Downtown Khazan: Ice Cold Utopia

[The MunchKING]

Hmmm... Since you brought it up, Eriol makes an interesting philosophical point. Is it following a law, if you're only doing it because you had no desire to do the thing forbidden by law?

Like you aren't going around murdering people, but not because you care that there's a law about it, it's just that there's no one around you feel like murdering.

Then again, with how much he also says "Behave anarchically" and "Cause Chaos" he probably DOES think some murderhoboing is good for society.

[Siriel]

Really nice list, and you’ve given me food for thought on a couple of things. I’ll give some more detailed thoughts when I’m sat at my laptop (so I can actually access the books rather than just try and vaguely remember wording), but there’s a few things I notice straight away.

For example, you rated Touched by Destiny as being pretty universally terrible, but there’s a particular usage where it’s… gah, not exactly ubiquitous, but it does seem very, very popular. Summoning. Mainly because, while it may not be ultra-effective at guaranteeing success, it DOES almost guarantee you’re not going to fail by a huge amount and thereby drop yourself in a massive problem (and likely sentence yourself to death or a fate-worse-than etc.).

It's true that I didn't consider Summoning, let me reason through it and see if it makes it better.

Looking at the premade Summoner from the booklet for example (since those tend to be decent but not optimized characters), she has 120 in Summoning, and needs to make a roll of 160 to summon a level-equivalent creature. By taking six hours for the ritual, she has a 90% chance of success, rising to 97% if she takes a day.

Now, in order to get screwed over by Summoning you need to 1) be summoning something helpful to you* and 2) fail the roll by 50 or more.

So in order to be screwed over by summoning a level-equivalent creature, Lamya needs to roll a fumble that reduces her total by 50.

This means:

Rolling a 1 and rolling over 35.
Rolling a 2 and rolling over 50.
Rolling a 3 and rolling over 65.

So Lamya has about 1% chance of being screwed over by Summoning an equal-level creature, assuming she uses nothing but time to boost her roll. If summoning a creature two levels above her, requiring a roll of 200, she still has a slightly lower than 3% chance of getting a terrible result.

Since invocations you already have a Pact with don't have such dreadful consequences for failure (since they specifically ignore the normal summoning rules), we have to ask ourselves: How often will a Summoner actually summon a creature? Once per session? That seems like a stretch, you almost certainly aren't summoning during any session that takes place in a city. Let's say you use one of the four skills once every other session on average. (More likely you'll have periods of time where you use them a lot when dealing with supernatural beings, and then occasions where you don't use them for several sessions when you aren't.)

That means the player used a CP to protect themselves from a result that'll happen on average every 190th sessions or so, and isn't necessarily lethal even if it does. Do you think that's worth it? Personally I tend to prefer advantages that give a consistent value over something that might come in handy when the stars align to screw you over, but if any of the above sounds wrong let me know. I haven't actually played a summoner except for a one shot so my thoughts might not line up with actual play.

That said, I do think that if you're playing such a large amount of sessions then Touched By Destiny gets a lot better. (Also I hope you picked Learned for that sweet sweet +1700 XP, lucky person who gets a frequent game for years.)

*: The fact that it summons a being of opposing nature to what you wanted actually works out in your favor if you were trying to summon something particularly dangerous. If you fumble summoning a demon and get a powerful angel instead, there's decent odds you can just apologize and explain that you're trying to stop some fiendish scheme and they'll let it go with a warning. Likewise if you summoned some neutral creature, you can probably talk things out. The fact that the creature isn't immediately hostile is a strong mitigating factor to the consequence.

Now of course, this all assumes that a Summoner uses their powers responsibly and doesn't try to summon something wildly out of their means at the first opportunity to munchkin out a massive power gain, which I grant you is a stretch. But if someone is going for some greedy do-or-die strategy, I tend to assume they aren't going to care about what a guide says.

[The MunchKING]

How often will a Summoner actually summon a creature? Once per session? That seems like a stretch, you almost certainly aren't summoning during any session that takes place in a city. Let's say you use one of the four skills once every other session on average.

I don't know, let's ask Bill/Jack.

Now of course, this all assumes that a Summoner uses their powers responsively

Oh well if THAT's a baseline assumption...

[Siriel]

Hmmm... Since you brought it up, Eriol makes an interesting philosophical point. Is it following a law, if you're only doing it because you had no desire to do the thing forbidden by law?

Like you aren't going around murdering people, but not because you care that there's a law about it, it's just that there's no one around you feel like murdering.

Then again, with how much he also says "Behave anarchically" and "Cause Chaos" he probably DOES think some murderhoboing is good for society.

As written Eriol punishes you for doing anything that's in keeping with a law. I'm almost certain the intent is for your character to not care about the law, hence calling for a GM ruling to make it not quite so.. insane.

[Thezmage]

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

Happy Halloween all!

[bruceleegreyhulk]

Happy Halloween.

[Tami]

[grampagen]

[Guy1]

Happy Halloween!

[Dark Soul # 7]

YES! SPY X FAMILY IS GETTING AN ANIME!

[Iron_Twister]

Happy Halloween, everyone.

[Jcogginsa]

[Tami]

[Tami]