From: Jim Ogle (Ks. Jim) <jogle@aoc.nrao.edu>
Subject: Re:  Stuff more rediculous than the Gravitic Ray Gun
X-Gated-By: The Black Marble Wombat@morticia.cnns.unt.edu
X-Gated-From: torg mailing list
Organization: University of North Texas
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Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 03:52:37 GMT

The manatee writes:

> Everyone likes to use the Grav gun as an example of
> things that make one player way too powerful.  I can
> off hand think of a couple of other things that make
> players rediculously powerful as well.
> 
> 1.  The Ayslish miracle "Wrath of the Gods".  It has a 
> base damage of the castor's faith plus the total on 
> the die.  Not the bonus number from the chart.  The
> total of the die.

I've always wondered what they were thinking when they made this one
up; it goes so much against the grain of Torg's mechanics I'm
convinced that the writeup is some kind of massive typo (or one of the
infamous editing problems!)

> 2.  The Coar miracle "Spirit Sword".  It has a base damage
> of faith plus the result points of the miracle.  The 
> miracle diffuculty is 5, so a priest with a faith of say
> 17 getting a zero bonus on the die would do base damage
> of 17 + (17 - 5) = 29.  Now consider what the damage 
> would be if the player spent a possibility while invoking
> it.

This is of course the Space Gods version of the Star Wars light saber;
I don't really mind it even though it can be ungodly simply because
almost all of the SG weapons are ugly (ok, so technically its not a
weapon, but I think they just did light sabers this way because they
couldn't figure out a biotech method of making one - though I don't
see why not since the gravitic ray is a biotech weapon).

> 3.  The Nile Pulp Power "Super Skill".  Nuff said.

It is nasty if used in the right way (say with a 14 stat, Super
Attribute and a Tag skill, right Dave? 8-) and the ability to always
raise the skill cheaply smells like something that didn't get caught
in playtesting (c'mon, if you'd been playing the same character since
the Nile SB came out you could have 30+ adds in you Super Skill by
now!)

> Off hand, I can't think of anything that a Core Earth
> character could have that would put him in the God-like
> category.  Same goes for the Living Land, Orrorsh, or
> Nippon Tech.  Note that I'm talking *player* characters.
> I am quite aware of how nasty Orrorsh monsters can get 8).

Hmmm...

Core Earth - From what Rick has said, the Telekinesis psi power is
pretty nasty.  Certain martial arts can be rude, but not in the godly
level of rudeness.

Living Land - If you think Wrath of the Gods is rude, imagine what can
be done with a Spirit of 24!  WEG just never got creative enough.

Orrorsh - You could always come up with a really bitchin' Occult
ritual (of course, you probably wouldn't be a PC afterwards!)  8-)

Nippon Tech - Like CE there's martial arts, and having the financial
backing of a mega-corp (Mega Corp CEO template) can make a person
really dangerous ("Arrange for a wing of our corp's attack helicopters
to be available for this mission I'm going on."  "Yes sir!")

I can't believe you didn't mention any of the nasty stuff you can get
from the Cyberpapacy or Tharkold!  Big Guns (tm), Big Cyberware, nasty
magic and miracles galore!  And don't forget those Tharkoldu PCs!  8-\

Kansas Jim (jogle@aoc.nrao.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.games.torg