Earthskin and similar talents

[Gkeckley]

In 4th Edition Earthskin has been changed quite a bit. Which I agree with as it was in my opinion overpowered in previous editions. Now you roll Rank+Tou and you get +2 MD per Success Level and it lasts for Rank hours. On the surface this sounds reasonable. But when you look closer it seems off. As an example let's assume the character has a Tou 13 and a Per 16. Not unreasonable since 2 of the three classes that get Earthskin are Elementalist and Weaponsmith. At Rank 5 you are rolling Step 11 versus MD 10 (9 for Per +1 for Discipline) so without karma on avg you are 1 below a success. Now compare that to an 8th circle adept. By 8th circle 2 of 3 Disciplines that get the talent are +3 to MD. Also there is a decent chance the Per Att will be raised to a 19 which is another +2 to MD. Now you are rolling Step 14 versus MD 14. If they wanted to pick an item up that raises MD by 3 then their MD is 17. On average they are 3 under what they need for 1 success. Now you can raise Tou or the talent higher to compensate. However, you are raising these to just try and keep up. In the end the Talent is better (higher rank), but you are not anymore likely to succeed. The point I am trying to make is that any time you increase your MD, talents and spells that buff yourself are negatively effected. This occurred in previous editions to an extent as well, but with the way success levels work now and not being able to lower your MD it is more pronounced this edition. As a player it would really annoy me that I have to keep spending legend to raise Earthskin just to keep getting the same bonus, granted you do get the benefit that it lasts longer. I wanted to ask what was the line of thinking for this? When designing the rules was the thought that buffs should on average only get 1 success no matter your circle? It does make you stop and think a lot more about which to raise MD or Steel Thought (assuming you have access to Steel Thought). Just looking for other people's thoughts on this.

[Baravakar]

[Gkeckley]

MD is Mystic Defense. It used to be Spell Defense. You sacrifice a Recovery Test and you roll Rank + Tou versus your Mystic Defense and you receive +2 to Mystic Defense for every success level you obtain. In 4th edition for every 5 that you beat the target # counts as a success level.

[Baravakar]

[etherial]

[Gkeckley]

Yes. I specifically asked if lowering your Mystic Defense was left out of the rules on purpose and the answer was pretty much as Etherial stated above. This has a pretty huge effect on beneficial spells and talents that are rolled versus Mystic Defense.

[Baravakar]

Well then, it seems the answer is that talents like this have a limit on how high of a bonus they can give you. If you already have an elevated defense, then it's harder to increase.

I guess this puts a natural cap on the effectiveness of these abilities, but that may not be a bad thing. The higher your defense is before you use the talent, the harder it is to increase. These talents still give a bonus (if minor at best) the higher you go up but only if you already have other bonuses in effect.

I'm ok with this.

[Gkeckley]

That was my initial thinking as well, until I started thinking about the amount of legend you need to sink into the talent just to keep up. For a couple Disciplines (Elementalist and Warrior) it is a Discipline talent so it has to be raised. I know I would not like it as a player if I had paid 37,400 lps (Rank 10) and did not get much of an added benefit. To a lesser extent you have the same issue with buffing spells. It is less noticible as you can some times weave additional threads for a better effect, you can still cast the spell on others who do not have as high a Mystic Defense, and there is always other spells to cast. I actually like this aspect for the spells as it helps people who need it the most, helps prevent a huge disparity creating the haves and have nots, and most importantly unlike Earthskin it does not require a Recovery Test. I looked for other talents and I am not finding any others that work like this. Social boosts work the same way, but these go against someone else's Social Defense and you pretty much always have someone in the group that can benefit from the boost. As it is only one talent I am probably being overly concerned. Just wanted to see what others thought.

[Baravakar]

[Telarus_KSC]

In 3e, Warriors got Earthskin as a 9th Circle Discipline Talent (found in the 3e Player's Companion, which had Circles 9-15 for most Disciplines). In 4e, Warriors get it as the 5th Circle Discipline Talent (Elementalist @ 7th Circle Discipline Talent, Weaponsmith @ Journeyman Talent Pool 5th+ Circles).

3e wording was "He spends a Recovery Test and makes an Earth Skin Test, adding his Earth Skin Rank to his Spell Defense for a number of hours equal to the Test Result."

4e wording is: "He spends a Recovery Test and makes an Earth Skin test against his Mystic Defense, adding +2 to his Mystic Defense per success for a number of hours equal to his Earth Skin rank."

The reduction of the total average bonus (& standardization of the duration) probably meant that they could move it up in the Warrior progression and add it to the Weaponsmith progression (I can see getting 8 successes in some freak exploding roll, but that's target number +35, so it's not happening much). Having earlier access will allow use of the talent before Mystic Defense starts jumping up, but I think the real key to this talent in 4e is that it's driven from Toughness (which helps with medium Perception characters of these Disciplines), and that you can now spend Karma on any Talent learned from your Discipline. (That Karma should help offset those odds called out in the OP a bit.)