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I know this community is pretty quiet, but since I've been unable to log on to the WW forums this evening, I'm going to post this here, as a first step in the thinking process.
I'm trying to work out a way of doing Torment in nWoD. I've read a couple of variations people have suggested, but none of them seem to capture it. How about this:
To attempt an evocation, roll Attribute + Skill + Power.
Power (for want of a better term), is a player chosen number between 0 and 3. It represents the character drawing on his divine nature -- but the more corrupt his nature is, the more likely things will go wrong.
To determine if an evocation is inadvertently called as a high torment version, use the same rule as previous, but use Torment + Power instead of Torment. That is, compare the number of dice that are (Torment + Power) or lower, with those that are greater, but only for dice that roll Successes. If more dice are equal or lower to the relevant number, the effect is high torment.
The advantages I see are this:
It gives evocations a bit of extra kick, to make up for the harder difficulty (not that I've studied nWoD probabilities all that much, as yet).
It reflects the previous version's idea that the easier a roll (in this case, the more die), the more likely high torment will kick in.
It reflects the previous version in that there's no real chance of any of this happening until Torment reaches 5.
When Torment is between 5 and 9, the demon can choose to temper his abilities if he wants to keep on the straight and narrow.
It would also make sense that Power would affect the chance of Revelation.
I don't think the exploding-10 rules will complicate it too much, since each 10 is automatically counted for 'low torment' (unless Torment + Power is >= 10, in which case there's no point counting anyway).
Comments?
August 8 2005, 15:52:53 UTC 6 years ago
How about this for a system. Attribute + Ability + Faith. If you get more sucesses on your evocation then your Grace score, you have a high-torment evocation. The reason why it works is as such, statistically 1/3 dice rolled is a sucess. If you have good ability (3), attribute (3) and faith (6) then you will only have high-torment normally if you have a grace score of 3 normally.
If the ww forums are down, feel free to visit us over at www.shadownessence.com We have a vibrant Demon forum including the demon project.
August 9 2005, 11:42:37 UTC 6 years ago
There isn't a new roll in my system -- just another modifier, which I don't think would be too complicated (and you really only have to think about changing it when your Torment changes, which isn't all that often).
I have read other people suggest a Grace statistic as well, and I wasn't completely convinced. That's probably mostly because of the name though -- it seems somewhat cooler to be using a High Torment ability than a Low Grace (Graceless?) one :-)
Still, aligning it with Morality has its advantages. I certainly think we should keep the temporary stat -- you only lose 1/10 of a point per slip. Has anyone used the current Morality rules in game? They look rather unsubtle and far too fast -- like the Madness Meters in Unknown Armies, which I thought were a great concept but didn't work so well in play.
(I see Evo Shandor on the WW Forums has a sort of pyramid scheme of temporary Morality, which is rather interesting.)
Meanwhile, I like your mechanic, which is rather elegant. If implemented, it may change the way demon society works because it redefines the path to high torment (and I'm not sure it is balanced at higher power levels, especially if characters are still adding points of Faith to the mix), but they are problems that could be overcome. Some might see them as advantages.
Has anyone kept Virtues, BTW? They were never the strongest defined of stats in the original game, so I guess dispensing with them wouldn't cause a lot of harm. I'm sort of fond of them, though, so I'm wondering if that've worked for other people.
August 10 2005, 07:32:20 UTC 6 years ago
- Your Morality scale is called Faith. Characters start at 7, can push it down at chargen for XP, and it goes up and down as per usual.
- Your 'power trait' (ala Blood Potency) is Torment, which goes from 1 to 10. It starts at 1, but you can buy it up with XP.
- Each time you fail a degeneration roll and lose Faith, you make a similar check to see if you gain a point of Torment. Spend XP to gain Torment, and you automatically lose a point of Faith. And vice versa; the two traits are mutually exclusive.
- Evocation rolls are Stat + Skill + Lore rating.
- If your dice pool is larger than your Faith rating, you risk losing control and evoking the tormented version of the Lore. If the roll succeeds, compare the successes to the dice pool that would be rolled for degeneration for a sin equal to your Torment. If you get as many or more successes on the evocation roll than the size of the resistance pool, you evoke the tormented version. You can choose to reduce your dice pool to avoid the possibility of losing control.
- That's not superclear, so here's an example. You have Torment 4 and Faith 6, and a evocation dice pool of 9. That's more than your Faith, so evoking that lore is risky. A level 4 sin is resisted with a pool of three dice, so if you get 3 or more successes on the evocation roll, you accidentally evoke the tormented version. You could choose to reduce your dice pool down to just 6, in which case you would have no risk of casting the tormented version.
- If you deliberately invoke the tormented version of a Lore, you can choose to roll Torment + Lore instead, which could easily be a bigger pool.
- Any time you cast the tormented version of a lore, you must make a degeneration check. The level of the sin relates to the level of the Lore and your Torment trait in a way I haven't worked out yet.
Pros: only requires one roll, ties into Morality, has the same structure of the other nWoD power systems, keeps the rough pattern of 'easy evocations carry more risk of torment' as the old system.
Cons: requires too much cross-referencing, counter-intuitive bits throughout, probably too harsh on the degeneration checks, and I haven't finished working through the probabilities or most of the system.
But there, some food for thought.
August 10 2005, 11:28:58 UTC 6 years ago
One problem I see is that characters who aren't so much concerned with playing nice can set themselves to sinning, which pays off with immediate gains in power -- build up 10 Torment and you're casting evocations as well as anybody. If nothing else, the Raveners are going to beat the Reconcilers every time.
Actually, there's another consequence -- the duration and range of various evocations is determined by the (temporary) Faith pool (at least in the old version, which uses a different definition of Faith, but we'll run with it). That means, higher Torment means less impressive effects. Temporary Faith can also add automagic successes, which can work around the 'dice pool greater than Faith' peril in this system.
Hmmm, this could work, as a weird balancing act. People would certainly try to avoid Torment 10 if it meant no Faith at all.
The side-effects are probably a bit messy (low Faith certainly doesn't effect every evocation, and starting Faith in this system is very high if used equivalent to the old system), but might be fixed.
My other comment was that adding Lore rating to a dice pool seems a bit odd to me, as it makes more powerful effects easier by definition.
February 18 2006, 07:42:08 UTC 6 years ago
February 18 2006, 11:37:30 UTC 6 years ago
Having said that, I haven't updated my conversion notes in about 6 months, having being diverted by fiction, so it's all becoming a bit hazy.