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RE:Some thoughts over Exploit weakness
(Date Posted:02/10/2008 21:52:00)
Though it looks like an old thread, here's me several cents. I never liked the knack either, espec. after adding all the new schools from expansions, plus perhaps a few from the web i liked (Cutty comes to mind). While basing it off of nationality seems a simple fix, it has too many issues such as Sec. Society schools and how you'd learn them if not in them, the differences between say Boucher's 2 knives, Valroux's fast fencing and Musketeer bayoneted musket not having so much in common, it's problematic-though i certainly considered it, say at half your EW dice for same nationality or common origin (i.e. Bonita and Gallegos or Desaix and Valroux or Boucher and Mortis or Aldana and El Punal. Come to think of it, those are the only common origin examples i can think of at all, don't think there are any more. And funny, not all of them give you the discount that Desaix gets, i house-ruled that one long ago ).
I digress, while the averaging method also has its merits, especially if it's free and makes mastering schools cheaper, which is darn expensive if ya ask me, not to mention grand mastering, whew, I think the method i've always tinkered with is what i'll use, as follows...
Keep the EW in your school, or another originally based off your school, as normal and it applies at full dice. It's more a matter of which schools your GM likes and wants to use, the "common 6", extra schools he likes, how much combat he wants in his games, etc. Depending on this, your EW can be very useful, it all depends on your game/storyline and your group.
For a combat style that's similiar to yours, you get 1/2 your EW dice (min.1, round down). By style i mean in broad terms, which makes EW more useful and people won't mind raising it as much, or will even want it. I broke the styles down to: Fencing, Paired fencing, Hvy. weapon, Knife, Unarmed, Firearms, Polearms, Mounted.
I know some of these will seem more common/useful than others and others overlap (say Rois et Raines is Polearms and Firearms), but that is a GM call on a case by case basis, I'd say. And if you don't think your EW is so useful, it's certainly more useful than it was by the basic rules, AND you did choose your school because it appealed to you, be happy and have fun with it, it was your choice, see the positive here and buckle your swash man!, not be griping into your ale ;)
Then there's the house rule of each school having a 5th knack, and then you can raise any 4 you want to gain Mastery, plus some schools seem to scream for another one, it's so obvious, This has the side-benefit of EW not being required to improve your school, and players take it more now because they want to.
Examples include Soldano (Dbl. attack) and Torres (Lunge, it's how they finish bulls off in the end, not being part of a school based on bull-fighting is plain silly, also needed a bit of offensive power too). The problem is, some aren't so obvious (Valroux to Bind with the knife, to open them up for the rapier-or-Riposte for the speed of the school, plus it fits) and all the work to do all this... Not gonna even try to do Crescent or Cathay, too many schools, even with my players helping. Feedback on this one would rock, it could REALLY help me out, someone might see ideas i didn't for which extra knack to include, in all these schools, or help with ones that are stumping me. Probably should post this seperately though.
(Message edited by Don Joaquin on 02/10/2008 22:08:08)
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