Physical Skills

For talk about all things Palladium past, present, & future.

Moderators: Immortals, Supreme Beings, Old Ones

Valbarca
D-Bee
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:15 am

Physical Skills

Unread post by Valbarca »

So I've been looking at physical skills.. and I just wanted to check something. Do physical skills still as bonuses to Dragons and other creatures of magic /supernatural creatures?

I know with Nightbane, you add everything to the Facade..then carry over they stats..so technically the physical skill effect them in that sense but it only because of the carry though. If I give the Bane Boxing, does that extra attack go though to the morphus? Or in the case of a Dragon..it also says it has the equivalent of h2h basic +1 for the tattoos..but would he get +1 for the boxing skill?
Valbarca
D-Bee
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:15 am

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Valbarca »

Lol.. I can't work if I just ask stupid questions.. or if people don't want to answer :D

I thought it was a reasonable question...
anakeron
D-Bee
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:04 am

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by anakeron »

according to rue , dragon hatchling skill don't include boxing (secondary skill only) so.. no problem. :).
for the others physical skilld allowed , why not. just use common sense to see if its may be applicable .. for example i will restrict aerobic to humanoid :) but athletic general for a dragon may be justifiable.
User avatar
Proseksword
Adventurer
Posts: 719
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 2:20 pm
Location: Chi-Town, IL
Contact:

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Proseksword »

No reason to think it doesn't. Usually if skill bonuses don't apply, it will indicate it somewhere. Of course, MDC creatures don't gain SDC bonuses, but I think that's pretty obvious & straight-forward.
Valbarca
D-Bee
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:15 am

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Valbarca »

Awesome.. so its a "just use discretionary" thing really.. wasn't going to do it.. just more of a question really. :D
User avatar
Proseksword
Adventurer
Posts: 719
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 2:20 pm
Location: Chi-Town, IL
Contact:

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Proseksword »

Valbarca wrote:Awesome.. so its a "just use discretionary" thing really.. wasn't going to do it.. just more of a question really. :D


Discretion is the better part of the Palladium rules, honestly. If you're coming to Palladium from RPGs with more rigid rules like D&D, you'll find that Kevin Siembieda considers the rules of his games more of a guideline for fun rather than rigid laws. GMs should decide what goes for their tables, no need to worry about what is "official". In general, however, I don't think there's any problem applying any modifiers from physical skills to SN creatures provided their bodies could conceivably benefit from exercise. If, for example, they're living stone or something & can't gain muscle in the natural fashion, I would consider ruling those bonuses unavailable.
RainbowDevil
Explorer
Posts: 103
Joined: Sun May 29, 2016 3:45 am

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by RainbowDevil »

Proseksword wrote:
Valbarca wrote:Awesome.. so its a "just use discretionary" thing really.. wasn't going to do it.. just more of a question really. :D


Discretion is the better part of the Palladium rules, honestly. If you're coming to Palladium from RPGs with more rigid rules like D&D, you'll find that Kevin Siembieda considers the rules of his games more of a guideline for fun rather than rigid laws. GMs should decide what goes for their tables, no need to worry about what is "official". In general, however, I don't think there's any problem applying any modifiers from physical skills to SN creatures provided their bodies could conceivably benefit from exercise. If, for example, they're living stone or something & can't gain muscle in the natural fashion, I would consider ruling those bonuses unavailable.



Except when it comes to alignments. No-one who plays in a Palladium game is ever allowed to use a neutral-aligned character because Kevin says so very clearly. :D
User avatar
Hendrik
Rifter® Contributer
Posts: 868
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:52 am
Comment: What is genius? A Victim OCC (BtS 1st ed, p. 193 ss)! The ultimate hero is a victim conquering adversity.
Location: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OLD EMPIRE

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Hendrik »

I think according to the rules (aside from GM discretion) skills for nightbane all carry over from facade to morphus, unless stated otherwise. You need to keep facade and morphus separate due to (a) different attribute boni (such as especially due to supernatural PS) and (b) because no matter what skill package/training you had in your facade life you will have hth:martial arts. In other game lines, like fantasy, there are no rules I can recall from the top of my head, perhaps something is mentioned in Dragons & Gods or under spell descriptions or under Doppelgaenger or where shapeshifters are mentioned. EDIT: The various Metamorphosis spells give a good idea of what you „take with you“ when you change. I don’t think that should necessarily be canon for Nightbane but it is good food for thought.

Carry over of all skills may not always make sense, ie I think it is legitimate (due to GM discretion in any case but also in general) to ask which skill may not be usable as „the monster“. Some may not be able to talk so skills requiring the ability to talk may not work. With boxing it will depend on the body’s capabilities and how you interpret the boxing skill. Boxing makes you swifter and you know how but also where to hit. Most physical humanoid forms will definitely be able to use it. Even a dragon with that skill knowledge may benefit from it - if perhaps only after a while and having gotten used to his body to be able to translate the advantages of his old training to his new body‘s mechanisms. As proseksword said, discretion works best here.

That said, I also think that „true neutral“ is quite impossible. No human being is without morals or ethics, unless you roll on the mental illness table for the character. Arguably, a psychopath would fit? Isn’t a psychopath amoral? Half joking aside, everyone but a baby makes moral judgements / has ideas about right or wrong and is within a certain ethical concept / alignment (I mean, we align ourselves by answering our ethical dilemmas and by making a deliberate choice act „ethical“). The AD&D „true neutral“ is not neutral either but making moral choices and judging his and others actions. That is not neutral. However, those are philosophical questions and if one feels this is wrong, it is easy to introduce a true neutral alignment. I have just never seen one played true neutral. Players tend to play neutral as (i) switching alignments with a lofty explanation or (ii) by playing aloof. As soon as a person takes a stand/stance he stops being neutral and people do that all the time.
Handouts for Operation Minotaur (BtS Adventure published in RIFTER #83) Get them at the fabulous "House of BtS"![/quote]

May all your hits be crits!
Shark_Force
Palladin
Posts: 7128
Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2009 4:11 pm

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Shark_Force »

Hendrik wrote:That said, I also think that „true neutral“ is quite impossible. No human being is without morals or ethics, unless you roll on the mental illness table for the character. Arguably, a psychopath would fit? Isn’t a psychopath amoral? Half joking aside, everyone but a baby makes moral judgements / has ideas about right or wrong and is within a certain ethical concept / alignment (I mean, we align ourselves by answering our ethical dilemmas and by making a deliberate choice act „ethical“). The AD&D „true neutral“ is not neutral either but making moral choices and judging his and others actions. That is not neutral. However, those are philosophical questions and if one feels this is wrong, it is easy to introduce a true neutral alignment. I have just never seen one played true neutral. Players tend to play neutral as (i) switching alignments with a lofty explanation or (ii) by playing aloof. As soon as a person takes a stand/stance he stops being neutral and people do that all the time.


*none* of the alignments really "make sense". there are 8 alignments, and pretty much zero chance that every single person imaginable fits perfectly into one of them. the idea is simply laughable. the only way it even remotely makes sense is if we presume that when you write down an alignment you're saying you're pretty close to the description of that alignment. at which point... sure, there isn't really something that is *perfectly* true neutral, or at least, it is absurdly unlikely that there are large numbers of beings such that we need an alignment category for it, but there are sure to be plenty of things that are closer to "true neutral" than they are to anything else, which is ultimately the only justification for every other alignment in the palladium system to exist.
User avatar
Hendrik
Rifter® Contributer
Posts: 868
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:52 am
Comment: What is genius? A Victim OCC (BtS 1st ed, p. 193 ss)! The ultimate hero is a victim conquering adversity.
Location: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OLD EMPIRE

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Hendrik »

As I said, it is a rather philosophical point. Coming from AD&D, I liked the Palladium alignments better. Each has a nifty 10 points list, so they are easy to compare, neutral which I never liked or saw work was gone, and I liked the description better - more down to earth.

That said, while I have played AD&D and Hackmaster later with level loss and such on alignment infractions a while, Palladium knows no such punishments. Essentially, alignments ARE only what you choose at the start and can then change as you will with - fittingly - any „punishment“ coming only from the reactions to your actions. I prefer that.

Alignments are nifty for NPCs and a great starting mould. After or beyond that, I don’t ise them much. Usually, I let players either choose an alignment or just let them play for a while before I tell them to which alignment they are closest but just to give them a frame to go on from.
Handouts for Operation Minotaur (BtS Adventure published in RIFTER #83) Get them at the fabulous "House of BtS"![/quote]

May all your hits be crits!
Shark_Force
Palladin
Posts: 7128
Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2009 4:11 pm

Re: Physical Skills

Unread post by Shark_Force »

funny. i like D&D alignment (or at least, the ones i'm more familiar with). palladium is full of "Never" and "always", most of which lead to silliness. i greatly prefer "tends to" or "usually" or similar; we're not going for specifics if we've got generic alignments, so it makes a lot more sense to say that, oh, i dunnooo... lawful individuals usually value consistency, tradition, and planning, while chaotic people tend to do things by the seat of their pants, because that allows for someone who is "chaotic" but had a really bad experience on a wilderness hike as a child and as such overprepares for just that one thing, because they don't *always* do things by the seat of the pants, they just tend towards doing things by the seat of their pants.

"never" and "always" work much better imo for more specific value systems... where, for example, you might choose some concept (helping others, getting rich, etc) and assign a value of importance to it as a roleplaying guide. truthfully, i like those systems better in general if there is only going to be minimal or no connection between alignment and mechanics. it works much better as a roleplaying guide because you only put what is important to your character, and you rank things by importance such that when two of your values inevitably collide (say, "get rich" and "help others") you know which one your character will tend towards, in a way that neither "anarchist" nor "chaotic neutral" does a very good job of conveying. and because those numbers are not 1, 0, and -1, but a whole spectrum of possible numbers, you also know how much more important different things are; if "staying alive" is an 8 and "helping others" is a 6, you're probably not going to take excessive risks to help others... unless by risking your life (or even by almost guaranteed death) you can accomplish a really *big* "helping others". in contrast "neutral with good tendencies" or "unprincipled" is not likely to help you figure out what your character would do.

in any event, neutral (at least in it's form of "not really strongly inclined in either direction") makes a lot of sense as an option. broadly speaking, many people will be "neutral" in most areas, and it makes sense to have an alignment for those people.
Post Reply

Return to “All Things Palladium Books®”