[Solar System] Let me see if I got equipment ratings right...
jb.teller4:
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on August 30, 2009, 01:38:43 PM
The new rules I figured out through this year are different: your own Ability check is used to find out whether your equipment gets damaged, but the equipment rating itself is used to adjudicate the actual Ability check. So if you got a Marginal (1) result under those rules, a +1 equipment would do nothing for you.
It's probably because I'm new to TSoY/SS, but I really don't understand what this means. Can you explain it again and/or give an example or two of how it works in play? I'm probably missing something simple and it will all click when I hear more, but I'm currently at a loss.
Thanks!
John B.
Eero Tuovinen:
Which texts have you read? It makes a big difference if you're going by Clinton's text or my Solar System or the new TSoY book.
Regardless, a simple example... let's say that I have a sword according to the new rules, like so:
My Great (3) Sword
This is a masterwork sword, the sort you might expect Gorenite smiths to make. Because it's Great (3), it gets three ratings.
Ratings:
+1 for fighting people
+1 for slaying beasts
+2 against unarmored opponents
Now, if my character was in a fight with this sword, he could replace his check result with a Marginal (1) success (when fighting with the sword) or Standard (2) success (when fighting specifically against unarmored opponents). His actual rolled result would be ignored, except that if it was a failure, then the quality value of the equipment would go down one step - the sword would become merely Standard (2) and it would lose one rating until fixed. (To be exact, the player of the character would choose which rating would be lost when his item loses quality; it wouldn't need to be the one he used.)
As you can see, it makes no sense to use the equipment in this way if you can roll a solid success yourself with the dice. This sort of equipment use would for the most part be for characters at Competent (0) Ability levels. Stormtroopers, king's guardsmen, whatever - they need the equipment to give them some reliability with the dice, you could say if you wanted to get logical about it. Even an Experienced (1) character would statistically get some use from equipment, especially if it had +2 and +3 ratings. Characters at higher Ability levels would probably be better off investing in specialized equipment that does something more powerful than this basic effect - this is fine with me, I wanted the basic equipment effect to be something commonplace that'd allow me to have equipment appear all over the place instead of being the major artefact that you'd get in Clinton's rules.
An edge case with this equipment rating usage is that the +1 rating is only normally useful for a character when he's rolled a failure - and thus the equipment will always get worn a bit when he activates such. I'm not greatly concerned with this myself, it makes for suitable drama, even if it means that equipment needs constant maintenance in the hands of the inept. It's easy enough to bring in a Secret or Imbuement that allays this, anyway; something that allows you to pay a Pool point instead of getting the equipment broken, for example.
I should also say (I think I intimate this in the book as well) that I'm very interested in hearing about the experiences and solutions others use in leveraging equipment ratings. I spent quite some time coming up with my current solution that'd both preserve the concept of the equipment rating unchanged (important for backwards compatibility) and bring the rules in line with the rest of the system. What I like about my new system is that equipment is now not one of those mechanically volatile, awesome subsystems that might blow on your face at any moment. The new book certainly has a lot of those, but I feel that they are in the proper places in there: when your character gets an alien symbiote or starts combining dream shamanism with Three-Corner magic or whatever, we all know and accept that hey, he might break the world. The feeling just is not there if my character breaks the game by getting a bog-mundane sword from a bazaar and finding out that equipment ratings are actually the most powerful force in the game by far. It's much better if they are so weak that I can scatter them about like so many pennies without worrying that something is going to break.
jb.teller4:
Thanks for answering so quickly!
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on September 08, 2009, 07:33:48 AM
Which texts have you read? It makes a big difference if you're going by Clinton's text or my Solar System or the new TSoY book.
I have Clinton's TSoY and your Solar System as a PDF. I don't have the World of Near (though it's on my Wish List).
Your explanation above made a lot more sense to me, thanks. I'm pretty sure I've got it now.
The only question I have is the cost (if any) of using equipment. From the description you just gave, it seems like using equipment has no cost (except damaging the equipment if your ability check failed). What is the cost of a) getting new equipment and b) using equipment?
I think I remember reading in another post that the first time you use a piece of equipment you have to spend a number of pool equal to the rating of the sword +1 per imbuements, then it's yours and you can use it freely. In other words, there's a pool cost, but no Advances cost. Is that right? I'm guessing that you can take equipment as a Secret, which would give you the benefit that it can't be taken away from you long term (or you get the Advances back if it is destroyed or taken).
-John B.
jb.teller4:
I did think of one more question about imbuements... are they separate from the ratings? What I mean is can you use an imbuement while using your ability check result instead of the equipment rating? I'm assuming the answer is yes and I'm guessing that imbuements are a big part of the "specialized equipment that [do] something more powerful than this basic effect" you mentioned.
-John B.
oliof:
… new equipment rules in World of Near? I need to take a closer look.
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