(no subject)
May. 7th, 2008 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geebsTuesday night TV commentary:
Interesting Reaper last night. So Sam and Andi are on full on couple mode, but then her ex sells his soul to get her back. And since the devil always throws in a catch so he can get the soul as soon as possible, he makes it so Sam would want to kill the guy. First that the guy stole Andi away from him, and then having the ex's ID manifest as a chainsaw wielding maniac endangering him and Andi. In the end, Sam uses his get out of hell free card to get the ex out of it, since he's not really a bad guy. I guess the devil underestimated Sam's selflessness, though I'm sure this incident will have repercussions.
Though I'm curious if Sam still has that nerf-gun vessel thing. That's a pretty powerful artifact to have!
The Ben/Dualla/British Pam storyline was also amusing. Glad he finally stood up to his wife so he could start dating Dualla. And then implying to Ted they had an open relationship? HA!! That's one thing interesting about the show, they resolve issues like this pretty quick. Like I did not expect Andi to find out about Sam being a reaper AND becoming cool with it all in last week's ep. Normally, they'd stretch it out a few eps. (Or seasons, in the case of certain shows!) Its refreshing.
****
The roomie beat GTA IV last night. Given the way the final arc for ending 1 plays out, I'm amused that it's considered the "good" ending. GTA IV seemed to be completed much faster than any of the previous games, but I'm wondering if that's because of the addition of the auto save after missions and the taxi cab thing. The auto save is something they should have always had, given how frustrating it could be completing a mission and dying on the way to your friggin safehouse to save. Its like you were always tense and driving real slow so you didn't accidentally bump a cop or get into a really bad wreck until you got to save.
But yeah, the taxi thing seems to cut down on distractions. Instead of driving to a person to get a mission, and possibly getting distracted by some cool jump you see, or accidentally bumping into a cop car and leading to a chase throughout the city, you just get into a taxi and automagically get there, and if its not a mission requiring you to use a specific car, you take a taxi to the mission start. So you can basically hammer a whole bunch of missions out without having to deal with all the time spent driving except for that required by the mission itself.
And is it me, or did they increase the size of the trucks? I mean, vehicles like the Enforcer look frickin' ginormous when compared to the normal cars!
****
Having learned the Exalted combat rules, I only remembered yesterday that I wanted to re-visit Void Avatar Prana and see why its creating such a fuss on the boards. I guess one of the problems is that the text description doesn't mesh exactly with the descriptors. Particularly, its speed and that the duration is listed as instant. The charm itself seems to modify Dark Messiah form, and the descriptors seem to match exactly up with Hungry Ghost style's form charm modifier, Labyrinth Walking Prana except for the durations. LWP's is scene long, while VAP is instant. But from the text description though, its obvious that its meant to be scene long.
VAP is ridiculously overpowered, even with it being 10 charms down the tree. As I interpet it (and I'm 99.9% sure I'm right), you activate it after assuming Dark Messiah form, effectively making assuming Dark Messiah form speed 6. Labyrinth Walking Prana works the same way, and both are listed as simple charms with Speed 1 and DV -1 and costing a willpower.
What's the big deal about VAP? Well, while in VAP enhanced Dark Messiah form, the martial artist (I use this instead of Abyssal since its a MA style and anyone can use it) can perfectly defend any attack (even unblockable ones) by spending just 1 mote! During this block, their anima flares up, and anyone touching (no matter how lightly) the martial artist takes a number of levels of unsoakable lethal damage equal to the martial artist's essence. So if they're doing an unarmed attack, their attack is not only blocked, they're the ones taking damage instead! And the essence minimum for VAP is 4, so the minimum damage they would take is 4!
Even more insane, the martial artist can also spend a mote while attacking to add this damage to their attack. But it was ridiculous to read the forums and see all these people in denial of how VAP worked so it wouldn't be this insanely powerful. Like they were saying, "it only lasts 6 ticks". Uh no, its pretty clear it works as LWP and modifies the speed of DMF so its 6 instead of 5, that's where the 6 comes from. Or that while in DMF, you can activate it on your action as a speed 1 attack/defense. That makes no sense either. Since its a simple charm and not a reflexive charm, you have to activate it (and spend the willpower point each time?!) and hope an enemy attacks you during that tick. Again, the text is pretty clear that the whole speed 1 thing is because it modifies DMF's speed from 5 to 6 (adding 1 to the 5 equals 6! Its math, people!)
I'm not sure why these people are trying to come up with erroneous interpretations of the text to salvage this charm into something not broken. I think it is indeed broken and the abyssals errata needs to tone it down or something. I'm not sure how though. Jack up the essence cost when making a perfect defense? Jack up the initial activation cost? (You can't spend more than 1 willpower a round, so make it cost a willpower and some number of motes?) Change how it works entirely?
Interesting Reaper last night. So Sam and Andi are on full on couple mode, but then her ex sells his soul to get her back. And since the devil always throws in a catch so he can get the soul as soon as possible, he makes it so Sam would want to kill the guy. First that the guy stole Andi away from him, and then having the ex's ID manifest as a chainsaw wielding maniac endangering him and Andi. In the end, Sam uses his get out of hell free card to get the ex out of it, since he's not really a bad guy. I guess the devil underestimated Sam's selflessness, though I'm sure this incident will have repercussions.
Though I'm curious if Sam still has that nerf-gun vessel thing. That's a pretty powerful artifact to have!
The Ben/Dualla/British Pam storyline was also amusing. Glad he finally stood up to his wife so he could start dating Dualla. And then implying to Ted they had an open relationship? HA!! That's one thing interesting about the show, they resolve issues like this pretty quick. Like I did not expect Andi to find out about Sam being a reaper AND becoming cool with it all in last week's ep. Normally, they'd stretch it out a few eps. (Or seasons, in the case of certain shows!) Its refreshing.
****
The roomie beat GTA IV last night. Given the way the final arc for ending 1 plays out, I'm amused that it's considered the "good" ending. GTA IV seemed to be completed much faster than any of the previous games, but I'm wondering if that's because of the addition of the auto save after missions and the taxi cab thing. The auto save is something they should have always had, given how frustrating it could be completing a mission and dying on the way to your friggin safehouse to save. Its like you were always tense and driving real slow so you didn't accidentally bump a cop or get into a really bad wreck until you got to save.
But yeah, the taxi thing seems to cut down on distractions. Instead of driving to a person to get a mission, and possibly getting distracted by some cool jump you see, or accidentally bumping into a cop car and leading to a chase throughout the city, you just get into a taxi and automagically get there, and if its not a mission requiring you to use a specific car, you take a taxi to the mission start. So you can basically hammer a whole bunch of missions out without having to deal with all the time spent driving except for that required by the mission itself.
And is it me, or did they increase the size of the trucks? I mean, vehicles like the Enforcer look frickin' ginormous when compared to the normal cars!
****
Having learned the Exalted combat rules, I only remembered yesterday that I wanted to re-visit Void Avatar Prana and see why its creating such a fuss on the boards. I guess one of the problems is that the text description doesn't mesh exactly with the descriptors. Particularly, its speed and that the duration is listed as instant. The charm itself seems to modify Dark Messiah form, and the descriptors seem to match exactly up with Hungry Ghost style's form charm modifier, Labyrinth Walking Prana except for the durations. LWP's is scene long, while VAP is instant. But from the text description though, its obvious that its meant to be scene long.
VAP is ridiculously overpowered, even with it being 10 charms down the tree. As I interpet it (and I'm 99.9% sure I'm right), you activate it after assuming Dark Messiah form, effectively making assuming Dark Messiah form speed 6. Labyrinth Walking Prana works the same way, and both are listed as simple charms with Speed 1 and DV -1 and costing a willpower.
What's the big deal about VAP? Well, while in VAP enhanced Dark Messiah form, the martial artist (I use this instead of Abyssal since its a MA style and anyone can use it) can perfectly defend any attack (even unblockable ones) by spending just 1 mote! During this block, their anima flares up, and anyone touching (no matter how lightly) the martial artist takes a number of levels of unsoakable lethal damage equal to the martial artist's essence. So if they're doing an unarmed attack, their attack is not only blocked, they're the ones taking damage instead! And the essence minimum for VAP is 4, so the minimum damage they would take is 4!
Even more insane, the martial artist can also spend a mote while attacking to add this damage to their attack. But it was ridiculous to read the forums and see all these people in denial of how VAP worked so it wouldn't be this insanely powerful. Like they were saying, "it only lasts 6 ticks". Uh no, its pretty clear it works as LWP and modifies the speed of DMF so its 6 instead of 5, that's where the 6 comes from. Or that while in DMF, you can activate it on your action as a speed 1 attack/defense. That makes no sense either. Since its a simple charm and not a reflexive charm, you have to activate it (and spend the willpower point each time?!) and hope an enemy attacks you during that tick. Again, the text is pretty clear that the whole speed 1 thing is because it modifies DMF's speed from 5 to 6 (adding 1 to the 5 equals 6! Its math, people!)
I'm not sure why these people are trying to come up with erroneous interpretations of the text to salvage this charm into something not broken. I think it is indeed broken and the abyssals errata needs to tone it down or something. I'm not sure how though. Jack up the essence cost when making a perfect defense? Jack up the initial activation cost? (You can't spend more than 1 willpower a round, so make it cost a willpower and some number of motes?) Change how it works entirely?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 12:13 am (UTC)