Jon Chung
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The point of making a unified system for all character subtypes to engage in Downtime Activity is that all the players would be engaged in downtime activity that played off each other. Much like characters work together in combat to overcome a foe, the characters work together in Downtime to enhance each other with synergy effects. The magical trade group buys raw material for the magic cannon and the magic temple, the magic temple produces magical energy which can be used to fuel the cannon and as bribes for the spy network in local spirit courts, the magical spy network steals information which allows the trade network and army to operate with less risk and more reward, the magical army protects the trade network and temple to allow them to operate smoothly and produce better rewards and the magical cannon makes the army more efficient at its job while keeping the local spirit courts from interfering with the temple.
If you design the system right, there is no such thing as a "Decker problem" as all the players will be engaged in the system since they can all contribute to each other. If players refuse to participate... well, no game system can solve that. If only one player spends any XP on combat skills and the other players just play Pokemon on their gameboys while you run through a hour long duel with the Dawn then the Dawn is the Decker in this situation.
This would require you to mandate that everyone purchase a useful even mix of downtime/not-downtime skills so everyone has something to do in either state, which while it would work, is not what I was talking about, which was specifically Craft being a special snowflake of badness compared to almost every other build in the normal state of things when it comes to decker problems.
If we aren't working in such an assumed background framework, I'm therefore still obligated to murder Craft.
And I don't really think that Craft was very bloated. Craft had, what... ten Charms in 2e compared to how many Melee Charms? If we're cutting down on Craft bloat I also want to cut down on Melee bloat and Socialize bloat. Players should be able to invest just as deeply into Craft as into Melee and get just as much fun out of it as a result.
You're forgetting the multiple redundant abilities you had to max out because apparently it's harder to make different kinds of stuff than it is to wield every melee weapon in existence with equal skill, heh. And ten charms is far too many.
Like I said on the previous page (check the edit), severing most of this bullshit, separating design and construction stages, compacting the physical construction crafting charms to a short and concise tree and tying the design phase / magical crafting to magical spells allows me to take all this otherwise completely wasted experience and let the dude use it on buying stuff* he can actually use when playing the game with the rest of the group as well as expanding his magic widget crafting library for buffing said group.
*assumption being we aren't paying full XP for Unconquerable Self like rubes
Of course, in my ideal game players would be unable to dump everything into a single Charm tree. You'd be forced to spend resources on at least one combat tree, one social tree, one downtime tree and so on. I'm not certain how to handle it, but I wouldn't want a 10 Melee Charms vs 10 Craft Charms character.
Fair, but see above.
No, the effects could be as standardized as having a daiklave. You just balanced them around the idea that a daiklave was a daiklave and a Snake Stylist was a Snake Stylist. I had some fluff about unique traits of the user serving as exotic training methods, but that's just fluff and has no more mechanical balance then "Only a Solar may forge this three dot daiklave of Does Aggravated Damage to Zombies"
Hmm. OK, but why would you do that when you could avoid having to balance your virtual style item against Lunar, Abyssal, Infernal, Dragon-Blooded, Raksha, Ghost, Dragon King and Spirit Charmsets as well as Solar by doing it the other way?
It actually looks like less work to do one for Solaroids, one for Lunars and one for DBs. I suppose it works either way.
I could say the same thing about, say, defeating a rival. "You could just spend BP on "I defeated Chejop kejak" and move on. The point of the game is to set up entertaining challenges and goals, Jon, not to win.
Uh, the special thing about Sokka's space sword was that it was made of space metal which he got from a space rock. You need to get the space rock. If you're doing this at chargen, you're buying that with BP and telling the GM you forged it into a sword with your Craft dip, which is able to handle making swords.
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