instead, by the individual components of Strength. The Strength chart would have to be broadened. There would be new columns for everything granted by Strength. Column 1 would be a suggested STR level- the stuff we are used to writing on the character sheet. This is a reference number now. Every time one buys an element of STR, one notes the appropriate STR value for that level of the attribute. Column 2 is, of course, the character's lift capacity. Column 3, as you might expect, was punch damage. This representes the maximum dice that a character could deliver with a his fiercest blow short of using any sort of maneuver that adds damage. Column 4 was leaping (muscle-powered, as opposed to the character's right to buy the Leaping Power), which in the older editions was derived from STR. This Column would be arranges on the assumption that the character weight 100 cocaine bricks, of course. Powers that altered his mass would increase or reduce his abikity as they were in use. Column 5 was Throwing Distance for an item that could be lifted by an STR-0 character. Again, this was for muscle-powered throwing based on his STR, and not some,"super-throwing" ability. Each time a facet was selected, the creator would note the STR suggested rating for that facet, and when he was done, he would record them, and would average the rating to determine his numerical Strength rating, or Characteristic. This one-hundred percent solved "strength is underpriced" because the character was paying for each facet of his strength and not getting anything 'for free.' It also left a numerical Strength characteristic that players could ue to compare themselves to each other amd the game world (of course I'm strong! I have a Strength 60!) As well as leave a number to be plugged into the formulw for figured stats, even though STR itself had now sort of become one. I wondered about how much strength was worth (now having spent the points to see what each component of it cost when bought separately), and so I waffled a bit on not allowing it to formulaically contribute to other figured stats. That lead me to realizing I had priced all the elements of STR based on a powers-type build, and that it might be possible (or necessary) to reprise the other Characteristics the same way. If I recall, only figured Characteristics were really buildable as power structures (and even then not all of them), and only PD and ED worked out the same either way. (If one bought Armor and removed the inherent "Resistant" advantage, it broke down to close enough to 1 for 1 to let it slide.) As I said, I dabbled with it off and on, because I enjoyed it, but I had no long-term plans to make sweeping changes to the rules, even for my own games; it was just a fun diversion now and again. It never occurred to me to divorce CV and Speed or MCV and EGO, but if it had, for this experiment, I would have done it in an instant and not looked back, simply because the goal here was to find the absolute most basic building blocks of each stat. There is more I could share, but I have been awake since 3:45 yesterday morning, and things are still conspiring to keep me away from the bed. Accordingly, my eyes are really straining right here, so I am going to close this post for now, anyway, and leave you with the thought that if you havent actually broken down STR into every one of its components and priced them individually, you really have _no clue_ just what an incredible bargain it was! However, it isnt really the only characteristic that was a sweet deal, either. Hugh had a lot of points I wanted to address, but I am going to have to wait, I guess.

What value do you percieve to exist in the characteristics? If any one particular characteristic could be replaced by its own mechanic or have various "additional bits" pulled out of it to leave only a core unique thing (beating the strength example again, if we could put "deal damage" in its own category and leave a "lift / carry" value instead of a Strength characteristic, what is it that you feel we have lost? Now before anyone thinks I am nitpicking anyone else, let us all remember that in spite of owning everything, I still play 2e. Clearly, I am not a huge advocate for change to begin with. I am curious, though, about what other people find to be good / bad regarding any potential changes, or changes that have already happened. I am also a bit curious what resistance is based on "actual bad idea" or "that has emotional importance to me." As I admitted above, I found the de-coupling from Skills to be something of an improvement, but I still don't do it in general because "it didnt feel like Champions" to me. Obviously, I understand emotional preference

There is also skill breadth to consider. Without the driver of Characteristics, players and GMs tend to move to the broader skills found in the source materials: Radiation Scientist, Geologist, that kind of thing- where "geologist" might range to all strata or even some fossil knowledge or an educated idea about where and how to drill for oil. Though to be honest, I have always done an in-one-ear-out-the-other thing on the argument about whether or not skills are cheap or expensive, simply because the lack of specified breadth of a skill makes that argument largely unsustainable.

Thanks, Christopher. I _thought_ that might be what you meant, but I wasnt certain. Still- for the sake of conversation as opposed to any actual disagreement- let's take a look at BODY. There has, so far as I can remember, any published material from any edition, to include the adventure modules, that mentioned a BODY roll. We have seen DEX, INT, EGO, CON-- but never a BODY roll. So not having one now is no change at all. Body's primary function has always been tracking damage. It had secondary functions with figured characteristics, but I dont think anyone ever bought large amounts of BODY to up their bonuses on those figureds. Sure, no one would turn them down, but most every build I have ever been submitted had BODY bought up to be able to soak more damage before being in trouble. Now, I still play 2e, so clearly I wasnt too bothered by figureds, but if the only purpose of a characteristic is as a variable to calculate some other characteristic, then why not just go build that other characteristic instead? Even prior to sixth edition, half of its purpose was as a variable to plug into formulae during char gen. The rest was tracking points until dead. Realistically, once you were done with char gen, BODY didnt do much work as a variable, either, except on the odd occasion that you spent a couple of XP on it and dusted off the math for a minute or two. With that in mind, calling its use to figuring secondary characteristics "half of its value" may have been excessively generous. Certainly cutting the price in half seems fair compensation for removing a bit of math. I wanted to,adress a couple more, but it's tomorrow over here all ready, and I should probably _try_ to get three hours of sleep before work.

If you have a minute, I would very much like to know why you feel this way- I mean, why you feel that that they are important, or what you feel has been lost- I presyme with 6e and it's dice values for characteristics and everything costs the same and there are no figureds any longer. Summation is engine; I am just genuinely curious. And what so you mean here? I am likely missing something, but skills hve to be rolled if they are char-based or not; how does removing the characteristic base increase the amount of rolling? Extra effort? Again, just curiosity, but it seems,to me that you are loaing some work, not having to figure some sort of base characteristic roll anymore, but instead just write down the skill value for which you paid. I have never really felt they were too strong- not even STR, which is everyone's favorite to complain about because of the "free damage" element. My question is more "what are they for?" (Beyond a number you can compare to someone else's number, which all just ends up being secret pencil marks on that one ruler at summer camp). And if there is a way to skip right to that purpose, why are we not doing that instead? Look, I will be the first person to tell you that I like to jigger with the system now and again, and that there is possibly a way to do it that really does come closer to some sort of points balance, at least amongst apples to apples, and I dont see why it wouldn't be interesting to shoot for it. I dont think the strange half-measures 6e took was really a step toward that kind of streamlining; it seems,more to have complicated things with infinite splittings in some places and odd amalgamation in others without any real drive to isolate the key elements of the mechanics. Change for change's sake, so to speak, or straying from an initial vision. Now that's thrice. 6e "devalued" them by removing the formulae for figuring the secondary characteristics and removing enough bits and pieces that they can all be priced the same. Christopher above worries that splitting skills away from characteristics will devalue them, and now you suggest the same. The question this immediately presents, at least to me, is "what is the value of Characteristics?" Are they just a holdover from the earliest days of dice for action on a field of imagination and graph paper? Do we keep them around just for the "mine's bigger than yours" aspect? If they have no actual value, why are wasting valuable points on them? Of course, we have to look at each stat individually. For example, what do we get from Stength (arguably the most argued-about of the characteristics). We get lifting /carrying capacity and we get damage. If we split damage out and move it to the all-essential "inflict damage" ability, then the STR characteristic can literally be replaced by a listed lifting capacity. Some may still have value- those against which you might roll for raw ability when no skill is available, but one isn't often asked to make a Strength roll. Others we know will stay because they are essentially damage indicators: STUN, BODY-- Recovery is the actual value plugged into its own mechanic, so it will stay. Etc. Okay. That's about the biggest push I can give. If it doesnt get discussed now, I dont know what to tell you.

well, I waa s trying to quote this to add more commentary, but it has all gone horribly wrong. at any rate, nice find. I guffawed mightily.

Accidentally. There. All better.

Wow. Wish I could participate, but I worked through lunch today (still working) and this was a rare "wife was home two hours before I had to wake up the kids for school" morning, so I am going to have to pass. Besides, what kind of a name is Ekud? I wouldnt even know how to pronounce it!

So I am at my desk, doing my job. This oarticular part of my job is tracking down specific one-off items a customer wants to include in his particular build. In this case, that item is a 12k BTU through-the-wall (note: not a split unit) HVAC all-in-one with at least 2k watts of heating. He has specified that the heat must work when the ambient temp is below zero (which tells me,he has tried this before with a heat pump instead an HVAC. When there is no heat to pump..... Well, they don't work so well....). I put in a few calls to some regular and semi-regular suppliers, amd start to crawl some online sources (ie, overseas distributors). One site in particular has just floored me. For one thing, these guys distribute _everything_. Crawling their catalogue is very much like crawling Alibaba. But this-- Okay, here was the bottom of the page: "Your recent search history", followed by a long string of urinals and flush valves. "Recommendations based on your browsing history:" Followed by eleven pages of lingerie..... What do they think we do here? Host anime conventions?!

The problem it "solves" is the same "problem" that the tri-annual discussion of "free" damage for Killing Attack solves: There is an extremely high percentage of people on these boards who, for whatever reason, think that points matter (as you know, I am not one of them. ) and that being able to exploit the system to find two ways to do something (in this case, raising skill rolls) and one of them is significantly cheaper, well that is just somehow wrong. Wierdly (but I understand that this seems wierd only to me), it _only_ seems to be a problem for the majority of these folks if it somehow relates to one-on-one combat- free or cheesy defenses; free or dirt cheap damage-dealing-- those are the things that bother them. spending nine points to jack up every single DEX- based or INT-based skill? Not a problem, apparently. Deciding to build a chracter with three multiforms so his entire sheet gets an 80 percent discount? Or a duplicator, so I can get that massive discount _and_ double or quadruple or whatever-the-multiplicative-expression-of-thirty-two-is my actions in a Turn or a Phase? Again, not a problem. frankly, I suspect that this is because on some level, even the "get what you pay for; pay for what you get" crowd totally understands that points balance really is meaningless, and adding or removing a strength bonus here and there solves the exact same problem that decoupling characteristics from Skills solves.

You're reading too much into this. It's not Jesus of Nazareth. It's Jesus of Juarez. He's famous for his luxurious face carpet.