The good things about the extra books are the sections that tell you how the order and Mythic Europe look like.
Take RoP:F for example. What is it good for?
Imagine, I have a story idea that deals with a being that kidnaps powerful mundanes and replaces them with his minions (those minions have the power of looking/sounding/smelling like the other person and mind-reading so they know what people expect them to do).
Without any of the RoP books that is done quickly. I take the supernatural creatures from ArM5 as role models, change the stats and powers as I like and play it. My players have no chance at guessing the powers by looking through the books - which is much more fun than your players starting to argue whether the creature must have a Magic Might of 13 or 14, and whether using a power cost 0, 1 or 2 Might points (the same players usually do not have Fairie Lore (Game Rules) 15.
Adding numbers stifles creativity, slows the game by extra rules that have to be looked up. There also is the danger of extra rules that unbalance the system.
If you add just background history/geography/sociology/ethnology, the storyguide can quickly make up modifiers and numbers.
Then, just -do- that. Indeed, I -have- done that. You watched FutureWorld too, eh?
Faerie is for when you need something to give your creativity a little bit of a kick along. It's not meant to tell you how you -must- play in your home game.
Actually, on. ROP:F says that faeries can have any stats you like. You don't -need- to balancethem up using the ROP rules unless you want to, or are writing for the published line.
If you add just background history/geography/sociology/ethnology, the storyguide can quickly make up modifiers and numbers.
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That's true. I think you are playing very close to the written rules: far closer than is healthy, IMO.
You don't have to follow every one rule. There are rules in all supplements (I guess) because some people like to have rules for every thing and the line editor use them when creating creatures. However nothing prevents you from just taking in the realms books the already-made creatures stats, cool story ideas, background informations, nice simple rules, etc.
I have to say I usually don't thoroughly read the rules part in the supplements: I won't use them, except as inspirations for creatures or stories.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to actually publish a few characters intentionally designed by ignoring some limits or rules, just to show that no it isnt really total taboo to not follow the rules as written 100% all the time.
Some people refuse to play by anything but the RAW, they need to be clearly shown that the rules are not quite written in stone.
Or something...
The line writers for White Wolf , do not have to follow the RAW for character creation.
Consequently , a number of npcs have amazingly high xp totals , that by RAW xp gain , players could not practically achieve.
One Werewolf core book npc is doable in 20 years of weekly play.
Games that do this annoy me , where a PC can never , ever be as good as an npc.
Sure , there are beings that are way more powerful than players ,
but being overshadowed by line-created character archetypes has no appeal for me.
At least in Magi of Hermes , we get some well-developed Magi that are believable within game context.
People can always post examples of ignoring some limits or rules on the forum.
What about the ST who asked about his player , who had a lucky roll studying from raw vis
and ended up with a Rego score of 85.
This is not limit or rule breaking , but few would like or accept such in their saga , imho.
In one of our games we´ve seen such lovely little things as magi with a 70+ Art score and 20+ Ability scores...
Im yet to find any NPC with anything close to that. And that was the result of nothing more odd than Covenant-based powergaming(over MANY years of gametime of course, but still...).
However, thats not what i meant. I referred more to things like the restrictions on Virtues and Flaws (not necessarily even the numbers but the "cant have more than this # of this sort of flaws" etc)...
I´ve ignored all that foolishness from the start and never have i had any problem with a character having 5 Major personality flaws, 3 Minor Focus or 4 Major Hermetic Virtues etc etc... Nor have i ever seen any problems in allowing characters to skip the Ability starting limits, as long as they have an explanation for it and the XP needed, fine.
Yup, but then its still not RAW. And as i said, there are some players who reads RAW like holy writ, anything it says must be obeyed! Its usually not a problem for me, but i know others have to deal with it. And the times i´ve had to deal with such players, though never with ArsM. so far, its terribly annoying because they´re basically going "its in the rules, you cant do anything that isnt in the rules!"...
And as Timothy said, ArsM. is really game that shouldnt be run TOO strictly or closely to the rules.
But many people will absolutely refuse to believe such until they have been explicitly shown that its NOT forbidden on pain of death to actually fiddle with the rules if the game calls for it.
About personnality flaws and all, I'll say it again, since it never seems to penetrate.
The reasoning behind the maximum number of personnality/story flaws are, as far as I understand, as follow:
A flaw that ain't a flaw ain't a flaw. Thus, a flaw that doesn't come into play, or does so every 10 years or real time, shouldn't count as a flaw.
In a typical party, there's the main sotryline. The eventual secondary storyline. Then the flaws-induced storyline. The more story flaws players have, the less often they'll come into play: If, say, a flaw-induced story comes each 5 session. If you've got 5 story flaws, these come into play 5 times less often, thus reducing their impact on your character: Your ennemy bothers you once every 25 sesssions, instead of one every 5. As far as I understand, story flaws are supposed to be good deals for the player, as they help the SG drag them into stories. A GM only needs so much tools, so the player gets an increasingly good deal if you increase their numbers. And if one player have more story flaws than every others? The saga tends to revolve more around him, all things being equal.
Personnality flaws: These are FLAWS, not traits. Nothing stops you from being a continent wrathful pagan magus with true love, a Hatred for Faeries, a Duty to his Mystery Cult, and a Reckless Seeker of Ancient secrets. But, not only is this becoming more and more a patchwork magus, but the personnality flaws are for things that are really important and have an impact on your character and the saga. See point 1 and 2. So, the aforementionned magus? You just have to take, say, the True Love and Duty flaw, with the traits Pagan +3, Wrathful +2, Hatred of Faeries +1, Reckless +2, Seeker of Ancient secrets +1. You make a choice of what flaws you want to really, really come into play to bugger you, and you play out the others. I cannot stress this enough, as it seems to be a recurrent theme of "I cant be such and such because of Flaws restrictions!".
A consequence of all of the above (which I don't think to have been in the line editor's intent, but I may be wrong): Allowing multiple personnality/story flaws is a great tool for min/maxing and powergaming. Which may be fine for some groups, which will then lift the limit as an HR, but not for others. As such, since it is easier to remove limits than add them, I think that having these build in the RAW is better than not.
My experience as a sg is that sticking to the RAW are useful. Ars players like to debate and haggle and I've seen more than one friendly haggling turn into a battle in which FUN played no longer a role.
I have used the comparison before:
Creating a character is like writing a poem. Having a clear structure and rules you take seriously helps you write a good poem. Of course some of the greatest poems deliberately break the rules. Normally though, rule breaking is induced by incompetence, greed or some other vice.
A good example for a character that breaks the rules and is still a masterpiece is Alexander of MoH. Timothy certainly knows that according to RAW only one Major Hermetic Virtue is possible. Yet he took Gentle Gift + Major Focus for Alexander. But Timothy didn't throw in a skilled parens and an inventive genius on the plus side ("balanced" by 2 additional personality flaws). In fact Alexander only has seven virtues and flaws. It is a concept-driven character (and an exercise in exploring shape-shifting and Muto magic). Alexander is not a killing machine.
Completely irrelevant reasoning. There is nothing stopping you from combining story flaws or from having them be part of the main story.
What you´re saying is also that anyone that plays without making sure Story Flaws ARE consistently used on their own and in such a way that they spawn stories by themself, are playing wrong and breaking the rules. Story Flaws are Flaws as long as they have a clear effect on the character.
And thank you graciously for the attempt at an extremely over the top caricature there...
Except of course for such a character probably being totally playable and quite possibly even a fun addition to a game. Real people are complex you know? Real people CAN be a complete clutter of "Flaws". What gives you the right to say that its wrong to allow the same ingame? Especially in a game where balance isnt even remotely an issue anyway.
Except that IS the result of the restrictions. Why ever should i want to play out flaws without getting the benefit from them? Thats utterly stupid when there´s zero reason for doing so.
I´ve still done that by taking the flaws but not equal Virtues, because it suited the character concept, but changing those to Traits would just be silly semantics.
Who cares? Its ridiculously easy to min/max 100% by RAW. Its harder to actually make a character according to a concept or idea due to the restrictions.
I´ve run characters with over twice as many Flaws as Virtues, they´re still "killing machines". You dont need ANY Virtues to be that. You can have a character with 30 points of Flaws and 0 Virtues and still be a serious "killing machine".
DW, are you aware that this kind of statements is why people takes your arguments to be rude and childish and thinks about adding you to the "do not read the posts by this dude" list? Just FYI You might not agree with the reasoning above, but it is far from irrelevant. Just different from yours.
My current character (a vitki) does not trust quaesitores ands considers Odin to be a much better God than the Allmighty. He has neither the pagan nor a distrust quaesitores flaw, even if he is a pagan and his distrust of Quesitores brings problems for him and marks his reactions in social situations. Complexity of personality does not equal to virtues and flaws around here.
It heavily depends on your players. Mine (and myself) don't want to be bothered by rules: if computing casting totals and spell levels according to rules is too long in-game, just don't and let the storyguide decides if it is ok or not depending on your raw scores. In any case the storyguide has the final word with respect to rules and can adapt them if it fits the story.
IMO, where the supplement rules work well is when they give (well thought out) rules for things that are not covered in the core rules. Things that don't come up very often, and in fact may never be used in a particular saga, but are nice to have if you do want them. The research rules might be an example of this. The other sorts of things that work well is when the supplements give clear variations on the core rules to apply the core rules to new situations. This is things like new Virtues and Flaws, new Spell Masteries, etc. I also quite like rules like (parts) of the laboratory customisation rules. There is a lot of complexity there, but it gives a nice clear motivation for PC magi to go out and find exotic things to stick in their laboratory. These sorts of rules allow the players to generate character-based stories.
However an introductory scenario should not really need anything (for the players anyway) except the core rules. And it should only be using the basic bits of the core rules. So, for example, most of the spell casting "options" should be dropped(using vis to increase casting total, ceremonial casting, varying gestures and voice, fast casting, spell masteries). But the basic ideas of the Arts, and Spont., Formulaic, and Ritual spells need to be there. Rituals can be very easily dropped too, by the simple expedient of not giving the PC magi any --- although rituals are pretty easy to explain as a special, powerful, but laborious and vis-consuming kind of Formulaic.
His reasoning was completely irrelevant in regards to what i had posted. You want me to lie or sugarcoat and then add some insinuations that says the same thing without being outspoken? That kind of crappy lawyer style seems to be oh so much more acceptable.
Thank you but id rather at least try to be honest.
If the statement had not been made as an argument against my post, then it would be relevant by the merits of the statements themself, but as an argument against my post, its just far out and away...
No it doesnt, but there´s no reason to limit when it does equal V/F and when it doesnt.
Thats where the "Epic Fail" is. Especially where the RAW only says "should have", and people still read that also as "must have"(even when it says that its a rule that may be violated)... That you cant build the characters you want without breaking the rules, even when its something totally minor.
And it was in reference to that which i made my original suggestion. Which almost instantly got a response about "min/maxing", "power levels" and other completely irrelevant crap.
Nope.
To me, ArM4 is the OTE
Which I think provides the solution. ack then the magic guidelines had basic parameters and the example leves presumed you were using those (EG> Creo Ignem presumed you were using the spells at a range of "Far", ectceteras). You could look up a spell guideline level, and it was precaluclated to presume you were using it at the most useful/common R/D/T. In ArM5, all spell guidelines were pared down to the lowest common denominator, and you gotta build upwards from there. I think this is the inhibiting factor for new players to grasp spont magic. People have been mentioning "Spont Charts", and I think something similar to this may provide the solution.
Indeed. I am thinking along the same lines, much like the charts from ArM4 were presented. Presume you are gonna cast the average CrIg spell at "Voice/Mom/Ind" and list a few suggested effects, presume the average ReTe spell affects rock, the average Mentem spell has a Range of Eye, stuff like that.
Once you get the numbers past the first magnitude so that you are consistently adding or subtracting 5, it goes much quicker.
And you don't have to list out each and every possible spont combination either. If it is for a Convention game, you only need to worry about what the magi designed for the adventure can do.
You might not agree with the reasoning above, but it is far from irrelevant. Just different from yours.