Ganbare Gincun wrote:I've been kicking around the word "Passionate" in my mind, and I think "Spirited" would be a better choice of term. It's pithier, and doesn't have the kind of romantic connotations that "Passionate" would have in the minds of some readers. Anyways, here's how I would suggest dividing up regular weapon attacks under this framework:
I don't know why, but I prefer "strong" to "mighty". It's obviously not a syllables thing, because I don't feel the same aversion to "Cunning". That being said, the three syllables thing of "passionate" (and for that matter: "spirited" as well) is probably too far. Maybe something easier to write like "fervid"?
Not sure. But the Machiavellian split into strength, cleverness, and conviction seems like a decent enough split for resistances.
FrankTrollman wrote:I don't know why, but I prefer "strong" to "mighty". It's obviously not a syllables thing, because I don't feel the same aversion to "Cunning".
I was thinking along the same lines, but I fear that if we have a "Strong" attack classification, people will think "oh, that's where all of the Fighter powers go, because Fighters are Strong". And then "Strong" powers are only relegated to Fighters and Wizards get all of their powers dropped into the Cunning and Spirited categories. Gamers are totally down with talking about "mighty wizards", but not strong ones.
FrankTrollman wrote:That being said, the three syllables thing of "passionate" (and for that matter: "spirited" as well) is probably too far. Maybe something easier to write like "fervid"?
Not sure. But the Machiavellian split into strength, cleverness, and conviction seems like a decent enough split for resistances.
Fervid/Fervent actually works out very well because of its secondary meaning of "glowing", which dovetails quite nicely with the concept of having "Luminaries" running around.
I think the reason that "Cunning" works so much better than "Mighty" is the different parts of speech the terms appear in when they are used as attack modifiers vs. when they are used as Resistance values. That is, when you hit someone with a Fireball, the Fireball itself is the subject or object of the sentence and the fact that it is Mighty or Strong or Powerful or whatever is a modifying adjective. However, when you are targeting someone's resistance, the "resistance" part is assumed. You're just concerned about the category and the number. Which means that "Cunning" or "Mighty" is in fact the subject or object of the sentence. And this is so true that you are likely going to be talking about it as a noun, which conveniently enough is still Cunning in the case of that, but which is Might and not Mighty in the other case.
Which brings me to bottom line on why "Mighty" doesn't work: it doesn't really mean the same thing as the direct adjectival form of "Might". It is an inherently comparative word. It's not analogous to "Red" it's analogous to "Redder". A smaller amount of Mighty doesn't make contextual sense.
But Cunning is fucking awesome. You can have "more Cunning" or "less Cunning". You can talk about "low Cunning" and "high Cunning". You can talk about "a Cunning attack" and you can talk about how "you used your Cunning". Swap it in for Might or any derivations of Might and it doesn't work a tenth as well. So regardless of what other words we use for attacks and resistances, I am totally sold on the word "Cunning".
virgil wrote:Behold, the power of a thesaurus! I stuck to the idea the word being able to fit in the "more/less X" and "a(n) X attack"
Varieties of Cunning: Deft, Adept, Learned
Varieties of Mighty: Potent, Force, Telling
Varieties of Passionate: Bright, Eminent, Spirited, Wanton
Unfortunately, none of them terribly work with the "you used your X" part, except maybe Force. Lago's 'weight' works though.
Cunning, as Frank put it, is actually fine. K's suggestion of Potence also seems good. For my 10 cents, how about Eminence? Spirit is also not too bad.
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For reasons of character sheet abbreviation, you want each word in a simple list to start with a different letter. The fact that Charisma and Constitution start with the same letter was the cause of more wasted pencil scratches through the ages than any other arbitrary choice of Dungeons & Dragons.
SR4 has too many stats, but the fact that it abbreviates BARSCILW is about 100% better than if Body was named Constitution instead. Different first initials is key. If you can get them to spell something, so much the better. Potence/Cuning/Spirit, for example: could be called your "PCS" (pronounced "Pee Sees").
FrankTrollman wrote:If you can get them to spell something, so much the better.
Of course, one shouldn't spend too much time trying to make them spell a word, as I have done with games before. There really is no requirement to make the stats spell a rude word.
PCS is fine. Making them spell CAT or BUM for instance, would be dumb.
How about Zealous instead of Spirited? It has fewer syllables and has more "punch" to it. So you'd be looking at Cunning attacks, Potent attacks, and Zealous attacks, and your resistances would be Cunning, Potence, and Zeal.
