RE: house rule question of augmentation

From: Nick Brooke <Nick_Brooke_at_...>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 07:48:12 +0100


Wulf writes:

> >That's elegant. I like it.
>
> I'm in the same gaming game group, this was Andy's idea (neater than
> mine). It's much quicker than having everyone worrying about what
> level of resistance to risk, and taking too long for anyone else to
> care...

Yep. Enhancement should be an essentially private business, IMO... I don't want these reflexive Bladesharp/Dullblade spells to take up too much game time. (Nor do I want them to be normally reflexive :-)

> >How well does it work with Masteries?
>
> Not sure how you mean. If you have 1W Ability, and try for 2 levels of
> Augment (+4 Edge or +2 Bonus), you subtract 10, down to an Ability of
> 11. It has one obvious flaw, you can't go for broke and attempt a
> super-augment relying on a HP-bump. For instance, with an Ability of
> 17, you COULD try for a +6 bonus. That's 17 vs 10W resist... Chances
> are, you'll succeed, resistance will crit or succeed. A bump will
> probably still get the bonus. But with our rule, you can't roll 17-30!

I think that's "a feature, not a bug." Less number-crunching in the heat of action.

But:

What I was worrying about was (say) a 17W2 character rolling at -35 vs 2W1 to get a +7 augmentation, criticalling with that residual bump on a roll of 1-19, and thus doubling that to a practically automatic +14 augmentation (or +28 edge)...

For comparison, 17W2 vs. resistance of 15W1 has just c.22% chance of a +14 double bonus, 62% chance of a +7 single bonus, 11% chance of a -7 handicap, and 5% chance of no result. (Odds against a double handicap are vanishingly small, at 0.25%).

But I guess since enhancements will be available to everyone, PC and NPC alike, they'll both have the same "accelerator" and be using comparable levels of edge and augmentation. And high W2 skills are a long way above entry level. But some of the beasties in Anaxial's Rooster (True Dragons, frex) will really benefit from this. As if they needed to be any scarier...

Another worry: enhancements are all + to hit (augmentation) or + to damage (edge); the other part of the trinity in RQ was + to armour points, but that's gone. Imagine duelling Rune Lords with Truesword, Bladesharp 6, Strength, Coordination... but no Shield or Protection spells! Big edges are going to get scary.

Cheers, Nick

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