karma use and other questions in 4th ed

[Telarus_KSC]

No, there is no LP cost for Karma in the 4e book.

[Baravakar]

So a character who did not spend any Karma yesterday, begins the day with his/her full compliment. After a harrowing event that uses all of the Adept's Karma, they may then perform the ritual and 30 minutes later they have the full amount again. Effectively being able to spend twice your full amount of Karma for the first day of an adventure.

I like it.

[freid78]

I have a comment about interaction test.

I don't get what is behind this line of thinking. Earthdawn have talents to upgrade initiative, fighting capabilities, hit points and so on. Then how come an adept still needs to make a raw charisma test for interaction? And the system allow a bunch of charisma based talents, but all of them are not interaction... it's like having a bunch of talents about daggers, swords and axes, but none of them actually help in melee. Gosh, even blade juggle can be used to attack a target! But hey, don't try to persuade someone with diplomacy, it's not design for that. It only helps to have the target more receptive, you still need a raw charisma dice roll!

Was that a way to cancel an overpowered talent that would allow an adept to persuade anyone of anything? You know that the greeks were well aware of that talent. They called it : rhetoric

[Telarus_KSC]

In my opinion, in the earlier editions it was because there were much fewer bonuses available to Social Defense (compared to Physical/Mystic), so the Interaction Tests relied on base Charisma.

[earcaraxe]

interction test are quite powerful, a specialized character (and not only troubadours) can talk anyone out of their shoes even now. I wouldnt advise introducing any more boosting to that.

[Marceli]

No, karma is free. There is option for also AFAIR.

[freid78]

I tried to find this into other thread too but perhaps it was buried, but in 4th, it seems we don't have a maximum number of karma dice on a single roll. Refering to p.37, p66, p86 and p459, there's nothing indicating it is capped. So my question is, can you stack up karma on single roll?

Easy answer is yes. Let us imagine a cavalrymen charging an enemy. At circle 3, he can spend a karma on attack test while charging. Since melee weapon is a talent, he basically can roll 2 dice to hit a target.

Now, from easy, let's go deeper. While a cavalrymen can roll 2 karma dices to attack, how many could he roll on damage? Let's say you are using shield bash on a charge, with crushing blow. You'll end up with a massive damage AND 4 optional karma to roll (3 for talents + 1 bonus at circle 5). Pretty impressive.

I am wrong on this?

[Telarus_KSC]

[freid78]

Seems to me I was wrong on the damage example, since you can't use more than 1 karma per source. This should have been included into the core rules.

You have basically a maximum of 2 karma dice per roll, unless you get a magical item that allows you to roll karma (hence a 3rd source apart from discipline or talents).