The Sage’s Answers, Part 7
Is it the middle of the week already?
Just to remind everyone, here we’ll be answering questions players and GMs have asked about The Witcher TRPG with the goal of turning them into an errata and updating the book down the line. Today we’re answering five questions!
Cody Pondsmith, our line developer, will be answering five to ten questions each time we post. We’re going to shoot for either every weekday or every other weekday, schedules allowing, and when there’s going to be longer breaks, we’ll try our best to let you know in advance. We’ll be posting each The Sage’s Answers on our blog, our Facebook, and on the r/WitcherTRPG subreddit. On our blog, I’ll be tagging each entry with “sagesanswers” to make them easy to find.
And on we go!
Mgshammer asks…
Magical Focuses. Page 167. It specifies Mages. Can a priest or witcher use a focus? Perhaps a holy symbol for the priest? Otherwise, what’s the point of a holy symbol, as it’s not needed for anything in the game?
Cody answers…
Priests can use magical focuses but they must be one of the stated magical focuses in the game. These items are focus items due to their physical make up and made according to ancient rites and runes in specific ways which doesn’t lend themselves well to alteration, even for ornamental purposes.
Holy symbols are in the game to signify alignment to a religion. Beyond being important to the character they can also be used to establish your kinship with other worshipers more quickly.
Mgshammer asks…
Dimeritium, the Bane of Mages and Highly Skilled Mages sections. Page 167. In these paragraphs, it specifies Magic User instead of Mage. So I presume this means that it affects all magic users: mages, priests, and witchers. Right? Not just Mages, even though the header only mentions mages. Also, in the books and games, Geralt didn’t seem affected by Dimeritium. So maybe these sections don’t apply to Witchers. Just priests and mages? If it’s only mages, then what’s the difference between a Mage and a Magic User?
Cody answers…
The term “magic users” applies specifically to both Priests and Mages. Witchers, for reasons which are still being explored inworld, seem to be exempt from this and we will make this clearer in the update.
Douglas Engles asks…
How does Geralt reach such a high Reflex?
Cody answers…
Hey, Douglas! Geralt is at such a high Reflex for story purposes. It is established again and again that Geralt is special even amongst witchers. We wanted to reflect that by making Geralt slightly more powerful than even top grade Witchers. It is possible that in further supplements it will be possible to reach that high as a player character but we wanted to make sure that Geralt was appropriately awe inspiring.
Douglas Engles asks…
Do Witchers have to buy Empathy 5 (before the effects of Dulled Emotions) in the Point-Buy system or can they just allocate 1 Point there and get 4 freebie stat points? Does Empathy 2 cost 2 points or 6 for a witcher at chargen? (And after chargen, if a witcher wanted to raise their EMP from 1 to 2, would it cost 10 IP or 50?).
Cody answers…
A Statistic (INT, REF, DEX, BODY, SPD, EMP, CRA, WILL, and LUCK) has to have at least a rank of at least 1. During character generation, at least, no matter the penalty applied due to circumstances such as race or Lifepath, these Statistics cannot be lowered to 0 once points are spent on them.
Therefore, if a Witcher player only wants a 1 in Charisma, they only need to spend 1 point from their point pool to buy the rank. Yes, the -4 technically still applies, but since the Statistic can’t be dropped below 1, they don’t need to spend more points.
However, if a Witcher wants to be more than an emotionally stunted mumbler with a hard time convincing anyone of anything, their player does need to spend the points to mitigate this negative.
For Empathy 2, the player has to spend 6 points from their pool (to overcome the -4 penalty). For Empathy 3, the player has to spend 7 points, and so forth all the way up to the Witcher’s maximum of 6, which has a cost of 10 points (or 1/6th of an Average game’s Statistic point pool).
Once the game has begun, the Witcher’s player can spend I.P. to raise their character’s Empathy at the same cost as any other Statistic, keeping in mind it can never rise above 6 as per the Dulled Emotions sidebar on page 22.
Douglas Engles asks…
Can you kick an addiction during your lifepath? It only takes 3 weeks of not indulging, and each roll on the table stands for a decade.
Cody answers…
Technically, no. There is not a way for you to kick an addiction during your Lifepath. Lifepath is supposed to establish benefits and disadvantages that your character starts with in your campaign. In a similar vein, you can’t use a favor before you get into the actual game. That being said, if your GM permits it, you could attempt to kick the addiction earlier on by making the appropriate rolls. At that point, your character no longer needs the source of their addiction but might still crave it, making relapse a possibility and grist for the RP mill.
That’s all for today!
Keep your blades sharp!
Categories
Hello Talsorian!
First of all congratulations for this amazing rulebook, it’s a blast!
Second, I was wondering what are the rules about falling damage both for the Player Characters and the NPC/Monsters.
Thank you again for your work, I can’t wait to have the next manual of the Witcher!
For the moment, I would look to the griffin, wyvern, or bird entries for guidance.
A question about magic.
When casting through a weapon with Greater Focus your spell DCs are considered 2 points higher.
This means it’s harder to cast spells, and I presume it’s a way to tune down higher levels of standard Focus. Am I right?
Good question. I’m going to add this to our list.
Hi there! Loving the game!
So, my question is: the weapon effects table in page 72 states that meteorite weapons have 5 points of extra stopping power. What does this mean? I understand that blocking or parrying negates full attack damage, so what’s the use?
Thanks
Thank you! I’m going to pass your question onto our design team.