Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Erifnogard]

A large part of the flavor of Hucksters for me is the Deal with the Devil casting procedure. Frankly I dislike power points in general but really dislike having both mechanics in the same arcane background. So as I think the Deal with the Devil rules are the meat (so to speak) of the Huckster's rules, I want to drop power points and have all Huckster spells require Dealing with the Devil.

That having been said, I don't want to completely change the dynamic of the Huckster and I think having some degree of assurance that you can get a few spells off in relative safety is a valuable part of the profession. My thought is that a Huckster could draw a 'hole card' at the beginning of the session in place of each 5 power points he would have had. These could be used at any time with his normal draw for casting but do not replenish until the next session. This also has the advantage of keeping the power edges useful.

-Edited to remove my rules reading fail driven skill drivel and to add the following:

One thing I have considered to make up for some of the loss of certainty is that you don't declare the exact point cost you are aiming for but instead see how many points you are able to muster with your draw and then choose the options on your power. I'm pretty iffy about this idea though as it takes a lot of the gambling out of the Deal with the Devil.

Anyway, any opinions?
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CEO of Paranoia, Inc.
Our motto: "Better paranoid than surprised!"

[catalac]

with anything 6 power points or less you still need the skill to see if the spell works. as for your idea i'm sure it would work fine but i can't help but think you hate your huckster. although then again unless you make it clear that magic is a sin to most folk hucksters tend to be over powered so hate away
walks away from the magic blast vary slowly while putting on sun glasses

[Erifnogard]

[skylion]

There always has to be a catch. The Spellcasting, or Arcane Skill roll is a given, and cannot be avoided.

But, if you want a system that gets rid of power points, but has some certainty to it in the face of the Deal With the Devil, than it should rely on skill: something they have to invest in.

Knowledge: Occult.

The Huckster has as many "safe" PP to spend as half his/her Knowledge Occult die type.

But, a Knowledge Occut roll must be made before the Spellcasting or Arcane Skill roll. This slows him down a turn, and it has him invest in a skill at the expense of other useful skills. It might make up for the "free" PP.

This needs a limit, so you can make that a "once per session" rule, with Edges to bump it to twice a session if need be, or whatever other system you feel provides a proper limit.
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[GranFalloon]

Er... by my reading, the Huckster does not usually need to roll Spellcasting.

Ahem.

[catalac]

well as i said it should work but it will increase them rolling on the back lash charts (which seriously seriously sucks) which results in the above mentioned magical explosion. in my experience this happens often enough in my campaigns because i tend to make it so the characters have weeks off in game then have them run into lots of trouble in one hellish unending night in which they face over 30 bad guys in three sessions in game time of less then 4 hours unless they have the sagebrush and starlight adventure card it tends to make them start dealing with the devil just to save their lives(which is the only reason a normal person would.) it tends to make it so taking whateley blood seems like a good idea and of course all sorts of different problems come with being a whateley.
so yeah dealing with the devil is the meat of hucksters but they probably don't need help doing it. (but then again this rant only applies if your evil like me and don't let your heroes sleep between sessions.)

[Erifnogard]

[Erifnogard]

[Erifnogard]

[GranFalloon]

Another solution is to fiddle with the Backfire table. Rather than a swingy d20 roll, it could be 2d10 or something, where the middle effects aren't too bad, but they get pretty unpleasant out toward the ends. And/or add or subtract a number based on how close the character came to the necessary PP.

[steelbrok]

Hucksters tend to be (or disguise themselves as) gamblers and so depend on their luck. that being so I suggest this:

Hucksters may treat their bennies as semi-permanent power points. Every benny they currently have represents a power point, so a Huckster with 3PP can cast spells up to 3PP as long as he doesn't spend a beny on anything else.

As he uses his bennies his inherent PP decrease (down to 1PP can only cast 1PP spells this way)

Whenever he wants to cast a spell using more PP than he has bennies he must Deal with the Devil

[Erifnogard]

[Erifnogard]

[Clint]

[Erifnogard]

[Clint]

[Erifnogard]

Ah, now I understand. So yes, definitely skill roll first then.
_________________
CEO of Paranoia, Inc.
Our motto: "Better paranoid than surprised!"