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Post by Racebred on Mar 21, 2005 10:24:40 GMT
hi all, i'm writing this qn from memory, so if there's any factual error pls correct me, but the idea is still there.
Now, if you play the books from 1-20, you start off with a RNT+10 for CS and a RNT+20 for EP.
At the end of book 12, going into book 13, you carry over all your CS and EP.
However a player new to the series starting at 13 will get RNT + 25 for CS and RNT + 30 for EP. This will put them in a better starting position than the regular faithful player wouldnt it?
RNT + 10, plus lore circles bonuses plus (is there this rule in magnakai or it's only for the GM series?)1 CS for every completed book, dont think will get you through the 15CS deficit you get hit if you're not a new player.
only with sommerswerd +8 and whatever bronin thing you are allowed to carry over, will the odds turn to your favour again.
Now, if the player hasnt bought book 2 but chooses to port over this CS from 12 to 13, he would be in a worse off position wouldnt he?
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Post by Oiseau on Mar 21, 2005 12:02:56 GMT
Yeah. The CS +25 in Books 13+ is meant to compensate for the "givens" of the previous 12 books, namely the Sommerswerd (+8), the Silver Helm (+2) and the Lore-Circles (+5). As for the Shield (+2), it's no longer part of the Grand Master Special Items (for whatever reason). That's the 15-point difference.
It's kind of assumed that Lone Wolf, starting a new "series" as in Book 13, has lived through all 12 previous books. If you haven't, you're better off just playing 13, and not carrying over from 12.
Which, of course, does nothing to save you from the insane difficulty of Book 13 and its sequels, wherein the average citadel guard could have taken down Haakon with one hand behind his back, and you get to fight happy CS=50 creatures at every turn. Better choose your four Disciplines reaaaally well. There's basically no wiggle room for preferences, unless you want to hand over your fate to random-number rolls.
But that's another rant entirely. ;D
The Oiseau
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Post by outspaced on Mar 21, 2005 12:48:41 GMT
In addition to Oiseau's excellent post, there's also the fact that you get the Discipline "loyalty bonuses", so you get +4 Weaponmastery bonus (for Scion-kai and above; cf. www.projectaon.org/xhtml/lw/11tpot/imprvdsc.htm ) on top of the 15 points Oiseau mentioned! You're actually 2 or 3 columns better off starting from Book 1.
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Post by Vonotar on Mar 21, 2005 14:53:47 GMT
In the same way, the Curing and Psi-Surge loyalty bonuses when you reach Archmaster are very helpful. Archmaster Curing makes Deliverance largely irrelevant, and you also get to restore +1EP per numbered section from the basic discipline, which is always handy.
Kai-surge isn't quite so readily dispensible, but you can certainly do without it for the first few books if you have Archmaster Psi-surge.
Picking the optimal GM disciplines then becomes that much easier, thanks to the fact that you can manage without both Grand Weaponmastery and Deliverance, and to a lesser extent, Kai-surge.
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Post by Racebred on Mar 22, 2005 4:11:16 GMT
i thought the +4 weaponmastery is overridden by the +5cs of grand weaponmastery? these bonuses are replaced rather than added on right?
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Post by Black Cat on Mar 22, 2005 4:23:00 GMT
i thought the +4 weaponmastery is overridden by the +5cs of grand weaponmastery? these bonuses are replaced rather than added on right? I wrote about that in another thread: replacing the Magnakai disciplines by their GM counterparts instead of adding both bonuses will make a veteran player weaker by book 20 than a rookie that doesn't replace his GM bonuses. My own interpretation is to add my Magnakai bonus to my GM one so that it can be fair.
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Post by Oiseau on Mar 22, 2005 4:59:43 GMT
I don't see how that's possible. At the beginning of Book 13, the rookie and the veteran are equal in combat stats. The only difference is, the veteran owes this to items (Sommerswerd, Silver Helm) and Lore-Circles, whereas the rookie benefits from the same scores, added to his starting Combat Skill (in a way, they compensate for the absence of the Sommerswerd and other items).
Then, GM Discipline bonuses are added in both cases, replacing the loyalty bonuses as they go. In the end (Book 20), veteran and rookie can both expect to fight Kektakaag with CS = 54 (in the best-case scenario of picking an initial 9 when determining CS).
The veteran has one advantage : Book 12 and the extra items therein (Bronin Vest, Silver Bracers) which yield an extra +5 CS. The rookie is never compensated for these points, although the enemy stats seem to prove Joe Dever included them as "givens".
Therefore, the rookie should get +30 at the start of Book 13, and not +25 ! ;D
If you start adding GM bonuses to Magnakai bonuses, you obtain an extra 10 CS points which skew everything in favor of Lone Wolf by a long shot. I understand that Books 13+ were never fairly balanced (hell, that started back in Book 8 with the Vordaks), but still !...
Jeez, these explanations get complicated ....
The Oiseau
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Post by outspaced on Mar 22, 2005 9:47:42 GMT
i thought the +4 weaponmastery is overridden by the +5cs of grand weaponmastery? these bonuses are replaced rather than added on right? Yes, it is. But if you enter the GM series from the Magnakai series, you get to use your Weaponmastery bonus even without picking Grand Weaponmastery. Once you pick GW, your CS bonus hops up by 1 from +4 to +5. But if you start from Book 13, you don't get to make use of the +4 Weaponmastery bonus, and you only get a weapon bonus once you pick Grand Weaponmastery--a straight +5 CS.
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Post by Relenoir on Mar 22, 2005 12:32:08 GMT
I wrote about that in another thread: replacing the Magnakai disciplines by their GM counterparts instead of adding both bonuses will make a veteran player weaker by book 20 than a rookie that doesn't replace his GM bonuses. My own interpretation is to add my Magnakai bonus to my GM one so that it can be fair. I used to do that until I read in a Dever interview that I wasn't supposed to. Made ZK, CM, and DI much easier in the old days. . . moves you over a column in the Magnakai books and 2 or 3 against Ixy! @ Oiseau: Look out!!! There's a Black Cat perched above your last post, it's ready to pounce on you! Couldn't resist the irony!
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Post by Black Cat on Mar 22, 2005 18:01:03 GMT
@ Oiseau: Look out!!! There's a Black Cat perched above your last post, it's ready to pounce on you! Couldn't resist the irony! ;DGood one! Ok, here's the copy of the explanation of my point that I made in the "Psi-surge in GM series" thread projectaon.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=general&thread=1095118812&action=display&start=0After thinking about it all day long (and a good part of last night in my bed ), I figured out that you need to ADD the bonuses of the Magnakai disciplines to the ones of the Grand Master series, contrarily to what the Rules Handbook says. Here's why: in the Magnakai series, you add 10 to the number you picked on the Random Number Table (in this case, let's say a 9). After playing all the Magnakai books, you gained 5 CS points from the Lorecircles, 6 CS points from the Kai-Surge with the rank of Archmaster, and 4 CS from the Weaponmastery with the rank of Scion-Kai, for a total of 34 CS. You have to transfer this score from the Magnakai series to the Grand Master series in book 13 as it is said at the beginning of it. Someone who starts directly with book 13 has to decide his CS score. He adds 25 to the number picked on the RNT (in this case, let's say 9 again). He doesn't have any loyalty bonus, so he starts with a basic 34 CS. Now, both players has to add bonuses from the Grand Master's disciplines. In the case of the player who played all the previous books, he has to replace the bonus granted by the Magnakai discipline by the bonus from it's Grand Master's equivalent, as said by the Rules Handbook. So, if he picks the Grand Weaponmastery discipline and the Kai-Surge, he substracts the previous Magnakai bonuses (6 and 4) from his CS score and then adds 5 and 8. 34-(6+4)+5+8=37 The player who starts with book 13 and picks the same disciplines doesn't have any bonus to replace, so if he picks the same discipline of Kai-Surge and Grand Weaponmastery, he has a CS of 47. Whoah! What happened to my loyalty bonus? I have 10 CS points less than the rookie has! I agree that you have to replace the Kai disciplines by their Magnakai equivalent when transfering from book 5 to book 6, but when tranfering from book 12 to book 13, you have to add them together. You can say that the 10 points difference can be compensate by all the goodies that Lone Wolf collected during his previous adventures, but the Sommerswerd (+8 CS) is the only thing that Lone Wolf is sure to bring in the Grand Master series since all the other items have to be found by taking a special route, which means that not everybody will find them. So, even with the Sommerswerd, you are still 2 CS points lower than the rookie.
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Post by Sol on Mar 22, 2005 22:04:48 GMT
I think that Joe Dever is pretty clear that you shouldn't stack, but I always do! I have this idea that Joe became very Anti-Munchkin in his later days and when some shmoe came up and said,
NerdBoy Fan: Mr. Dever, Your Honour, I can add all my points from WS, WM, and GWM together for a nice, fat, +19 Sommerswerd, right Mr. Dever, your Highness?
Joe: NO WAY YOU FRIGGIN MUNCHKIN! +19?? ISN'T A FRIGGIN +8 SWORD GOOD ENOUGH! May the world hear me, stacking isn't allowed!
----- Unfortunately, I think that Joe started to have nightmares about the +19 Sommerswerd coming to get him, and this is why he wrote all later opponents with such sickeningly high stats.
I also have the funny feeling that Joe originally meant for this stacking to happen, but changed his mind when the horror of so many plusses made him feel like a munchkin-enabler - that would be just wrong.
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Post by Racebred on Mar 23, 2005 3:58:12 GMT
when i first played the books as a child, the weapons bonus steadily increasing from +2 to +3 to +4 to +5 already made more sense to me than adding all of them up, and thats how i played it. it's simply a case of LW slowly getting more and more proficient in his weapons wielding skills.
also you notice his CS deficit when unarmed slowly decreases 1 by 1 to 0 by the time he's a GM. one doesnt stack the -4 to a -3 to a -2 to a -1 and end up getting killed by a giak when you're a mighty but unarmed archmaster.
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andyr
Kai Lord
Posts: 122
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Post by andyr on Mar 23, 2005 4:00:12 GMT
But in his "later days", the books get more and more munchkin... I have played the series 1-20 stacking like a madman (excepting for Psychic combat disciplines and Healing and Curing) and the fights still feel pretty balanced!! You get your good times of scaringly low EP, and those lovely big guys who send you to -4 or lower on the combat resolution table... May be it is a coincidence, but if you stack +5 from Lorecircles, +4 from Weaponmastery, +2 from Weaponskill! and +4 from each mastered Grand Master Disicpline (that's clearly disallowed, it is for the disciplines past the initial 4), you get an straight 25 to add to your CS roll! That's quite a bit of a coincidence. EP are off-kilter, nevertheless. They are at 20 + 11 only with Lorecircles, if the mastered disciplines were to be considered, they would be RNT + 18!!! I guess Dever tried to achieve some balance there, but it also seems to me that he was doing his little maths with a Sommerswerded LW in mind!, that's why he gave such hefty bonus to newbie CS. But it makes the gameplay a bit bizarre... Only items can compensate... I think that +15 CS and +30 EP (that is, your LW base stats + half, which almost matches Lore-Circle advancement) would have been more fair. Only then can be one accused of munchkinism for stacking disciplines!
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Post by snfcn on Mar 23, 2005 15:27:01 GMT
The veteran has one advantage : Book 12 and the extra items therein (Bronin Vest, Silver Bracers) which yield an extra +5 CS. The rookie is never compensated for these points, although the enemy stats seem to prove Joe Dever included them as "givens". Oiseau: You have forgotten a certain item you get in book 20 if you don't have the Sommerswerd. In the end, when you are Kai Supreme Master, you should theoretically have equal CS provided you possess all the items. But to be fair: The rookie lacks these 5 points in the seven books before TCON.
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Post by Relenoir on Mar 24, 2005 2:37:27 GMT
But to be fair: The rookie lacks these 5 points in the seven books before TCON. BUT has to fight Ixy with the same CS as if you had the Sommerswerd.
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