Biata and stone elf mental abilities and tags

Mike Ventrella

Mike Ventrella

Paragon
Other chapters are making tags for the new mental abilities, and at first I said "We have too many tags as it is" but the more I think about it, the more I agree it will help.

After all, now if you try to use your skills and someone challenges you to prove you can, you have to pull out the Rule Book (to check the skill's requirements) and your character card and compare the two.

So there are now tags for biata and stone elves that list all the mental abilities in order from weakest to strongest. When you check in, you can pick one up, and logistics will tear off the tag accordingly, leaving the sklls you can do. You should probably lamenate it with tape or something, since you will keep this tag for a while (until you are a higher level with more racial skills and can get the next mental ability).

I think this should simplify things; that way if another player or a marshal asks whether you really do have the skill, all you have to do is pull out one tag.
 
Did you happen to make a tag to give to someone who has an ability performed on them? Something listing the Performer of the ability, the ability and racial skill level of it, and the Recipient of the ability would be great. Maybe make them in pink, like the racial abilities.

The details of big mental changes would have to be remembered by the recipient, obviously, but having a tag to refer to, if someone tries to alter the change, would be a big help to the use of the ability. Having a marshall sign the tag after reviewing the performers racial stats would also help assure that someone doesn't say that a Trap was put in their head at Racial level 20, when it was actually only racial level 10, or similar things.
 
Telokh_Amdo said:
Did you happen to make a tag to give to someone who has an ability performed on them? Something listing the Performer of the ability, the ability and racial skill level of it, and the Recipient of the ability would be great. Maybe make them in pink, like the racial abilities.

The details of big mental changes would have to be remembered by the recipient, obviously, but having a tag to refer to, if someone tries to alter the change, would be a big help to the use of the ability. Having a marshall sign the tag after reviewing the performers racial stats would also help assure that someone doesn't say that a Trap was put in their head at Racial level 20, when it was actually only racial level 10, or similar things.
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Not a bad idea. I guess it would have to be a kind of generic tag, where you fill in the thing done, the player who did it, and your racial level...
 
The tag should fit on a ring, so not a weapon tag. Something like the lab/forge tags that are read sideways. Enough room for 3 lines on the tag that way.

First line is performer of the ability. Second line is the name of the ability and it's racial skill level. Third line is the recipient.

Marshall can verify the racial skill level and sign the tag at the opposite end from the hole punch.

Something like this (Please forgive my paltry skills with Paint):
mentalabilitytag.png
 
Nice Idea!

I'll have to remember picking a few up for my biata's Mind Reading and Mind Meld abilities.
 
Just a thought, shouldn't it also include somewhere the name of the ability used? Or could that just go on the back? P.S. This is cool.
 
Dreamingfurther said:
Just a thought, shouldn't it also include somewhere the name of the ability used? Or could that just go on the back? P.S. This is cool.
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The middle line of the tag is labelled "Ability/Racial Level".
 
I am for killing trees as much as the next guy, but is this really nessesary? Its entierly RP based, and completly deniable after its been done, so whats the point of taging it? I'm not against it, I just don't see the point. It all strikes me as unnesseary complication, expecialy scince it isnt going to be consistent from chapter to chapter.

If someone wants to be a lamer about the mental stuff there is nothing in the rules that stops them from looking at the tag, deciding nah i didnt realise he had that many racials/i changed my mind/i just like to screw with people/etc and tearing it up and saying "it went away".

I personaly think there are other things about the tag system which need improoving before we add another tag to the mix.

--bill

PS: i am aware that its not a lot of paper as there arnt that many characters with these ppowers, and the tree bit was a joke, not part of my main point.
 
Well the original tags as proposed are just a way to confirm skills without having to pull out the book and your character card. The person requesting the information gets the exact same information either way; it's just quicker with a tag.

The tag Mike proposed is just a way to remember what was done at what level in case it becomes an issue later on. If someone wants to roleplay removing a block, for instance, you have to know the racial skill level of the person who placed the block, and a year later you could have easily forgotten.

Both of these tags, in my opinion, simplify things rather than complicate them.
 
Wouldn't it make the most sense just to put it on a character card? Only times per day skills have tags currently. You don't give someone blacksmith, alchemy or craftsman tags, you put them on the character card. It's no more troublesome to pull out your character card or your tags. You're supposed to have both on you at all times.

Scott
 
Duke Frost said:
Wouldn't it make the most sense just to put it on a character card? Only times per day skills have tags currently. You don't give someone blacksmith, alchemy or craftsman tags, you put them on the character card. It's no more troublesome to pull out your character card or your tags. You're supposed to have both on you at all times.
Scott
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Fearless Leader said:
Well the original tags as proposed are just a way to confirm skills without having to pull out the book and your character card. The person requesting the information gets the exact same information either way; it's just quicker with a tag.

The tag Mike proposed is just a way to remember what was done at what level in case it becomes an issue later on. If someone wants to roleplay removing a block, for instance, you have to know the racial skill level of the person who placed the block, and a year later you could have easily forgotten.

Both of these tags, in my opinion, simplify things rather than complicate them.
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/agree w/ scott for using entry on charater card. Also, I guess a tag with each erned mental skill wouldnt hurt so diging up a rule book (incase you donrt have it memorised) wouldnt be a bad idea. laminate it, treat it like a MI tag. I just thought handing people tags for the mental rp skills used was silly.
--bill
 
I had never suggested handing over tags every time you used this skill. I even mentioned laminating them. I was treating this more like a spell book, which lists which spells you can do, and doesn't get changed very often.

It was just a quick way to say "See? I have the skill to Remove a Block" with a quick look at the tag ring, as opposed to looking at your character card and going "See? I have five Resist Charms and seven Break Charms, so that gives me a racial skill level of 12. I'm 10th level. Now let's get out the Rule Book. Let's see, which page has the skills? Oh here it is. As you can see, you only need to be 6th level and have two racial skills to do a Block, so that means I can do this."

Now if we can add a section onto a character card that says which racial skills can be done by the person that's fine, but it seems like that would take even more work. (Although writing on your character card that you have a Block placed in you from racial skill 12 is not a bad idea and would be fairly easy, in which case Mike's suggested tag may be unnecessary). I could be wrong though; I'm no programmer. Is it possible to make a program in the database that could check every biata and stone elf's level and racial skills and then list what mental abilities they could do? If so, that would be cool.
 
Altering the database for this is overkill IMHO. A tag much like a spellbook is really all that's needed to keep track of what you can and can't do.

The other tag is just to keep track of what was done to whom and at what racial level.
 
Isn't there a notes section on the character card? Why not just use that? With a separate tag or a character card you still have to figure out what skills a person has. The skills will also change, and could change fairly often for a younger character, so you might be printing out this "spellbook" fairly often. You have to print out a character card every event, so why not just add it to notes, and then it's there forever. Spell books are on separate cards because they are items and stealable. The casters tree is on the character card. Mental abilities are much more akin to a spell tree than a spell book. And why make someone carry an extra tag around with them?

Scott
 
I'm fine either way. I am just trying to prevent having to go through six steps to prove you can do the ability.

I agree at least that it's a good idea to place effects on the character on the character card in the notes section. "Block placed by Character X at level 12" is all you really need. I can't imagine that many characters would have more than one racial thing on them at a time anyway.
 
Telokh_Amdo said:
Altering the database for this is overkill IMHO. A tag much like a spellbook is really all that's needed to keep track of what you can and can't do.

The other tag is just to keep track of what was done to whom and at what racial level.
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It WAS thought of for the new log database- part of the reason the database now calculates your "racial skill level" under the racial section was so it could use the info to generate a mind-ability card you could print out if you wanted to. But people thought, as you say, it was overkill and something that could be done like a spellbook if a chapter wanted.

You wouldn't even have to cross out abilities on the spellbook-like rep - just make a single "book" with all the abilities and their level/racial skill requirement next to it and then compare it to the character card for level/racial skill to see if they can do it. A reference of all abilities for a given race- not a hard/fast list unique to each character. Then a character can just keep the same reference forever and as their character card changes and grows they just match their level and skill level to the abilities they want to do (they don't even have to add their racials together anymore since the database will do that for them ... ya know, in case they're horrible at math lol).

Frankly I was going to make my own personal reference for this and keep it where I keep the biata-alphabet cheat-sheet I carry (a small laminated alphabet on my OOG tag ring).
 
Personally Not being one of the races concerned I would like to receive a tag if someone places a block or trap in my mind that way I don't have to remember at what level racial it was put on me because even if the person placing it is there when it comes into question who is to say that the persons racial level didn't change.
 
The notes section in the database doesn't print on the card. The biggest reason to NOT put these abilities on the character card is that there are 10 Stone Elf and 14 Biata Abilities. There are some players/characters that won't have room for that many extra skills on their card. The Racial Skills are already on the card and a small spellbook-style tag can be used as an on-hand refernence tp compare to the racial skills to see what can and can't be done.

We have had tags in the past for who was bitten by a werewolf/vampire, who received a certain cure, and other things. None of these was entered on the character card so there is a precedent for using a tag to keep track of a lingering effect. Anything done with a mental ability can be considered a lingering effect.
 
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