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Message no. 1
From: nightgyr@*********.com.au (GreyWolf)
Subject: Professor GreyWolf's Question Time: Intelligence and it's
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 23:24:46 +1100
Welcome all.

Id like to begin today's talk by relating the current situation pertaining
to the intelligence stat. it is probably the most important stat a cahracter
can have. It is the most likley stat to be maximised in character creation,
if only for one of the following:

1. It is used to calculate reation
2. it is used to calculate the combat pool
3. It is used to discern how many points of and at what level knowledge and
language skills are posessed by a starting character
4. It is integral to most aspects of magic, determining the spell pool
5. ...and the astral combat pool
6. It is the stat used for perception checks, in fact it IS the perception
stat
7. It determines negotiation TN's
8. It determines any academic active skills maximum reasonable level for a
starting character (eg: computer or biotech)
9. It is used for calculating the hacking pool
10. It seems to be ignored by most players after character creation
including the way the character is played.. after all, most if not every
shadowrunner is a genius, right?

Wrong.

I dont know about you, but in every gmae I have seen, the INT stat is
permennantly set at 6 and this just cant be the way it should work. I now
propose the folowing:

The INT stat is bought as per normal. For each point of INT you buy, you get
4 "points" to spend on the folowing.

1) Combat, Spell, Hacking & Astral Combat Pools
2) Reaction
3) Perception
4) Knowledge Skills & Lanugage Skills

None of the categories can be higher than 1.5 times the INT stat (round
down), and cannot be lower than 0.5 times the INT stat (round up). Thus, a
player who wants his character to have a high perception, but is not worried
about his dice pools being really high could up the perception figure at the
expense of the pools. Or, a player wanting her character to be only a little
dull but very fast could boost reaction at the expense of only a little of
the pools and perception. This will not stop the dedicated munchkin from
dropping the highest available value into intelligence for its "high rate of
return per build point" but will allow players who might otherwise want to
put the points elsewhere to do so.

I would now like to put he idea to the audience. Is this a good idea? Has
anyone used it or a similar arrangement? How did it go?

Feel free to put forward alterations to the basic idea presented above. Any
original ideas are always encouraged and plagerism is frowned upon - so give
credit where it is deserved!

(Professor) GreyWolf




----Addendum: I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Doc' in this
thread. I would also like to say (for the benefit of any paranoid members of
my gaming group) that I will not be using this in my own game at any time in
the near future unless it gets the bugs ironed out - something I hope will
begin to occur in the spin cycle provided by the listmembers.

Further Reading

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