Racial Packages Problem

[feedback]

After Josh mentioned some of the brokeness of the Eodia racial package I went back to the book and noticed that we made some serious errors when creating characters using racial packages.

A racial package's disadvantages count against the character's overall disadvantage total, it does not add to the disadvantage total (pg. 30 under Obtaining a Package Deal).

i.e. our Val and Illryian players are essentially getting free points above and beyond what they should have. Both races should not be getting a disadvantage total of 125, their 25 point racial disadvantages should count towards their 100 point disadvantage limit. This becomes an even bigger problem when you look at the fact that Eodai players will be getting about 50 free points that other non-Eodai players will not have. Just because everyone in a given race has these abilities does not mean that a character should be getting them for free. All abilities still need to be obtained by paying character points.

That being said since 3/4 of the party is affected by this mistake I'm not exactly sure what you wanna do to resolve it. We probably could just let it slide for now so we don't disrupt the flow of the game or people are going to need to gut 25 points out of their respective characters. If you want to make the changes go through at some point one option would be to ignore the mistake for now and let players pay for the additional points with xp that will be gained over the course of the game so no major reconstruction of characters will need to be done at this moment.

So yeah, somebody go double check me on this and correct me if I'm wrong. If not, well... shit.

[dyuman]

ouch

[Duragar]

Crap. Figured that I messed up on those.

Well.... Forcing a respec seems like the most prudent choice, because I was having people work the bugs out of their characters, anyway. I think it's a little bastardly to force people to use exp in the middle of the game to buy off disadvantages, and I'd rather remain accurate to the way the rules build racial packages. Therefore... work on remaking your characters to compensate for this change.

Sorry to do this to you guys, but Hey, you've got another week to do it.

On an unrelated note, I'm not due back until the 6th of July now. My mother requested that I stay another week, and I agreed. I should have game ready for the 7th (this saturday), but I might be jet lagged, so it might be a shorter session than planned, if I need the day to recuperate.

[feedback]

Question. Since we are redoing how racial packages work should I just cut out the free everyman skills that humans get or do I get to keep them as a freeie? On one hand it does seem unfair that now humans are the only ones getting stuff for free, but on the otherhand thats all they have going for them so far. So yeah, ruling please.

On a somewhat related note, what was the official ruling for the multipower point total problem that was being discussed in the official ruling thread?

[dyuman]

Only problem is that Jon is really the only one that can help remake mine and craig's characters since we dont know the character creation mechanics nearly as well. I'd suggest maybe getting together earlier on Saturday to work on it?

[feedback]

I have no problem getting together sometime before the game to help anyone who needs or wants my help with their character. I'm free pretty much all week. Though a ruling on the multipower question would be much appreciated.

Also, any idea or plans on whether or not Scott will be joining us this weekend?

[Pikachu]

I'm done redoing my character. Another thought on racial packages now: whereas the Eodai and Val were examples of some pretty superpowered races, it seems that a racial package that uses up many points will hinder customization of those races. Granted, I don't play the races and it won't hurt me personally, so I'm not trying to make a big deal of this... though I would like to bring the point up to see if people agree with me. I think this warrants a little thought as we all try to get more intimate with this system.

[feedback]

I had a similar thought about how many points the racial packages of some races take up, but I don't think that it will be much of a problem, for our characters at least. Stat changes quite honestly don't have much of an impact as far as the customization of a character. The racial stats are more along the lines of redefining the minimums and maximums that a particular character can have. Looking at the Val's racial package, yes it is a total of 30 pre-allocated points, but the bulk of those points (27) are in stats. Stats can be sold back at full cost though you probably won't want to sell any stat below 0, COM not withstanding. So in reality the Val's racial package is more along the lines of 3 points and it allows you to have higher maximums in some stats while forcing a lower maximum in others.

I think that this is fine for our purposes since none of us are playing races that have a huge racial power total (unless Scott decides to play one of these races). For the most part I think that a lot of those powers look really cool and think they add a lot of flavor to each individual race, but thats probably because I'm not playing one and it's not eating up my points for a potentially useless racial ability.

On another unlrelated note, if you take an average NPC with 8 in every stat and apply the Val's racial package you get a NPC with a whopping INT score of 2. The Val as a whole might have once been the mighty protectors of the realm, but these days your average Val finds his intellectual equal in a 2 year old. Oh how the mighty have fallen. ;D

[Pikachu]

Never underestimate the power of angry tard.

[dyuman]

Rawr.