Unfortunately, White Wolf seems to have thought Gunslinger was a great idea, because in a WoD book released soon after, they put in something much worse. Legend of the Five Rings did this, as did Shadowrun. It’s amazing how many systems miss the significance of having an extra attack when everyone else only has one. If you’re building a gunfighter, there is no other merit in the book that will benefit you half as much. The amount of damage a character with Gunslinger can inflict is frightening. A mild penalty is slapped on, 1-3 dice depending on other abilities, so it isn’t quite doubling your firepower, but it’s pretty close. This three point merit lets your character make a second attack with their off hand pistol. In the World of Darkness, it’s one attack, always. It isn’t like Dungeons and Dragons where attacks scale with level. In the Storytelling system, characters only get one attack per round. A little cheesy, but what’s the harm? It must be remembered that the New World of Darkness operates on the Storytelling system. This merit allows your character to fire two pistols at once. Merits include social benefits like Allies and Resources, but they also cover physical and mental abilities that don’t fit as a skill or attribute.įor the most part, these merits provide your character with a minor ability or small edge they wouldn’t otherwise have. New World of Darkness changed up a few things, including doing away with backgrounds and replacing them with something called “ merits“. Gunslinger, The World of DarknessĪfter that little flashback, it’s time to examine more recent additions to White Wolf’s lineup. It also gave a few miscellaneous bonuses like erasing security footage and covering up tracks, just to rub salt in the wound. If you were playing a detective and trying to track someone who had Arcane, you’d be at a huge disadvantage with no way to make up the difference. There was no corresponding bonus for detection skills. If you made a character with both Arcane and Stealth, you would have a master ninja to whom sneaking up and tying the President’s shoe laces in knots would be a breeze. If you wanted to make a sneaky character, Arcane was more efficient than the skill meant for that exact purpose. Adding insult to injury, it was cheaper to raise with starting points than the actual Stealth skill. In some cases, Arcane would count twice on a single roll. Not only did you add Arcane to all Stealth skill rolls, but you subtracted it from opposing Perception or Investigation skill rolls. One rank would make the character easy to overlook, while five ranks made them practically non-existent. It didn’t actually make them invisible, but people found it hard to concentrate on them. This background represented the mage’s ability to slip around unnoticed. Old World of Darkness character sheets had a spot on them for something called “ backgrounds.” Most of these were benefits like Allies or Resources, things your character had that existed outside their actual stats. It also had one of the most broken abilities to ever grace the genre. It introduce a revolutionary free-form magic system and a setting so rich that many groups are still using it today. That book was Mage: The Ascension, and it would forever change the way people thought about roleplaying games. Macedonia was admitted into the UN, the European Union was created, and White Wolf Publishing put out a book about pretending to be a wizard. Arcane, Mage: The Ascensionįor our first entry, we have to take a trip in the Wayback Machine to 1993. Unfortunately, the World of Darkness has some of the most overpowered abilities available in gaming. Even in a narrative heavy game like White Wolf’s The World of Darkness (WoD), keeping abilities on the same level is important. Those who don’t take them end up feeling discouraged because their characters are so much less capable. If one power is much stronger than others of the same cost, you feel pressured to take it because you want your character to be effective. Overpowered abilities are bad for roleplaying games because they unbalance play. How you decide that can be tricky, but it usually boils down to an ability being stronger than other powers of the same cost or level. Three ranks in Forces Magic granting you the ability to call down lightning bolts would be over powered if three ranks in Matter Magic only let you turn water into salty water. In gaming, an ability is defined as overpowered if it is more powerful than it should be.
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