TheDarkness

Why do I feel like I've been mentally haymakered?

Does a demiurge count?

I can agree that the haymaker rules are problematic, I kind of think that of all the absolute effects and how they interact with the rules at large.

If all the kings in a world employed all of those able to scry in the world, one per king, it would still be an extremely rare magic held by an extremely limited number of people. That said, since it's your game, obviously you know what you're after. I just don't see how, if magic is that rare and lower in power, it isn't already dead in such a world. Without magic, you would already have had the same results. If even dwarf built fortresses cannot stand against gunpowder, it seems like you would already have a world without reliance on armor and castles. An army with guns would clean up if magic is that rare, and would sweep through rapidly and that would be that. Perhaps I'm not following the thinking. Is this intended to be an 'end of magic' campaign? I'm having trouble seeing what advantage magic gives beyond temporarily, oh, this king temporarily has a wizard able to scry and so can preempt the invasion attempts of enemies, but as soon as that wizard dies, it's all over sort of thing, but if the intent is to depict exactly that sort of scenario, I can follow. That said, I'm not sure I'd be wanting to play one of the doomed magic using creatures in such a world. As for tactical issues, if we're talking rifles, obviously they will want to keep distance, obviously those fighting against someone with a rifle will want to close. Cover will be a big factor, especially cover to move to in order to safely close the distance. Reload time will also. That seems to me to be the main factors, and I would think that being anywhere in the country that doesn't use guns with one is going to mean having to stash the gun before going to any city for fear of being seen as one of the enemy. The country that uses both, well, it's a bit impossible to say without magic being somehow defined and abilities having some reproducibility; not knowing what magic is like in the world, it's very difficult to say what tactics players might use.

Aylwin13's split personality has an alter ego.

Isn't the first post technically odd?

Bazza was once mistaken for alternate universe evil with a goatee Bazza.

Latest elf report on the human army moving through the holy forest: Day 19: Their weapons deafen everyone, friend or foe, but when attacked by an army of silent elves at night taking positions of cover, they take heavy losses before even realizing the attack has begun, and have no capacity to find the more mobile elf warriors. They also falsely believe dogs will warn them of elves. They are apparently marching without significant magical support, or any, and are completely blind in the dark. We have done heavy damage on them, and they are only able to set camp on clear, moonlit nights. Recommend cloud summoning. Day 20: Ate lembas. Settled heated camp argument over which member of the camp has the most ethereal demeanor. Day 21: Enjoyed more lembas while smuggly thinking about what fools the numenoreans were and blaming them for current conditions while conveniently ignoring shenanigans of a fair number of elves in the Silmarillian. Spent a portion of march discussing the very real possibility that giant eagles are a plot device of Eru. Don't feel a day older for the millionth day running. Day 723: Came to the conclusion that Peter Jackson is stretching out this entire business far past it's intended narrative. Cannot discern reality from platform console game at this point. Entire party now has dwarven love interests and racist parents like some strange melange of Death at a Funeral meets All in the Family. Day 729: Can no longer trust my senses. Saw Radagast on sled jumping over a shark. Saruman making token appearances for no apparent reason, and hobbits now appearing solely in choppy video sequences while orcs have entirely converted to CGI.

Taking this thinking to other places. Guns ended knights and castles. Guns and cannons, of course. Human castles in the non-magical world. Dwarf fortifications? Well, there's no evidence on this. And who wouldn't hire dwarfs to have a hand in their castle design? Oh, this group of humans is building guns. They are mining for steel for barrels and bullets and whatnot. Oh, they have a tiny proportion of their population available to extract metal from the earth. And they aren't able to work with mithral, because no runes and no dwarf gods. How quaint. Do they realize that the entire bulk of the dwarf population live in cities that are, effectively, mines? Mines that put modern mines to shame in terms of stability and size? I mean, only natural. Those poor human miners get tired. Not the dwarfs, with their very nature and the help of runic magic and dwarf gods and the entirety of a population dedicated to mining, refining, building, forging, etc, that entire population, again, living in a mine and quite thrilled about it. And where are the humans mining? The dwarfs have had long eons to establish themselves in the richest places to mine, poor young race of humans who no way and no how can support the population needed in the mines to compete with the dwarves without having hugely fragile supply lines to those mines. And what is the basis for the human's economics? Is that a gold piece? Wanna compare stashes? Ah! Poor, gun-toting humans, with their wonderful technology but no night vision, and thus, absolutely the least able of the major races to deal with combat at night except against other humans. And since the other humans have magic, the other humans can infiltrate the ranks of the non-magic using humans with ease and unleash horrific things on their leaders. They can control their leaders. They can become their leaders and these humans wouldn't even know it. Poor humans. It is truly a cruel path they must tread. But the dwarfs do salute the ingenuity of their inventiveness. If only they had the capacity to use the runes, they might not be living in kingdoms facing such tumult.

I think, narratively, one thing that plays to the advantage of a haymaker in melee over one in ranged combat is this: In punching, a haymaker, once thrown, is a bit looping, and the loop is often tightened or loosened in order to hope to hit. This is extremely common. In ranged combat, once the arrow is let go or the trigger pulled, that's it. It's on it's path and nothing in the world will change it. Unless you buy an additional triggered power to do so. I tend to see it as implicit in the haymaker rules that the inference is that movement means that the target, at the 'narrative moment' the attack is launched, unexpectedly is no longer there. Since this is about the only narrative approach that makes sense, then ranged attacks, in my view, have no claim to immunity from this effect, since, when you let go of the bowstring, you cannot change the path of the arrow. As I said, before, I really think the argument that 'that movement represents only a couple of degrees movement to actually hit', if accepted, almost entirely nullifies ANY miss by ranged attacks, because that is almost always the case. And the idea of leading the target does not apply, because leading the target implies a target already in motion in a certain direction, not sudden, unexpected motion. I could see an argument that, if the target's movement is a continuation of movement from before the haymaker declaration, that that would become a factor, but that would lead to another narrative problem, that aiming and leading a target are ADVANTAGES of something called a haymaker, and that, in my mind, is problematic and at odds with what is being attempted. Accuracy is being sacrificed for damage, and this seems an attempt to have both significant added strength and accuracy. As for mind and location, aside from builds where this is not the case, I think most would say that the brain is kind of the target, and that has a location for the vast majority of targets. But, the fact that DCV has no bearing means that something else is at play to some degree. That doesn't make it balanced to allow mentalist 'haymakers' to have as strong as advantages as regular haymakers with far less downside, and the problem with saying that that is correct, there should not be these downsides, is that it never answers the question 'why should there be a 'mental haymaker' in the first place?' When we cannot even answer what happens with a mental miss, it's a sure bet we also cannot answer what on earth a mental haymaker is, anyway. At which point it seems to me like it should be a build, not a maneuver, and does not warrant absolute effects, which would solve both the 'automatic miss' problem and not give free stuff of significant power to only those with LOS powers that are not included in the description of LOS or the power or the maneuvers. Or, it should miss if the target moves(or, if one can find some condition for missing that would be as common as having been moved or moving, use that.)

It's awesome, fantastic job. You're hired! Mind you, the personnel budget doesn't exist, but we might be able to splurge for a free taco...

In response to the idea that a gun can charm, intimidate, all that, yes, but it cannot do so without the other person knowing it was done to them, nor will its effects be likely to last once away from the gun wielder. And as for hunting, as I said earlier, every environment in which hunting tends to take place is also where monsters who may be immune to guns are prone to frequent, and they probably won't hear a bow shooting a deer, but they would be very likely to hear a gun and get territorial. In a world where magic exists, those with a corner on that market will, without question, have the best information on enemies who lack it, the greatest potential mobility to attack almost anywhere in a moment. If a society without magic messes with them, exactly what does that other society have to prevent the assassination of all their leaders wherever they may be by way of magic? If we're going to get super real world battlefield, magic is the shortest supply lines ever(gates and teleports), the best intel ever(scrying, invisible people, shape changing), unless that society is completely ignoring the outside world the opportunities for them to devastate any non-magical enemy army before they got to the battle, even if by simple weather control(good luck sending an army through ANY mountains without thousands dead from flash floods before they get where they want to go) is staggering. An enemy that can block any mountain passes, put pieces on the field that not a single gun can damage, potentially cause supernatural fear, can reach the enemy leaders, enemy economic leaders, enemy's enemies, with a single incantation, can INSTANTLY find ANY of them: even with all our technology now, this is a capacity the NSA and CIA would druel at the thought of. The more likely answer to why this capacity wouldn't take over is because anyone who plans it is either mad, dead, or wishing they were. Just some thoughts.

It just seems to me that a 'mental haymaker' is a mental attack pushed. The reason an actual haymaker tends to miss is because it's a bit more flailing than other strikes. While I've seen 'mental flailing' before, I don't think it has a place in mental combat, but rules.

Which part are we talking about?

Cancer, deciding that Constitutional Literalists simply don't go far enough, has become the world's first Literal Literalist. When he's not busy, he now likes to take it easy by firing into excreta with a tommy gun.

I think the point to keep in mind is, the conditions that you describe as ending the use of armor were on the battlefield. Armored knights, outside of stories, were a battlefield thing for the most part. But, in role playing, they're part of the story, wandering alone or with halflings and such. What he needs to model is how it plays out in what are, essentially, skirmishes between a handful of people, and not battlefield conditions where if even twenty percent of muskets missed their chance, huge damage is still done. In game, missing the mark at least one time out of five means some charging knights get through. Those with some magical protection may get through regardless. At such a point, how accurate they would be is an important factor, what ranges they would be facing also being important for designing his world. Unless he's planning on doing full scale battles, in which case, I feel for him... There are a number of factors people have pointed out that would make magic completely change the situation on the battlefield, and how he explains that is important for the story world. But as for the fights the characters will actually have, whether the characters do or don't have guns, the battlefield has little bearing on this. I forget the name of the statistic, but within 21 feet, gun versus a knife wielding attacker is an ugly thing, and guns don't come anywhere near automatically winning unless the threat is known and the gun is already drawn or the draw is somehow given more time(often by trying to kick away the charging knife wielder). Statistically speaking, in the real world of modern firearms, the gun wielder will be badly or fatally hurt more often than not. If the characters are adventuring in wide open fields with absolutely no tall grass, then full range is definitely to the firer's advantage. If corn fields, not so much. If dungeons, not so much, AND every shot will be heard(though, technically, sword fights should also bring attention, okay, we can gloss over that!) Forests, again, not so much, especially given that feudal game worlds commonly have more forest. Castles, again, lots of hallways, secret halls and chambers, lots of cover, for game purposes, everyone has a fair chance. Literally, magic could be built to make an area of effect where the only effect is 'no sparks', and every cannon and gun is useless, so it makes sense that leaders might hedge their bets and not rely too heavily on them alone in battle. Which also might mean that assassinating the lone wizard who is preventing the seige of a keep from succeeding would also happen a lot. Once he's dead, fire the cannons.

One thing I'm going to point out here is that the first two ways boxers learn to not get hit is one single, small, shuffling step to either side or diagonally forward to either side, followed by learning slips. You absolutely DO NOT slip if the step makes the strike miss. A good boxer will avoid like the plague moving a meter away from their opponent unless they themselves are in a tough spot and want to reset. They train all the time to make it miss by the minimum possible, and they succeed in doing so far more than they fail, though failure, in that context, may mean that they lose the match, which does not change the fact that most of the time, they are not taking most head hits that are thrown, and the primary means if footwork, the secondary means is slipping and blocks, tertiary is bobbing. I am not familiar with any martial arts that don't train defense by seeking slight motions to make a punch miss. Some train bridge and clinch a lot more, but still train this. Fighters famous for being able to hit at odd angles are not the norm, and are the only ones who are particularly successful at hitting a target that has moved off of the line of attack with effect. I could totally see this being modelled as a special thing for a special character, most can't do it and do even their base damage, much less more than their base, because you line yourself up to do your strong attack at its strongest angle, if the target moves, the new angle will not provide as much power as your base attack, if we were trying to be realistic. Narratively, the assumption I've always made is that any movement between the declaration of the haymaker and the execution is considered to take part, at least in part, at the moment the attack is fired off. I agree this is a result of the movement rules not reflecting how the rule in play narrates the action. But, if one accepts that, one accepts that that is exactly the circumstances in which a target you are focused on ends up being a target you miss. I actually think that, even more than this being a remnant of the movement or the different editions, this is a remnant of combat manuevers being essentially a separate game construct that is heavily interacting with the construct of builds and the third construct of skills, and the strain of that. By having maneuvers and their cost structure and balance structure grandfathered in, one ends up in some odd places that normal builds don't suffer from. I think the difficulty is that one definitely does need to establish what qualifies as a lock on a mental target, and what makes one miss such a lock. One could certainly argue that movement shouldn't, I won't dispute that argument, but at that point, what should? If your side rallies, is your sudden change in mental state something that could constitute a miss? What constitutes the cause of a mental 'miss'? Further, why use haymaker rules for this at all? A haymaker is an all or nothing done with the limitation that it has less accuracy and higher change of failing due to change in conditions, which is pretty consistent with real haymakers, they are very prone to failure due to movement on the opponent's part. Why use this construct for anything that isn't described by that? Lastly, if one really wants to use it, balance is important to the other character's builds, and this is a pretty big giveaway. It seems sensible to at least consider some sort of condition that equates to absolute failure beyond merely penalizing the roll, or else one should change the haymaker rule for everyone(which I don't think is advisable). Oh, it hadn't even occured to me. This(if they move, then it's a miss) is an absolute effect. Is there a single absolute effect in Hero that ISN'T problematic? It seems like the few of them that exist either create weird exceptions that can't be exceptions, or create problems where builds doing similar things swallow points like there's no tomorrow. I mean, in this case, yes, haymaker is free to everyone, but the guy who has blast and a punch has twice the effective points in it, and the buy who has a punch and a LOS attack has a far superior version of it, and thus more than twice the effective points, which seems off.

I think the thing to keep in mind, is that almost all misses with ranged attacks would be hits with a motion of a few inches. Does it make sense for them to be otherwise? Balance wise, it seems like a bad idea to both allow it for LOS attacks and take away one of the main drawbacks that balance it out. At that point, I'm wondering if one built it as its own power, instead of as a maneuver, how costly it would be. It seems the more appropriate way to build it, anyway. At that point, one does not have to deal with the special haymaker rule at all.

I think one thing that gets glossed over is, unless sniping, most soldiers are actually not firing their rifles in a way that that gun's accuracy ratings are based at. Yes, aiming by use of the sights when stationary, X accuracy value is achieved. For non-snipers, that is NOT an option. They are not stationary. They are often crouched or moving. When being fired upon, they are often not in a position to make use of their sights in an optimal way. And again, the pressure of combat does not generally improve anyone's aim, it is usually quite worse. This is not that the soldiers are not using the gun to its full range, but that the supposed full range is often assuming if the gun is used in a way that it only can be used in a minority of situations.

I think Jagged and Hugh hit the nail on the head. The issue isn't whether it's ranged or not. And the narrative value of RAW is, imo, on target.(See what I did there?) You are throwing everything you have on this spot. At the last moment, the target moves or is moved from this spot. You miss. Because you put everything into hitting that spot. When choosing the rather huge advantage to your DC, you accept the possibility this could happen, you are, by default, choosing to do a less accurate attack. It's not a matter of, 'normally, I could still hit them'. This is not normally, this is a haymaker, and the very definition of a haymaker is a less accurate attack to try to pulverize. For the mentallist attack, the location and the fact that it's LOS means it is location specific, it is targetted to the area he sees the target being, thus LOS.

To figure out which people you know are nazis?

Should we B-negative?

Vernacular, is that one of those Fiend Folio vampires who detach their heads at night?

Chinese chess actually has a cannon. Highly recommend the game, it's great fun.

Which part?