Topic: Wednesday - Power vs Resistance

[Thom @ ICE]

In Rolemaster, there are 6 different types of resistance (7 counting fatigue).
In HARP, there are 3.


In Rolemaster there are 2 "power development" skills.   Body Development, Power Development
In HARP there are 2 "power development" skills. Endurance, Power Point Development


This got me thinking....    (And I know RM does this a little bit)


Why shouldn't your resistance weaken as your "power" skills weaken?
Create 3 main Power/Resistance skills
* Stamina
* Willpower
* Mystical Energy


All 3 can be developed.
All 3 can be reduced.
Resistance rolls are done against each one.


Stamina -
As you are receive concussion hits, your stamina is decreased.  At the same time, if you receive a blow that causes a stun result, in HARP you get a resistance roll but if you've been beaten on heavily or if you are new to the fight - the resistance roll is the same.   Why not use the Stamina as both your Hits and your Resistance, therefore as you get injured more, your resistance becomes less?


Willpower -
Same concept, but now you can get attacked mentally (either by magic or psi powers) and they can do damage to your willpower. 


Mystical Energy (generally referred to as Power Points) -
Same thing.  When you are strong and full of energy you can resist magic better than when you have spent your energies.


Main objection I see is Mystical Energy or Willpower in regards to resistance are often because they have the anti- version of that power.  Instead of free-flow of Mana, they completely block it - well I don't see that as an issue.  That's just their power level.  Whether they use it for manipulating or resisting is tied to their power level.


When any of the 3 power levels reach 0, the individual becomes incapacitated.


Just a thought....

[Witchking20k]

This kind of links right in to your "defence" roll thread.  In systems that use an Active Defence you can easily weaken a foes resistance.  I can't recall if d6 penalizes your dice pool for defence when you are injured....

Now, I am not a huge fan of it; but, if you are playing with changing combat to a skill vs. skill: you are somewhat obligated to at least look at the same for Magic & Poison/Disease.

[Thom @ ICE]

There is a method to my madness....

[Witchking20k]

Somewhere deep within...there is method

[tbigness]

This seems to put in way too many factors. In the case of Mystical defense every non-caster is crippled unless paying a hefty cost for PP development.

[Thom @ ICE]

True - if you use the RM costing model (or even the HARP costing model - though to a lesser extent) but the two concepts I am highlighting is 1 - the use of the power points to indicate the resistance level and 2 - the concept of 3 primary power skills, and enough impact to any one of the 3 could incapacitate you.


The costing model is already something I want to address, but not enough mapped out yet to discuss.

[tbigness]

Then this would be essentially a DP dump in addition to all the other skills that a character has to get in order to function. I find that it is hard enough to get decent amount of needed player skills let alone skills to flesh out a character (history, Lores, Languages, Driving, sailing, ect) to make a PC non-generic cookie cutter just to be playable. Most characters look similar due to min/maxing. I have to encourage these enough to make them playable in my world. More things to dump DP's into that are not part of this is more of a waist to me.

[Thom @ ICE]

In Rolemaster you have Body Development and Power Point Development, so this is only one more skill to develop (Willpower Development).


In HARP you have Endurance, Power Point Development, and you also have skills in Resist Magic, Resist Stamina and Resist Willpower.


In Rolemaster you rely on Talents to improve your Resistances as you go up in levels, but otherwise it doesn't change much (except the same way that improving your stats helps them). 


In HARP you develop 5 different skills, or at least 3 for resistance.


So calling this a DP dump is not accurate.  If you want to improve your resistance in RM you buy talents, in HARP you buy resistance, in this proposal you buy the skill (similar to HARP) but it helps you with power and resistance - therefore it is a 2 for 1 deal.


If you prefer not having your barbarian enhance their mystical power because it is against their character concept - then don't do it. Spend more on Stamina and Willpower, and then in battle race headlong to ensure that mage dies before they can cast a spell on you.    But if you want your character to be resistant to magic, then you get that benefit also without spending any DP on learning spells.


Finally, look at HARP.  In Battle if you get hit with a major blow you roll a resistance against Stamina to avoid Stun.
But after being hit 10x in a row, your Resistance roll is still basically the same....  however using this concept, every wound you get makes you more likely to get taken down by that next hit.

[jdale]

In Rolemaster you have Body Development and Power Point Development, so this is only one more skill to develop (Willpower Development).

Casters develop PP heavily but may only buy BD every few levels at best. Arms characters almost never buy PP. Functionally, I think increasing the value of these skills means that characters will buy them more, and therefore they will require more DP (unless the costs are lowered sufficiently).

It does seem like you lose the archetype of the sturdy, resistant, non-magic-using character though.

[Cory Magel]

My first thought is that having more than one 'number' contribute to your abilities helps keep you from getting beat down too fast.  When you combine them you increase the rate at which you become ineffective, which results in a fairly major power shift in how the overall balance.  You speed up the rate of attrition so to speak.  Separate things out and you slow it down (so long as the same action isn't causing both to decrease at once).

So if your 'resistance' weakens because your 'power' weakens one factor is applying to two abilities and will make life difficult for the victim quicker (and vice versa).  That not necessarily bad depending on your objective, but you need to keep it in mind.

Personally I like the fact that someone who is being tortured, but has an iron will, will never give up their secrets.  For that to happen those things need to remain mostly separate.

[Thom @ ICE]

Cory  - Just to clarify -
In your example, assuming physical torture, the stamina would decrease, and they may pass out - but their willpower would be separate.


If the torture was mental, then it would slowly reduce their willpower, and eventually they would fail that resistance.  If somehow they continued to resist until their willpower hit 0, then effective their mind shuts down and while they may be awake - they would have suffered a complete mental breakdown.


As for the weakening power, weakening resistance, leading to a potential downwards spiral... well, isn't that what happens?    Think about it from a physical standpoint.  In battle as you take more and more of a beating your body is less able to deliver damage (frenzies notwithstanding).




jdale -
Yes, some additional DP needs to go into PP, WP, and Stamina regardless of your focused profession (as a general comment), though you will have a base level standard based upon your race so it is still a DP choice and not mandatory.   Coming from the HARP background, I also tend to forget that RM costs are significantly more (especially for Arms users buying ranks in PP development).  In HARP the costs are a lot closer, and Endurance and the Resistances are favored for every profession, so it would just be a matter of moving PP in there also.


As for the "sturdy, resistant, non-magic-using character".... I disagree.  They can still be non-magic-using, but spend DP in PP to cover their resistance.  A mage who invests a lot of DP into Body Development (or Endurance) does not automatically have to engage in melee.

[tbigness]

I don't see this concept work well for the RMSS/FRP systems due to DP cost on either side of the Stamina/Mystical stats. The cost is severe dependent on class.

[jdale]

Cory  - Just to clarify -
In your example, assuming physical torture, the stamina would decrease, and they may pass out - but their willpower would be separate.

If the torture was mental, then it would slowly reduce their willpower, and eventually they would fail that resistance.  If somehow they continued to resist until their willpower hit 0, then effective their mind shuts down and while they may be awake - they would have suffered a complete mental breakdown.

As for the weakening power, weakening resistance, leading to a potential downwards spiral... well, isn't that what happens?    Think about it from a physical standpoint.  In battle as you take more and more of a beating your body is less able to deliver damage (frenzies notwithstanding).

For the specific idea of torture, I don't think the rules should model the all-too-prevalent idea that any information-gathering problem can be solved by torture, you just have to set aside your morals. It's not at all realistic, but is used to justify that setting aside of morality. (I'm looking at you, 24.)

To an extent you could handle it by saying once willpower gets low enough, they are no longer able to even provide coherent, meaningful responses. But it still seems iffy, since before that they will pass through a period of very low resistance.

As for the "sturdy, resistant, non-magic-using character".... I disagree.  They can still be non-magic-using, but spend DP in PP to cover their resistance.  A mage who invests a lot of DP into Body Development (or Endurance) does not automatically have to engage in melee.

They will also gain any other benefits of PP, e.g. if the party acquires a PP-powered item, the anti-magic guy will be very effective at using it (especially because he doesn't have anything else to use his PP on). They will also be a great source of PP if you have spells for tapping that power / draining people. (Such spells also become more powerful, since they are now also piling up penalties on future RRs.) Neither trait fits the archetype well.

On the flip side, since the character already has a motivation to buy PP, the cost of picking up spells is now lower.

Not saying the rule couldn't work, but it does change the metaphysics and will change how characters develop.

[Thom @ ICE]

Good points across the board.


Costs are definitely something to carefully look at.
As for the PP associated items and spells - will need to review those also, as they would definitely need a modification.
An individual with high power/resistance to magic should not make them a power source - though they could become a conduit for it (having a kind of internal insulation against the magic itself.

[pyrotech]

A less elegant method would be to assign penalties at fractional levels.  -20 at 1/2, -40 at 1/4 or something like that.  This still ties the RR to the stat but doesn't encourage people to develop them as much for metagaming reasons. 

It seems like an ugly compromise to me.  I don't know if it would satisfy people or not.

regards,

[Thom @ ICE]

Unfortunately that adds a layer of complexity which I want to avoid.
Every player would have their 3 Power Stats available and being tracked so they don't need to convert anything.
The fact that the resistance is tied to the power automatically reduces the likelihood of a failed resistance roll for a high power guy.  If they do lose some power it's not a percentage of their power that they are losing, it's an actual value so that value should translate 1:1 into a penalty to their resistance, instead of being adjusted based upon the % of the total it represents.  That would be double-dipping.

[Cory Magel]

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do it, just that you need to keep in mind the impact on the game and be ok with that impact.  It's not always going to work out that taking one thing and turning it into two will cause effectiveness to decrease quicker.  It might actually help.  It all depends on what your toying around with.

Concussion Hits and Exhaustion Points is kind of a good example.  You take penalties for decreasing Hits and you take penalties for decreasing Exhaustion.  In that particular situation using both increased the rate at which the character became ineffective as opposed to those of us who just tossed Exhaustion Points out the window.  By using or not using one or the other you increase or decrease the length of time the character remains standing.

Stamina -
As you are receive concussion hits, your stamina is decreased.  At the same time, if you receive a blow that causes a stun result, in HARP you get a resistance roll but if you've been beaten on heavily or if you are new to the fight - the resistance roll is the same.   Why not use the Stamina as both your Hits and your Resistance, therefore as you get injured more, your resistance becomes less?

In this situation, you're giving more penalties to the resistance roll to the character who has taken more damage.  That's going to cause a faster drop off in effectiveness.  The more you get beat up, the less you resist, so the quicker you succumb.  It's simply a matter of if that's what you want.  If you're writing a new game system you can account for that up front, but if you're implementing it into an existing game you're changing the balancing relationship between the damage and the resistance.  Again, you and your players might like the result.

[tbigness]

I think the standard RR at LVL of the character and creature is solid enough. This adds a complexity that will make a rewrite for all characters and creatures in the system. This is already somewhat the course for Harp I believe but for RM this takes things to a new challenge to keep track of as if the multiple spreadsheets I use are not enough already with Hits, PP, Encumbrance, Exhaustion, penalties due to the previous category wear and tear along the way. This is very encumbering to keep track of.

[Thom @ ICE]

Cory,
Yes - these questions are all completely for something separate from HARP or RM.  Pretty much for myself personally, unless it fleshes our really good then I'll talk to the powers that be about it.
As for Exhaustion - that won't be included - so Stamina power/resistance would also be reduced by extended marches, exceeding carrying capacity or extreme exertion.

[Thom @ ICE]

tbigness -
As I just stated to Cory - new system, so rewrite is not an issue. 
By the way - in HARP you don't get bonus RR skill ranks each level automatically, it's just almost always done (at least until you hit 20 ranks, then the issue of ROI comes into play). 
Stamina, PP, Willpower - that's what you would track
Encumbrance and Exhaustion go away and get folded into Stamina.