General 7th Sea Rules Questions

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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby smafdi » Tue Aug 28, 2012 10:38 pm

It's all good mark, was fun getting to dust off my rules bickering powers. Bring on the next one!
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Tue Aug 28, 2012 11:49 pm

Ok, it's early but here it is.

p. 165 the Propitious Virtue. First, let me quote the relevant passage

Every time you use this Virtue, you gain one fewer Drama die at the beginning of every future Story, so use it only as a last resort.


This is, of course, the side-effect of using this Virtue. I assume this is cumulative (given that if it weren't there'd be no penalty once you'd used it the first time). So if I begin the game with all "3" Traits (and thus 3 DD) the first time I use it, I only get 2 DD from now on, the second time 1 DD. And, assuming I don't raise all my traits to "4" the third time I use the Virtue will be my last (unless I am particularly good at RPing and get DD from the GM.) Ok that sounds JUST a bit harsh to me but whatever, here's my question. Say I do activate it a fourth time. Does that mean the first DD I earn from now on automatically goes back in the pile? (since I should be at -1DD earned at the beginning of each Story)

Alright, next question, further on on p. 183 they mention that DD are used to activate Virtues. So what I'm hearing is that not only do I have to lose out on ALL my future DD but I also have to use a DD to get them going. Doesn't that sound overly harsh?
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Rebecca Iavelli » Wed Aug 29, 2012 4:58 am

Not looking at the book right now, too early, and getting ready for work, but what does that virtue give you? What exactly are the results of using it?

Most of the time, that I have seen in game, it has been the GM that has activated the virtue/hubris of the character player, so it is the GM's DD that is getting used to activate it, not the players.
Though like "Uncanny", which seems to be used a lot lately in games I've played in, lol, I can see that type being activated by the characater, and yes, it would seem harsh if it is like that, in that they would loose a DD and have to use one to activate it too.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:01 am

Propitious - You may activate your Virtue in order to call for a lucky escape from the current Scene. This will extract you and your entire party from your current predicament.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Rebecca Iavelli » Wed Aug 29, 2012 9:51 am

Well, I can see that they were trying to limit the use of such a Arcanna, or everyone would be using it alot, to escape the plots of the GM's, lol.

But I think that charging a DD to activate it, along with loosing a DD is a bit harsh. I can see it being used maybe once or twice, in extreem situations, in most games, unless of course the players really don't like to role play their games. I think its use should be limited to the wits of the character playing it, not the DD they have.

Ok to add to what I was thinking earlier. Limiting this one particular to the characters wits I think would work much better. They can use it only the amount of times they have pips in wits. Yes, they can increase their wits, so they can increase the amount of times they can use it, but here is the catch. While they don't loose DD's, it will cost them more for each time they use it. So like for the first time, it will cost 2 DD, and 3 DD for the second time, ect up to 7 DD for a character with a 6 in wits. I think it would keep them from using it too much, but still allow it to be viable. If a character has to use it 6 times in the course of their game, then they are relying too much on it anyway, and should cost them those DD.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Wed Aug 29, 2012 10:06 pm

This is the game's "get out of jail free" card. It allows the player and party to just skip even needing to try to outwit or outskill the problem at hand. As such it is not at all overpriced. And spending a DD to activate is just the cost, same as all other virtues. The penalty for handwaving the event is not getting that DD back. Now, I can't imagine any player worried about DD to XP conversion ever taking this but beyond that, I would venture few GMs are going to let this ability get used regularly without some extra penalty. I would guess that the intent was at 0 starting drama it goes in active but I can respect the concept of the whole negative drama and having to dump earned DD until the deficit is made up. At that point the only characters wrecking balance with it are drama generating swordsmen and they will want those dice for other projects.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby DrKwang » Thu Aug 30, 2012 8:01 am

Rebecca Iavelli wrote:But I think that charging a DD to activate it, along with loosing a DD is a bit harsh. I can see it being used maybe once or twice, in extreem situations, in most games, unless of course the players really don't like to role play their games.


As Sal said, this is the "get out of jail free" card. It's intended to be limited to extreme situations because it evokes a "deus ex machina" to save you, which is generally neither fun nor heroic (nor good story).

Rebecca Iavelli wrote:I think its use should be limited to the wits of the character playing it, not the DD they have.


I wouldn't do this, because "Propitious" means "lucky", not "clever". A Wits-1 character could be just as randomly lucky as a Wits-5 character. (Except for the probability that the Wits-1 character has fewer drama dice to work with)
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Thu Aug 30, 2012 8:39 am

Now see, I had this nice "pie in the sky" view of what Propitious was, and here you all ruined it with your fancy word-talkin.

While I did think it let the heroes out of some danger, I guess I thought it was more of, "HEY GM! I want a cool escape scene cause we got in over our heads!" To which the GM (who apparently didn't think of a way out for them) then scrambles to redesign the scene to let them go free.

But you're all right. It's just deus-ex-machina. Bummer.

(Though it does lead me to wonder what I'd do with a character who activated it during the campaign*)

*probably nothing as they'd have been beaten soundly for putting the kibosh on the other players' fun.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby smafdi » Thu Aug 30, 2012 2:26 pm

A little late to the discussion but I still want to voice my opinion. I'M OPINIONATED DARN IT!

If you were to limit the use of that arcana by a trait it'd have to be panache since it does come down to luck.

As for the limiting factor of it, if you were to take the -1 DD at the start of a story thing I would say you could only use it until you generate no DD at the start of a story. EXAMPLE TIME (to make sure what I'm saying is clear) I have all traits at 3, and I use deux-ex-machina feat 3 times over the course of a few adventures, I now won't receive any starting DD until i raise all my traits to 4.

That's my thoughts on the arcana, but honestly, what hero doesn't take a hubris for that delicious 10 extra HP at char gen? Oh and something something about ruining Mark's fun.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Thu Aug 30, 2012 3:04 pm

Alrighty, got another one today (this is more of a comment than question though). And surprisingly it already came up in this very discussion. P. 183 Drama Dice it says (again lemme quote it for you).

Your GM, on the other hand, starts with a number of Drama Dice equal to the highest Trait in the party, plus one for each Hero in the party.


It was always my understanding that I got the highest trait, then 1 more for each extra player. So 6 players one with a 4 Brawn gets me (the GM) 9 DD. But this reads to me like I get 10 DD
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:21 pm

Final propitious thought from me... As a GM and as a player, if I was using this virtue or it got activated by a player in my game, I would expect the player to be suggesting some ludicrous but plausible explanation for how the party gets out of the situation. (aliens landing and zapping the bad guys is not plausible. An entire regiment of the king's guard who made a wrong turn and stumbled into their hideout would work). As for the DD handed out. It is as you now suspect. One for each player and an extra set for the highest trait. You are shorting yourself but with 8 at your table most of the time, you never remember to use them anyhow.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Sep 03, 2012 8:04 am

Ok another comment more than a question. p.120 Using Reputation Dice The substance of the text spends a lot of time explaining how you use Rep in a Scene and how you can use them every scene which implies to me that they'd refresh every scene, but then you get to the last sentence and it turns out they refresh every Act. I know a certain Glamor mage who's gonna be surprised...

Again, not complaining about it other than, as Mike said, writers getting cutesy with their language.

And I wouldn't have a problem with them being useable more frequently if they weren't so broken in terms of what they can do.

For example, take a look at my CV character Miguel. He has a 90 Reputation, Panache 6, and Oratory 2. He wants to get the crowd riled up with a stirring speech (and he's gonna be stylish about it). So he has 9 kept dice for Rep, 6 for Panache, and 2 unkept for Oratory. That's 17k15 or 10k10+120.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Mon Sep 03, 2012 2:46 pm

It gets even worse if you use it for seduction. (tack on some dangerous beauty and appearance dice). But then again if you are seducing more than one NPC per hour, your last name is likely salamanca or you are doing it wrong. Keep in mind, even at a refresh rate of acts, you are getting use of them every hour or two of game play. And glamour users with decent rep. Should be able to generate an effect in every scene even with that refresh rate. But it will cut down on wasting glamour frivolously.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Oct 15, 2012 1:22 pm

So been reading the PG again and have a bunch more questions, and since people seemed to like going over them, here's my first question. First though I need to quote myself from over on Revs to give some perspective.

Character with Legendary Trait (Finesse) so Finesse 6
Master Gallegos
Attack (Fencing) 5

The Character in question spends two rounds doing nothing but tagging the opponent, and fortunately with such a high passive defense, is never hit. So at the end of the second round he has 12 DD available for this fight.

Now he decides to end this farce. He makes a normal attack (with truckloads of raises for damage, but that isn't relevant to my question) and rolls...

6k6 for Finesse
12k12 for DD
5k0 for Attack

for a total of 23k18.

Making that fit into the "only keep ten dice in hand" brings us to 10k10 + 210
BUT according to the PG (p. 183) it says,

You may add on Kept die to any one roll. This can be done after the roll is made, but must be done before the GM describes the result.


Now if I do the math the other way (adding the DD after the initial roll) I end up with 11k6 (so 10k7) plus 12 DD to use as I see fit. Now someone with better math skills than me can correct me, but it seems the average of a single die roll is 5.5 (not sure how that is affected by the exploding 10) but if it's negligable we're looking at an average of 66 on the 12 DD. That leaves us with 10k7+66 which as you can see is WAY WORSE than 10k10+210. So my question is, why would anyone ever add DD in later?

Now I should say, I have no intention of changing how HoA does it (which is, add the DD in separately) simply because that keeps the rediculous numbers down and ensures the new folks are not murdered off by my evil bads who have to keep pace with the experienced heroes.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Sister Sonya » Mon Oct 15, 2012 3:13 pm

Black Jack Rackham wrote:You may add on Kept die to any one roll. This can be done after the roll is made, but must be done before the GM describes the result.

No problem. Just change "can be" to "is".
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Mon Oct 15, 2012 4:53 pm

Well, the real point of this is "who would be so foolish as to declare and waste 12 DD in a single roll?". Drama Dice are an ADDITION to the roll and outside the rule of 10. Now the bigger danger is the character who has taken that school for the extra drama dice AND Glamour magic. I'd like 12 DD to use in the rest of the combat. (mind with the points involved, the character will be useless outside of this combo)
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:00 pm

Sure I know how I can make the fix Mike, but it just seems to be a glaring mathmatical mis-calculation. Adding them in first (more than) doubles the utility of any one die. Either way works in a home game, and I have no problem choosing one over the the other, but if both are allowed, I can see some players calculating it one way while others do it the other, and voila, we have vastly different rolls.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:05 pm

salamanca wrote:Well, the real point of this is "who would be so foolish as to declare and waste 12 DD in a single roll?"


I remember Miguel's first duel against a MacDonald swordsman where he smacked with with 58 flesh wounds (in addition to the 30 some I'd already received). I was just about unconscious, so I had to use up all the DD I'd saved over the first 3 years of the campaign (10 en toto I believe) just to not fail by 20 (and get that second DW that'd have put me out).

So I guess that's all in one roll. But if I'd simply thrown in all 10 at the get go in addition to my soak roll (2k2 if memory serves) that'd have put me at 10k10+40.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:09 pm

Part of your problem is that your math is wrong. You have to add the knack and trait first and balance out to the rules of TENS. (your 10K7 in the example) the first 3 drame dice never get rolled and simply increase that to 10K10. Leaving 9 dice to become tacked on as automatic +45 (+ 5 each if I recall...books are still in the car).
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:47 pm

You're adding the two different types together. In the first example, we are mixing the original Roll and Keep dice and the Drama Dice in together (for a total of 10k10+210). In the second, we just roll the R&K dice (10k7) and then, once we know the number but before the GM has told us the result, start adding in the 12 DD (presumably one at a time with an average of 5.5 per die for a total of 66) so 10k7+66 and in this case since DD are breaking the rule of 10 it's the same number whether I roll them all together (12k12*) or one at a time.

*as opposed to 10k10+40 which would be applying the rule of 10 to the drama dice.

Although now that you mention it, if we did apply the rule of 10 to the drama dice, we'd end up with 10k10+210 vs. 10k7+66+10k10+40. Ok looking up on the 7th Sea Probability chart, 10k10 hits 60 slightly over 50% of the time, and 10k7 hits approx 52 50% of the time, so assuming they are the average (or close enough for this exercise) we get 60+210 vs 52+66+60+40 or 270 vs 218, so yea adding them in first is still coming out on top but not quite as bad as I'd said before.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Rebecca Iavelli » Tue Oct 16, 2012 4:57 am

Too...Much...Math..... :shock: :geek: :lol:
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Tue Oct 16, 2012 7:55 am

Well, once again, you have misinterpreted the math but it's a moot point. The drama dice are never suppossed to be included within the dice pool for the rule of tens. They are always their own seperate pile of rolled and kept dice. The only advantage a player gets from tossing them with his rwgular roll is that, as GMs, we let slide that the DD MUST be kept and allow the player to keep a higher die in their pool. An incorrect ruling but not a game breaking one in normal play (and totally irrelevant in a 10K10+X situation). So in you example the player really is required to roll 10K7 + 12K12. But as lazy gms we are gonna let that end up being a situation where instead of splitting that into two pools, the player is gonna chuck 23 dice and keep the best 19. The "can roll" you are quoting only refers to the fact that the player has options to WHEN the dice get tossed.
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Tue Oct 16, 2012 12:42 pm

Ok now I'm confused since I thought that's what I was arguing...

So as not to troll this too much, lemme throw in my next question, this time its about initiative. Specifically about the bottleneck that seems to happen during certain fights at phase 10.

I will say at the outset I think I know the answer to this one but I want to point it out anyway. PG p 185 if you want to read the text.

So let me begin with an example
Good Guy and Bad Guy are in combat. GG has rolled 1, 3, 7, 10 for action dice (for an init total of 21). BG 2, 5, 6 (for an init total of 13). Just to make this more obvious, lets assume both are concerned that the other is winding up to whollop them so they save all their actions (allowing them ready actions for Active Defense) until phase 10.

At this point I say, "GG you have the highest init total, and a 10, so you can go first."

GG responds, "I hold my action."
Ok, BG your turn, "I'm still holding."
GG "Hold"
BG "Hold
etc, etc, etc.
And there we sit, waiting desperately for one of these goobers to go

I believe the resolution is, in phase 10 you can no longer hold actions. If you don't use them they disappear. So, phase 10 hits, GG holds his "10" I say, if you hold you lose it, so GG goes and uses his 10 dropping his init total to 11 which means BG now goes (with 13). He uses his 6 dropping his init total to 7 so GG goes again using his 7 (now init 4) BG uses 5 (leaving 2) then GG, BG, and finally GG

Alternately, if they are fighting a defensive game
GG goes (11) BG riposts (7) GG actively defends (4) BG attacks (2) GG actively defends (1) BG attacks again (done with actions) and GG actively defends (done with actions)

That sound about right?
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby salamanca » Tue Oct 16, 2012 10:57 pm

Ok, the point is that if you are letter of the law using the drama dice, they are rolled outside of the trait + knack total. So you end up totalling your trait + knack then your set of drama dice are added Then the GM reveals the result. If a player really wants to declare rolling all 12 blindly, they can do that but the optimal solution is to get your standard total and then add on one DD at a time and hope for some early explosions. ................... Now for the initiative:. It depends on the GM. Some prohibit holding more than one action at a time. For those allowing it, you are pretty much correct. The player with the ten has the option to act and the other character COULD supercede that IF his initiative total (panache rank if that was also tied) was highest. Players should however remember that they are burning held actions with the lowest number first (so held actions of 2,3,4 would use the 2 first).
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Re: General 7th Sea Rules Questions

Postby Black Jack Rackham » Sat Oct 20, 2012 8:39 am

salamanca wrote:Players should however remember that they are burning held actions with the lowest number first (so held actions of 2,3,4 would use the 2 first).


Kind of related to that, on p. 185 the example on using held actions shows that you can pick any two actions to use (so it doesn't have to be the next action or lowest numbers, etc.) Also, it's interesting to note that, if my Good Guy above chose on Phase 2 to use his 7 and 10 actions to do an interrupt action, his init total would change (assuming he'd used his first action) from a 20 (3, 7, 10) to a 5 (7, 10 turn into a 2, and still has the 3)
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