The obligatory skill

[LADRILLON]

Hiyas:

I bet this has already been axed before but I wonder if the ONLY way to "recuperate/refresh/gain, etc." Karma [by the rules] is by utilising the Karma Ritual skill? Does this mean that w/out it an adept will eventually find itself Karma-less?


Thanks!
L

[Panda]

That is correct. In 3E and 3ER the list of Discipline Talents is required, though there are optional rules to restore the old talent lists.

[ArcadianRefugee]

There is one other way:

"The surviving character receives the dying character’s remaining Karma Points."

See "Dying Oath" (p179 in the 3rPG, or in the old 1e "Magic: A Manual of..." book).

[Anunnaki]

Also, if you find yourself without Karma Points, you can use Recovery Tests to power talents. "If an adept has no Karma Points he may use a Recovery Test to generate the magical energy required."

[treorai]

Since the Adept's maximum Karma is their racial Karma Modifier multiplied by their Karma Ritual Rank, technically, an Adept without Karma Ritual would have no Karma to begin with, since any number multiplied by zero is zero.

However, Karma Ritual, along with Thread Weaving, are supposed to be the very core of how the Discipline interacts with magic in the world. In setting, I can't imagine any master failing to teach such a basic Talent to their apprentices, and I always tell players that they must purchase it, even when using the alternate advancement rules that let you count any Talent for advancement.

[zayven]

This is one of those "fluff influencing crunch" issues that continually bugs me about ED. I think at one point I didn't even make players pay for their ranks in Karma Ritual at first level; they automatically got it at rank 1 or 2.

I just hate making players burn valuable legend points on something that should just be an inherent part of the discipline. I've never understood why your Karma Ritual rank doesn't just automatically equal your circle rank or something like that. You could dump more points into it if you really wanted to, but it takes some of the fun out of character building when you have to continually put points in a talent that you generally don't actively use in-game if you want to be able to increase your overall circle.

It's one of those things that makes all the sense in the world from a "fluff" standpoint, but the rules implementation is an unnecessary hassle. I don't feel like it's even a balance issue because removing it would just mean that adepts get a little more skilled with other talents faster. What are they being balanced against by having to dedicate legend points to increasing something that should be as automatic as stretching for an adept?

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to see a complete overhaul/redesign of the game's rules. As far as I can tell, the only reason that adepts have to have Karma Ritual is because "that's the way we've always done it" even if it didn't really even make sense in the first place.

[j0hn]

[LADRILLON]

Hi:

& this' right about the time I break into song:

#Karma police... Arrest this adept!

L
#This is what you get
when you mess with us...

[zayven]

j0hn, I was going to disagree with you on the basis that talents like Melee Weapons are regularly and actively used by the player throughout a game session whereas talents like Karma Ritual and even Thread Weaving (for non-casters) are used very infrequently by comparison and typically happen "off screen" between sessions, but the fact that you can get some tangible benefits by dumping legend points into Karma Ritual forced me to reconsider my argument a bit. Thinking about the way my players regard Karma Ritual, I probably should have done more as a GM to stress its importance to their characters.

Even so, I still think that it's unfair to ask players to spend valuable points on what amounts to a passive talent (I know Durability is passive as well; I'm not really a fan of that one either). I don't have a problem with the concept or use of karma, just the way it's implemented. I guess my main issue I have is that when you get down to actual game mechanics, karma points exist simply to give you extra dice for some talent rolls and to limit the usage of other talents. They're essentially identical to the "action point" mechanics that you see in some other games. I just don't feel like you need to create an entire system for managing these points rather than just increasing the maximum level at each circle and refreshing them after each game session or two. The flavor text does a good job of describing what karma does and how Karma Ritual functions; I don't see how having a specific talent dedicated to it helps to immerse the player in the setting any more than the text does.

Then again, I suppose I'm arguing in favor of simplification and the curtailment of character development options. I can see why some players might want to have the option of spending a lot of points on Karma Ritual (and paying the additional legend points to actually refresh the points after they've been used) in order to build a character that can draw upon karma more often than a typical adept. It's not something that I would do and I can't imagine any of my players ever doing it, but it's a perfectly viable way to build a character.

[j0hn]

I don't know what's 'unfair' about it. If every talent that's 'passive' is an unfair expenditure of LP, then there are dozens of them. And Karma is much less passive than many other talents-- Players decide the size of their karma pool, how often to spend it, etc. Those are all rather important/interesting decisions imo, that create variety in term of character decisions as well as playstyle. I've had players that horded their karma like it was gold, and didn't keep ritual maxed. I've had others that maxed ritual first, and spent it like it was water. Those are two very different playstyles, with different potential RP philosophies to back them up. I like that kind of variety.

I also think you underestimate how potent karma is. Fights in ED tend to be fast and bloody. Karma contributes more to a given roll than a single rank in any given talent. And it gets even better when karma-enhancing abilities are available...