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New Virtue: Honor

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Post  Senshuken Sun Nov 05, 2017 1:57 am

Just an idea I was messing around with a couple of people. This is the end result and I wanted to see what the mods thought.

Virtue

Honor- At character creation, the player discusses with the Gm a number of self imposed rules called the 'Code of Honor'. For every rule added to the Code of Honor, the player may add +1 to a skill to a max of 3 rules. If the player performs an action that goes against the spirit of one of the rules without actually breaking it, that will lose the +1 for that rule on their next skill check. If they outright break a rule, the bonus that it used to offer will instead become a -1 until the character performs a task to redeem themselves and earn the bonus back. If a character breaks all rules of their Code of Honor at the same time, they not only will gain the negatives to their rolls, but will also lose access to their magic point until they can restore at least one of the broken rules.

Example: Lime Green takes a vow to be Truthful for a +1 to their persuasion rolls. One of her team mates lies to someone in her presence and she remains quiet about it, betraying the spirit but not the word of her vow, meaning she will lose the +1 bonus from being Truthful next time she rolls persuasion. She herself then lies to someone, breaking the vow completely and turning what was once a bonus into a -1 to persuasion rolls until she can redeem herself and restore her dishonorable action.
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Post  A1C Bronymous Sun Nov 05, 2017 2:29 am

We were discussing this in the Dragon Feud skype chat. It's very roleplay heavy between the DM and the player- determining what opposes a vow or breaks it is up to them, which means it could vary from game to game. This is definitely one of those "up to DM if they want to use it" type of things. I personally like it, because even though its just another skill bonus, it depends on roleplaying to ensure it is upheld.

Of course, we did our best to balance it mechanically anyways, but we all know how that goes...

Also, we'll probably be trying to fill out a few more virtues as well. We have a few other ideas bouncing around.
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Post  AleneShazam Sun Nov 05, 2017 9:32 pm

More Virtues!

Courage
You always know when you or an ally is in a perilous situation, and if you are involved in the situation, exactly what the nature of the threat is so you can quickly respond. You also gain the following ability:

Hold My Beer - Magic
When in a perilous situation, gain +X to all skill checks until the situation is resolved, where X is the number of close allies in danger. This includes PC allies, and NPCs that you know very well.

Example:
Captain Ironhoof of the royal guard and his 5 loyal guardspony are trapped in a rapidly flooding room. Ironhoof determines water must be coming in from an aperture in the walls (passive), and activates Hold My Beer. He then makes a perception check with +5 to find where the aperture is, and informs his party members who work on stemming the water, while he again uses his mighty +5 bonus to buck down the sealed door of the room. The water level quickly recedes, and now that the party is out of immediate danger, Hold My Beer is no longer in effect.

The idea is that Courage will make you the one who initiates action, the one who leads the charge and is the first to rise to the call of duty. However, you are only as good as the support of your allies: someone who goes into danger without back up isn't courageous, they're just plain stupid.
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Post  Paper Shadow Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:19 am

The main problem I have with both of these virtues is that they are both mechanically boring. Boiled down, all they provide is a bonus to skill checks. The problem with stat bonuses is that they make situations less interesting and more of a numbers game, and they encourage min-maxing. Another problem both of these share is that they are both leashed by the DM. You need your DM to allow your Code of Honour, decide if you break it and how to repair it, you need the DM to identify a situation as 'perilous'...

Honour has a few other problems with it too. It's a passive, it's weak as hell, and it forces the entire party to play around it. Being a passive means Honour lacks the initiative and the oppotunity-opening options of the other elements. On that note, despite being an element, Honour basically just gives you a total of +3 divided among skills, with conditions that could cause them to because -1, at the cost of your Element slot. Compare that to pretty much any ability that grants bonuses to stats. Even just basically additional training, two ability points for +3 to one skill. This means Honour is best spent on an already high-stated skill that you have training and whatnot in, ergo min-maxing. More concerning, Honour suffers from the same problem D&D Paladins use to suffer from, that being that, if your party has a paladin in it, get ready to be berated whenever your character strays from the morals of the paladin, 'cus if the paladin doesn't uphold those morals, it suffers a loss of power, as you show the Honour character suffering in your example. The party has to either play to the Honour characters rules as well, or play against the Honour character or behind their back, creating player tension. Mind you, any '-X penalty on your next skill check' can be gamed by just making a pointless skill check to dismiss the penalty...

Meanwhile, Courage treads on the toes of Laughter far too much, converting its shared +2 bonus to a selfish +X bonus, which can range to that small +2 bonus (if you are in a party of three) to a challenge-trivialising, spotlight-hogging +9 (Party of six, with two companions (one being your own because why would you ever not), and two friendly NPCs) and beyond, tempered only by the fact that this bonus is only available whenever the DM decides the situation is 'perilous' enough, which obviously leads to problems of how perilous does a situation have to be to be 'perilous'. Another issue is that perilous situations seem to be a great time for Courage players to make History and Streetwise checks, due to the bonus applying to all checks in a perilous situation...
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Post  AleneShazam Tue Nov 21, 2017 6:03 am

Fair enough - I'll have to admit that courage was pretty much a reskinned laughter to begin with anyway. I had an even earlier version floating around that doesn't involve skill bonuses, let me go dig that out...

Courage - Magic
You can motivate up to six visible creatures to engage in a potentially dangerous course of action, as long as you are willing to head the charge, and this course of action doesn't significantly interfere with their overall goals. (possible statboost for support checks???? Maybe if they're not trained/expert in the skill checks??)

The idea for this courage is to get people to do things they normally won't be willing to, but I'm not sure how to go about achieving that...
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