Ok sorry but I have some questions.

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E Nymton
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Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by E Nymton »

I only picked up OVA recently and am very impressed with it. But as I guess is common I do have a few questions. I know there are quite a few threads on here like this and I am sorry to add more of the same. As much as possible I am trying to answer my own questions by studying the book more or reading old threads. Unfortunately, my attempts to search for answers on the forum have been less than successful as everything I have tried so far either gives no results as it does not exist or is too common and also gives no results. So I am sorry if I ask anything that has been covered before and I missed it.

I am going to start with what I hope are 3 relatively straight forward questions, mainly as I am pretty sure I know the answers.

1. All the examples in the book have characters with multiple attacks based of their Attack ability. But this is not limited to just the Attack ability is it? A character with Healing for instance could have a few diffrent effects based of it with diffrent perks and flaws, correct?

2. I have gone over all the sample characters and the only one I am unsure of the mechanics of is Ai, in particular her mind break attack. It looks like the DX includes her Attack (telekinetic power) and Telekinesis abilities. While this does seem rules legal (for lack of a better term) it doesn't seem right narratively as it soulds more telepathic than telekinetic in nature. I guess it could be explained away as her telekinesis representing her overall psychic strength? But I'm not sure I am putting the pieces together right?

3. Finally I have a question about the gear ability. Now I am pretty sure I understand the difference between gear, focus and weapon and how they are used to create diffrent feels. But it appears to me that gear gives the worst deal in terms of point efficiency. Now OVA is not a system exactly overburdened with concern about point efficiency and character balance, so if it is simply a less efficient option that's ok, I just want to make sure I haven't missed anything. Like focus and weapon, Gear potentially hinders a character by making some of their abilities removable, in return they give certain benefits. Now for gear I can think of three benefits only two of which are mechanical and they are both situational.

A) It fits the character concept and feel better than either focus or weapon. Most obviously to me if part of an ability is to be internal to the character and part from the gear. Like say, a skilled swordsman with a magic sword.

B) If the gear also has one or more weaknesses it allows to option to temporarily remove the  weaknesses at the expense of also losing the extra abities. Lets say the above magic sword is intelligent and tends to talk telepahically to its user (room for two weakness), it might be a good idea to leave it behind when out on a date.

C) finally gear is also usefull if combined with Walking Arsenal.

Now I think there will be situations were a character should have Gear because of (A) but neither (B) or (C) apply, which means it would be better to by the ability straight,  but that might not 'feel' right for the character. Have I missed another benefit of gear?
Malancthon
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Malancthon »

Welcome! I'm also impressed with OVA, as it does a lot of things that I like. It's My current go to RPG. I'll try to answer your questions.

1. The Attack ability name is slightly inaccurate. You don't need Attack to make attacks, but it makes your attacks more powerful. Basically, Attack is your main damage booster. A character can have any number of attack options, as long as it makes sense as something the character can do. Perks and Flaws likewise can be applied to other Abilities- they just mostly are used with the Attack ability. So, yes, Healing could be changed up using Perks and Flaws.

2. Good question. I'm guessing that the Will Attack Perk lets Ai add Psychic to her DX, even though the book doesn't say so.

3. Ah, Gear. Probably the most divisive Ability.

The short answer is Gear doesn't add or subtract points. It's more of a tag than an Ability, a way to say these Abilities are not innate to the character. Again, you got it, it's mostly for feeling right for the character.

Walking Arsenal is also a weird Ability, because you need to have Gear first, and then Walking Arsenal, but you can't have Walking Arsenal higher than Gear. Seems fair, since you basically can have any Ability as a Gear, but Magic and Inventor are also "any Ability" Abilities without needing to double spend points (granted Magic does have Endurance costs, but still).

I usually house rule Gear as being like Vehicle and Transformation, ie, costing half the total Abilities (round up). Walking Arsenal no longer needs Gear, but the item total after modifiers is no higher than the level of Walking Arsenal, and it requires a roll like Inventor to see if you have the item on hand.
E Nymton
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by E Nymton »

Malancthon wrote:Welcome! I'm also impressed with OVA, as it does a lot of things that I like. It's My current go to RPG. I'll try to answer your questions.

1. The Attack ability name is slightly inaccurate. You don't need Attack to make attacks, but it makes your attacks more powerful. Basically, Attack is your main damage booster. A character can have any number of attack options, as long as it makes sense as something the character can do. Perks and Flaws likewise can be applied to other Abilities- they just mostly are used with the Attack ability. So, yes, Healing could be changed up using Perks and Flaws.

2. Good question. I'm guessing that the Will Attack Perk lets Ai add Psychic to her DX, even though the book doesn't say so.

3. Ah, Gear. Probably the most divisive Ability.

The short answer is Gear doesn't add or subtract points. It's more of a tag than an Ability, a way to say these Abilities are not innate to the character. Again, you got it, it's mostly for feeling right for the character.

Walking Arsenal is also a weird Ability, because you need to have Gear first, and then Walking Arsenal, but you can't have Walking Arsenal higher than Gear. Seems fair, since you basically can have any Ability as a Gear, but Magic and Inventor are also "any Ability" Abilities without needing to double spend points (granted Magic does have Endurance costs, but still).

I usually house rule Gear as being like Vehicle and Transformation, ie, costing half the total Abilities (round up). Walking Arsenal no longer needs Gear, but the item total after modifiers is no higher than the level of Walking Arsenal, and it requires a roll like Inventor to see if you have the item on hand.
1 - Oh I get how attack works, by question really is do other abilities work in the same way. Could someone with healing 3 have a basic healing power, then one with area of effect and one with a couple of ranks of effective (both with an endurance cost) for juat 3 points, the same as you can do with attack. I don't see why not myself.

2 - I considered it might be psychic adding to the damage but there is no rules support for that, and I seem to remember seeing something that convinced me it wasn't that, but can't remeber what now. :)

3 - On my first skim of the rules I assumed gear worked they way you do it. I think the reason it doesn't is it makes it a better deal than focus a lot of the time. I'm actually ok with gear being mainly a concept/bookkeeping thing. But want to check i haven't missed anything.
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Sabersonic »

1. Yep, you got the basic gist of it. Only stipulation being that Perks and Flaws simply changes the Endurance Cost of its use, of which any ability's EP cost is 0.

Though, to be honest, I'm not exactly sure exactly what circumstances (outside of what is stated in the core rulebook in the Weaknesses, that is) would the cost of the ability be in Weaknesses such as Unique as opposed to perks and flaws. Clay?

2. That would probably depend upon the GM in question, but I don't see why not if it makes sense to the setting and campaign.

3. Well from what I've learned in the forum, the chief characteristic of Gear is that it can be loaned to another character and that it can be stolen. Otherwise it's no different from other similar Abilities such as Magic, Arcane/Witchcraft or Walking Arsenal.
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E Nymton
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by E Nymton »

Ah yes gear can be given to someone else. What about weapons and foci? I guess weapons could be a bit tricky to disentangle from the character. For a focus I would guess it would depend on how the focus works in a narrative sense?
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Sabersonic »

Well so long as an attack (or Ability now that I think about it) has the Weapon Flaw, then it can be stolen by another character. Foci is basically the same as Gear with the exemption that the thief cannot use those same abilities, only deny them.

As for taking them, well it depends upon the setting, GM fiat, and a very good dice check.
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E Nymton
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by E Nymton »

Weapon is a bit odd though, if you are disarmed you cant use it, fine. Someone takes it off you and they get ... a bundle of perks and flaws? What if some of them relate to your skill or power not the wepaon itself? It will have to be an individual judgment. But weapon seems a bit awkward to take off someone rather than just deprive them of it.
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Sabersonic »

Well just because someone deprived another of their Weapon/Foci, it doesn't mean that they have access to their associated abilities. It just means that the ability/ies that the character normally has is not available and must use whatever is left to get it back.

One example (i.e. probably not the best one now that I think about it) is when Thor's hammer was stolen by some Giant or something and is basically rendered powerless and must dress up like a bride in order to trick the Giant King to give the hammer back. The hammer doesn't give the thief all the powers of Thor, since even in the original Norse mythology Thor needed special gauntlets and/or belt to even wield the thing, only that it denies Thor his powers if not his masculinity if some scholars are to be believed.
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Clay
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Clay »

There's been lots of great answers from everyone about this, but in case you want some thoughts straight from the horse's mouth:

1) While only Attack specifically delineates multiple "settings" for the Ability, there's no reason you can't apply the same logic to others. Sometimes this makes senses (as with Healer), but other times, it's not really fair (Vehicle for instance.) Just use common sense when approaching such uses.

(Trivia, behind the scenes Healer is basically built like an Attack with a hidden Perk (Heals instead of Damages +20) and Concentration (-20). So if you're so inclined, you could buy off the Concentration by taking 20 points of Flaws in its place and/or spending 20 Endurance every time.

This is never explicitly stated, but—now you know!

2) Yeah, I just went a little hand-wavy with the flavor text. Telekinesis is the mental-type damage increasing Ability, and it was just simpler to treat it that way regardless of what's actually happening. Telekinesis plays a little fast and loose with the term anyway, since you're basically allowed to do damage without actually throwing around other objects.

That said, if it really bothers you, you can houserule that Will Attack uses Psychic instead of Telekinesis—it's the same number of dice in Ai's case anyway.

3) Ah Gear, everybody's favorite. The main problem here is that while the current version of Gear doesn't really grant you anything, it's more of a book-keeping tool, treating it like Transformation or Vehicle is even more broken than OVA can typically be. Consider for a moment why you would <i>ever</i> choose Transformation or Vehicle, which both have highly hampered uses, which you could choose Gear, an Ability you can use ALL THE TIME.

OVA's intent was never to be a perfectly balanced system, but I think treating Gear in this way is just too encouraging to abuse. If you feel like Gear absolutely needs some sort of kickback, I'd let up on the rule disallowing Focus/the Weapon Flaw. Using either should give Gear the little bit of punch you're looking for.

Hope that helps!
E Nymton
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by E Nymton »

Clay wrote:There's been lots of great answers from everyone about this, but in case you want some thoughts straight from the horse's mouth:

1) While only Attack specifically delineates multiple "settings" for the Ability, there's no reason you can't apply the same logic to others. Sometimes this makes senses (as with Healer), but other times, it's not really fair (Vehicle for instance.) Just use common sense when approaching such uses.

(Trivia, behind the scenes Healer is basically built like an Attack with a hidden Perk (Heals instead of Damages +20) and Concentration (-20). So if you're so inclined, you could buy off the Concentration by taking 20 points of Flaws in its place and/or spending 20 Endurance every time.

This is never explicitly stated, but—now you know!

2) Yeah, I just went a little hand-wavy with the flavor text. Telekinesis is the mental-type damage increasing Ability, and it was just simpler to treat it that way regardless of what's actually happening. Telekinesis plays a little fast and loose with the term anyway, since you're basically allowed to do damage without actually throwing around other objects.

That said, if it really bothers you, you can houserule that Will Attack uses Psychic instead of Telekinesis—it's the same number of dice in Ai's case anyway.

3) Ah Gear, everybody's favorite. The main problem here is that while the current version of Gear doesn't really grant you anything, it's more of a book-keeping tool, treating it like Transformation or Vehicle is even more broken than OVA can typically be. Consider for a moment why you would <i>ever</i> choose Transformation or Vehicle, which both have highly hampered uses, which you could choose Gear, an Ability you can use ALL THE TIME.

OVA's intent was never to be a perfectly balanced system, but I think treating Gear in this way is just too encouraging to abuse. If you feel like Gear absolutely needs some sort of kickback, I'd let up on the rule disallowing Focus/the Weapon Flaw. Using either should give Gear the little bit of punch you're looking for.

Hope that helps!
It does, thank you.

Dropping Focus and the weapon flaw was an idea I had for games where gear would play a big role.

Another random question, for you or anyone else wbo can help

Can someone please give me a rundown of the probabilities in OVA. I find it hard to grasp how likely a given roll is to succeed. I found a thread about it, but all the links on it seem to be dead.
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Clay »

This has been brought up a few times over the years. Here's the original discussion of the topic from way too long ago:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1911

Rawle Nyanzi had made a colorful chart based on his own calculations, but unfortunately the image links are now broken. But you can still see some discussion about the results here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12500&p=23424&hilit ... ice#p23424

and here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12456&hilit=probability+dice
Malancthon
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by Malancthon »

Clay wrote:Ah Gear, everybody's favorite. The main problem here is that while the current version of Gear doesn't really grant you anything, it's more of a book-keeping tool, treating it like Transformation or Vehicle is even more broken than OVA can typically be. Consider for a moment why you would <i>ever</i> choose Transformation or Vehicle, which both have highly hampered uses, which you could choose Gear, an Ability you can use ALL THE TIME.

OVA's intent was never to be a perfectly balanced system, but I think treating Gear in this way is just too encouraging to abuse. If you feel like Gear absolutely needs some sort of kickback, I'd let up on the rule disallowing Focus/the Weapon Flaw. Using either should give Gear the little bit of punch you're looking for.
Hmm, not sure I necessarily agree with this. Vehicle also has a bonus of having it's own separate Health and Endurance, which can be a pretty big advantage. And Gear is not something you'd have at all times. If you are not out adventuring, or get captured, or on an impromptu mission, there are reasons why you would not have your Gear. If you want the ability all the time, then purchase it directly, and not as Gear.

And while opening a can of worms, I usually allow Transformation to be used at will, instead of once or twice per adventure. If it can only be used a few times, I'd make that a Weakness. If a player grabs Transformation and always stays transformed to exploit the 1:2 points advantage, then the player should be advised to remake the character without the ability. A transformation should be distinctive, like with Bizarre Appearance or Awkward Size- a reason to not want to be in that form all the time.
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Re: Ok sorry but I have some questions.

Post by sniffycrab »

The thing about GEAR is it gets passed around. In theory anyways.

For example Royal guard Leon has Armored +1. Now his armor won't really fit other people. Now if he had the GEAR: Shield ring Armor +1 anyone could use that. Leon could loan the GEAR to his buddy for a fight. Or some one could STEAL it for an encounter. GEAR means the ability can be transferred to others temporarily, sometimes without consent.

For example GEAR Jet Pack Flight +2. Any guy can use that to gain the ability to fly rather then a pair of wings. Explain to players that Gear is a universal ability that can be passed around rather then character specific.
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