Proposals for new Virtues

**Philadelphus** Mon Oct 28, 2013 3:24 am

We don't really have a thread dedicated to proposals for new Virtues, so I went ahead and made one. Post your ideas for new Virtues here.
That being said, I personally feel that Virtues/Elements are (or at least should be) somewhat "special," so I wouldn't recommend adopting new ones willy-nilly. Only the really good ideas should get in.

**Philadelphus** Mon Oct 28, 2013 4:07 am

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Patience
You can pass any skill check if you take X minutes, where X is the skill check's DC. You cannot have magic points.

Courage
When performing a skill check, if the DC is 30 or above. You gain a +3 bonus to that skill check. This bonus increases by +2 for each 5DC above 30. You cannot have magic points.

Temperance
Whenever you are effected by a mind-altering effect, you can immediately roll to get rid of the effect with a +5 bonus. You cannot have magic points.

Faith
Whenever an ally performs a skill check, you can make an assist roll for that skill check, even if you normally would not be able to. You cannot have magic points.

Hope - Magic
Whenever an ally fails a skill check, you can have them reroll the skill check with a +10 bonus.

Not exactly sure how I could add Forgiveness....

Now, my personal thoughts on these:
Patience: I know it's not useful in situations under pressure, but I could see it being a problem in other situations. You can, with no chance of failure, perform a DC 60 check in an hour – something that would normally require a really high roll and several Magic Points to accomplish. Or imagine the following exchange:
"What's the DC to dismantle this stone wall we've tried everything else to get through piece by piece with my bare hooves?"
"Uh...200?"
"Ok, that'll take me...3 hours, 20 minutes. The rest of you go do something plot relevant and meet me back here then."
High DCs are tools for GMs to limit what can and can't be done, what is and isn't possible. This kinda breaks probability with an "anything is possible given enough time" deal.

Courage: This one doesn't have potentially game-breaking consequences that I can see, but it doesn't seem all that exciting to me either. If the DC is 35, you'd need to have a 12 in a skill to achieve it even on a natural 20. If the DC increase to 40, you'd need to have 15 in that skill. And for a DC of 45 you'd need a base of 18. Those are really high bases for skills, and that's still only a 5% chance of getting them. Generally super-high DCs like that tend to be for really important things, in my experience, and somewhat rare. I'd personally rather have the Magic Point so I could just throw it on top of a good roll as necessary.

Temperance: This one has similar problems to the original version of Loyalty: mind-affecting effects are extremely variable in how much and how often they show up in campaigns. Some GMs make use of them and this might be a useful Virtue in those campaigns. Some GMs hardly use them at all, and it would be pretty much useless in those campaigns. With utility talents I think it's fine to make something that might be useful only in some campaigns, but I personally feel that a Virtue should strive to be useful in as wide a range of campaign settings as possible.

In terms of the effects themselves, it seems a bit lackluster. A +5 bonus for a one-time chance to throw of a mind-affecting effect? What if you fail on your check? Then your Virtue hasn't helped you at all and you don't get any second chances, nor have a Magic Point available to try to throw on top of it. The old Loyalty at least gave you a certainty of removing the effect without having to rely on luck (and an immunity to new ones with the new Laughter).

Faith: This one kinda seems underpowered to me. Most people only have a +2 assist bonus, so at most you'd be able to add that much to an ally's roll (maybe +4 with the right racial, still not super high). And it's only different from a normal assist check if you're out of contact with an ally (which brings up the question of how, in-character, you would know that said ally needs assistance). It's basically the opportunity to make an assist check to possibly add a +2 or +4 bonus to the roll of an ally when you're separated. Sure, I can see situations where it could be useful, but they just don't seem numerous enough to really warrant it. I'd say it's certainly not worth losing the ability to have Magic Points.

Hope: Ok, I can see how this might come into play in certain circumstances, but if they fail by less than 10, why not just chuck your Magic Point on top of their roll? And if they fail by more than 10, get someone else to throw in another one, rather than spend a Magic Point and risk them rolling low twice in a row.

Overall, there's nothing wrong with several of these (Courage, Faith, and Hope in particular), they just don't seem very exciting. Not like the ability to turn any hostile creature friendly, or compel someone to give you three truthful answers. I'm not saying passive Virtues can't work (we already have a few after all), I just find them more boring compared to active ones like the Elements.

ZamuelNow Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:18 pm

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Patience
You can pass any skill check if you take X minutes, where X is the skill check's DC. You cannot have magic points.

While the current structure seems subject to abuse, I think this is the most interesting out of the set proposed. Rather than an auto-complete, it might work better as a way to reduce a DC based on time used. Done that way, you could still keep your Magic Point since it would fuel the Virtue's usage. Preparation time alteration is one of the parts of Magecraft I really felt could stand to be made available to all since it's a concept that works for other things. This reminds me of a different yet somewhat parallel Element/Virtue suggestion I had a while back.

Inspiration - Magic
One of your or an ally's talents may be performed with half the preparation time.

It could potentially have a more speed/velocity focused name and there was at least one suggestion to make it Instantaneous instead of half time. I'm on the fence about that suggestion since some utilities get a little scary if you can just toss them out at will.

Elsewhere I saw an interesting mechanic concept though I'm not sure about the name/flavor.

Z2 wrote:Trust - Magic
Harmony requires more than an individual
Allow target ally you can see use of your utilities and/or attributes as if they were their own for one hour (X/day, X/session abilities draw from the same pool of uses for both players).

Fury of the Tempest Mon Oct 28, 2013 3:53 pm

Okay... how about this for a few changes?

Patience
You can reduce the DC of a skill check by X by taking X minutes. X can not be bigger than 60. (You cannot have magic points)

Taking into account what was said, instead of having an instant success, you instead lower the DC, and have a limit to how much time you can spend. Of course, there is several ways to tweak this, by having a limit to how low the DC can be reduced to (which means low level DC's can't be effected at all) or whenever or not you can have magic points.

Courage
When performing a skill check, if the DC is 30 or above. You gain a +5 bonus to that skill check. This bonus increases by +5 for each 5DC above 30. You cannot have magic points

Remember the Heart of Courage Racial? This is basically it, buffed so you perform better at higher checks. Not sure how exciting that is though, I like the concept of it, but I'm unsure of how to implement it... could always tweak the numbers so you keep the magic points.

Faith
Whenever an ally performs a skill check, you can make an assist roll for that skill check, even if you normally would not be able to

Not exactly exciting, but a very solid ability all-round. A potential +2 or +4 to each roll is powerful, especially now it doesn't require a magic point.

Hope
If an ally you see fails to succeed in a skill check, they can reroll the skill check with a +2 bonus. This can only be applied once to the same skill check. You cannot have magic points.

A 50/50 ability. Its possible to roll lower and still fail, but you do have a higher chance with the +2 bonus, plus it can be applied to multipule rolls now, instead of just one. Seems like an equal trade to me, perhaps to much.

Xel Unknown Mon Oct 28, 2013 6:00 pm

Personally I don't like the idea that most virtues go the whole "magic drain" mechanic thing. It's cool for the few ones we got. But maybe let's try to be more that don't just remove all magic points just cause.

Though that take 20 one does worrent a magic drain.

**Philadelphus** Tue Oct 29, 2013 5:40 am

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Patience
You can reduce the DC of a skill check by X by taking X minutes. X can not be bigger than 60. (You cannot have magic points)

Taking into account what was said, instead of having an instant success, you instead lower the DC, and have a limit to how much time you can spend. Of course, there is several ways to tweak this, by having a limit to how low the DC can be reduced to (which means low level DC's can't be effected at all) or whenever or not you can have magic points.

Well, giving it a limit is definitely a step in the right direction I think. What if we re-worded it so that it gave a bonus rather than decreased the DC? (Because if the DC itself is decreasing, can other people make a check at the new decreased DC?) Also, a +60 is still really really strong. It's also a bit boring if the rest of the party has to sit around for an hour while you work your magic.

What if it went something like "By taking 10 minutes to perform a skill check (where possible) you gain a +10 bonus to the check. You cannot have Magic Points." That's actually still really powerful because it basically lets you use a Magic Point multiple times per day as long as you're not under stress...just throwing out ideas here. I know it's supposed to be "patience," but I'm afraid anything that requires (and encourages) you to take extra time on stuff will tend to slow games down.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Courage
When performing a skill check, if the DC is 30 or above. You gain a +5 bonus to that skill check. This bonus increases by +5 for each 5DC above 30. You cannot have magic points

Remember the Heart of Courage Racial? This is basically it, buffed so you perform better at higher checks. Not sure how exciting that is though, I like the concept of it, but I'm unsure of how to implement it... could always tweak the numbers so you keep the magic points.

This one's...interesting. It basically means that you never have to make more than 25 on a skill check to succeed.
See, if the DC is 30, you get a +5 bonus, so you only need to get 25 in order to pass. If the DC goes up to 35, your bonus also goes by 5, so you have a +10 bonus and you still only need to get 25. And so on and so forth, you'd always only have to get 25 to pass. The problem I can see with that is that any challenge become a mere DC25 if done by the person with Courage, so naturally they'll be the one to do every challenge with everyone else standing by to assist them and throw Magic Points on as needed.

Maybe if you tweak the additional bonus to a small number like +3, so you get a higher bonus as the DC goes up, but not so high that it keeps pace...I'll have to think about it some more.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Faith
Whenever an ally performs a skill check, you can make an assist roll for that skill check, even if you normally would not be able to

Not exactly exciting, but a very solid ability all-round. A potential +2 or +4 to each roll is powerful, especially now it doesn't require a magic point.

Not exactly exciting, but I could actually maybe see this one working. The only possible problem is the potential of extra assist rolls slowing down the game, but...it might work. Maybe even add something to the effect that you can spend your Magic Point to help an ally even if you can't see them. That would make it more exciting. And maybe add something about always knowing when an ally is making a skill-check in-character, just to make it clear.

Fury of the Tempest wrote:Hope
If an ally you see fails to succeed in a skill check, they can reroll the skill check with a +2 bonus. This can only be applied once to the same skill check. You cannot have magic points.

A 50/50 ability. Its possible to roll lower and still fail, but you do have a higher chance with the +2 bonus, plus it can be applied to multiple rolls now, instead of just one. Seems like an equal trade to me, perhaps to much.

I have to say, the ability to re-roll any failed check is pretty strong. We have the Stubbornness racial that costs 3 racial points and only lets you do it three times per day. Giving up Magic Points is a small price to pay when you can give anyone you can see a second chance. Here's an idea: a Magic talent that lets you take a failed skill check and turn it into a critical success. That would be really powerful, and it's different from anything we have in the system at the moment.
Just some more thoughts, these are already starting to look better.

Fury of the Tempest Tue Oct 29, 2013 7:13 am

Thoughts

Patience:

Courage:

Faith:

Hope:

**LoganAura** Tue Oct 29, 2013 7:20 am

Fury: For Hope, rewards for Failure have very often been declined because people could just toss dice for things like setting fire to the moon until they activate Hope enough times to do it.

Faith in my eyes sort of breaks the tie between Roleplay and Gameplay, since your character knows they're rolling a skill check. Fits for people who take the Metagamer destiny, but not much else.

Patience... I would complain about it taking too long, but then I thought about It's Witchcraft/Magecraft and the fact you can get a +10 for spending a day on something. Yeah.

Courage: Honestly, being able to get a 5+3X Bonus where X is every DC rank over 35 can get a bit absurd. I made the DCs for some things that one of my players in AoH2.0 want to do somewhere in the 150 because he was a novice, barrier-specializing magician trying to mess with mind-altering magics.
120= 23 ranks over dc 35
5+3(23)=5+69= +74 bonus (Before accounting for his +18 arcana and any other bonuses they've had.). Something normally only possible with a ton of magic points. Yes this is an absurd instance, but... Things still happen.

Fury of the Tempest Tue Oct 29, 2013 7:29 am

LoganAura wrote:Fury: For Hope, rewards for Failure have very often been declined because people could just toss dice for things like setting fire to the moon until they activate Hope enough times to do it.

Patience... I would complain about it taking too long, but then I thought about It's Witchcraft/Magecraft and the fact you can get a +10 for spending a day on something. Yeah.

Courage: Honestly, being able to get a 5+3X Bonus where X is every DC rank over 35 can get a bit absurd. I made the DCs for some things that one of my players in AoH2.0 want to do somewhere in the 150 because he was a novice, barrier-specializing magician trying to mess with mind-altering magics.
120= 23 ranks over dc 35
5+3(23)=5+69= +74 bonus. Something normally only possible with a ton of magic points. Yes this is an absurd instance, but... Things still happen.

Hope, have it for a non-harmful check that they they could of succeed on. Problem soled.

So, is Patience actually being too quick, is that what your saying?

Courage, +74 bonus? Okay. 120-74 = 46. So they still need to get a total of 46, which usually doesn't happen without magic points. Extreme example, yeah. But its kinda what courage is designed to do. To make the impossible, possible. Because really, without 5/6's useage of Generoisty's, a DC 120 wouldn't ever be possible. Courage gives you the chance to do so.

**LoganAura** Tue Oct 29, 2013 7:40 am

A lot of get-stuff-for-failing can be broken just by purposefully failing Skill checks.

Patience, my comment was more that I didn't have any real complaint since I'm not a good balance dude+ Magecraft can go longer.

For courage.... *Shrug* Might be better to wait for dev's opinion. I'm not the best.

Fury of the Tempest Tue Oct 29, 2013 7:44 am

... If people start purposefully failing skill-checks, then the DM punishes them. HARD.

We shouldn't stop a potential of talents/virtues just because they can possibly be abused by jerks.

**LoganAura** Tue Oct 29, 2013 8:06 am

Dan's previously put the hammer down, multiple times as a developer, on things that become better when they're failed.

Fury of the Tempest Tue Oct 29, 2013 8:32 am

... I get it already! I'll have to be careful about the wording!

Z2 Tue Oct 29, 2013 6:21 pm

https://ponytales.forumotion.com/t478-the-lost-elements-of-harmony

I'll just leave this here for now. I'll retool some of them later.

I will say that of those, I have seen only Hope used regularly. It is far LESS broken in practice than I might have worried.

Sacrifice in particular might need a nerf.

Xel Unknown Tue Oct 29, 2013 6:38 pm

Z2 means the Hope v2 thing... Cause that one is quite fun I must say.

ZamuelNow Wed Oct 30, 2013 12:57 pm

Z2 wrote:https://ponytales.forumotion.com/t478-the-lost-elements-of-harmony

I find Trust and Sacrifice the most interesting out of the list. Though it really feels like they are the type of Virtues you have to carefully structure your whole build around and in some cases explicitly coordinate with the rest of the team. Sacrifice seems like it might be the one of the two more subject to abuse since a player can take a dud power as a way to fuel something an ally has.

Fury of the Tempest Wed Oct 30, 2013 1:03 pm

Any more thoughts/opinions on the latest editions of my proposals?

ZamuelNow Tue Nov 12, 2013 2:18 am

Mildly disappointing this just died out and there was so little cross-poster critique.

Fury of the Tempest Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:05 am

I'm not very good at critique... I could give it a go, but I'm much better at putting ideas down instead of critiquing other ideas.

ZamuelNow Wed Nov 13, 2013 1:49 pm

As long as people are respectful, I don't see "not being good at critique" as a major issue since it's still an opinion. It's better to speak up now than let things linger.

Fury of the Tempest Wed Nov 13, 2013 5:25 pm

Okay then. I'll put my thought on the Lost Elements...

As there the only actual elements put down. I'll also put down the newest versions of my suggestions.

Love makes more sense to be turned into a magic drain ability that gives you several gifts of love a day imo... and conceptually, I suppose it can work. However, I can't help but think that this might work just as well as an alternative version of generosity, as they are both about helping teammates with skill checks.

Trust... It makes sense, but just something about sharing such abilities makes me a little... cautious. Especially as you can share it with anyone. Up to three times a day with the right build... and it will work badly with new ability system. Giving someone something like the 'Nine Lives' ability would be broken as hell.

Hope... I prefer my idea better.

Sacrifice is just... off to me. I remember that Generoisty was decided not to be giving someone else a magic point for a reason, and this does it and more. So I really, really don't like it.

Progress... Helps you tackle one big task, once. And you actually want a smaller roll on the first two times than last. If you get 20, 20, 1, your gonna be screwed. If you get 1, 1, 20 though, you'll likely do well... I just don't like it, its too much of a gamble to me.

Finally. Inspiration... uh... yeah.... with the right build, it can again be used three times a day. That's without using something like Sacrifice to give you their 2 magic points... and a 'goal' can be very loosely defined... so I see a lot of potential for abuse here.

Paitence:

Courage:

Faith:

As for my Hope... I know what I want here, I want Hope to be able to get something positive from failures, as Hope is more powerful the darker the times are.... but I'm not sure how to implement it. Any suggestions?

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