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I don’t feel that physical characters have teh advantage at all. Mental characters have a whole slew of options available to them that physical characters do not. The weakest characters are by far the ones that are the most physical for a few reasons:
1) It is much easier to invoke a mental mastery on someone in public than it is to shoot or stab someone.
2) Mental skills have much more use than physical skills.
3) Mental masteries tend to be more powerful than physical ones.
Mental characters have multiple advantages over others. If you want to stack yourself with combat skills, you just made not only an uninteresting character, but one that could be covnerted to a new religion, convinced of anything, or layed out from across the room via skills and masteries.
I understand the need for balance, and ask anyone I’ve always strived for it, but at the same time I think you should look into the real use and roleplay value of mental skills… even the eventual combat value via masteries and put those into the equation. What I see happening here is that a character with mental abilities will end up having as much combat worth as a physical character, plus all those nifty “mess you up” masteries, plus more out-of-combat use.
I really hate to bring this up, since it may sound bad even though it is not intended to cast any negative light on any other game, but this is *not* Black Bayou or Crossroads. Plain and Simple.
Let’s address your first point:
1) It is much easier to invoke a mental mastery on someone in public than it is to shoot or stab someone.
Though it hasnt been 100% clarified as of yet since I have only been working on these rules for a little over three weeks now, but any mastery that has a YES listed with Breed ID has physical elements and are quite easy to percieve. So does the casting or activation of that mastery (see requirements under casting and focus). So if you see someone yelling incantations and then someone falls over dead. Well… I won’t hold it against someone to suspect they are behind it.
Your Second Point:
2) Mental skills have much more use than physical skills.
Our rules may have similarities, this is only to provide the players with a comfortable frame of reference. You might notice how skills have changed as far as how they work. None of them are Skill+Stat any longer, they are all Skill+Modifier. There are no strictly Body, Mind, Soul skills any longer, all skills use a modifier for success. Most of them use Body+Either Mind or Soul, so how can Body skills be less useful? Secondly if you look at the damages, melee weapons do 3-5 Body damage, and for every 5 points you score over their dodge roll you gain a +1 to the damage.
And your Third Point:
3) Mental masteries tend to be more powerful than physical ones.
If you think Mental Masteries are more powerful than Physical ones, I should point you to Phenom, Adrenaline, the Ambidextrous Advantage, and Improved Ambidextrous. You could conceivably kill a character with one hit, even IF they have a high body with this alone. How is that any less powerful than Rend Soul or Psionic Blast?
Last but not least, we have only shown the players one breed, Mortals. You have not seen the others, nor will the players for a while, so for you to say that mental masteries are more powerful is still based on what? Every breed is being re-written in full. So don’t expect that because you know how the breeds are in other games, you will know anything about them here. You will be surprised, greatly.
The thing with body. though, is that there are skills available to immediately heal someone. Basic Medicine. Major Medicine. I’m sure there are masteries for this as well. The fact is if there are skills to heal someone with body damage, then there should be skills to heal someone with soul or mind damage. Theology can be used to heal soul, perhaps. Some psychology skill can be used to heal mind.
This is a Social Sciences skill I made up that can be adapted for here. Just add something about healing mind stats once you reach a certain level and add a system or something.
[Social Sciences] ?Mind?
Generation Cost: 1 Generation Point
Experience Point Cost: 10 Experience Points per Level
System: roll 2d6 + Intelligence + Social Sciences Vs TN set by ST/GM
Description: Social sciences encompasses the whole field of psychology to communications. This skill includes aspects of history and speech, as well. Everything from ancient Greek to the third cold war can be learned from this skill. The more proficient you are, the more you know. Some Storylines may require this skill. Consult the table below:
Levels Effect
1-4 You have a basic understanding of general social sciences. You know your basic gene pool’s history and whatnot and understand where your parents came from.
5-8 You can impress your friends with the detail you know about general history, psychology and other similar based skills.
9+ For each level afterwards, you can specify a class of social science to become an expert in, be it 20th century cars, the kings of England or animal psychology.
If you want to consider death by soul and mind depreciation all as the same, the balance should be struck to heal these other two stats as well as a body one.
Also, not sure if it’s been addressed, but what happens when a person’s soul stat gets to 0? Do they go unconcious from feeling depressed?
Steven
Well, with this discussion I haven’t gotten to that. My first idea was that you would pass out or go catatonic, something similar to the unconsious of Body and Mind. Which ever it is, it will be the same as being unconscious in effect. mind and Soul recover faster than body does, hence the lack of ability to heal others of mind and soul damage. It’s currently 30 minutes per point (basically a full nights rest), so you can recover while play. You go to 0 you get back up with one point, confuzed, woozy, whatever.
True, the assumptions I am making may not have any basis here. I am just looking at it terms of role-playing games in general and going off of those preconceived notions. As I began to think about this, I realized what I was thinking was based more on ‘style of play’ rather than actual rules. After reading a post talking about how we shouldn’t expect this to be a coffee and romance all the time game, it brought a smile to my face.
The more I read the more balance I see.
I was just worried that we were falling into a trap that a lot of games end up putting themselves in, where they inherently favor a certain type of character without realizing it. The more you talk about it though, the less I am thinking that’s the case.
The rules as they are seem to favor balanced character sheets, which is a VERY GOOD thing.
Yep, you’re right Nick, the rules are meant to keep balanced character sheets with a sizeable advantage over a sheet that maxes out on spiritual abilities, or another sheet that maxes out on physical abilities.
It keeps the game kind of fresh, in a lot of ways. Makes generating a good CS interesting and fun for sheetophiles like myself who like to play with different options.
You know, that really takes a load off of my mind. It’s important for me that people see this balance and understand it. That’s the entire foundation for the rules is a balance, I don’t want anyone to think otherwise
True, the assumptions I am making may not have any basis here. I am just looking at it terms of role-playing games in general and going off of those preconceived notions. As I began to think about this, I realized what I was thinking was based more on ‘style of play’ rather than actual rules. After reading a post talking about how we shouldn’t expect this to be a coffee and romance all the time game, it brought a smile to my face.
The more I read the more balance I see.
I was just worried that we were falling into a trap that a lot of games end up putting themselves in, where they inherently favor a certain type of character without realizing it. The more you talk about it though, the less I am thinking that’s the case.
The rules as they are seem to favor balanced character sheets, which is a VERY GOOD thing.
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