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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 5615645" data-attributes="member: 30936">NAmby pambly civilization... what need Kronk with cviility?! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Which is funny, since I've read Burning Wheel. Well, Burning Empire. It's among the most dense, overly complicated game systems I've ever seen with pages upon pages of systems for things that really the GM and players should just make up.Frankly, I've found the most useful GM advice in terms of running a game to came from Play Dirty, Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads, and Paranoia XP SP2, with Crafty's GM advice sections in SC2.0 and FC following close behind.Actually, I said that magic items powers take second fiddle to the PCs powers. At level 14, for instance, the equivalent class to fighter can declare an attack check, a fort save, or a Strength or Constitution based skill check to be a natural 20 without. Heck, if he took a a specific selectable ability a few levels earlier too, he can then activate it as a critical hit for free. Every class has an ability on a similar scale at level 14 (or 10 for experts or 5 for master classes). They're called gamebreakers. The abilities granted by Magic items just aren't on par with the characters inherent abilities. The game is as high or low magic as you like, but it's not typically very magic item heavy.Fantasy Craft. Which has more magic using classes then non-magic users. The game is designed without assuming that magic, let alone magic items, is an element in a game world though. So Magic Items are desirable and very, very useful, but they're not a necessary element of play at any level.That's cool for you. I don't see the need or desirably of giving the PCs a third way to influence NPC reactions. All of those are already covered by Impress and Intimidate. You can be all of those things with either Impress or Intimidate. Frankly, the issue is that social skills are an afterthought in pretty much every version of D&D. Which makes them an afterthought of an afterthought in certain versions.Not every game has this problem.Social skills should be opposed tests. In my game, the NPCs scale with the PCs. Not quite as fast so a high level PC has a better chance then a low level PC, but it's a spread of a +5 advantage over 20 levels rather then a +20 or so. Not precise, but give you a better idea. Not to say PCs can't generate big bonuses for specializing. The Talker I mentioned above could generate big bonuses to social skill rolls like Haggle, Impress, etc. She was also built to that, with a Talent (thing race) Specialty (no good analogy), and class that were focused on dominating social interactions. Typically you can't adjust an Attitude more then one grade up or down a scene, and all attitudes fade over time, drifting back to neutral. PCs and Villain (a specific type of NPC) can choose to halve all Disposition changes effecting them. I usually have a pile of Action Dice to use to boost my NPC skill roles, etc. Special characters (including PCs) can spend action dice to ignore uses of Impress or Intimidate on the, and the target's Disposition effects use of the Impress skill. So it's actually easier to make people who like you, like you more. If someone is at the bottom of the scale (-25, Adversarial, Will do anything in their power to hurt the character) you take a -25 to Impress checks against them. So if someone really hates you, Intimidate might actually be a better choice, depending on if you want them to stop hating you, or just help you out with something for right now.</blockquote>

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