Topic: Chi Speed balance?

[Old Man]

Hi all,

After seeing Chi Speed in "action" in the past several melees I've run, I wonder if the -5 per cumulative round to "maintain" the Speed may be too little? (ROCO IV used -10 or -20 per iirc and I know some found that a bit much as well.)

Thoughts? Have any of you modified the skill?

Regards,
Old Man

[Thom @ ICE]

I have not had that experience, but Chi skills were never common in my games or were generally used at lower levels only where they really are not very effective.

Consider a character with 10 ranks and a +10 stat bonus for a +60 total.
They spend 1 round preparing and are only successful 60% of the time (40% failure).  They then get to act with Chi Speed for 1 round. The next round if they wish to continue they have a 45% chance of failure (which is a cumulative 33% chance of succeeding both rolls). By the 3rd and 4th round the total chance of success for 4 consecutive rounds is only 7%.

Another example, consider a 10th level monk character so he has a +20 for his professional abilities with 20 ranks for +70 (because beyond that it's hard to justify spending DP's for +1 bonus per DP).  Give him +20 for Stats because the player pushes for maxing out the stats and is at +10/+10.  Total is a +110. He can Chi Speed for 3 rounds without concern (other than fumble) but by round 7 he's at 20% chance of failure and his cumulative failure chance is down to 58%.  By round 10 he's at 65% chance of individual round success and 20% chance of cumulative success.

In HARP it's about High Adventure so by 10th level you want your character to do some great things, and this kind of benefit should work well though I wouldn't count on it all of the time because it needs that extra roll to continue every round. 

Using a 10% reduction...  First example would be down to 30% individual roll - rd 4- and 4% cumulative success.   Second example would be down to 20% individual  - rd 10 - and 0.4% cumulative.   The 5% reduction feels much more High Adventure to me.

[Old Man]

Interesting. I guess perhaps player in my game is good at maxing out his skill set (my players are long time Rolemaster/HERO players and are good at that). He is 5th level and bought 15 ranks in Speed (because we've long since learned Speed is life in RM) - 60 + 22 (stats) + 20 (talents - Mental Resolve and Inner Strength - hmmm, would you allow those to stack??).

Anyhoo, +102, he makes the roll 95% of time (barring fumble) and makes 2nd round 95% (102-5+1d100) and 3rd round etc ...

So he can do a goodly number of rounds of speed relative to anything ... Thoughts? Is there a mistake in there that we missed? (being HARP novices here)

[Thom @ ICE]

Those talents can be stacked.
+22 Stats indicates an average of 101 for those 2 stats.
That's  101/101,   102/96,   103/91,  104/86, or 105/81
Anything above 100 is by definition at an ultimate level.  This guy is either one of the quickest individuals in the entire world, or they have the greatest level of Self-Discipline.  Nothing wrong with that, but when they reach that level you need to expect that they'll be doing miraculous things.

His bonus would be +102, +97, +92, +87, +82, etc.
Up until 5th round his chance of maintaining the speed is pretty high (82% for a cum rate of 66%), but by round 8 it has dropped off to 67% (cum rate of 24%).

Nothing wrong with anything there...

[Old Man]

Btw, two 95s and Gryphon as race:

Qu   95   9   4      13
SD   95   9   0      9

[Thom @ ICE]

I forgot about the racial bonus.

The balance remains.... feel free to adjust as you wish, but the -5 cumulative does fit with the rest of the game, and allows characters to achieve some incredible things.

[Old Man]

...
The balance remains.... feel free to adjust as you wish, but the -5 cumulative does fit with the rest of the game, and allows characters to achieve some incredible things.

KK. Any other opinions? (Not to disparage but I only have a sample of 1 here. )

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

Mental Resolve has been deleted from the new College of Magics. Inner Strength now gives +10 to all chi skills for 20 DPs.

That should cool things down just a bit.

Best wishes,
Nicholas