Re: (TFT) Reliability of flickering Gates

[ErolB1@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/2/2003 12:43:45 AM Central Standard Time, 
rsmith@lightspeed.ca writes:

>     I should have said a couple of apprentices
> there.  Not that having a 10 or 20 point ST battery
> is that big a deal for the type of money we are
> talking about.

Two apprentices providing 10 St each, plus 10 St from the master wizard, plus 
20 St from a St battery - 50 St, just barely. And while I've extended the 
duration in my house rules, St from an Aid spell by-the-book only lasts 2 
turns. So timing is a lot tighter than the 1 minute deadline given by the 
Gate itself. If I were setting it up and had a 20 pt St battery, I'd want 4 
apprentices, for redundancy, plus a spare Gate to be used only to pop back 
and forth to re-establish the first Gate in case it does go down despite 
stabilization attempts. 

>    Yes we would have that chance of problem if
> the gates were in constant use, but normally there
> is not that much flow.  (The PC's charge what the
> traffic would bear which keeps it down to the
> more valuable goods.)

OK, if you limit Gate use to once every 2 minutes, the Gate will go unstable 
every 7.2 hours on average. After a Gate is stablized, though, it should 
remain unused for a few hours while the wizards recover their St and recharge 
the St battery. 

>     But I certainly can see the logic behind the
> GM whim gates of yours.  In many ways it is the
> cleanest solution that has been proposed.

Yeah, me too :-) 
"GM whim" is a solution I prefer to use *sparingly,* but sometimes it is 
needed. 

My most common use is in my character death rule: Character's who take a 
total of twice their base St in damage die immediately, but otherwise 
characters at St 0 or less get to linger on for as long or as short a time as 
the controlling player wishes (i.e. "player whim"). NPCs live or die 
according to GM whim. This allows the classic "NPC stumbles into the bar, 
gasps out a cryptic message, drops dead from the dagger in his back" without 
having to fudge any "death rolls." It also improves PC survival (a good 
thing, from my pov) - PCs can will themselves to live until healed. 

Other than that, I use GM whim for Gates, Long Distance Teleport, and Demons. 
(Although I'm trying to work out a regular system for what Demons can and 
can't do.) The limits on what counts as a wizard's Staff "picked up against 
the wizard's will" is more rule-lawyering than GM whim. And there are likely 
another one or two odd bits that I'm not remembering at the moment. 

-- 
Erol K. Bayburt
ErolB1@aol.com
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