Alternate Starting Lone Wolf Grandmaster Rules

[johntfs]

I recently replayed the LW GM series with a Lone Wolf I took through the Kai and Magnakai books and used the "hidden loyalty bonuses." I still hate it. While they may have strengths and weakness, figure all GMs should start as relative equals aside from what they carry and how the RNT shook out. Meanwhile, the "hidden loyal bonuses" made 3-4 Grandmaster disciplines partly or mostly useless. Grand Huntmastery, it's good for climbing and agility, but with Huntmastery you can already get Meals even in a wasteland. Deliverance? Curing already restores 1 EP per non-combat section from ALL forms of Endurance Loss and I can also do the "Restore 20 EP if I really need it in Combat." Kai-surge is more useful against certain opponents, but I can do the +3cs Mind-blast/+6 CS, -1 EP per round) with Psi-surge. Grand Weaponmastery is basically a joke. Really? I get +5 CS starting with 2 Weapons and can add more as I go? I already have +4 CS in all Weapons. With Bows or thrown Weapons/objects, that's a +5. I didn't even bother picking it up on this run.

So in these rules, take your character from the Magnakai adventures and adjust his base CS and EP to reflect the completion of the Magnakai quest (if you had a CS of 19 and an EP of 33 at the end of The Masters of Darkness but hadn't completed the Circle of the Spirit, do that and raise your CS to 22 and your EP to 36. Now, subtract 1 from your adjusted EP and add 10 to your basic CS. That gives you a CS of 32 and an EP of 35 to start the Grand Master adventures.

You don't get any "hidden loyalty bonuses" except for the part of Curing that lets you heal 1 EP for every non-combat section go through. That bonus applies to "veteran" Lone Wolves and "beginners" because there's honestly no realistic chance you'll make it through the GM books without it.

The items you can carry over from earlier adventures is also altered. You can no longer take the Silver Helmet, Silver Bracers or Kagonite Chainmail into the LW GM series. Presumably Lone Wolf gave them out to other Kai Lords and Masters who aren't carrying super-god weapons.

Don't whine. You still can keep the Sommerswerd and its +8 CS along with Helshezag and the Silver Bow of Duadon.

[Nym90]

My house rule for what happens if you choose to reroll your stats upon entering the GM series is that you keep everything (items as per the permitted Special Items list, discipline and lore circle bonuses, etc.) but you simply now have a different number for your base CS and EP, not adding anything additional to your scores. So the decision of whether to reroll or not just comes down to whether you think you can improve upon your initial scores, with the risk that you might end up with lower numbers.

Otherwise I think keeping a legacy character into the GM series is pretty well balanced and doesn't really need tweaking.

I think the "add 25 to your CS roll and add 20 to your EP roll" is intended for new players only, not legacy players who reroll. You may notice that if you have Psi-Surge (6 points CS), Weaponmastery (4 points CS), and all Lore Circles (5 points CS), that adds up to 15 points (plus the 10 points that new players normally add). Probably not a coincidence; Joe was simply trying to get new players "caught up" to where a legacy player would be. Likewise for endurance, you would add 11 points to your EP score if you had all the Lore Circles, which is pretty close to the 10 extra points new players get.

[johntfs]

Jul 23, 2018 16:32:30 GMT Nym90 said:

My house rule for what happens if you choose to reroll your stats upon entering the GM series is that you keep everything (items as per the permitted Special Items list, discipline and lore circle bonuses, etc.) but you simply now have a different number for your base CS and EP, not adding anything additional to your scores. So the decision of whether to reroll or not just comes down to whether you think you can improve upon your initial scores, with the risk that you might end up with lower numbers.

Otherwise I think keeping a legacy character into the GM series is pretty well balanced and doesn't really need tweaking.

I think the "add 25 to your CS roll and add 20 to your EP roll" is intended for new players only, not legacy players who reroll. You may notice that if you have Psi-Surge (6 points CS), Weaponmastery (4 points CS), and all Lore Circles (5 points CS), that adds up to 15 points (plus the 10 points that new players normally add). Probably not a coincidence; Joe was simply trying to get new players "caught up" to where a legacy player would be. Likewise for endurance, you would add 11 points to your EP score if you had all the Lore Circles, which is pretty close to the 10 extra points new players get.

I get it. I understand what Joe Dever was doing. I just dislike the way he chose to do it. A veteran Lone Wolf going into the GM series has a base CS of 15-24 and a base EP of 31-40. Assuming he's armed, he adds +4 to his CS. Assuming he carries in all the Special Items that modify his CS and EP scores, his CS without Grand Weaponmastery in an appropriate Weapon ranges from 34-43 while his EP ranges from 33-42. This also means that at any given time 4 of his 12 Special Item slots are occupied by these items. 6 if you assume he carries the Silver Bow and a Quiver.

Meanwhile, a "fresh" Lone Wolf has a base CS ranging from 25-34 with an EP from 30-39. It just doesn't work for me that a veteran Lone Wolf with no equipment has a CS 10 points lower than the fresh guy (albeit with an EP 1 point higher). So, that's why a made the change that I did. I wanted the only real difference between veteran and "fresh" Lone Wolves to be their equipment. No "hidden loyalty bonuses." No real need to make sure you get every last item in the LW Basic and Magnakai series so you can compete in the GM series. Everyone gets their Curing bonus. Veteran Lone Wolves get to keep a few of their most iconic and useful items (the Sommerswerd, Silver Bow, etc.) but not every last item, especially the Silver Bracer and Kagonite Chainmail, which were pretty obvious only there in Book 12 to help give a boost to the theoretical newbie who decide to start in Book 12).