From: Curtis Shenton (curtiss@netcom.com)
Date: Sat 12 Jun 1993 - 01:46:38 EEST
>
>
> SKILL CATEGORY MODIFIERS
>
> Nick, I'm actually very much in agreement with you when you suggest using
> POW in as few modifiers as possible - it changes constantly, which makes
> it an incredible pain to refigure skills when you sacrifice for a point
> of Divine Magic or enchant something or whatnot. You can tell people not
> to change skills when their modifiers change post character generation, but
> this is counter intuitive - where I've seen people try to implement this rule,
> it has generally been discarded by the majority as making no sense. POW
> is already incredibly valuable in spell casting, enchantment, magic resistance,
> spell range, cult progression, luck rolls and spirit combat. I don't think it
> would hurt to drop it from the modifiers.
If we drop it from the modifiers let's drop it from all of them rather
than just trying to limit the number of catagories modified by POW.
Otherwise we still reduce the problem without solving it. On that note
I'd like to say I've never had _that_ big a problem with changing
modifiers. I always write the skill % without modifiers with the
modifier at the top of the catagory. That way when POW changed I didn't
have to rewrite every skill%. I'd rather make POW more stable and less
likely to go up. But that would change quite a few assumptions of the
magic system.
>
> I'd like to suggest the following changes:
> 1) Drop POW from modifiers. Refiguring skills would become much rarer.
> 2) Recalculate modifiers so that they balance more equally. It makes
> little sense to me that an entire category of skills should be harder
> or easier because it has more or less positive modifiers attached.
> In RQIII, Stealth, Knowledge and Agility skill start at far lower levels
> and progress more slowly by experience than do Manipulation, Magic,
> Perception or Communication skills because of the number of positive
> modifiers they have. I would suggest that the categories each have the
> equivelant of two positive modifiers - a negative modifier such as SIZ
> is OK, since it simply says that you must be small to gain the same
> benefits as compared to another modifier.
> 3) Simplify the calculation of the modifiers themselves.
All three sound good. And I have no objection to dropping POW from the
modifiers.
>
> Reasoning is just another name for Judgement skills, from
> the earlier suggestion to drop the Stealth Skills Category
> Modifier and add Reasoning (can be increased by experience),
> contrasting with Knowledge (cannot be increase by experience)).
I like it. Though I'm curious to see which skills end up in which
catagory.
>
>
>
> THE GREAT APP VS. CHA DEBATE
>
> Hm. Looking at this, about all I can say is that it looks like
> there are few people happy with either. Here's another suggestion:
> rather than use either APP or CHA, which have specific connotations
> people have trouble with, how about using a different name entirely?
> One suggestion was to use something called Presence (PRE) instead
> (this came well before Paul's use of the term <g>). This would
> simply reflect how well a character presented themselves and
> something about the force of their personality. The individual
> player could then decide whether this came from physical appearance,
> charisma, or a mixture of both. For example, a character with a 13 PRE
> (above average) might have but an average appearance, but a magnetic
> personality and a good voice (strong charisma, if you will).
> A character with a 10 PRE might have average appearance and
> personality, or they might have above average appearance and
> an unappealing personality. Any opinions?
>
In otherwords you can't tell how goodlooking a character is by looking
at the character sheet. I don't think just renaming CHA will help. And
this Presence idea sounds pretty similar to charisma to me. Most
charisma definitions have assumed looks were part of it after all. Maybe
we should drop both CHA and APP from the game.
>
>
> Oliver
>
-- Curtis Shenton curtiss@netcom.com internet & 4@3091 WWIVnet "At the GM's option, strategic nuclear weapons may be considered 'magical'"-From the CyberCthulhu rules in Interface 0,,
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