Community

Jan 22, 2012 -- 10:42AM, Kaldric wrote:

In all of your cases, the character does his best to avoid falling asleep. Which is easily represented, in D&D, by a saving throw. There's no choice in using a saving throw, in normal cases, because no one chooses to fail. They don't choose to resist less. It's a meaningless choice, from the character perspective.

While this is true, it makes the game less cinematic by having characters always act the same way, no matter the situation. Which is alright if you don't like playing a heroic fantasy game and prefer gritty darker settings and adventures, but I think WoD covers that aspect better than how D&D does that. In that case, you can always turn off the Karma System (which is the same as saying "have it as an optional rule", except that as an optional rule it is very likely to be much less supported).

The Karma System aims at creating a dynamic pacing in the game. The big difference, as you noted, is that instead of having a flat out higher save bonus, the player may decide when to influence his destiny and when not to. I should perhaps clarify that my point is: while it is true that the decision is in the hands of the player - and not the character - there is a plausible in-character answer to the question "what does spending a Karma point mean?", the same way that there is a plausible in-character answer to the question "what does spending a healing surge or losing a hit point mean?". Karma's selling point is that it is built in a way (or at least, I believe so) that enhances dramatic narrative. You can influence the course of the game, choosing which scenes are appropriate for your character to spend Karma in and which scenes to consider less important. Karma has a meaningful impact on the game, however, and therefore its usage creates a moment for a character's traits to shine, whereas a higher save bonus is, mostly, just written on your character sheet. It might accomplish the same thing, but it isn't as descriptive, interactive and (in my opinion) fun to play with.

What about this case?

CASE FOUR:
PC: "My fighter tries to jump over that cliff."
DM: "Ok, before you can jump, a dart reaches you and hits you. The poison in the dart slows you down and you start to fall asleep."
PC: "Okay."
DM: "Doesn't your character try to resist the poison?"
PC: "No."
DM: "But you have unspent Karma."
PC: "I'm saving it."
DM: "But Redgar has the Tough as Nails trait!"
PC: "I'm saving it for the climactic scene."

It doesn't make sense. The reasonable choice for the character is always to try to succeed to the best of his ability. Any other choice is OOC - unless your character is intentionally self-defeating. Which, in D&D, is probably just rather boringly suicidal.

The DM is doing it wrong, though. He shouldn't push the matter, nor insist that his character spends Karma if he doesn't want to. Karma is a character resource, and can be spent when dramatically appropriate. In fact, this kind of situation is exactly how it should go: the PC is saving up Karma for a scene where he wants to be meaningful and his decisions will have an impact. You shouldn't waste Karma at every opportunity, because it loses all its power - which is a form of narrative power, of course.

The point is, by the character's perspective there is a role-playing reason for spending Karma in a certain situation, and by the story perspective (or if you wish, because of the Rule of Cool) there is a reason for not spending Karma in every possible situation. Additionally, Karma has some advantages (it rewards actually playing your character's personality, it rewards intresting backgrounds, it gives an opportunity to the DM to tie a reluctant or mildly munchkining character into the game's story, it allows to step out of the rules normal boundaries and improvisate, it gives the player a way to interact with the aleatory values of the game reducing luck and increasing the power of character decision) that I believe are worth at least considering. The impact a similar mechanic, especially if well implemented, has on the game is drastic.

 

I don't understand how this traits system could collide with Karma. Can someone explain this to me? How is Resist Sleep going to affect a Lawful Good character as opposed to a Chaotic Neutral one?

First I believe you mean Alignment and not Karma. Second, imagine the following situation: a Lawful Good character with the "Colleric" Trait fights and is on the verge of killing a psychotic mass murderer instead of bringing him to justice. The DM invokes the trait claiming that his anger is too much to resist the urge to kill him... unless of course the character spends a Karma point to resist. This collides with actual rules-heavy implementations of the Alignment system some seem keen on (for example, systems where your paladin is forced to stay LG to mantain his powers). Of course, this can be a very rewarding roleplaying situation - you want to play a Colleric Paladin, you're bound to run in similar scenes. However, if your character Traits collide too much with your Alignment and the system punishes people from going out of their alignment, you might run into a situation where the character, after having exhausted his Karma points trying to resist his urges, has run out of them and is not able to resist anymore, committing murder and losing his powers.

Of course, I believe in this case the fault is on the alignment system's part, because that is the restrictive one, punishing players from roleplaying a conflict (something that is probably the hardest thing to do in a game) instead of rewarding them. But that's just me, and this example shows how the Karma system might run into some problems when you also implement hard Alignments.

Jan 22, 2012 -- 11:41AM, Pa11ad1n wrote:

Actually as soon as I started reading this thread i was reminded of drama dice.  I apologise to the OPer, but i didn't finish reading your post.  The wall of text put me off .  I don't like walls of text on computer screen. 

A quick TL;DR version is this:

• You  choose five Traits that represent your character.
• Every time a negative Trait comes into play you may choose to either accept it or resist it.
• If you accept it and properly portrait your character in the situation, you gain a Karma point.
• If you resist it and decide to avoid roleplaying the Trait, you spend a Karma point instead. This way you aren't forced to do things you are uncomfortable with, but at a cost if it goes against your character's personality.
• You may invoke your Traits yourself by spending Karma points to gain different benefits (mainly rerolls or divergent applications of powers, skills and rituals). You need to have that Trait come into play to invoke it.