Because of the way Ex3 is set up, Linguistics really needs to explicitly take all the "art for art's sake" crafts. Probably it should be renamed to Art or something in the process, but we'll ignore that for the moment.
Generally speaking, if someone is trying to make a painting (or similar piece of art) in the game, that's probably a social action of some kind, most likely Inspire. Craft is not really set up to make social attacks. It has no charms which give it any bonuses or trigger on a successful social attack. All it has is every dice trick in the game so you can hit the required number of successes to make an artifact. Being able to get double 7s, reroll half your dice, buy extra successes, and get non charm bonus dice so you can create a painting that has a 30 success Instill action on it is really not what was intended by Solar Craft.
Now, obviously, said Solar can still do that and, via the basic objectives, there's a strong implication that people should be impressed by the Solar's skill and everything, but the ST doesn't have to deal with the mechanical obligations of a 30 success social influence action.
On the other hand, Linguistics is a social influence ability already. Giving it greater ability to create Inspire actions doesn't seem likely to break anything and it will open it up a bit more for play. Being a writer can be a bit tricky to work with, but a painter or sculptor has more common utility.
Mechanically speaking, what this would mean is that, if you want to create a "useful object," you roll Craft. If you want to create something which serves as the vehicle for Social Influence, you roll Linguistics. If you want to create a useful object that also serves as the vehicle for Social Influence, you make a Craft roll AND a Linguistics roll.
I think most of the existing Linguistics charms make sense under this paradigm, but adding a few custom charms specifically for Influence actions might be warranted.
So, any thoughts? Have I missed something?
Generally speaking, if someone is trying to make a painting (or similar piece of art) in the game, that's probably a social action of some kind, most likely Inspire. Craft is not really set up to make social attacks. It has no charms which give it any bonuses or trigger on a successful social attack. All it has is every dice trick in the game so you can hit the required number of successes to make an artifact. Being able to get double 7s, reroll half your dice, buy extra successes, and get non charm bonus dice so you can create a painting that has a 30 success Instill action on it is really not what was intended by Solar Craft.
Now, obviously, said Solar can still do that and, via the basic objectives, there's a strong implication that people should be impressed by the Solar's skill and everything, but the ST doesn't have to deal with the mechanical obligations of a 30 success social influence action.
On the other hand, Linguistics is a social influence ability already. Giving it greater ability to create Inspire actions doesn't seem likely to break anything and it will open it up a bit more for play. Being a writer can be a bit tricky to work with, but a painter or sculptor has more common utility.
Mechanically speaking, what this would mean is that, if you want to create a "useful object," you roll Craft. If you want to create something which serves as the vehicle for Social Influence, you roll Linguistics. If you want to create a useful object that also serves as the vehicle for Social Influence, you make a Craft roll AND a Linguistics roll.
I think most of the existing Linguistics charms make sense under this paradigm, but adding a few custom charms specifically for Influence actions might be warranted.
So, any thoughts? Have I missed something?
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