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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 8, 2014 11:14:53 GMT -5
Hello all,
I have a question about the Mastery of Kung Fu in the Spiderman's Guide. Obviously for this one I'm looking for RAI (Rules as intended) as for the life of me I can't figure something out. It has one option that reads like this:
Can substitute Mastery for Agility or Speed (must be chosen during character creation), only to be used for defense. (+1 to Cost Level)
I'm not sure what the benefit would be to this. According to the main book you can already use any 1 Action or any 1 Attribute (within reason, I suppose) to funnel your stones into your Defense. The only difference is the flavoring of the Defense would be Agility or Speed rather than a defensive karate stance, I suppose. What is the mechanical benefit or purchasing this option? Thoughts?
Edit: Mods, please feel free to move this to the Spiderman's Guide board. Didn't notice it was there.
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Post by Manah on Mar 8, 2014 22:24:06 GMT -5
Honestly seems useless to me, unless you have no other good action to shift into defense, a low Speed and Agility, and a high AN of MoKF. In that case, as you have no other action to use for defense, you substitute the AN of your MoKF to that of your Speed or Agility, and then shift it into defense, for a bigger defense. *Shrugs* It seems like a very context-sensitive-or-otherwise-useless option to me. Almost seems like it was created for one, very specific character concept in mind and no one else.
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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 8, 2014 22:35:11 GMT -5
Thanks for the input! The reason I don't understand it is that I think you already have the option of shifting MoKF into Defense, just not with the Agility or Speed flavorings necessarily. I welcome other people's ideas on this as well.
Another question I had about Master of Kung Fu: Specialties.
Combat Specialties can be added as Options to this Mastery for 1 white stone per Speciality, with a maximum number of Specialties equal to the Action Number.
That part seems to indicate that you have to buy your Specialties separate, but if you look at the end of the book....
"Discounted additional Specialties"
is listed as a feature of MoKF in the Action summary section. Makes me think they may have meant the first part as "1 Wh stone per -additional- specialty over standard."
Any thoughts?
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Post by Manah on Mar 8, 2014 23:12:20 GMT -5
Thanks for the input! The reason I don't understand it is that I think you already have the option of shifting MoKF into Defense, just not with the Agility or Speed flavorings necessarily. I welcome other people's ideas on this as well. Oh, you do already have that option. It's just that if you want to attack at the same time with it, it's always better to shift stones from something else into defense so you can use as many stones as possible from MoKF in your attack. Hence this option (again, only useful if all of your other actions, and your Agility and Speed, are very low AN compared to your MoKf). Afraid I can't help much with that one; I'm honestly not sure what they were going for here. No other single action in any book says you have to pay for Specialties, they just come for free with any action that makes use of them, 1/AN. So I simply ignored this part, gave 1 Specialty per AN to players who'd pick MoKF iny my games, and that was it. Now for the "options", however, that's another story, because they do add new ways to use the action, so I make them pay for those... but Specialties in my opinion should not cost a red stone more than normal, ever. Just my 2 cents.
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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 8, 2014 23:26:50 GMT -5
Aha! Hm. When they say you have a 2 action limit per turn, that doesn't include your attributes, right? So someone could shift both their agility -and- speed to defense, without using an action, thus leaving their MoKF available for offense and still having another action (say acrobatics) left for that turn? Does that sound right?
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Post by Manah on Mar 8, 2014 23:36:23 GMT -5
Wrong. It does include Attributes, as Attributes are what you use when you do not have the Action you'd normally use, or simply choose to use because it'd make sense at the time (ex: If you are running to avoid someone's attack, it'd make sense shifting stones from Speed into defense rather than Acrobatics, although you could use Acrobatics for the same purpose). Anyway, the point is, Attributes do count as an Action, even when they're used all by themselves. So, no. If you use MoKF and Speed or Agility (separately, I mean), you just ran out of actions for that panel. NOTE: The (separately) part I added in the sentence above is important. If you have an Agility bonus included in your MoKF action, then you can use both as a single action, of course. Otherwise, it'd count as two actions.
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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 8, 2014 23:44:52 GMT -5
I see! Well, let's see... think you can shift stones from Intelligence into defense, then? Agility I understand (leap out of the way). Speed (move out of the way). Even durability (brace yourself for hit). I suppose Intelligence could be 'analyze incoming attack and counter'. Hope you don't mind these questions! I'm on a roll.
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Post by Manah on Mar 8, 2014 23:56:29 GMT -5
Definitely. In fact, there are few actions that can't be shifted into defense (they exist though: Technology, Genetic Engineering, etc.). It sometimes depend on the GM, though. And yes, your guess of how to use Intelligence into defense seems accurate to me. Think Sherlock Holmes in the movies.
Another example few people think of is Social Skills. Spider-Man and Deadpool most certainly often shift stones from S.S into defense fairly frequently, explained by "they say things so confusing or annoying the villains start making mistakes and fail to hurt them". I'd expect Johnny Storm to do that too.
One of my characters on the board, River Tam from Firefly/Serenity, recently used her action "Perform (Dancing)" into defense to literally dance 'around the attacks of her foe'. That was pretty cool too.
I don't mind the questions, but soon I'm gonna have to go get some sleep. I work early tomorrow and, time change making my night shorter, gotta go soon. XD
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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 9, 2014 0:02:26 GMT -5
And with that background I understand now why that MoKF option is for exceeeeeedingly limited builds! Builds that have virtually no other legitimate defensive options than MoKF.
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Post by Manah on Mar 9, 2014 0:15:51 GMT -5
Yeah. So its basically useless. As for the rest, it is a very versatile and powerful action. Some would say overpowered. I disagree, although I do increase the base cost in my House rules, making it a base CL= AN+3 action. ^_^
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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 9, 2014 18:43:43 GMT -5
Thanks! This one is only barely related to Mastery of Kung Fu, but say I wanted to make a character that had a kind of Prescience, like...
oh, say, Mantis in the Hulk book: Prescience (total awareness discipline). Or maybe like Cassandra Cain from DC (one of the Batgirls).
Is that something that'd be appropriate for a "non superpowered" martial artist? Keeping in mind that obviously the line between superpowered and nonsuperpowered martial artist characters in comics are, well, super blurred.
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Post by Manah on Mar 9, 2014 19:15:27 GMT -5
I can think of various reasons why it'd be appropriate. Some fairly normal and others far-fetched. But yes, probably.
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Post by karielthornwynd on Mar 9, 2014 23:10:55 GMT -5
Any thoughts on this option for Mastery?
Can substitute Mastery for Strength, only to break things. (+1 to Cost Level)
Presumably that means you can use your Mastery for the Hardness scale in the main book. Think you can apply your Agility mod to that (or combinable actions) or think it should just be your AN?
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Post by Manah on Mar 9, 2014 23:18:01 GMT -5
That means, literally, that you can replace your Strength's AN by your MoKF's AN, but only to break objects. Agility bonus and combinable actions have nothing to do with it.
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Post by WildKnight on Mar 10, 2014 5:38:04 GMT -5
It says nothing about the Hardness scale, it simply says "replace." I would assume that it's just like any other "replace" option from a Mastery, and you can put as many stones into it as you have available up to the AN. It's a lot easier to get an AN 9 Action than it is to get a 9 in an ability. Even assuming you start out at AN 1... 80 LOE isn't as far away as it seems.
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