Questors Errata

Discussion on the Earthdawn game line, errata, and feedback not related to playing or GMing.
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gortatrien
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Questors Errata

Post by gortatrien » Wed Jan 02, 2019 7:27 pm

Should Questors of Dis have +2 SD, +2 MA at Rank 12 since they get +1 MA at Rank 7?

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Mataxes
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Re: Questors Errata

Post by Mataxes » Thu Jan 03, 2019 3:16 am

Probably. I'll double check.

Edit: Yes, it should be +2 Mystic Armor.
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gortatrien
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Re: Questors Errata

Post by gortatrien » Thu Jan 03, 2019 6:32 am

Thanks,

Another one:
Should Questors of Thystonius have +1 SD instead of +2 at Rank 8 since they don't have any other bonuses to SD?

daedalron
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Re: Questors Errata

Post by daedalron » Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:43 pm

It seems questors of Vestrial have access to the "Let's make a deal" devotion. However, that devotion mention that the questor calls upon Chorrolis, so I guess that mention should be changed to a more neutral term.

Also, in terms of game balance, that specific devotion is mentionned as being exceptionnaly powerful, and its use is restricted because if misused, Chorrolis would take the power away. But Vestrial would instead really like for the devotion to be "misused", so isn't the devotion a bit too powerful as it is for a Vestrial questor (since the Chorrolis limitation doesn't apply to them) ?

Also, in Upandal's Armory (p186), it mentions: "The questor makes a Create Weapon test". Shouldn't that be a Upandal's Armory test ? Because otherwise you would never roll Upandal's armory, so why give it a Rank+WIL step.

ChrisDDickey
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Re: Questors Errata

Post by ChrisDDickey » Mon Feb 04, 2019 6:25 am

daedalron wrote:
Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:43 pm
It seems questors of Vestrial have access to the "Let's make a deal" devotion.
Very excellent points, and I agree that all or most of the references to "Chorrolis" need to be replaced by references to "their Passion".

But I have always thought the Devotion has reasonable limits, and even one trap, thus making it not overwhelmingly powerful. At the end of the day, all it does is make people open to any offer that is not suicidally or ruinously bad by setting base price that is at least twice (or higher) than a reasonable price. Then give user a +2 bonus to haggle per each success to try to haggle the price back down towards reasonableness.

Using the Rules as Written, if the Base Price is set at "Reasonable times two", then the Questor will need to succeed in 10 haggle tests just to lower that by 50% to arrive back at "reasonable" with any chance of excess profit coming by succeeding more than 10 times. And that is assuming his target can't or does not succeed at haggling back at all. If the Questor flubs his roll just once, he might end up paying significantly more than reasonable price. If you are using house rules where the haggling discount is 5% per success, the situation is considerably more dire.

Of course any deal with somebody with 15 ranks in Haggle is usually going to be dire. But at least when this Devotion is used, the base price starts at 2 more times what the base price would have been if the devotion had not been used.

Now if a Questor of Chorrolis is using "Lets make a deal" on you, he is an Exemplar of Chorrolis and almost certainly has Haggle of at least rank 9, and might have it as high as 12 or even 15 (though there are no known Questors past Exemplars, unless you have made the mistake of going up against Chorrolis himself). So he probably has a rank of at least 9, and might have it as a Talent of up to Rank 15

However a Questor of Vestrail does not have native (granted by the Passion) access to Haggle, so "Lets make a Deal" is useless to them unless they have quite a few ranks in Haggle from some other source. Of course the Questor of Vestrail will not have taken this devotion unless he has quite a lot of ranks in Haggle from somewhere, but at least he will not be spending Devotion Points on his Haggle Tests in addition to his Lets make a Deal bonus.

Assuming all other references to "Chorrolis" get changed to "their Passion", including the phrase "Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor of [their Passion]", the power is still not overpowered in the hands of a Questor of Vestrail. I mean Questors of Vestrail are supposed to mess you up, but it should not be able to mess you up in a suicidal, ruinous, or I will willingly/knowingly make a deal with a Questor of Vestrail sort of way.

First, once again, aside from Chorrolis's desire that his Devotion be used as a force for good, the restrictions that the Devotion does not work when dealing with "Priceless" values, Clearly suicidal missions, as a way to arbitrarily ruin, or creatively kill a person are all still in effect. A reluctant target can make appeal to the GM that the Questors initial offer of a base price gave insufficient allowance for the sentimental or practical value attached to the object of the deal.

Oh, and the "Trap". "Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor of [their Passion]". Don't ever try to use this Devotion on anybody who has "Steely Stare". Once again, all LMaD does is give you a +2 on Haggle Tests. Steely Stare takes away your ability to make Haggle tests for a short period of time. If a Questor makes an offer that is too good to refuse, confident that he can haggle the target down to "I wish I had refused". And the target says "I accept" and gives you a Steely Stare, the Questor is messed up. He can Accept the deal and pay full offer without haggling. He can reject the deal and fall into severe disfavor with his passion, or he has 2 or at most 3 rounds to throw off the Steely Stare so he can haggle, before the Adept turns on his heal and leaves (thus throwing the Questor into severe disfavor with his passion for failing to accept the targets acceptance of the deal. Just the danger of this scenario happening ought to be enough to make most Questors a bit careful about useing this power.

daedalron
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Re: Questors Errata

Post by daedalron » Mon Feb 04, 2019 8:33 am

But why would Vestrial, the Passion of deceit and lies, force her questors to honor their words about a trade ? I don't see how the "Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor of [their Passion]" apply to a Vestrial questor.

ChrisDDickey
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Re: Questors Errata

Post by ChrisDDickey » Tue Feb 05, 2019 5:27 am

daedalron wrote:
Mon Feb 04, 2019 8:33 am
But why would Vestrial, the Passion of deceit and lies, force her questors to honor their words about a trade ? I don't see how the "Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor of [their Passion]" apply to a Vestrial questor.
Several possibilities here, and I would like to see an official errata or comment upon this topic, and how they would choose to word any errata to make more sense of Questors other than Exemplors of Chorrolis using it. But I have come up with several possibilities.

I ought to say something about my personal philosophy with rules...
If I am looking for ways that the Rules as Written don't make sense, I am always able to find many examples, and lots of theories about how they could be "improved". However if I see something that does not initially seem to make in-game sense, if I think about how it might make sense, I can almost always find several reasonable explanations as well. I almost always find it much simpler to spend my efforts trying to imagine ways in which the rules make sense, than to spend them trying to imagine how they don't make sense and good balanced ways in which they can be fixed.



That having been said, here are some of the possibilities for why the RaW make sense without any changes at all, and how they might make even better sense with the absolute minimum of editing to the rules (substituting some or all of the instances of the named passion Chorrolis with "their Passion"). These are just examples of possible reasons, I am sure many other exist. Some of them rely upon weird magic, but ... My goal is to find a solution that I like with the absolute minimum of changes to the RaW. This is why would tend to go with solution (b) or (c) below. I don't really like solution (a), but the others are reasonable and remove the fewest of the restrictions on the Devotion.


(a) First, lets assume no edits to the text whatsoever. Chorrolis' name is still hardcoded into the text everywhere.
Vestrial (for whatever reason, probably involving the amount of effort and magic that would need to be spent) did not bother to make a new Devotion called "Let's make a Swindle", Instead the Passion chose to piggyback upon Chorrolis' efforts. Vestrial has granted her Questors the ability to make a direct appeal to the passion Chorrolis. Chorrolis, for reasons of his own, treats these appeals exactly as he would invocations of the Devotion by his own Questors. Judging the fairness of the deal offered, etc. If the deal does not meet Chorrolis' (not Vestrial's) standards, the Devotion fails. If Chorrolis determines that a Questor (even a Questor of Vestrial) is abusing the power, Chorrolis can take it away.


The other canidates replace one, most, or all of the references to Chorrolis with "their Passion". At the very minimum the very first reference "The questor calls upon Chorrolis to inspire the target with a desire to..." would have Questors of Vestrial calling upon Vestral instead of Chorrolis.


(b) and (c)
Vestrial (for whatever reason, probably involving the amount of effort and magic that would need to be spent) did not bother to make a new Devotion called "Let's make a Swindle", Instead the Passion chose to piggyback upon Chorrolis' efforts. Lets assume that Devotions do not require the personal attention of the Passion involved, but they have been automated. Thus the magic of the Devotion itself is an expert system that makes judgements upon topics such as "suicidal", "ruinous", "practical value", "sentimental value", etc. The magic of the Devotion was written by Chorrolis and imposes those same values upon all instances of the Devotion, no matter the Passion of the Questor involved. Vestrail can't modify this without going to the effort of making her own Devotion (and she instead put her efforts into "Vestrial’s Tongue"). Questors of Vestrial can do nefarious things with the power, but need to work within the restrictions that Chorrolis has imposed.
"Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor with Chorrolis."
(b) Vestrail does not care if her Questors abuse the Devotion or fail to live up to deals made with the Devotion, but Chorrolis most definitely does. Abusing this power, or failing to live up to a deal forced with this power, puts you straight at the top of Chorrolis' shit list. This goes beyond merely being an agent and Exemplar of a Mad rival. This is a direct affront to the Passion, who is going to make a direct response to the Questor.
"Once engaged, the questor must make the purchase or fall into severe disfavor with their Passion."
(c) failing to make the purchase puts a Questor of Vestrail in sever disfavor with Vestrail. Vestrail is a Mad Passion and as thus is not rational about some things. She gave you a Devotion. It is a Holy Devotion. It does not matter that Chorrolis wrote the Devotion, she gave it to you, and you are not using it as designed. This makes her angry with you. This attitude is insane, but so is she. It's your fault for following a Mad Passion, now how are you going to make it up to her.

Note that none of these possible solutions really remove any of the restrictions on the devotion. The only difference is which Passion is mad at you. Once again there are many more possibilities, but I honestly think the best solution is to think about ways the rules might be right, and come up with something workable that makes the fewest changes to the rules. And which of these solutions I ended up going with would depend upon if there is an Errata on this power and exactly what the errata changes.

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