I think the arguments were more about clarifying Armsmasters paranoia about the hope imposed on him, things spiraled from there.
Constellations (Worm/Okami)
- Thread starter UnwelcomeStorm
- Start date
I think the arguments were more about clarifying Armsmasters paranoia about the hope imposed on him, things spiraled from there.
Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
Cutting out middle man entirely John merely needs to hang out by shrine for next fix.
Chessman's Power
UnwelcomeStorm
BARK! BARK! BARK!
- Location
- United States
So, the topic of Chessman/Danny's powers came up on SB, and I wrote a quick explanation of it. I don't want SV to be left out, so here it is:
As much as Toon Physics and Epic Mickey (and more importantly, OPM) amuse me, Danny doesn't play Looney d20. Here's my basic guidelines for the Chessman power set:
Chessman's power is highly conceptual. The things he can animate need to follow three specific guidelines. Namely, that they are/can be used for some form of gaming, that Danny spends time using them (and even better, detailing or improving them), and that the piece must operate with some form of code or rule that Danny understands. That's why his first pawns were chess pieces-- board games around the house were something he'd spent time with, and unlike a Monopoly piece, chess pieces have rules that govern their behavior and abilities.
Vehicles and mechs count, so long as they adhere to the previous standards.
The durability and quality of the pawn is related to two things: the starting material, and the amount of time Danny's spent either using or improving the miniature. So a pawn made from a pewter mini will be tougher and stronger than one made of plastic... unless Danny's spent a good long time with the plastic minis and not with the pewter.
The power of the pawns is related more to how well Danny understands the rules governing the source material. For this reason, things with clear-cut guidelines (melee, ballistics) will generally be easier for him to replicate than something based on magic, because in most systems magical attacks are both varied and variable in a lot of ways. Guns and swords, less so. That said, expect the usual Shard limitations on things they would expect to be highly dangerous to put in the hands of silly monkeys, like anything that mimics the Golden FU Beam.
While Danny does have QA, his multitasking and Thinker aspects are nowhere near Canon!Taylor's league. He can handle numbers that'd be large for anyone not named Taylor, but his direct control gets weaker the more there are. After a few squads, it comes down to an almost subconscious (read: shard-driven) 'programming' for the pawn's behavior once animated. (For this reason, Danny is no longer allowed to field Ork armies.) He also doesn't get the sensory feedback Taylor's QA would-- he knows where a pawn is and what it's doing, but can't share senses to use them for scouting.
I figure Danny would be rated as a combination Master/Tinker, due to his need to spend time 'maintaining' his pawns. What numbers he'd get is probably dependent on what he's fielded so far: while there's been mention of keeping a few things 'for a rainy day', Danny has not yet attended any Endbringer fights, and therefore hasn't ever brought out any truly big guns.
Not to say that he hasn't had normal big guns.
1)He has to spend time working with them and improving them for his power to settle. Mass-produced models such as army infantry require little work and, because mass numbers are generally deployed as one unit in most games, it's a neat little loophole that the tiny time spent on each individual soldier counts towards the army as a whole, and vice versa. Individual models that are easy to come by (adventuring game characters, DnD units, or easily-assembled vehicles) are also a favorite, because they're usually made of sturdier materials to begin with, so it's easier to make them tougher.
2)Because of the time necessary to invest in each model, one of his biggest concerns is battle damage. If Hookwolf cuts through that cool mech he spent weeks on, how is he going to repair it? Liquid resin and a tiny tiny welder will only get him so far. It's a conundrum similar to Bakuda's power: all his stuff takes a good deal of time to make, but while not single-use it's all ultimately disposable, so he needs to balance the resources put into the model versus how much use he can get from it before it's too damaged to play with anymore.
He does collect higher-end models and cool things in general, spending a few spare hours here and there working with them, but they're kept in reserve for the most part for when they're needed on a rainy day. Since Danny doesn't attend Endbringer fights (and thus doesn't pull out any truly Alpha-strike models), he keeps his loadout appropriate for countering threats in Brockton Bay. He's also known for an almost compulsive love of irony when it comes to using his power, in that if he knows who/what he's engaging with in advance, he'll almost always use something historically or culturally appropriate for it: E88 gets WW2 models or spacefuture WW2 models, that sort of thing.
The PRT's primary classification for Chessman is Master/Tinker 5.
I think a lot of the questions on 'could he use X' could be changed to 'should/would he use X?' Chessman keeps his available models tuned for acting in Brockton Bay-- that means street level cape encounters and crimes. He needs sufficient force to overcome them, sure, but also not kill anyone, nor destroy everything around him either through armament or sheer weight crashing through the streets when working with tanks and vehicles. He can help the latter with not letting his models get too heavy when animating them, but that means they'll not be made of super-resilient materials, which feeds back into the damage investment time/use dilemma.
Imagine a hidden point-buy system, where he gets more character creator points the longer he spends working with something. A tinkerfab model might have some better base stats, like how an Elf tends to have more Dex than a Human, but the end effect isn't as pronounced as one would hope.
2)That'd fall under normal shard restrictions, I think. Danny can't copy powers and esoteric/magical effects are difficult for him to reproduce.
1) The PRT likes to keep the Tinker-y aspects of his power limitations under wraps, so it's not exactly well-known that he needs to spend time on his pawns to make them truly useful.
2) By contrast, it IS well known that Chessman is not a Striker. That is, he can start empowering his pawns from a distance. How far a distance is a matter for debate.
3) After he decided to troll Uber and Leet a little (with permission...) one of his common tactics was revealed and well-publicized: Pawns can carry other pawns. So Chessman will often have a couple of pawns animated, but not fully-grown, transport other pawns by hand or in a case to another location. Whereupon he will start animating those pawns.
And that third point is the big one. Chessman's existence is a nice, paranoid stick to poke the gangs with, because it's impossible to know how many pawns he might have hidden around the city, just waiting to be suddenly activated. It's a bluff, but when the consequence of calling that bluff may or may not be a tank suddenly bursting through the water main under your base, it is a pretty good bluff.
The end result is that, on average, gangs in Brockton Bay adapted their tactics to favor shorter engagements and preferably, guerilla-style hit-and-runs. Larger-scale or drawn out battles are exactly the sort of thing Chessman loves to interrupt, since it does take him time to get his pawns fully grown and animated.
As much as Toon Physics and Epic Mickey (and more importantly, OPM) amuse me, Danny doesn't play Looney d20. Here's my basic guidelines for the Chessman power set:
Chessman's power is highly conceptual. The things he can animate need to follow three specific guidelines. Namely, that they are/can be used for some form of gaming, that Danny spends time using them (and even better, detailing or improving them), and that the piece must operate with some form of code or rule that Danny understands. That's why his first pawns were chess pieces-- board games around the house were something he'd spent time with, and unlike a Monopoly piece, chess pieces have rules that govern their behavior and abilities.
Vehicles and mechs count, so long as they adhere to the previous standards.
The durability and quality of the pawn is related to two things: the starting material, and the amount of time Danny's spent either using or improving the miniature. So a pawn made from a pewter mini will be tougher and stronger than one made of plastic... unless Danny's spent a good long time with the plastic minis and not with the pewter.
The power of the pawns is related more to how well Danny understands the rules governing the source material. For this reason, things with clear-cut guidelines (melee, ballistics) will generally be easier for him to replicate than something based on magic, because in most systems magical attacks are both varied and variable in a lot of ways. Guns and swords, less so. That said, expect the usual Shard limitations on things they would expect to be highly dangerous to put in the hands of silly monkeys, like anything that mimics the Golden FU Beam.
While Danny does have QA, his multitasking and Thinker aspects are nowhere near Canon!Taylor's league. He can handle numbers that'd be large for anyone not named Taylor, but his direct control gets weaker the more there are. After a few squads, it comes down to an almost subconscious (read: shard-driven) 'programming' for the pawn's behavior once animated. (For this reason, Danny is no longer allowed to field Ork armies.) He also doesn't get the sensory feedback Taylor's QA would-- he knows where a pawn is and what it's doing, but can't share senses to use them for scouting.
I figure Danny would be rated as a combination Master/Tinker, due to his need to spend time 'maintaining' his pawns. What numbers he'd get is probably dependent on what he's fielded so far: while there's been mention of keeping a few things 'for a rainy day', Danny has not yet attended any Endbringer fights, and therefore hasn't ever brought out any truly big guns.
Not to say that he hasn't had normal big guns.
Danny didn't actually go to the PRT after he triggered, he just kept doing his thing, practiced a bit with chess pieces, and quietly started collecting his tools. A good six months or so after his trigger, the E88 decided to make an example of the Dockworker's Union HQ for their refusal to play by the Empire's 'reasonable requests.' Several people were injured and the building Danny worked at was heavily damaged by arson.
The next week, Chessman crashed an Empire rally when he showed up with three Sherman tanks from a WW2 skirmish game.
Escalation, thy name is Hebert.
The next week, Chessman crashed an Empire rally when he showed up with three Sherman tanks from a WW2 skirmish game.
Escalation, thy name is Hebert.
Chessman actually prefers to use relatively smaller-scale, more easily mass-produced models for two reasons:
1)He has to spend time working with them and improving them for his power to settle. Mass-produced models such as army infantry require little work and, because mass numbers are generally deployed as one unit in most games, it's a neat little loophole that the tiny time spent on each individual soldier counts towards the army as a whole, and vice versa. Individual models that are easy to come by (adventuring game characters, DnD units, or easily-assembled vehicles) are also a favorite, because they're usually made of sturdier materials to begin with, so it's easier to make them tougher.
2)Because of the time necessary to invest in each model, one of his biggest concerns is battle damage. If Hookwolf cuts through that cool mech he spent weeks on, how is he going to repair it? Liquid resin and a tiny tiny welder will only get him so far. It's a conundrum similar to Bakuda's power: all his stuff takes a good deal of time to make, but while not single-use it's all ultimately disposable, so he needs to balance the resources put into the model versus how much use he can get from it before it's too damaged to play with anymore.
He does collect higher-end models and cool things in general, spending a few spare hours here and there working with them, but they're kept in reserve for the most part for when they're needed on a rainy day. Since Danny doesn't attend Endbringer fights (and thus doesn't pull out any truly Alpha-strike models), he keeps his loadout appropriate for countering threats in Brockton Bay. He's also known for an almost compulsive love of irony when it comes to using his power, in that if he knows who/what he's engaging with in advance, he'll almost always use something historically or culturally appropriate for it: E88 gets WW2 models or spacefuture WW2 models, that sort of thing.
The PRT's primary classification for Chessman is Master/Tinker 5.
I think a lot of the questions on 'could he use X' could be changed to 'should/would he use X?' Chessman keeps his available models tuned for acting in Brockton Bay-- that means street level cape encounters and crimes. He needs sufficient force to overcome them, sure, but also not kill anyone, nor destroy everything around him either through armament or sheer weight crashing through the streets when working with tanks and vehicles. He can help the latter with not letting his models get too heavy when animating them, but that means they'll not be made of super-resilient materials, which feeds back into the damage investment time/use dilemma.
1) The quality of his animated Pawns depends more on the time and effort invested into them than the base construction; the better base quality helps, but something he's spent 10 hours working on will trump a 1 hour pawn every time.
Imagine a hidden point-buy system, where he gets more character creator points the longer he spends working with something. A tinkerfab model might have some better base stats, like how an Elf tends to have more Dex than a Human, but the end effect isn't as pronounced as one would hope.
2)That'd fall under normal shard restrictions, I think. Danny can't copy powers and esoteric/magical effects are difficult for him to reproduce.
That's actually a hard question to answer. Chessman is a pretty heavy hitter if he needs to be, and in true Hebert fashion, he doesn't tend to waste a lot of time with slow increases of force if he can get away with it. More importantly, there's three factors that influence how the Bay villains think of him:
1) The PRT likes to keep the Tinker-y aspects of his power limitations under wraps, so it's not exactly well-known that he needs to spend time on his pawns to make them truly useful.
2) By contrast, it IS well known that Chessman is not a Striker. That is, he can start empowering his pawns from a distance. How far a distance is a matter for debate.
3) After he decided to troll Uber and Leet a little (with permission...) one of his common tactics was revealed and well-publicized: Pawns can carry other pawns. So Chessman will often have a couple of pawns animated, but not fully-grown, transport other pawns by hand or in a case to another location. Whereupon he will start animating those pawns.
And that third point is the big one. Chessman's existence is a nice, paranoid stick to poke the gangs with, because it's impossible to know how many pawns he might have hidden around the city, just waiting to be suddenly activated. It's a bluff, but when the consequence of calling that bluff may or may not be a tank suddenly bursting through the water main under your base, it is a pretty good bluff.
The end result is that, on average, gangs in Brockton Bay adapted their tactics to favor shorter engagements and preferably, guerilla-style hit-and-runs. Larger-scale or drawn out battles are exactly the sort of thing Chessman loves to interrupt, since it does take him time to get his pawns fully grown and animated.
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Mandabar
Waifu of choice is Rem. Give that girl some hugs!
- Location
- Florida, USA [Yes. Florida *FacePalm*]
Much appreciated! I know I've totally dropped reading that SB thread. *shudders*
I don't suppose this needs to be threadmarked or FAQ linked in the index post?
CaesriusPolybius
Worldgate Mechanic
- Location
- United States. Ish.
Holy crap delegation QA. THANK YOU!
esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
Pathfinder's grappling rules are really close to coherent! Honest!
Unseelie
(Verified True Fae)
- Location
- Tír fo Thuinn
Somewhat. I've never seen anyone play Pathfinder with minis though.
esotericist
A Weary Hand
- Location
- Lacey, WA
Given the absolutely absurd number of physical grid-bearing objects for sale in the Paizo store, I have to assume a great many people do.
Me, I do it digitally, but hey. That's how I role.
i'm not sorry
StatelessGem
Bane of the Iron Lords
Okay then.
Two things.
1) This may be a little nitpicky but you should at least consider a small Tinker rating if activly working on his little figurines improves them
2) Imagine the field day (AKA someone make an omake) if Danny joined LEET AND UBER. XD
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
So, Taylor still has the potential to actually trigger here, but given Ammy is her patron... It's far more likely that Ammy hijacked the shit out of that. Which would explain the celestial brush stuff when Taylor's painting... but that could also just be Ammy doing her thing, as Taylor really doesn't need to actually be doing any of it herself.
Honestly, the only thing that would prove Taylor actually has any abilities is if she does them without Ammy present.
Honestly, the only thing that would prove Taylor actually has any abilities is if she does them without Ammy present.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And now my head-Danny is played by Donald Sutherland. Beard possibly inspired by Armsmaster.
Zanji117
Blood Wolf
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
Ironically I see that power as another piece of evidence of him being a less than stellar father. You need to model and play with your figures to make our power work? There's no better father-daughter bonding than some wholesome modeling hobby and there's modeling for quite literally any taste under the sun so he could have found something to play alongside Taylor.
That, plus the cooking incident makes me think that when the reveal occurs Taylor won't take it easy, no matter how deep the explanations go.
That, plus the cooking incident makes me think that when the reveal occurs Taylor won't take it easy, no matter how deep the explanations go.
What I'm gathering from this is "Danny and Taylor spend the evening at home, painting minis" inevitably turns into a super powered A-Team Montage.
CaesriusPolybius
Worldgate Mechanic
- Location
- United States. Ish.
Also a bit nitpicky, but that would be a trump rating, not tinker - power improvement falls squarely as Trump, while tinkers are their own special type of bullshit.
NemiTheNen
Perpetual Phone Poster
So what you're saying is that the PRT better be giving him die cast tinker pieces made from Tinker Tech material that he should be working on for the day he goes to fight an Endbringer.
Some of the expensive Aleph Imports have been Ogre.
Danny has to fuck around with a lot of games to find the rules that work the best for which pieces.
Danny probably plays a good chunk of GURPS until he finds a better fit.
GLORIOUS
- Location
- West Michigan
The pun works both ways!
US explicitly stated that the power doesn't work if someone else (e.g. Taylor) does the painting.
Vox De Harlequin
Consequences are for other people
- Location
- Hyalean Theoric World
Screw die cast, I'm sure there's a transformers P&P floating around somewhere, and tinkers can make fully articulated figurines.
All the best fun I've always had with transformers toys was learning all the ins and outs of the actual transformation, so that thought has me kinda salivating over here...
Even better if they if they came in DIY kits...
Kindfragen
Reluctant Assistant
- Location
- Zone 1
Agreement: Our family has a thing for transformers. My brother and I more so than our mother.
Assurance: Your suggestion is beautiful and we like it, but some things (Unicron, Galvatron, Thunderwing, etc.) are not meant to be trifled with. Besides, rules are required.