Difference between revisions of "Talk:Future Imperfect chapter 8"

Revision as of 16:30, 20 March 2016

--Jason 11:41, 19 March 2016 (MST) In this line: If a psionicist is reduced to 0 or fewer CT by using talents, he falls out, exhausted, until he can recover (just as though he had taken CT damage from injury). I think you mean passes out, or falls unconscious.

--Melonberg 15:30, 20 March 2016 (MST)Yes. Whatever the proper representation of losing all CT is. I wasn't sure if it was being KO'd or just being too worn out to do pretty much anything.

--Jason 11:42, 19 March 2016 (MST) Essence trait (very important to psionic characters, like deftness is to marksmen). I believe we have changed this to dexterity.

--Melonberg 15:30, 20 March 2016 (MST)Noted. Likely a verbiage oversight.

--Jason 11:54, 19 March 2016 (MST)To use a talent in combat, play an action card to use the talent as your action on that phase of the initiative. Action cards will have modifiers for PSI, and when you play your action card, these modifiers will affect the current activation of the talent. Faster cards will tend to have penalties, while slower cards will tend to have bonuses; this reflects that the longer you take to focus, the better it is for the talent to activate properly.

I see what you are trying to do here, but acting on the card you draw is not the same as rushing, even if you draw an ace. In a sense, you were more prepared. Maybe instead of having penalties on faster cards we can have a penalty on any card, but if you want the penalty to go away you can delay and have your action go off at a later time. In essence (har har), your drawn card is when you react, if you delay you can effect proper preparation.

--Melonberg 15:30, 20 March 2016 (MST)I like that proposal; have penalties randomized throughout the action deck that can allow a person to unleash a talent now at the listed penalty or delay to negate the penalty, or maybe even sacrifice a lower action card or something. My initial thought was the dilemma of the "trade-off": Do I react faster at a greater cost or possibility of failure, or slower with greater effect? However, holding an action kind of bypasses that, and would allow a character with psionics to act "fast" with the benefits of a slow card. In a sense, it kind of defeats the purpose of the dilemma, so I get where you're coming from.

If the psionicist concentrates, they can “aim” to target an opponent (for certain types of mental attacks). Unless otherwise specified, it takes 3 phases to aim to get a +1 bonus. You can “aim” up to twice for an attack. Also, you can increase the CT cost by 2 to get a +1 on the activation roll.

When you say phases, do you mean card levels (Ace, King etc)? If so, this is like what is covered above. In a related note, maybe we should call card levels something like impulses, fragments, phases etc. We should discuss this Thursday. Maybe we need a jargon discussion page.

--Melonberg 15:30, 20 March 2016 (MST)My use of the term "phases" was intended to refer to card levels during a combat round. I like the notion of naming them something. My intent was to allow a player to delay a psionic action in combat to increase the odds of it "hitting" its mark, or allow the player to spend more CT to ensure the talent activated. Some of the talents have high activation numbers, meaning they are tricky to pull off unless the character strains and focuses, unless they are really good and have a large dice pool.

--Jason 11:56, 19 March 2016 (MST) Conditioned—These people have had some form of mental conditioning, formal training or are naturally chaotic in their thought patterns. This character has no psionic abilities, but starts with one level in the mental conditioning skill as an everyman skill. This allows them to make defense rolls against mental attacks instead of unskilled Essence rolls. I think this should require an edge to begin the game with the mental conditioning skill.

--Jason 17:27, 19 March 2016 (MST) If, during character creation, you chose rank 3 for Psionics, this rates your character as a Psionic “Null.” We should refrain from using specific notation such as this. What if we change the table for how you get psionic powers? Maybe something like, a Hero may only be defined a psionic null at Hero creation by paying the appropriate cost.

This means that for the most part, many Psionic talents that detect or influence the mind will have little to no effect on the character. A telepath would not sense a Null with his Detect Life talent, and targeting a Null with most Mental Attacks is extremely difficult (but not impossible). I think we need concrete effects here. Such as: effects with the Scan attribute automatically fail. Effects with the attack attribute have a penalty of 2, etc.

If a talent will not work or have reduced effects on a Null, the talent description will make this distinction. Psionic Null characters can never, ever learn psionic talents, and are so out of tune with psionic energies that mere physical contact with a PK crystal will act as the most virulent neurotoxin imaginable as the energies the crystal channels into our dimension breaks down and subsumes the bonds in the Null’s mind. This will result in incurable brain death, regardless of whether they maintain physical contact with the crystal. You have been warned. This seems broken and arbitrary. I get where this is coming from (and I suspect you copied it verbatim from Space Opera), but I think instead of YOU DIE, we need some kind of mechanical effect, like character is hit with a Mind Slay, or something like that.