- Characters who have had their Chi disrupted can't just meditate or sleep to recover it.
Disrupted Chi must be restored using one of the Chi Skills.
If the character doesn't have the necessary skill, then it's necessary to seek out some kind of Chi Master for assistance.
Wujcik bolded the term "disrupted" so it must have some kind of distinct meaning. Though I can't recall if it was described in the book itself.
11 September 2007 NMI posted this thread http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... 37&t=79258 and the second portion says "#2: Author: Guest, Posted: 10 Mar 2005 23:22" but then the 2nd question in that 2nd section:
Question: Can characters who have had their chi disrupted use Chi Mastery Abilities (i.e. if they have Positive/Negative Chi Mastery Abilities and, as a result of Chi Combat, have been reduced to negative chi, can they use those abilities)? My gut instict would be no, since their chi has been disrupted, preventing them from being able to focus on a chi mastery ability in order to use it.
Answer(by Erick Wujcik): Correct. Those who have had their Chi disrupted cannot use Chi Mastery Abilities... at least until their Chi is restored.
So I'm not sure if perhaps "Guest" was Erick Wujcik, or if Guest was quoting something Erick had said previously...
If this can be relied upon, it appears that Chi disruption might refer to one of 3 things:
- 1) running out of chi (reduced to 0 voluntarily or involuntarily)
2) having all your chi destroyed (reduced to 0 involuntarily)
3) being infected with negative chi
I'd like to know what others would instinctively assume, and then compare this to other information to see if we should revise our assumptions.
SURVIVING ZERO CHI gives some further hint as to this:
- If the character ever recovers any Chi, then healing will start immediately and the illnesses will disappear.
Lost Chi, Hit Points and S.D.C. can be recovered normally.
This time I added the bold for emphasis. The implication here is that when you are at zero chi, lost chi does not recover normally. This leads me to think that "chi disruption" refers to definition proposal 1 (being at 0 chi voluntarily or involuntarily) without a requirement to be infected with negative chi or be reduced to 0 by an attacker. So merely overusing chi skills might result in it, for example. A character should always keep 1 in the tank!
I'd like to better understand the mechanics of how to deal with this state of disrupted/zero (synonyms, I think) chi.
What is the "necessary skill" which is "one of the chi skills"? Dragon Chi (Fu Zhensong and Dark Chi (Chakuri-Chi) both say "maximum Chi that can be tapped is equal to the character's current level of positive Chi" so maximum tap = 0 means they're both useless.
The only way around this I can think of (and for Dragon Chi only, not Dark Chi) is to assume that since it ends with "natural Chi" it may not be referring to all aspects of "tapping" within the power, but perhaps only that of the preceding paragraph which refers to tapping it from surroundings, and not the paragraph before that, which allows drawing from volunteers who you're touching.
"Chi Relaxation" on 118 uses "full hour's meditation" so page 16's disclaimer would appear to prevent it from helping with disrupted chi. So as far as I can tell there's no actual way in the main book for someone to help themself, unless of course the "natural tapping" reasoning above is used.
As for "seek out some kind of Chi Master for assistance" I figure that refers to 119's Chi Healing (Chi-atsu). It specifies:
- destroying negative Chi does not simultaneously heal any hit points, or S.D.C., but does heal the positive Chi so that natural healing (and treatment) can resume
Getting Rid of Negative Chi is something we do have rules for people helping themself with. It's an afterthought at the end of "3. Defend Against Chi Attacks" page 118. It's not clear to me if this is something only people with the 3 skills can do (Chi Masters, per main book) or if this might be something anyone capable of meditating can do. Meditation (normally restores full chi in 1 hour) isn't just an aspect of "2. Chi Relaxation", as even those who aren't Chi Masters can do it as long as they have a chi bonus from their form, according to page 16.
GRONC can bring you -1 to 0 but not 0 to +1 though, and that's the problem you need to solve to begin healing again, including healing your own chi normally via sleep or meditation.
When Chi-Atsu mentions that DNC (destroying negative chi) "does heal the positive Chi" I'm thinking this is a less clear part of the power. It sounds like perhaps, in addition to destroying 2 negative chi, that it may also impart 1 positive chi in someone. If that was the intent, the "crunch" could have been explained a little more clearly in that last paragraph before the example, since the degree of healing isn't really explained.
It might be, for example, that it doesn't restore 1 full point (which you might then immediately use to power an ability) but perhaps some kind of fractional chi which brings you above 0 to allow healing, but isn't otherwise useful? If so, knowing how that works would still be nice. Like perhaps you get 0.1 chi restored per 1.0 chi spent by the Chi Healer? A 10:1 ratio like that probably wouldn't be unbalanced. Of course if you thought it was, you could make it 0.001, or however small that it wouldn't alter play mechanics.
It's also not clear if you actually need to destroy negative chi to heal the positive chi, or if the 2nd Chi-atsu ability (dnC) could just be used to heal the positive Chi of someone at 0 who was not infected. Is it possible that healing 0>1 actually requires dispelling at least 1 negative chi? Perhaps Chi-Atsu actually involves transforming negative chi infections into positive chi, similar to "Negative Chi Control" on page 120 going "in reverse"?
Page 153 of Mystic China appears to support the interpretation that it is Chi-Atsu which was meant by "some kind of Chi Master" on N&S 16, as under "recover from Zero" it mentions "anyone with Chi Healing", which does seem to imply that, at whatever the ratio/mechanics are (I don't think they've been clearly stated) that Chi-Atsu can somehow bring you above 0, whether that's to 0.0001 or "points spent" or "amount of negative chi removed" is what's unclear to me. Without knowing the mechanics it's hard to think of how to actually apply this solution to people at 0 and in need of help.
Page 152 of Mystic China affirms the N&S mechanics. Since you "must have at least one point of Chi in order to be healed from any damage" this would also include "chi damage". The combat example on page 119 of N&S for example has the GM say "3D6 of damage to your Chi" and after saying "21 points off your Chi!" the player (ALAN) replies "taking 21 damage, that only leaves me 5 points".
MC152-153 also affirms you need 1 positive chi to get back all lost chi from a full night's sleep. Doesn't mention meditation in 1 hour though, but I believe N&S 16 would still apply.
MC153 then says:
People with no Positive Chi remaining and with no Chi abilities, can't heal back their lost Chi
I don't know if this is meant to imply that having ANY "Chi ability" would allow you to heal it back, or if it is only referring to a particular subset of Chi ability.
Someone with any of the chi mastery powers gets "Chi Relaxation", but it still seems to me that since it uses "meditation" and N&S 16 forbids restoring chi via meditation that this isn't the way. So is this meant to mean "use Dragon Chi to take Chi from a volunteer"?
MC introduces certain new tricks for escaping chi disruption but they don't explain what the main book was referring to unless Wujcik was referring to abilities he hadn't introduced yet:
- pg 109 "Mudra for the Evocation of Healing Energy" .. "at Zero Chi, the body's normal Positive Chi will be filled, at a rate of..."
The problem there is that since this Mudra requires 4 positive chi to activate, it can't really help you if you want to begin it at 0, you already have to have begun using it before being reduced below 4!
http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... 37&t=79258 addresses this too:
If one wants the Mudra of Evocation of Healing Energy to work properly, change the Chi Cost to read "Four Positive Chi to heal damage, zero Chi to fill with Positive Chi.
That answer has no (Wujcik) next to it though so I don't know if it would be considered canon.
- pg 157 "can .. be down to Zero Chi .. and still be able to perform any of the Chi Katas"
+
pg 158 "Mending Chi Kata" .. "replenishing lost Positive Chi"
I'm not sure if Chi Katas are considered a "Chi ability", I don't recall a specific glossary for CA or statement that it was limited to Chi Mastery. It would seem a term flexible enough to apply to Arts of Invisibility (Chi Zoshiki) or Body Hardening (Chi Gung) so why not Chi Katas too?
Pg 73's Convert PPE to Chi would also be a useful solve to escape 0, assuming you knew the spell or at least knew how to burn Celestial Calligraphy. For the latter I'm a little unclear about it. Page 71 goes from talking about Western Mages and alternatively 5 minutes to 1-2 hours, but page 63 had said "Anyone can activate paper-inscribed Celestial Calligaphy simply by setting fire to the paper and holding it while the written character burn". Not sure what to go by.