Thanks. Let me go through these...
Orion wrote:
- Being a first year Monstrosity looks a little on the boring side. They essentially get no house abilities at all that can actively be used to do stuff. Their progression ramps up very nicely in higher years though.
- It's a little strange on first read-through that Heartblade doesn't get a grade boost to anything. Then again, they have by far the best on-demand speed and strength, so that may give them all the utility they need.
- Speaking of which, Battle Aura is a little weird. Strength and Speed have all kinds of functions like carrying shit, getting from place to place, and so on that they may want outside of combat. You could just roll with it and say a martial artist needs someone to make him angry before he can run a race, or teleport to the moon, or lift something out of a ditch. It's a slightly nonstandard flavor for monastics though.
1. Hmm, I'll go put some more interesting things in their First Year.
2. I'm not sure it's that big a deal, really.
3. Think less monastics, more Ranma 1/2. Akane normally isn't a very good fighter until Ranma insults her cooking, at which point she can hospitalise him in one strike.
[*]Home Ec seems like it wants a little something extra. Maybe borrow something from Cooking Club, which has a bajillion abilities. Maybe give one or the other a healing or buffing ability? I mean, if Forensices lets you ENHANCE! than home ec had better let you make some pretty fantastic food and/or vast riches.[*]Hunting looks maybe a little out of line. +3 HP, use it for Spot checks and attack rolls, plus some (admittedly not inspiring) utility? Expect the CharOps board to insist on rolling Hunting on every single Psychic and Trainer.
1. Sure, I can move stuff from Cooking Club to Home Ec, and you're right, cooking meals of awesome should certainly allow healing and status removal.
2. I'll lower the HP boost, maybe have the attacks thing specifically be for ranged attacks?
You give a list of the positions on the council, then in the list of committees you mention that the leaders are "true members" of the council. Does that mean that the Treasurer, Secretary, and so on are also the Committee heads? Or that you just left half of the Council positions off the list of Council positions?
Basically, you have the overall Student Council, and any member of that is an actual member of the Student Council. Then you have sub-committees, which are under the Student Council, but only a few people in those sub-committees are actually proper members of the Student Council.
All other members of the committees just exist to get their job done as they're told. It's still a risky business to actually pick a fight with them, though, what with their connections.
I personally feel that the 3-point version of Inept should be called Inept 3, and not Inept 2. Because it's worth 3.
Sure.
[*]Freshman year is really hard on Magical Girls. Burning a round to transform, then getting 6 rounds of juice, is a pretty serious handicap in any situation where they can't completely control when the action starts. The First-year super-form isn't even that exciting compared to the always-on stuff others get, so I worry that this is too harsh. That said, I don't want to see the limitations nerfed into irrelevance, so I'm not sure what to do here.[*]Double Transformation probably shouldn't synergize with Instant Transformation that way. Not only does it strongly suggest that you should get Instant, but once you have both you can go directly to stage II in all cases, making your first costume never relevant again. Either make the second transformation always take an action, or maybe require that it can't be done during the same round as the first one. Maybe even make it require battle aura so it can't easily be pre-buffed? Finally, you have language about taking an action to downshift from form II to form I but no reason to do so.
1. Yeah, I'm not too sure how to fix that one either. I could give them their Instant/Dazzling choice at First Year I suppose?
2. Fair enough, I'll make it so double-transformation always takes the action. The bit about downshifting is there on the off chance anyone decides they want to, not that there is an actual reason to do so.
[*]The +1 defense in Enhanced Speed one is easy to overlook. It also appears not to scale up; is that intended? Finally, it is +1 point or +1 degree, I.E Normal to Hard?
Just one point... I think. To tell the truth, I'm tempted to just remove that bit.
Blink Step: As far as I can tell this doesn't do anything. Is this intended to let you move as "not-an-action". Because if so that should be more explicit, and it has some weird rules interactions.
Yeah, it was supposed to be "Don't ever spend your Minor Action moving like a chump, you can just move places as Not An Action". I'll clarify that. Note that you still actually have to use a Minor Action to move for some of those "Must have been moving last turn" powers, and that's intentional.
Double-Team. Maybe you could clean it up with something like "may assist your main action, or take a second action which affects unattended objects or willing others, but not you, enemies, or their stuff."
That's basically what I was after, thanks.
Clock Stopper has language that sort of implies you can't use it to make attacks, but it doesn't say you can't.
I'll change it to specify that you totally can.
Second Element is essentially worthless without Linked Effect.
This doesn't bother me too much - the assumption is that people will take Linked Effect and then take Second Element if they want. I mean, if you find yourselves fighting lots of creatures with various Resistances it has a reason but w/e.
Negation Beam should be clarified. I assume it means you have access to both a fire beam and a negation beam, which are separate actions to use?
That's correct. I'll fix that.
I demand that the description of "wide blast" begin with the phrase "you have huge balls.
Denied.
I don't even know what's going on here. It doesn't specify a skill.
As it's an attack, you use "your attack stat", but I'll specify that, and that, as a beam attack, you can use Science.
Are Happiness beams meant to be repeated for credit?
That was the intent. Should it just remove annoying conditions instead? Or maybe have Healing + reduces Battle Aura, meaning for 5/6 people it's free healing, but the other 1/6 actually have an annoying trade-off?
Anger should define its interaction with Battle Auras.
Good point.
The "Mind Control" clause of Love doesn't do anything. The victim can choose to act as confused, and confused people can choose to do nothing, ergo you can never control anyone's actions. Also it's a little weird that confusing beams of love (or LOVE) come in under energies and emotions with similar but not identical mechanics.
Oh snap! I'll remove the bit about still choosing to be confused. And yeah, I'll remove LOVE as an Elemental Blast type.
Fast Flight is virtually worthless.
I'll make it so you're harder to hit when flying fast.
If someone walks into your fear aura and passes the test, and then you Focus it while they're inside, what happens? What if you "pulse" it every other round? Or even every round? Does it matter if they walk out and back in?
They passed the test, so you can Focus as much as you like. If they walk out and back in, they need to attempt the test again. If you pulse an aura on and off each round, then you can force tests. I guess I should make that cost an action.
What can you do while defending with a Barrier weapon?
Anything you can normally do except attack with it. I mean, you can attack with it, but as soon as you do, you stop using it as a Barrier until your next turn. I'll clarify that.