Oh yes.Kemper Boyd wrote:I think it might not translate well from the review, but the game isn't about playing supers even if you have magic.
It's not a game about supers, it's just a game in which you happen to play a guy with super powers fighting other guys with super powers. Which is, you know, the exact definition of a game about supers.
Until now, I though White-Wolf-fanboys were the most pedantic players ever. I was wrong. At least, they largely admit that Vampire and ToothFairy and Werezombie and other White Wolf games are about playing superheroes.
So AH is lying when he write : "Entropomancers get their power by playing Russian roulette and win. They gain charges by surrendering themselves to chance, be it gambling with money (minor), serious injury or death (significant), or the lives of you and everyone nearby (major)" ?And you probably missed the part where I said that the power level of characters tends to balance out fairly well between characters, magic or not. Because of how charging works for Entropomancers: they can't charge up without endangering themselves needlessly so taking risks while pursuing goals with other player characters doesn't count. And the meat-and-potatoes part of charging, minor and significant charges, don't give you any bonus for endangering other characters.
According to this, it seems the only difference between significant and major charge is the risk incurred by other people. If the entropomancer isn't an idiot, he never risks his life alone, because risking TPK is in every way more advantageous: he gets better magic if he succeed, and if he fails he doesn't even have to reroll a character because the whole game ends.
According to this description, he also has infinite minor charges, because "gambling money" isn't something hard to do at all.
But it's 90% of getting what right on the first try under pressure? A standard task? A difficult task?rasmuswagner wrote:AH and FT are on a hyperbole bender as usual. There's plenty of shit in Unknown Armies, but the low skill percentages are not part of the shit. The low skill percentages are a fucking improvement on CoC because unlike CoC, where skills are calibrated for "HerpDerp", skills in UA are calibrated against "getting it right on the first try, under pressure".
Also, getting 90% right on the test in college is not a fucking 90% skill rating, nor is it even an indicator of the ability to perform actual tasks, and whoever insinuated that is a massive twatwaffle.
Let's say my character is a musician, he has guitar 90%. He auto-success every repetition, but when he's on stage, there is some pressure because of the public; therefore every ten concert, he fails and must start again.
That's... not very good. That's more the level of a good guitar student than a professional musician. Under your definition, any score below 100% is very amateurish, and any expert should be in the range 180%-200% (as in "even under pressure, he can succeed at task a beginner can't do at all")
And anyway, even if we admit that guitar 90% is impressive... it's 90% of playing what right on the first try? Is it the same to play Buckethead and a simple bed song? You aren't even able to explain what this "90%" actually is, and you want me to believe that the percent-roll-under-system is "easy to grasp"? That's complete bullshit.