The Saddening
Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2017 7:08 am
Not really a good place to put this otherwise, but figured this would be a worthwhile note in the "for what it's worth" category.
Moved Shadow of the Demon Lord into the spot I was going to run Earthdawn in for my Japanese gaming group, so I've been putting my effort into ramping up on that system and campaign. My other gaming group, after a six month hiatus on the system, swung back around to our multi-year Earthdawn campaign. Moving towards a pivotal moment on the campaign, my Elementalist attempts to use Summoning (and well within the realm of "good" odds on the test) - boom, failure, Astral Backlash, one wound plus half my Unconsciousness Rating. Yay, okay, go below deck and lick my wounds. Next morning, pivotal moment arrives, my Elementalist can make a huge and interesting impact with Summoning, GM basically allows me to get the 30 minutes in before things kick off (again, test is well within the realm of "good" odds) - boom, failure, Astral Backlash, one wound plus more than half my Unconsciousness Rating. Thanks to the lost time of the wasted Summoning, I spend the first half of the combat casting all the prep spells I'd otherwise have had Chain Cast. Thanks to the lost health, I effectively hide for the rest.
I saw the writing on the wall with Summoning from a numbers stand-point for a while (and have made some posts on it). To actually see it come to fruition, though, was honestly a little heart-breaking (given my love of the system). All I can really say is that it is truly saddening that what should be an iconic and central thing of a Discipline, something that takes a huge chunk of time to do with the ED4 changes, is just as likely to effectively remove the character from play for the remainder of the in-game day as it is to MAYBE achieve the goals (three chances to fail with Summoning). I don't really see that anywhere else in the system.
Really, I'm just sad and disappointed...
Moved Shadow of the Demon Lord into the spot I was going to run Earthdawn in for my Japanese gaming group, so I've been putting my effort into ramping up on that system and campaign. My other gaming group, after a six month hiatus on the system, swung back around to our multi-year Earthdawn campaign. Moving towards a pivotal moment on the campaign, my Elementalist attempts to use Summoning (and well within the realm of "good" odds on the test) - boom, failure, Astral Backlash, one wound plus half my Unconsciousness Rating. Yay, okay, go below deck and lick my wounds. Next morning, pivotal moment arrives, my Elementalist can make a huge and interesting impact with Summoning, GM basically allows me to get the 30 minutes in before things kick off (again, test is well within the realm of "good" odds) - boom, failure, Astral Backlash, one wound plus more than half my Unconsciousness Rating. Thanks to the lost time of the wasted Summoning, I spend the first half of the combat casting all the prep spells I'd otherwise have had Chain Cast. Thanks to the lost health, I effectively hide for the rest.
I saw the writing on the wall with Summoning from a numbers stand-point for a while (and have made some posts on it). To actually see it come to fruition, though, was honestly a little heart-breaking (given my love of the system). All I can really say is that it is truly saddening that what should be an iconic and central thing of a Discipline, something that takes a huge chunk of time to do with the ED4 changes, is just as likely to effectively remove the character from play for the remainder of the in-game day as it is to MAYBE achieve the goals (three chances to fail with Summoning). I don't really see that anywhere else in the system.
Really, I'm just sad and disappointed...