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When we last left our nameless and genderless adventurer, we'd determined a great deal about their origins. So great, in fact, that we went through the first fourteen tables in character creation and only have four to go! But they're doozies, so strap in. Our first stop is Table 215, Significant Events of Childhood and Adolescence. We roll d3 twice to determine how many times we're going to be rolling on this chart; lucky us, we get the full three for both childhood and adolescence. For each event, we roll d20 + our Social Level Modifier, which as you may recall is 4 (-1 from being Poor, +5 from being nobility). Let's get started. Our first roll is 5+4=9. Character serves a Patron. Determine the details on Table 543: In the Service of... [N] (Events can produce [L], [N], [D], or [R]. I'll explain what that means later.) Table 543 is actually three tables. First, we roll d10=4 on Table 543A. A nonhuman. Select on Table 751: Nonhumans. (Sigh.) We roll d20=12. Half elf - A human and elf crossbreed. Combines the vitality of humanity with elvenkind's beauty and eldritch nature. Though likeable, they are often outcasts. (Ah, the classic 'no one really understands me' race.) We roll 1d3=1 to see how much higher our patron's Social Status is than ours. I'm guessing they mean Social Level Modifier, so it's 5. We roll d8=1 on Table 543B. A parent was allied to the patron. (Not sure if this means our actual parents or our grandfather, who raised us. I roll 1d3 to find out (because why not) and get good old granddad.) Now we head to Table 543C to see what happened while we were serving this patron. We roll d3=3 times on this table. (Of course we do.) The first roll is 2d8=11. Patron requires the character to perform criminal acts. Select the crime on Table 875: Crimes. (It's at this point that I discovered the forums put a limit on how deeply you can nest lists...) The instructions say 'Flip back to Table 750: Others to determine against whom the crime was committed... We roll d20=7. A noble. Select title on Table 758: Nobles. We roll d100=25. A (1d2=2 for gender) Duchess. She has 1d3=2 titles... which means a trip to Table 871: Special Titles for Nobility. d20=20, d20=6, d20=3. 'Watchwarder of the Domain.' (If the middle roll is 1-10, it doesn't add anything.) d20=17, d20=16, d20=9. 'Swordmaster of the Northern Hills.' d100=26. She has 1d10x5=25 square miles of holdings. A Civilized Noble will have 1d4=3 hobbies in place of an occupation. Select these hobbies on Table 427: Hobbies. (Oh, for crying out--) d20=6, Act (dramatics). d4=2, +2 for nobility, rank 4 skill. d10=8, Devoted, spends 10-15% of her income on the hobby. d20=1, collect something. They don't provide a table, so I don't care what. d4=4, +2 for nobility, rank 6 skill in, uh, collecting. d10=3, sporadic and variable, spends 1% of her income on the hobby. d20=20, Heraldry. d4=3, +2 for nobility, rank 5 skill. d10=2, casual, rarely spends money on this hobby. Back to Table 875, and Select the victim's Social Status on Table 103: Social Status. (I think you can just assume I swear every time this gets more nested.) d100=45 + Cultural Modifier of 4 = Comfortable, Social Level Modifier of 0. Now, finally, we roll d20=4 to see what we did. Murder. As a child. ...okay! Footnotes ⑩ and ✝ apply. ✝ says If the victim was a Noble, always add footnote ❷. Footnote ⑩ is NPCs are put to death. Player characters receive life sentences (1d20+20 years). ❷ is Add 5 years to length of sentence. So for murdering a duchess at the tender age of d12=2 years old, we're locked up for 1d20+25=42 years. It's at this point that I say 'gently caress it' and throw my hands in the air, because really, what else can I say? I haven't even gotten out of childhood, and already this kid's life is effectively over. It just makes no sense. Thankfully, the authors have some helpful advice... Introduction posted:WARNING: There are bound to be incongruities in this book, maybe even a whole bunch of them. Each randomly selected table entry will not always work together with another randomly selected table entry (Ruta really tried to make sure that they all did work, but there are just too many combinations). If you find something that doesn't work, the best rule that the author and editor can give you is to throw out the second roll (the one that conflicts with the first) and reroll. Our Character Sheet posted:Name: ???
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# ? Mar 3, 2014 20:01 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 00:16 |
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You know what this thread needs? More Palladium. And more unfortunate implications. But how can we combine the two? I know! Let's make Rain Man fight Cthulhu! Beyond the Supernatural, 2nd Edition includes a variety of P.C.C.s (Psychic Character Classes) for all your Call of Cthulhu/X-Files Step 1: The Eight Attributes As always for Palladium, we begin by rolling for the character's stats. IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB and Spd. Normally, this would be 3d6, with potential bonuses if we roll high enough. But since we're special, we have a slightly different set of starting attribute rolls. IQ - How smart we are. This is actually rolled twice for us, due to our mental handicap. "Real IQ 2D4+10, but communicates with others as if IQ were 1D4+2." So we end up with: 2D4+10=15 1D4+2=4 So we're actually pretty intelligent, but to the rest of the world, we're having a good day if we remember how pants work. Fantastic. MA - How charming we are. 2D6+3=13 Apparently, we're average in the ol' charm department. Clearly, others find our behavior, if not endearing, at least tolerable. ME - How well we cope with mental stress. 1D8+3=9 Low end of average, but honestly not as bad as it could have been. PS - How strong we are. 1D8+5=7 Woof. Kind of scrawny there. But then again, it's not like we expect this guy to actually try fighting stuff, right? PP - How agile/dextrous we are. 1D8+2=8 Well, that's barely coordinated enough to get around without constantly tripping over himself or everything in his path. PE - How tough we are. 2D6+6=12 Average toughness, we're apparently healthy. That's always good. PB - How attractive we are. 2D6+3=11 Again, pretty average. Given that we're barely capable of dressing and grooming ourselves, that's a win in my book! Spd - How fast we can move. 3D6=10 And once again, average. I was hoping for a 16, 17 or 18 for the bonus die so I could make a "gotta go fast" joke here. Oh well. So after all that, we end up with: pre:IQ 15/4 PP 8 MA 13 PE 12 ME 9 PB 11 PS 7 Spd 10 Step 2: Determine S.D.C. and Hit Points Next up, we figure out how much punishment we can actually take before we die. It was explained earlier in the thread, but for a quick recap: S.D.C. - This is how much cosmetic damage ("flesh wounds") you can take before you start to suffer serious injury. It acts as a buffer and most attacks will deplete this before you start taking damage to your H.P. H.P. - This is how much damage you can take before your life is actually in danger. At 0 HP, you fall into a coma. If you continue to take damage, you die when your negative hit points are equal to your PE. S.D.C. is 1d10+12=14 H.P. is PE+1d6=13 Any skills that would raise our PE will also raise our H.P. and certain physical skills can also raise our S.D.C. by fixed amounts. Additionally, every time we gain a level, we get another 1D6 H.P. Our current stats: pre:IQ 15/4 PP 8 S.D.C. 14 MA 13 PE 12 H.P. 13 ME 9 PB 11 PS 7 Spd 10 We already did this; we're an Autistic Psychic Savant. I'm not sure why they have "pick your class" listed as step 3 when most classes in Palladium games alter what your starting attribute rolls are for Step 1, but that's Palladium for you. Step 4: Selecting Psychic Abilities Okay, cool, this is what we're here for! So what kind of awesome psychic powers does our mentally disabled friend here possess? Well, for starters, we get a bunch of abilities that are unique to our class, starting with... 1. Autistic Defensive Trance - When we're confronted with supernatural evil, we gain the ability to... curl up into the fetal position and mutter for someone to make it go away. What's the point of that? Well, apparently it renders us immune to a bunch of things: quote:In reality, the entranced psychic is vaguely aware of what's going on around him, but he has closed himself off from the world as a temporary defense maneuver. While in the Autistic Defensive Trance he character is impervious to Telepathy, Empathy, Empathic Transmission, Bio-Manipulation, See Aura, Detect Psionics, Hypnotic Suggestion, illusions and all types of psychic probes, mind reading, and mental attacks, including Horror Factor and Possession. To other psychics and supernatural beings, the Savant reads as a blank and is perceived as helpless and harmless, however, the Savant can sense when they are no longer watching him and no longer consider him an[sic] threat. That's when he comes out of the trance and takes action (makes good an escape, gets help, rescues a friend, even attacks a monster). For a five full minutes after coming out of the trance the Savant remains impervious to Horror Factor Possession, Mind Control and all the things noted above. 3. Autistic Reading - Even though we can't normally read (at all), when we're investigating supernatural stuff, we can not only read normal stuff, but also ancient languages and symbols and decrypt secret codes, figure out puzzles and so on and so forth. Not in a way that would be considered fluent, but enough that one or two key pieces of information can be understood. 4. Intuitive Skills and Clarity - Oh hey, finally something that doesn't start with "Autistic". (Because, you know, you might have forgotten.) Anyway, this just lets us function a bit better when we're investigating stuff. We're still mentally handicapped, but not nearly as much; the book says our functioning improves to the level of "an eight year old child." Also, in a crisis, we inexplicably get 82% proficiency in the Escape Artist, Hide (works like Prowl except you can't move), Land Navigation, Pick Locks, Rope Works and Swim skills. 5. Psychic Bloodhound - Whenever something psychic, magical or otherwise supernatural goes down within 1 mile of us, we're instantly aware of it and compelled to head that way and investigate, as opposed to staring at a wall and drooling. 6. See Multiple Levels of Realities - When we're in the presence of supernatural/psychic/magic phenomena, we can see invisible stuff (like ghosts and people who are astral projecting), sense dimensional anomalies and find dimensional portals. Also, we can see through illusions, automatically find our way through environments that would otherwise hamper us like mazes or fog, and detect when an object is imbued with dark magic or possessed by evil spirits. 7. Speak in Tongues - Basically the same thing as #3, but applied to spoken stuff. 8. God's Wrath - Yup. Gonna quote this one straight from the book. quote:This startling power occurs only when facing Possessing Entities or any force that can possess a mortal being (person or animal), Demonic Servants (Greater Demons), Ancient Evil and Alien Intelligences or their avatars, as well as any supernatural being directly attacking the Savant. The character must expend 6 I.S.P. and desire to attack or destroy the monster for the power to engage. When he does, the character's hands glow and smolder as if they were hot coals. 9. Standard Meditation - We automatically and intuitively know how to meditate to regain our Inner Strength Points. Speaking of which, there are two kinds of supernatural energy we have. P.P.E. is "Potential Psychic Energy" and is used (counter-intuitively) to power magic. I.S.P. is "Inner Strength Points" and is used to power psychic stuff. Most psychic characters don't have a lot of P.P.E. because it was spent developing their psychic powers. Our character gets: 2D4+6 P.P.E.=10 1D6+5 I.S.P.=7 Our I.S.P. will also go up by 1D4 per level of experience. Our P.P.E. remains fixed. Also, it should be noted that while 7 ISP doesn't seem like much, that's because psychic powers in Beyond the Supernatural work a bit differently. Under normal, laboratory conditions (calm environment, no outside disturbances), our powers are reduced in potency. However, whenever we're actively investigating or confronting supernatural evil, our ISP pool is multiplied by a certain amount. This applies to all P.C.C.s, but in our case, the multipliers are slightly higher. Against minor supernatural threats (poltergeists, etc.) or when simply investigating, our Base I.S.P is multiplied by 3 (2 for normal psychics). Against Lesser Demons and Supernatural Predators, our Base I.S.P. is multiplied by 5 (4 for normal psychics). Against Greater Demons and Demonic Servants, our Base I.S.P. is multiplied by 8 (6 for normal psychics). Against Ancient Evil and Alien Intelligences, our Base I.S.P. is multiplied by 12 (10 for normal psychics). BUT WAIT! There's more! You didn't think we were just gonna be limited to spending all that I.S.P. on our special autism Jesus lasers, did you? No, we also get a bunch of "regular" psychic powers on top of that! We get three powers from the Sensitive category, two powers from the Physical category, and either two Healing or two Pyrokinetic abilities. We also get a few extra Sensitive and Physical powers at higher levels. In true Palladium spirit, let's roll randomly and see what we get, shall we? Sensitive Powers: We get Commune With Spirits, Advanced Meditation, and Sixth Sense. Commune with Spirits is handy; we can already sense that poo poo by virtue of our P.C.C.'s abilities, but this allows us to actually talk with them and find out stuff... for what good it does us given we have trouble communicating with normal people to begin with. Sixth Sense gives us a precognitive flash of warning whenever we're in danger, and kicks in automatically, which is handy. But we don't actually need Advanced Meditation, since our P.C.C. gives us a better recovery rate when we use our normal meditation. So let's reroll that and see what we get: Remote Viewing. This lets us focus on an image of something (a photo or video) and we can see what's actually happening near whatever we're focusing on. Physical Powers: Impervious to Poison and Telekinetic Leap. Spiffy. Now then, the big question: Healing or Pyrokinetic? 1 we heal, 2 we burn: 1; healing it is! Healing Powers: Detect Psionics and Induce Sleep. We kind of already do the whole "detect psionics" thing by virtue of our P.C.C., so let's reroll that one: Increased Healing. So we can help people heal faster, or help them sleep better (in case they're suffering from like insomnia or nightmares or something). So after all of that, we've got: pre:IQ 15/4 PP 8 S.D.C. 14 MA 13 PE 12 H.P. 13 ME 9 PB 11 P.P.E. 10 PS 7 Spd 10 I.S.P. 7/21/35/56/84 Autistic Savant Powers Sensitive Powers: Commune with Spirits, Remote Viewing, Sixth Sense Physical Powers: Impervious to Poison, Telekinetic Leap Healing Powers: Increased Healing, Induce Sleep So what do we actually do for a living? Well, turns out there's not many career opportunities for the mentally handicapped. Shocking, I know. This is a problem, though, since your occupation is how you determine your skills. As an autistic savant, we've got a 20% chance of maybe working as a professional psychic, and failing that, a 15% chance of working in a low wage job, like a store greeter or a janitor. So are we a professional psychic? Nope. Low wage income earner? Nope. Fantastic! As far as I can tell then, that means we get absolutely no skills whatsoever. Step 6: Picking an Alignment Standard Palladium stuff; choice between two Good, two "selfish" and three Evil alignments. The book notes that Autistic Savants tend towards Good alignments, so let's just go with Scrupulous. Step 7: Character Advancement ... We're a starting level character, why is this even a step on here? Oh, right. Palladium. Step 8: Rounding Out the Character AKA the "you haven't rolled on enough random tables yet" step. So here's where we roll 1d100 eleven times and compare the results to a bunch of charts. Birth Order: 58 - "Last born." Note that it doesn't bother to explain how many older siblings we have, just that we're the last one to pop out. Swell. Weight: 48 - "Average." Height: 93 - "Tall." Age: 43 - "Twenties: 20-29 years old. College age or time for starting a career, or getting married and/or starting a family." Yeah, yeah, rub it in, RNG. Age Psionics First Manifested: 93 - "Only recently." As if our life hasn't been awkward enough. Disposition: 37 - "Gambler. Likes to take chances for himself and is always looking for a way to even the odds and make a big score." So we're Rain Man but with Tom Cruise's personality? Environment Growing Up: 30 - "Country community, small town or village." Land of Origin: 76 - "South America." Family History with the Paranormal: 88 - "No recent history of psychic phenomena in the last two generations (until now?), but the grandparents used to whisper about some relative or part of the family that 'had queer powers' (or 'dabbled in magic' or 'dealt with spirits' or his spirit is said to 'haunt the old farm')." ... Wait, isn't one of our powers communing with spirits? ... Uh oh. Reason for Paranormal Investigation: 20 - "A Gift and a Responsibility. The character is religious or spiritual person by nature. A figure he respects (priest, teacher, parent, etc.) told the character he was special, 'gifted' and that he had a responsibility to use his gift to help others and make the world better. Note: The gift could be psychic abilities or an affinity for magic, or an openness to ideas, people or being a good, kind soul who cares about others. Deeply spiritual/religious, the characters sees all his talents and abilities (supernatural or conventional) as a blessing and responsibility." Outlook on Being Psychic: 89 - "Gonzo. The psychic loves having psionic abilities. Loves it and loves using them. They make the character feel important and powerful - like a super-hero. May thrive on conflict and trouble (goes with the super-hero self-image), and may also be a bit too overconfident and underestimate his opponents." So what I'm taking away from all this is that a mentally handicapped young man from South America who's got a bunch of other older siblings just recently found out he's got psychic powers, and because someone important to him has been telling him he's special his whole life, he's decided to use his powers to help people, despite his inability to actually comprehend normal everyday life. ... I'm not sure whether that's incredibly or incredibly so I'm going to move on to determining equipment, housing and savings. Equipment: "Basic gear includes a medium-sized duffel bag or backpack or briefcase, flashlight, pocket mirror, six to 10 inch (5-10 cm) cross, 2-4 inch cross or other holy symbol made of silver, magnifying glass, notebook, two pens or markers or mechanical pencil, a piece of white chalk, 5 individual packets of salt, 4 individual packets of sugar (no sugar substitutes), 4 cloves of garlic, 3 candy bars (or other favorite snack food), 8 sanitary wipes, 1 pair of plastic gloves, 9 zip-lock sandwich bags, 5 rubber bands, a hair brush or comb, wallet, a pair of sunglasses, cap or hat, jacket, very basic wardrobe, one suit, and some personal items." Yes, you do have to roll for all those little odds and ends. Housing: It says to pick one of five options. So of course we roll for it and get - "A bedroom or basement apartment at the home of the parents, a sibling, other relative or legal guardian. No cost." Given that one of the options on that list is being institutionalized, that's a kind of a relief. Money in Savings: Since we're unemployed, we have 4D6x$100 in cash saved up. So $1400. So there's our final character: Gualberto Campos pre:IQ 15/4 PP 8 S.D.C. 14 MA 13 PE 12 H.P. 13 ME 9 PB 11 P.P.E. 10 PS 7 Spd 10 I.S.P. 7/21/35/56/84 Skills: None! We can't even do basic math, are illiterate, and can't even speak fluently in our native tongue! Autistic Savant Powers: Autistic Defensive Trance, Autistic Psychic Messaging, Autistic Reading, Intuitive Skills and Clarity, Psychic Bloodhound, See Multiple Levels of Realities, Speak in Tongues, God's Wrath, Standard Meditation Sensitive Powers: Commune with Spirits, Remote Viewing, Sixth Sense Physical Powers: Impervious to Poison, Telekinetic Leap Healing Powers: Increased Healing, Induce Sleep Age: 24 Sex: Male Height: Tall Weight: Average Origin: South American village Personality: Gambler, loves being psychic and helping people because it makes him feel special. Housing: Lives with family. Savings: $1400 Equipment: Bunch of random poo poo I'm not relisting. W.T. Fits fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 4, 2014 |
# ? Mar 3, 2014 22:00 |
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gently caress, I wish being autistic gave you superpowers. All I've got is the ability to magically make computers work.
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# ? Mar 3, 2014 23:53 |
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I'm going to lazily quote myself from my F&F review of Classic Travellerquote:Let's talk about Traveller !
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 00:31 |
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Because I love this thread an inordinate amount, I went to my DriveThruRPG account and plundered it for games that I've never really looked at properly. Now I shall make characters for some of them, and maybe get a better idea of what they're about in the process. It's a journey of discovery! First up, Mystic Empyrean. This is a game where the world has been smashed into tiny islands floating in a sea of evil fog (the Aether) and the players take the form of Eidolons, which are godlike beings whose bodies emanate from crystallised Anima - a fancy term for elemental power - and who manifest physical traits and powers based on their desires and inner natures. I'll admit, that sort of pitch is why I bought this game in the first place. I'm a total sucker for strange and godlike beings as PCs - see also my deep and abiding love of Nobilis - so I figured I'd give it a shot. I remember struggling through the long chapter of capitalised terms and worldbuilding some time ago, but nothing else, so this time I'm jumping right to chargen. Paging through the book turns up some interesting ideas. The primary conflict resolution tool in Mystic Empyrean is something called a Balance Tool - which is a bag containing 13 tokens. Three 'anima', three 'aether', and one each for the seven elements. (The traditional four, plus light, darkness and electricity.) You draw a certain number of tokens from the bag, one at a time until you draw aether or get one you like - the degree of success depends on whether the element you draw is an exact match, an outside match, neutral, or an opposition element, and all that is determined by a handy diagram. Anyway, onto character generation. The basic idea is "you are what you act" - if you run around like a loose cannon you develop the power called Cartwheel, which is a weapon you barely control. If you lie all the time you get Silver Tongue. That sort of thing. These in turn determine your stats: if you develop a lot of fire-based traits, your fire stat rises and you find doing fiery things much easier. It's an interesting approach, so let's see how it works in practice. Step 1: Concept We all know how this works by now. I'm going to bend the bird-lady bard concept a bit and start with the concept of a thunderbird in quasi-human form. Step 2: Persona Traits This is the step where you select the character traits that define your character (and as such, the powers they manifest). There's actually a neat option for starting your characters without any powers and gaining them with increased speed during the first session, based on how they act, but that's not what we're here for. I'm going with the Constructed option, which is where I choose the powers. You start with four traits, each at Emergence 7 (Rank 1). Emergence is how strongly that trait defines the character, and at 7 they're superficial. (Increasing to deep at 14 and all-consuming at 21.) I choose Energised ('athletic tendencies', Fire-aligned), Festival ('jubilant', Water-aligned), Illusionist ('exhibitionist', Darkness-aligned) and Windborne ('capricious', Air-aligned). I was sorely tempted by Music Box (to play emotion-swaying music) but I've already made a character who can do that. I also feel the need to point out that there's a Kirby power in there that lets you consume another Eidolon (temporarily) and use their powers. Apart from anything else, these powers give us the ability to summon and control sudden bursts of wind, crystalline fingertips which let her charge other objects with elemental energy, the ability to produce fireworks and small sparks by snapping her fingers, and a third eye in her forehead which can cast illusions into the minds of anyone who looks at her. Given the personality traits attached to these I get the impression of a festival tumbler: an upbeat gymnast who loves to be the centre of attention. As a side note, although All-Consuming powers are pretty good, they usually come with hefty drawbacks. Our gymnast's Superficial ability to charge objects with elemental power, for example, steps up to being able to shoot elemental blasts at Deep, and being able to create objects made of elemental force at All-Consuming - except that at the final level she charges everything she touches with elemental force, unable to turn it off. As a side note to the side note, some of the less pleasant traits - like Featherweight, which makes you light - are disadvantages at the first and second rank but gain a bit of a good side once they become All-Consuming. Featherweight, for example, lets you fly under your own power at rank 3. So far, so not even remotely like a thunderbird. Oh well! Step 3: Balance Basically, your stats. You get 1 in each of the seven elements for free, plus 1 in pure anima, plus 1 for each elemental trait you have. This gives our gymnast Air 2, Darkness 2, Earth 1, Electricity 1, Fire 2, Light 1, Water 2, Anima 1. You get a number of draws from the Balance Tool (i.e. bag o' tokens) equal to the stat that matches what you're trying to do. Hiding? Draw up to [Darkness] tokens. Kicking a dude in the face? Draw up to [Fire] tokens. You get the idea. As a neat twist on that, instead of drawing a token to do what you want you can spend one of your personal balance tokens to guarantee success (called an 'anima surge'). This token then goes into the Balance Bag, meaning that you have now skewed the world closer to that method of problem-solving. If you really want to ensure that someone gets beaten up, you can spend Fire to ensure it - but now violent actions by anyone are more likely to succeed. I like this in theory, but I don't know how it might play out in real life. Step 4: Background We all know how this works, too. Backstory time! We'll name our gymnast Gwendolyn. She's not a thunderbird in human form (mainly because most of the Electricity-aligned powers are drawbacks) but perhaps she's related to one? Yeah, that sounds plausible. Her crystalline fingertips are an inheritance from a thunderbird's crystal talons, but her elemental balance is different so rather than shoot lightning and make thunderclaps she can shoot sparks and throw winds around. I figure she's a few generations down the family tree, and the more powerful members of her bloodline have amassed quite a bit of money - which is why Gwen can spend her life touring from party to party doing gymnastic tricks and hypnotism. She's magician and beautiful assistant rolled into one! Step 5: Creed An Eidolon's creed is a simple set of statements spelling out what they believe to be important: "All things deserve dignity", for example. This is important because an Eidolon holds its creed in its heart, and if it goes against its creed its heart breaks - literally. And since an Eidolon's heart is the core of its being, that's a bad thing. Effects include losing traits, having traits jacked up to All-Consuming levels, or having traits transform into entirely different traits. For Gwen I choose:
And that's it to start with. Gwen isn't very potent, as her elemental affinities are spread around, but so long as she continues to act happy and carefree she should rack up plenty of points in Air, Fire and Water. Gwendolyn, Thunder's Daughter Energised 1 --- Emergence 7, Fire, charge objects with elemental power Festival 1 --- Emergence 7, Water, create sparks or firework noises Illusionist 1 --- Emergence 7, Darkness, cast illusions through her third eye Windborne 1 --- Emergence 7, Air, summon sudden gusts of wind Air 2 Darkness 2 Earth 1 Electricity 1 Fire 2 Light 1 Water 2 Anima 1 Creed:
--- All in all, I'm rather interested by Mystic Empyrean - I reckon there's a decent game hiding underneath the deluge of 1990s-style backstory.
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 00:41 |
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Ars Magica: The bird is the word Okay! Now what we’ve made Malik, it’s time we got to work on his Companion. Step One, as before, is concept: A bard who is also a bird. She’s going to be a Spaniard, like Malik, but probably a Christian one. Step Two: If a magus, pick a House. Not a magus. Check. Step Three: Virtues and Flaws. Now, our bird bard - I will name her Maria - has some rules that must be followed here.
Okay! So we turn back to the list of Story Flaws. (I will not reproduce them a second time - you can go back and look.) We could take Curse of Venus and have Maria be surrounded by men and women who wish to love her but whom she cannot stand. Instead, however, I think we will go with Animal Companion - Maria has a wild hawk that likes to follow her around and can vaguely obey orders. That’s a Minor, so 1 point. For Personality flaws, we’ll take Proud as a Major. Maria thinks very highly of herself indeed. And we’ll take Busybody as our Minor. So that’s 5 points there. pre:Maria of Spain Virtues Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1)
Hm. A hawk is a bit too small for Lycanthrope, so nothing doing there. Let’s look at Social Status Flaws.
I don’t think any of these really fit Maria. Maybe some General Flaws?
Let’s see...I think we’ll grab Poor Student. Maria learns by doing. She is also Obese, due to her love of food and drink. That gets us up to 7 points of flaws, but we can’t take more than one more flaw, since we can only have five Minors. Well, I think that’ll do us, though. pre:Maria of Spain Virtues Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1)
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 01:46 |
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I feel like doing something different, and since I put up an ACKS (Adventurer Conquerer King System) recruit recently I will try to build a character for that system. 1) Start with a fresh character sheet. Well we can just skip that. 2) Roll 3d6 in order for your character's ability scores. 3) Choose a class which suits your character's abilities. (The Player's Companion has rules for creating your own class) 4) Note on your character sheet that your character has 0 xp, may also note down how much is needed to level. 5) Roll hit points. 6) Record your character's attack throws and saving throws. 7) Choose your character's starting proficiencies. The player's companion has some kits that prechoose your proficiencies and equipment for you. 8) Generate your character's starting wealth. 9) Give your character a name, create a description of your character's appearance, personality, and maybe a brief note about their background. We skip Step 1 because we are filling it out here. 2) Generate Character's Ability Scores I roll and get 8, 12, 12, 9, 14, 10 They go in order of Strength 8, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 12, Dexterity 9, Constitution 14, and Charisma 10. Hmm I was expecting that Strength to hinder our choices, while it isn't great there isn't much that actually has a strength requirement. Still the does give a penalty to attack and damage. 3) Choose a class which suits your character's abilities. The Int is kind of nice, though not good enough for a bonus, and the Dex is fairly average, but Con is good. Could be just about anything though the low Strength will hinder his melee capabilities. I think I will go with the Dwarven Machinist from the Player's Companion. Its Prime Requisite is INT and DEX, so we won't be getting an XP boost. Its Requirements are CON 9 which we easily meet. Its Maximum Level is 10. They advance it attack and saving throws like a thief, two points every four levels. May fight with a weapon and shield, or wielding a weapon two-handed, but cannot dual wield. May wear chain mail or lighter armor. Can only use arbalest, crossbow, dagger, hand axe, mace, and war hammer. They may use any magic item usable by thieves. At 1st level, every dwarven machinist is already a master craftsman in a particular type of mechanical craft, such as armor-making, clock-making, jewelling, weaponsmithing, etc. With access to craftsman’s tools, the character can produce 40gp worth of items per month, and supervise 2 journeymen and 3 apprentices in his craft. When examining works of his craft, the dwarven machinist can identify masterwork items, rare materials, and famous artisans with a proficiency throw of 9+ on 1d20. Their attention to detail gives dwarven machinists a +3 bonus on proficiency rolls for other proficiencies they learn as well. Much like a thief they are able to open locks and find/remove traps, except they are actually better at this than thieves. The Machinist's greatest ability is to design, build and repair automatons. Clockwork constructs. The next page or two of the class is relegated to automaton rules. Automatons do not heal naturally, but the Machinist can repair them. At 9th level most classes can build a castle or some other structure and acquire followers. The Machinist at this level can establish a factory and attract apprentice machinists of 1st through 3rd level. Like the other dwarf classes the Machinist gets a +1 bonus to surprise rolls when underground due to sensitivity to the rock and stone around them. They may detect traps, false walls, hidden construction or sloped passages with a proficiency throw of 14+ on 1d20. But they must be actively searching for these abilities to function. Being dwarves all their Saving Throws are reduced, making it easier for them to pass. 4) Note on your character sheet that your character has 0 xp, may also note down how much is needed to level. Again a simple step that is done easily. 5) Roll hit points. Dwarven Machinist gets 1d6 per level through 9th level and our Constitution 14 gives us a +1 bonus per HD. Rolled a 1. A 1. Still +1 from CON so we have 2 HP at first level, at least we should be able to build an automaton to protect us, if we have the gold. The automaton looks like it can be kind of crazy powerful, eventually, with up to twice the Machinist's HD. But it is also expensive, starting at 2000 gold per HD and then adding another 5000 gold for each special ability. So I am not sure how you would get the gold to make one. Particularly without leveling quite a bit. 6) Record your character's attack throws and saving throws. code:
We have a choice of proficiencies. We get 1 Class Proficiency, 1 General Proficiency, then 3 more for being a Dwarf. Yeah. If our INT was 13 or higher we would get another. Now I could go and look through the lists and carefully select my proficiencies. But instead I will just take the Engineer template helpfully listed in the Machinist section. This gives me Tinkering, Engineering, and Craft (stonemasonry) the last taken 3 times. Tinkering: May build automatons as if he were two class levels higher than actual, the time required to build an automaton is reduced by 20%. Engineering: Skilled at planning, designing, and constructing castles, towers, roads, and so forth. Can evaluate constructions the party is passing to assess what shape they are in, when and by whom they were built, etc., with a proficiency throw of 11+, 8+ for a Dwarf. Each time this proficiency it taken the character can supervise 25,000 gp worth of permanent construction. Craft: Is rather long. 1st rank is apprentice, 2nd is journeyman, and 3rd is Master Craftsman. Can manufacture 40gp per month with a proficiency throw of 11+, being a dwarf that is actually a 8+, and supervise up to 2 journeyman and 4 apprentices, increasing their productivity by 50%. This means we are both good at creating our automatons and working on stonemasonry. Also it sounded like Machinist should have already had something like that, unless they meant the Dwarf extra proficiencies are specifically used for a Craft. Oh well. 8) Generate your character's starting wealth. We roll 3d6 then multiply the result by x10. I get an 11 for 110 gold. The template I was using gets a warhammer, a steel shield, and chain mail armor. So I will grab those for 5gp, 40 gp, and 10 gp. The armor is AC 4 the shield adds +1, our dex is average and thus does not change it so our AC is 5. This number is added to the enemy's Attack Throw to determine what number they must roll over on a d20. The Warhammer deals 1d6 damage in one hand or 1d8 in two hands. Either way our strength gives us a -1 to attack and damage. Going to ignore the rest of the equipment for now. code:
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 04:21 |
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FredMSloniker posted:Dice rolls So.. Our character is a golem created by a wizard and leased out to do chores -- except that the buyer turned out to be a half-elf revolutionary who instead of having us sweep floors or clean dishes activated the command-words to turn us into a ninja assassin and had us murder the Duchess. We've spent fourty years in a gulag hiding the fact that we don't eat or sleep or grow older, and have just managed to escape with one goal: vengeance on our creator. That's an awesome backstory. I say we keep it and roll some more dice.
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 10:09 |
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I got bored at work tonight, so Our collective
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 11:01 |
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Whybird posted:So.. Our character is a golem created by a wizard and leased out to do chores -- except that the buyer turned out to be a half-elf revolutionary who instead of having us sweep floors or clean dishes activated the command-words to turn us into a ninja assassin and had us murder the Duchess. We've spent fourty years in a gulag hiding the fact that we don't eat or sleep or grow older, and have just managed to escape with one goal: vengeance on our creator. ^ This guy knows what's up. I'm going to build a Half-Orc former slave in Pathfinder (which will be interesting since I'm going to do it the long way, rather than using the character builder, which I've never done before), and I'm going to screw around with D20
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 15:11 |
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Ars Magica: The bird is the word When we left Maria, she needed Virtues. Now, the first thing we need to do is pick Maria’s Social Status, since we didn’t take a Social Status Flaw. Let’s look at the Social Status Virtues - which, rather uniquely, include a few that are free and cost nothing, largely due to lack of any benefit whatsoever.
Let’s see...I think we’ll take Wanderer. None of the rest really fit a troubadour. That costs us nothing. pre:Maria of Spain Virtues Wanderer (0) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) ...speaking of, we will, once Maria is done, be taking a brief detour back to Malik, since I forgot: he still has mastered spells, since he took Flawless Magic. Oops! I totally forgot about that. Ah well, once we’re done here. Anyway, our final pick will be Luck. Maria’s got luck on her side. pre:Maria of Spain Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) pre:Maria of Spain Abilities Spanish (Storytelling) 5 (75 XP) Arabic (Slang) 1 (5 XP) Area Lore: Andalusia (Legends) 1 (5 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Legends) 1 (5 XP) Charm (First Impressions) 2 (15 XP) Guile (Lies to Authority) 2 (15 XP) Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) pre:Maria of Spain Abilities General Spanish (Storytelling) 5 (75 XP) Arabic (Slang) 2 (15 XP) Area Lore: Andalusia (Legends) 1 (5 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Legends) 1 (5 XP) Bargain (Musical Services) 1 (5 XP) Carouse (Drinking Songs) 2 (15 XP) Charm (First Impressions) 2 (15 XP) Etiquette (Noble Courts) 1 (5 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 2 (15 XP) Guile (Lies to Authority) 2 (15 XP) Supernatural Shapeshifter (Hawk Form) 1 (5 XP) Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1)
Allright! Now how about Supernatural Abilities, since we have one?
Our animal form is, obviously, Bird. A hawk. Let’s take a look at Academic and Martial, too, though we won’t be grabbing any of those on Maria. Academic first, besides the two we’ve seen!
Now, martials!
Next time, we will find out how old Maria is and what she did with the rest of her life. Next time: SKIIIIILLS
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 16:51 |
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Winson_Paine posted:In fact, it was so loving amazing I am going to run it as a PbP. I got permission from the mod to drop this ad here, I am in fact recruiting for Orcs of Thar now. Orcs of Thar Recruiting - http://tinyurl.com/tharscape
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 21:43 |
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Whybird posted:So.. Our character is a golem created by a wizard and leased out to do chores -- except that the buyer turned out to be a half-elf revolutionary who instead of having us sweep floors or clean dishes activated the command-words to turn us into a ninja assassin and had us murder the Duchess. We've spent fourty years in a gulag hiding the fact that we don't eat or sleep or grow older, and have just managed to escape with one goal: vengeance on our creator. Fig. 1: the secret origins of a Very well! Let it not be said I am unresponsive to the will of the people. Let's see where I left off. Mumble mumble... Table 543... Table 751... back to 543... 875... 750... 758... 871... 427... 103... back to 875... Okay! When we left off, we'd just finished sending a two-year-old to jail for the crime of murder, and just as we were about to tear up our character sheet, our GM said, 'no no, it's okay, keep going, I have plans for this.' As it happens, that was merely the first thing that happened related for our patron; remember, we rolled for three things. So we need to head back to Table 543C. Roll 2d8=11, and... wow, back to Table 875? Really? Okay. Let's see what else we did during the Incident. d20=16 on Table 750 is an adventurer, which sends us to Table 757, Adventurers. d20=10 on Table 757A is Warrior; d20=4 on Table 757B is Rank Beginner (skills usually do not exceed Rank 3); 1d2=1 means the adventurer is male. d100+4=97 on Table 103 tells us he was Wealthy despite his poor skills; a friend of the Duchess, perhaps? And d20=13 on Table 875 is Armed Robbery, with a further d4=3 telling us that we held up a moneylender, for which the penalty is ⑤, which is 2d4=a further 4 years imprisonment. However, because we are of noble birth and our victim is not, this becomes a mere 4,000 gold piece fine. Back to Table 543C one last time. Roll 2d8... and get another 11. I swear I'm not making these rolls up. Okay! d20=6 on Table 750 is a thief; d2=1 says he's male too; d100+4=21 says he's poor. And d20=2 on Table 875 says the crime is, drum roll please... Racketeering, with a penalty of ⑧, which is 2d10=10 years imprisonment, which gets converted to a 10,000 GP fine. So. Let's see if we can make sense of this, keeping in mind that we (the player) and we (the character) shouldn't know the GM note. Apparently we grew up in jail because, at the tender age of two, we got involved in an organized crime deal that went horribly sour, winding up with our robbing an adventurer and murdering a duchess. We got arrested and were somehow found mentally competent to be convicted and given a 42-year sentence. At this point we stare levelly at our GM, who nods sagely and says we were uncommonly bright as a kid. Fine. Guess what? There's another table I missed that we need to visit! Table 540, Imprisoned!, will give the details of our incarceration. d3=1 significant event happens during this time. d10=2 tells us that: Table 540 posted:2 The ruler of the land declares a general amnesty. The character is freed after serving only 1d10x10% of his sentence (do not make any more event rolls on this table). God dammit. Fine, whatever, we are at last out of this miserable childhood event. But we still have two more to generate! I go ahead and roll d12 twice to see when they happened and get 3 and 6. So let's see what happened when we were three years old, rotting in prison for a crime we totally committed. That means we're at last back to Table 215. d20+4=9. ...character serves a patron [N]. God dammit! Okay okay, back to Table 543. It can hardly be worse at this point. d10=5, a foreigner, head to Table 750. d20=15, a criminal. Well, okay, that makes sense. Table 755. d20=20, a pirate. Well, that's interesting! d20=5 for the scale of (d2=2) her criminal activities suggests she's not a terribly successful pirate (but successful enough to be in prison, at least). Back to Table 543, and d8=4 tells us she needs all the friends she can get. (I can see how having a three-year-old murderer as your friend might improve your piratical profile.) d3=1 event to roll for, 2d8=12 for what it is... Table 543C posted:Patron is outlawed. All those under his patronage are watched closely by the ruler of the land's secret police. Back to Table 215 for one last childhood event. d20+4=12. Gain friend. Select friend from Table 750: Others. [L] Well, that's nice! d20=5 tells us our new friend is A mentor, the wise person who guides the character. (d2=1) He will hopefully steer us better than the other associates in our life. And at last we're in our teens! Recall that we rolled three events for that as well. d6+12 thrice gives us ages of 15, 15, and 14 for the events. Let's do the age 14 one first-- Oh wait, we had a 50% chance to gain some skills! d100=8. We gain Dagger 3 and Brawling 3. So apparently we are now even more skilled at murdering people. Isn't the prison system wonderful? Ahem. d20+4=5 on Table 215. Learn head of household's occupation to Rank 2 competency. If no head, use patron, or random selection from appropriate Culture's occupations. [N] Well, grandpa's an Archduke, so he doesn't have an occupation... but wasn't there something on Table 758 that could help? Table 758 posted:A Civilized Noble will have 1d4 hobbies in place of an occupation. Select these hobbies on Table 427: Hobbies. Back to Table 215. d20+4=7. Character has a religious experience. Determine the details on Table 541: Religious Experience. [R] Well, this could be interesting. First we have to nip off to Table 864, Deities, to determine what type of god we interact with. d20+4=24. The God of Thieves. Interesting. This character got off to a shaky start sense-wise, but pieces are starting to fit together. So what did the God of Thieves want with us? d20=13 on Table 864B. Character makes prophetic statements. Roll a d10. On a result of 6-10, the character becomes quite unpopular for what he says. d10=9. Whoops. We'll have to figure out what we actually said later. This isn't the only thing that happened to us at age 15, though! d20+4=8 on Table 215 has us roll d6=4 on a subtable, which tells us Family does not approve of character's friends. [R] So Grandpa doesn't like our mentor, eh? Iiiinteresting. And with that, we are finally a... you know what, it's silly we don't actually have a gender yet. Easily fixed. We finally become a (d2=1) man! And move on to Table 217, Significant Events of Adulthood. Because we're older than the minimum adult age at the start of play (still in jail, remember!), we roll d3=1 to determine how many times we roll on the table. Then we roll 2d20=18 plus our Social Level Modifier of 4. Result 22 is... Table 217 posted:Roll again, subtract 1d3 from the roll and do not add in the character's SolMod or CuMod. Dammit. 2d20-1d3 is 25. Learn to use an unusual weapon at Rank 3 proficiency. The weapon is something alien to the character's Culture. What, no table to determine what kind of weapon? You're slipping, book. Oh, and when does this happen to us? Table 217 posted:AGE NOTE: For each event you may select the age at which it occurs, rather than roll dice to determine the age. Table 318 posted:This table is the final stop in creating a character. Fine, whatever. When we were going through those life events, we were collecting bolded letters. By my count, we have [N] [N] [L] [N] [R] [R]. These are personality traits. For each of these, we roll on a table (naturally) to see what it means. Let's start with the [R] traits, as they randomly become some other kind of trait. d100=95. Exotic personality feature: use Table 649, Exotic Personality Features. Okay, we'll come back to that one. (I've also decided, though the book doesn't specify, that each trait will be associated with the event that generated its event; this one is to do with the religious experience we had.) d100=8. No personality trait develops. Apparently our grandfather disapproving of our mentor didn't make much of an impression. Okay. Let's check out the neutral trait we got as a result of the Incident. 2d20=29. Conservative: restrained, opposed to change. Next, the neutral trait we got when we worked for the pirate. 2d20=17. Introverted: focus one's interests in oneself. Next, the lightside trait we got from gaining a mentor. We have to head to Table 647, Lightside Traits, for that. 2d20=20. Self-confident: sure of self and abilities. Well, I should hope so, considering what we've accomplished. Next, the neutral trait we got from learning heraldry. 2d20=7. Loquacious: talks and talks and talks and... I can only imagine us boring our inmates by telling them about And finally, our exotic personality feature. Which sends us off to Table 649. First we roll d20=11 for exotic feature category. We get Behavior Tag (and sadly miss Sexual Disorder, the 'hilarious' table I showed off when we started this journey). That means a trip to Table 649E, where we roll 1d20=8 and discover that we're a Know-it-all [N]. Has an opinion or knows the "truth" about everything (but, of course, you already knew that). Actually has a 10% chance to really know the truth. There's also a Trait Control Chart, but it's sadly lacking in numbers. Fortunately, it's got six entries; d6=5 tells us that this is a Driving trait that dominates our life. With that, we head back to Table 318 to determine our alignment. We now have four neutral traits and one lightside trait. Table 318C posted:Determine Alignment: Add the number of traits in each column of boxes in the PERSONALITY section of the worksheet and record the total beneath the corresponding column. If the Lightside or Darkside column total is two points greater than any other column, then the character's alignment is the same as the highest column total. If either the Lightside column or the Darkside column is NOT two points greater, then the character's alignment is Neutral. Record the character's alignment on the line provided for it. Our best judgement is to roll for it. d5=2. Table 318C posted:Apathetic: "What does it matter and who cares?" are his mottos. Such a character believes that nothing really matters in the end. He lives his life as if there were nothing to be accountable for often choosing to side with good or evil because he doesn't care which wins. (Neutral.) So. I present our final character sheet (well, as final as the book has given us) without comment. May some other brave soul make it make sense; I'm exhausted. Our Character Sheet posted:Name: ??? Next time, on Central Casting: Heroes for Tomorrow: Baaaaaards... in... SPAAAAAAAAACE!
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# ? Mar 4, 2014 22:45 |
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D20: D20 Modern (Past, Future) is what you get if you take the old 3rd ed D&D game and strip out everything fantasy related and attempt to set the game in a more contemporary setting. Whether or not they succeeded at this is up to interpretation (seeing as it never got a 4E or any other kind of face-lift since release, basically not). The D20 system did away with and reworked a lot of things that you might be used to from 3.5 D&D. Gone are Spells (unless you want to add them back in, there's a book for it), now all classes have access to Talents, many of which are powered by Action Points earned at level-up and awarded as part of a campaign. Gone is Armor as AC, now each class has a set progression for Defense, and Armor acts as Damage Reduction. But one of the biggest changes is the Basic Classes themselves. Gone are the Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric, they've been replaced by classes based on six Attributes (which carried over from 3rd ed D&D relatively unchanged). The Classes are: Strong Hero: The Strength based Class, all of his abilities revolve around hitting things harder than everyone else. At first level he gains a Talent that lets him do Strength based tasks better, pretend an object is less hard than it really is, or hit things harder. Fast Hero: The Dexterity based Class, they excel at hitting things from a distance, keeping that distance, and not getting hit. At first level they get a Talent that grants them Evasion (like a Rogue!), or move an additional 5' in a round. Tough Hero: The Constitution based Class, they excel at laughing hysterically while being punched in the face to no effect. Their starting Talent will either grant them permanent Damage Reduction 1 (all damage taken reduced by 1 point), grants resistance to an energy type (Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire, or Sonic/Concussive) equal to their Con bonus, or the ability to spend an action point to heal an amount of HP equal to his Con bonus. Smart Hero: The Intelligence based Class, they excel at having all the skills (all of the skills). Seriously, if you give yourself at least a +3 bonus in intelligence you start with 48 skill points to spend at first level. That's 12 class skills at maximum rank (four ranks at level 1). Their starting talent either lets them know even more about one particular skill, or have a chance to instantly learn new languages as soon as they encounter them. Dedicated Hero: The Wisdom based Class, they excel at... being the team band-aid box and radar dish, as they get bonuses to healing checks, listen checks, and spot checks. Their Talents pretty much just make them do those things better. The problem is, as un-fun as being the band-aid box is, you need one, because weapons are hilariously deadly in this, and without magical healing and potions, it takes in-game weeks between sessions to heal up. Charismatic Hero: The Charisma based Class, they excel at being the party face and being a filthy Storygamer. Your Smart Hero is probably solving all the puzzles, but it's your Charismatic Hero that is passing all the speech checks that get you to the puzzles and lets the Strong/Fast/Tough Heroes Punch/Shoot/Get-Punched-In-The-Face. They've also got a bunch of bard-like Talents, since they are pretty much the party leader. You are free to mix and match the classes while leveling up, and there are several advanced classes that we'll get through when I do character creation. I believe we are doing Bird-lady Bard? Lady Bard shouldn't be too hard, but the bird bit... unless... As an aside, I was working on this while my kids were watching Scooby Doo, and the Scooby Gang fit several of these archetypes pretty well. RickVoid fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Mar 5, 2014 |
# ? Mar 5, 2014 01:49 |
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D20 Modern was based on 3.0, not 3.5. You can tell by certain skills, how Damage Reduction works, and because it was published a year before 3.5.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 02:18 |
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Siivola posted:D20 Modern was based on 3.0, not 3.5. You can tell by certain skills, how Damage Reduction works, and because it was published a year before 3.5. Ack. I'll edit that, thanks.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 03:00 |
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FredMSloniker posted:
Why hasn't anyone made an program that automates this.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 05:23 |
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Bucnasti posted:Why hasn't anyone made an program that automates this. Seriously, there are programs to generate FATAL characters, how did this get missed? So I asked in IRC, and the decision was unanimous: Scum genehacker. Hoo boy. The Scum faction is about what you'd get if you gave 4chan a spaceship. They began as drifters who stuck around in orbit and began setting up a black-market economy among the orbital workers. Then, well, the book tells it best: Rimward posted:Our defining moment came just a few years before the Fall. A group of 20 or so indentured Chinese vacworkers—all former convicts—were simply abandoned out in the Belt. The asteroid they were left on was mined out, the valuable equipment already lifted away, and the corp that owned them simply decided they weren’t worth the fuel mass to pick up and relocate. They weren’t even left a fabber to survive on. Lucky for them, a small drifter ship stopped by right about the point they were getting ready to murder each other for the last few days’ worth of food. The drifters strained their own life support resources to haul the vacworkers to the next nearest mining operation—a two-week, hellish trip. When they arrived, the manager in charge flat refused to let them in, infamously proclaiming “I will not let you scum on board!” The numerous miners underneath him—many of whom were itinerant vacworkers—took one look at each other and shoved the manager out the airlock. The manager’s recorded message, and the story along with it, went viral among workers and wanderers throughout the solar system. The scum meme stuck, and before long, drifters everywhere were using the term for themselves among their own kind. Soon, everyone was using it. They rescued a lot of people during the Fall, housing them in hundreds of flotillas of roped-together junk. These "Scum swarms" have names like Carnival of the Goat, Get Your rear end To Mars, and Lick Me I'm Delicious, and wander the solar system more or less as they please. Some of them operate on low-delta-V "cycler" orbits between two gravity wells. They operate much like gypsies or traveling carnivals, bringing exotic, often illicit goods and exotic, often illicit entertainment to habitats they encounter. What the scum are most known for, however, is being on the forefront of personal modification and sexual freedom. So just off the bat, we have a dude in a morph that is only recognizably human if we're lucky, sporting a number of new and intriguing sex organs! I'll be actually throwing points at things in my next post.
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 09:09 |
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I am (also) the Law! Judge Dredd (Games Workshop, 1985) There have been three RPGs based on the British sci-fi hero Judge Dredd, one a d20 system and another using Mongoose Traveller. This is the original, though, now almost 30 years old yet still in surprisingly good shape when I dug the boxset out of my attic. Judge Dredd, for those unfamiliar with both the character and the comic strip named after him, is the most feared lawman in the 22nd century’s Mega-City One, a nightmare conurbation of mile-high tower blocks that at its height stretched along the entire US eastern seaboard and had a population of 800 million people. It’s been dramatically winnowed down since then - 400 million dead in the nuclear Apocalypse War, another 80 or so million in the paranormal Necropolis and Judgement Day storylines, assorted nukings by the militantly pro-democracy group Total War, and recently most of the city has been burned to the ground and about three-quarters of its remaining citizens killed during Chaos Day. It is not a safe place to live, even at the best of times. Which is why it needs the Judges. (Or maybe it’s that unsafe because of the Judges…) While MC1 has a nominally civilian government, with an elected mayor (holders of the office have included an orang-utan and a serial killer), real power is held by the Justice Department, which after the final US president started a world war in 2070 took control in a coup and has held on to it - bar the occasional usurpation - with an iron fist ever since. Laws are strict, oppressive, frequently unfair, occasionally Kafka-esque or outright insane, and administered on the spot by the Judges, who act as cop, judge, jury - and executioner, if need be. The most (in)famous of all the Judges is Joe Dredd, a humourless, obsessive, brutal fascist who will pursue you to the ends of the world over an unpaid parking fine if needs be, and is personally responsible for the deaths of getting on for a billion people. He’s not all bad, though; he is utterly incorruptible, and as long as you haven’t broken the law he will do whatever it takes to protect you from anyone who is. (However, never having broken any of MC1’s countless and byzantine laws is in itself cause for suspicion. What are you hiding, citizen?) The comic strip is, at heart, a black satire, Dredd’s initial status as a straightforward (if ultraviolent) hero being subverted as the Thatcher years got into full swing in the early 1980s. The 1995 Stallone movie missed the point; the recent Karl Urban version did not. (Go and watch Dredd. Really.) However, while the RPG includes a lot of the background material that makes MC1 such a crazy place, the rules largely play things straight, so the degree of satire and lunacy is down to the GM. So, on to character creation! Let’s meet our Judge. Judge Bird is (coin-flip) female. This makes no mechanical difference in play, because quote:there is no discrimination in Mega-City One All except S are initially rolled as 2d10+20; scoring a natural 40 grants a bonus in the form of a special ability, and can also allow a Judge to become a specialist Tech, Med or Psi Judge if they have a high relevant skill. S is rolled using 1d4, with a 4 becoming a 2. It’s both a measure of physical strength, and one of your two forms of hit points (the other being I). Losing S is a lot worse for you, as you can end up with permanent damage, but either going to zero can be fatal in short order. Our roll for Judge Bird is 3 - that’s good! If this system sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because the Dredd RPG was created around the same time as the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing and by the same company (and probably with a fair amount of creative crossover). Next come all the skill scores. Crack out the d10s. I: 28 DS: 33 TS: 34 MS: 29 SS: 33 PS: 27 PS has an extra roll attached to it; anyone scoring 10 or lower on a d% is psychically immune, which can be very useful considering the number of powerful psychic villains in the comic, like the Dark Judges. However, Bird scored 12 on this roll - low, but not enough to grant resistance from anyone trying to whammy her into pointing a gun at her own head. (The GM’s book gives Dredd a PS of 30, but in the comic he says himself that he’s “double-zero rated”, so he should actually be immune to most psi-trickery.) So those are the rolls, which for a new character are roughly average, but nothing spectacular. Since the skills are percentage roll-under scores, Bird only has about a 1-in-3 chance of success at any task. (What if you want to do something that doesn't fall into one of the standard skill categories? Wing it, is basically the answer in the GM's Book.) However, even a rookie Judge fresh from the academy is likely to be a lot more skilled than the average perp, who get typical stats in the 15-20 range. (Expect a lot of failed rolls on both sides to begin with.) Experience points earned during cases can be used to increase a skill; each 100XP grants a 2d3 boost to one stat, with additional special abilities being gained at various milestones. Players choose these abilities as they develop; they include things like Avoid Shots (I), Fast Draw (CS), Drive Fast (DS), Fabricate Voiceprint (TS), Sense Crime (SS), Emergency Resuscitation (MS) and - if the PC qualified as a Psi-Judge at creation - Telekinesis (PS). As a Judge, everyone gets pretty much the same equipment, with hand-held ‘Birdie’ lie detectors, handcuffs, body armour and the iconic eye-concealing helmet all being standard issue. The two most important (and famous) pieces of gear, though, are the Lawgiver handgun and Lawmaster motorbike. The former fires six different types of ammo, switched by voice control - General Purpose (aka Standard Execution, which sounds much cooler when shouted), High Explosive, Armour Piercing, Incendiary, Grenade and Rubber Ricochet, which when fired into a confined space pings about off every hard surface until it hits a soft target. Heat Seekers (aka Hotshots) are homing bullets, which have to be manually loaded rather than shot from a standard magazine. Hypodermic knockout rounds are also an option. The Lawgiver also comes with a booby-trap; if it doesn’t recognise the handprint of the person firing it, it explodes, pretty violently. The Lawmaster, meanwhile, is a big, kickass motorbike with a four-litre V8 engine, 570kph top speed, AI computer control, twin 20mm cannons, a laser, a shotgun rack, and a direct connection to the Justice Department’s data files. There’s a 50/50 chance that a Lawmaster will have a higher CS (30) than a rookie Judge when switched to automatic, and it’ll definitely have a better DS (60), so let the bike do as much work as possible! This being a 1980s RPG, you’re supposed to account for every single bullet and grenade in your arsenal, the character sheet having honest-to-god tick-off boxes for each of your Lawgiver’s magazines. (The Lawmaster sheet makes you keep track of every round fired from its autocannons!) However, the character sheet also shows your Judge’s bodily hit locations and armour. Even if you’re hit, armour provides a percentage chance of negating any damage. Helmets provide 75% cover, while pads on each arm and leg give 25% protection. The chest and abdomen? Drokk you, you’re on your own. Impacts that get through are rolled on a table; they might still cause no damage, or stun causing a loss of actions… or wound. Being wounded deducts one from your S for the rest of the adventure, which if you only have an S of one to start with is a major problem; at zero, you have to roll each round (10 seconds) to stay alive until someone stabilises you, and even then you’re effectively out of the game, with the chance of a permanent debilitating injury. Even lesser hits still reduce your I; while this can be restored by medical treatment using MS, making it less serious, initiative loss costs you actions, and if it is knocked down to zero you die unless given first aid within two minutes. So after all of that Judge Bird is ready to go out onto the mean streets of Mega-City One. Considering the comic’s massive mortality rate even amongst regular characters (Dredd himself has died more than once, but luckily 22nd century medicine is better than ours) her odds of survival are not good, but nobody becomes a Judge without accepting the risks. They are the Law! (On a sidenote, the game has some of the best interior art I’ve ever seen, simply because it uses panels from the comic itself. So by opening to any random page, you’ll find art by the likes of Brian Bolland, Mike McMahon, Colin Wilson, Ron Smith, Carlos Ezquerra, Steve Dillon, Brett Ewins, Ian Gibson… basically the top tier of artists in British comics at the time.)
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 20:06 |
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Ars Magica: What Do You With A Problem Like Maria? Okay. Maria is currently age 5. I don’t want her to start younger than 15, because the childhood rules, uh, don’t exist yet. They’re from Apprentices, which is late in the line. So, we’re going to roll 1d20+9. We get 16. Maria is 21 years old and has 16 years of XP. We got to Step 6, which Malik skipped. For each year of age, she gets 15 XP. If Maria were Wealthy, she would instead get 20 per year, and if she were Poor, only 10. So, 15*16=240 XP. We’ll toss 30 XP at Brawl, so Maria can know her way around a barfight. We won’t add any to Shapeshifter - she’s only ever going to become the hawk, so we’re fine. Instead, we will add 50 XP to Music, which multiplies by 1.5, so that Maria has Music at 5. She is an excellent musician. This leaves us 160 XP. We’ll toss 15 at Arabic to raise it to 3. 15 at Charm, 15 at Guile, 15 at Folk Ken. That leaves us 100. 25 for Etiquette, to raise that to 3, too. 15 for Carouse. That’s 60. We’ll toss 10 each at our Area Lores, raising them both to 2. 40 XP. We’ll toss 15 of it at Legerdemain, 5 at Ride and 15 at Leadership. With our last 5 XP, we grab Awareness. pre:Maria of Spain Abilities General Spanish (Storytelling) 5 (75 XP) Arabic (Slang) 3 (30 XP) Area Lore: Andalusia (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Awareness (Alertness) 1 (5 XP) Bargain (Musical Services) 1 (5 XP) Brawl (Barfights) 3 (30 XP) Carouse (Drinking Songs) 3 (30 XP) Charm (First Impressions) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Noble Courts) 3 (30 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 3 (30 XP) Guile (Lies to Authority) 3 (30 XP) Leadership (Inspiration) 2 (15 XP) Legerdemain (Magic Tricks) 2 (15 XP) Music (Singing) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Ride (Long Distances) 1 (5 XP) Supernatural Shapeshifter (Hawk Form) 1 (5 XP) Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) pre:Maria of Spain Characteristics Perception +1 Strength -1 Intelligence +0 Dexterity +2 Presence +2 Stamina -2 Communication +2 Quickness +1 Abilities General Spanish (Storytelling) 5 (75 XP) Arabic (Slang) 3 (30 XP) Area Lore: Andalusia (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Awareness (Alertness) 1 (5 XP) Bargain (Musical Services) 1 (5 XP) Brawl (Barfights) 3 (30 XP) Carouse (Drinking Songs) 3 (30 XP) Charm (First Impressions) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Noble Courts) 3 (30 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 3 (30 XP) Guile (Lies to Authority) 3 (30 XP) Leadership (Inspiration) 2 (15 XP) Legerdemain (Magic Tricks) 2 (15 XP) Music (Singing) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Ride (Long Distances) 1 (5 XP) Supernatural Shapeshifter (Hawk Form) 1 (5 XP) Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) pre:Maria of Spain Characteristics Perception +1 Strength -1 Intelligence +0 Dexterity +2 Presence +2 Stamina -2 Communication +2 Quickness +1 Personality Gregarious +2 Proud +3 Gluttonous +2 Abilities General Spanish (Storytelling) 5 (75 XP) Arabic (Slang) 3 (30 XP) Area Lore: Andalusia (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Awareness (Alertness) 1 (5 XP) Bargain (Musical Services) 1 (5 XP) Brawl (Barfights) 3 (30 XP) Carouse (Drinking Songs) 3 (30 XP) Charm (First Impressions) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Noble Courts) 3 (30 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 3 (30 XP) Guile (Lies to Authority) 3 (30 XP) Leadership (Inspiration) 2 (15 XP) Legerdemain (Magic Tricks) 2 (15 XP) Music (Singing) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Ride (Long Distances) 1 (5 XP) Supernatural Shapeshifter (Hawk Form) 1 (5 XP) Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) pre:Maria of Spain Characteristics Perception +1 Strength -1 Intelligence +0 Dexterity +2 Presence +2 Stamina -2 Communication +2 Quickness +1 Personality Gregarious +2 Proud +3 Gluttonous +2 Abilities General Spanish (Storytelling) 5 (75 XP) Arabic (Slang) 3 (30 XP) Area Lore: Andalusia (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Legends) 2 (10 XP) Awareness (Alertness) 1 (5 XP) Bargain (Musical Services) 1 (5 XP) Brawl (Barfights) 3 (30 XP) Carouse (Drinking Songs) 3 (30 XP) Charm (First Impressions) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Noble Courts) 3 (30 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 3 (30 XP) Guile (Lies to Authority) 3 (30 XP) Leadership (Inspiration) 2 (15 XP) Legerdemain (Magic Tricks) 2 (15 XP) Music (Singing) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Ride (Long Distances) 1 (5 XP) Supernatural Shapeshifter (Hawk Form) 1 (5 XP) Virtues Wanderer (0) Shapeshifter (3) Well-Traveled (1) Free Expression (1) Affinity for Music (1) Luck (1) Flaws Animal Companion (-1) Proud (-3) Busybody (-1) Poor Student (-1) Obese (-1) Confidence: 1 Confidence Points: 3 Next time: Something many first time players will never even care about
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# ? Mar 5, 2014 23:09 |
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SMALLVILLE: MY FANFICTIONS! Smallville is the RPG of the eponymous show, a retelling of Clark Kent going through high school and beyond on his road to being a hero. It was the first game released using the Cortex Plus rules system, a reworking of the old and busted Cortex system used for the original Firefly RPG into a sleek new storytelling beast of a gaming engine. We've already seen the Marvel Heroic RPG approach to character building, but that's Cortex Plus Heroic. This is Cortex Plus Dramatic, and character generation is a very different monster indeed. Like all good nerds, we'll be doing a crossover. Namely, taking the Smallville approach to Marvel characters (Putting them in high school at the start of or before their heroic careers). They probably won't wind up at all the same to their canon counterparts, but that's the fun, right? Our four heroes will be Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Jen Walters and Thor. For this we'll be using the core book, as well as the supplement High School Yearbook. The core book focuses on generating characters in a more generic state, as it was released in season 9 of the show when Smallville High was a distant memory. The High School Yearbook modifies character creation to be more geared towards, well, high school. Before we get started down building these four characters (And we have to do all four at once, no character exists in a vacuum in this system), we need to set up the Pathways Map as the game begins. It starts out like this: Don't worry, it's going to get even more complicated in short order All characters start out with a Relationship to the other Leads (Smallvilles term for PCs, since this is meant to emulate a drama show and all) rated at d4 to begin with, and another relationship to one Extra (minor NPC) of their creation, at 2d4. The relationships between PCs aren't defined until character creation is done, but relationships to your extras do need to have some descriptor. Relationships created during this stage should generally be reflective of a characters early life, but of course, you can break the mold if you so wish. All characters also start out with all the Values at d4. These are Duty, Truth, Justice, Glory, Power and Love. In Smallville, it doesn't matter what you do so much as why you do it. Peter decides to add his Aunt May to the map, saying that she and his Uncle Ben raised him since his parents died. Thor adds Loki as his brother and perpetual rival. Tony adds Pepper Potts, his personal aide who runs Stark Industries while he's off sleeping through physics class and hitting on cheerleaders. Jen adds her cousin Bruce, stating that she helps him deal with his... personal problems. We then move on to... STEP ONE: ORIGIN This is how it all began for each of our young heroes. At each step of the pathway you pick one of a list of options, which determines which ones you can pick during the next step. During Origin, you have free reign to select what you will, but the next few choices will be restricted. Peter selects Ordinary as his origin. Peter Parker, despite being orphaned, had a fairly average, normal upbringing. A small house out in queens, quiet and peaceful, no troubles at all. For this, he gets to step up (increase the dice size by one step, d4 -> d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12) Love and Truth a total of twice between them, gets a new Distinction, step up an existing relationship and step up an existing relationship, an asset or a resource (A Relationship is a link between Leads or to a Relationship-type NPC, an asset is a Distinction or Ability, and a Resource is an extra or location). Peter steps up both Love and Truth to d6 each. He was loved by his aunt and uncle, and Uncle Ben taught him the value of honesty. For his distinction, Peter selects Genius. He was always a smart kid, and this will let him use his mighty intellect to solve problems. It starts at a d4, and he can spend a plot point to reveal that he's studied the basics of a subject, any subject at all. As this steps up, it will unlock new uses as well as increasing the dice size. He steps up his relationship with Tony, as both are eggheads and probably have a lot to talk about. He spends his second step up to increase his link to Aunt May to 2d6, since she really loves her nephew. PETER PARKER VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D6 POWER D4 TRUTH D6 RELATIONSHIPS Tony Stark D6 Jen Walters D4 Thor D4 ASSETS Genius d4 (Spend a plot point to reveal that you have studied the basics of a subject) EXTRAS Aunt May 2d6 Tony selects Rich as his origin. He was born as son to a wealthy industrialist, and never wanted for anything growing up. He gets to step up Duty and Power a total of twice between them, adds a distinction, steps up a resource, and steps up a relationship, asset or resource. Tony steps up Power twice. During his young life, he was something of a braggart, foolhardy and concerned with only himself. This may change down the road, but it definitely has a big hand in defining him as a person. For his Distinction Tony takes Wealthy. This starts at d4, and lets him spend a plot point to reroll a dice where flashing cash could help out. He steps his link to Pepper up to 2d6 since he really depends on her, and his Wealthy up to d6 because Stark Industries makes BANK son, and he's done with this step. TONY STARK VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D4 POWER D8 TRUTH D4 RELATIONSHIPS Peter Parker D4 Jen Walters D4 Thor D4 ASSETS Wealthy d6 (Spend a plot point to reroll one dice in a contest or test that can be swayed by money) EXTRAS Pepper Potts 2d6 Jen decides that she was born Ordinary as well, and gets the same choices as Peter. Daughter of a county sheriff, she steps up Truth twice to a d8. For her distinction, Jen grabs Persistent. Rather than letting her spend plot points to do things, this one at d4 means she earns plot points by playing up her distinction, in this case whenever she gets pushy when she knows its a bad idea. Doing this gains her one plot point, and adds a d6 into the GM's Trouble Pool, a stock of dice that the GM (Watchtower in this game) can spend to rain on the heroes parade in all kinds of ways. She then steps her link with Peter up to a d6, reasoning that she looks out for the shy nerdy boy even if he doesn't know it, and steps up her link to Bruce to 2d6 since they were very close as kids. JENNIFER WALTERS VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D4 POWER D4 TRUTH D8 RELATIONSHIPS Peter Parker D6 Tony Stark D4 Thor D4 ASSETS Persistent d4 (Earn 1 plot point and add 1d6 to the trouble pool when you get too pushy with someone you know you shouldn't) EXTRAS Bruce Banner 2d6 Thor is an obvious candidate for the Alien/Metahuman origin due to his status as a Son of Odin. He gets to step up Duty and Truth a total of twice between them, add a new Heritage, add an Ability or step up his Heritage, and add a new Distinction. Thor steps up Duty and Truth once each, reasoning that he values honesty and honor. Heritage is being something other than a normal human, and works very similarly to distinctions. For his Heritage, Thor has Asgardian Heritage d4. Looking in the book, a minor alteration of Almerican Noble Heritage will suit this down to the ground. At D4 rating Thor earns a plot point whenever he chooses to act disdainfully and dismissively of his "inferiors" (everyone who isn't Asgardian). Thor then opts to take Super Strength d4 as an ability, for he is the Mighty Thor. For his distinction, Thor gets Confident. He's always large and in charge. At a d4 rating, he earns a plot point whenever he chooses to act first in a situation. THOR VALUES DUTY D6 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D4 POWER D4 TRUTH D6 RELATIONSHIPS Tony Stark D4 Jen Walters D4 Peter Parker D4 ASSETS Asgardian Heritage d4 (Earn a plot point whenever you act dismissively and disdainfully towards your "inferiors) Super Strength d4 Confident d4 (Earn a plot point when you choose to act first in a situation) EXTRAS Loki 2d4 NEXT TIME ON SMALLVILLE, MARVEL EDITION: UPBRINGING! Captain Hats fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Mar 6, 2014 |
# ? Mar 6, 2014 00:10 |
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quote:Rifts is certainly a thing. Maybe even a game? Nobody knows. I thought it might be neat to make one character in Rifts, but from every World and Dimension book. That is, embrace the multiverse aspect of things, and roll up one character with multiple versions. John Doe, coalition citizen; John Doe, Atlanean; Doe John, cyber-samurai; Jo-N D0, robot space pirate; and so on. Roll stats one time, go to each book and find something that he can be with those stats, and make it. Once more, our base stats are: pre:IQ 14 PP 6 SDC 18 ME 9 PE 11 HP 12 MA 19 PB 5 PS 11 Spd 15 Someone on IRC wanted me to make a Chiang-Ku dragon because they are hilarious and out of place and can make magic tattoos, but that image is a fake out and I'm not going to do that because I'm tired of RCCs. My second choice was the Temporal Wizard, but we aren't healthy enough for that. Instead, Sir John of Doe is going to be a Knight. No requirements, just be brave and Mrrlyn (An evil alien intelligence, like the vampire bosses and those splugorth slaver dudes in Atlantis, but different) picks us! We get a slight bump (+20) to our SDC since we are fightin dudes, but otherwise go right to skills. pre:IQ 14 PP 6 SDC 38 ME 9 PE 11 HP 12 MA 19 PB 5 PS 11 Spd 15 pre:Land Navigation 50 WP Sword Wilderness Survival 45 WP Archery Identify Plants and Fruits 40 WP Spear Horsemanship 73 WP Energy Rifle First Aid 70 WP Energy Pistol Math: Basic 60 Hand-to-Hand: Expert Language: Euro (Native) 89 Language: Amurican 73 Language: Dragon? 73 Fishing 55 Sewing 55 Military Etiquette 50 Demolitions 73 Wrestling Kick Boxing Running Climbing 50 Pilot: Robots and Power Armor 64 Pilot: Jet Packs 46 Mythology 45 We get a first aid kit, sleeping bag, saddlebag, backpack, utility belt, matches and a lighter, flashlight, 1 pair of handcuffs, 100' rope, grappling hook, 5 metal spikes, sunglasses, an air filter, binoculars, and 1 week of rations. Rolling for equipment, such verisimilitude. As far as equipment we care about, we get 4 wooden stakes and a mallet, a silver cross, a conventional sword, and a sidearm and energy rifle. We get some traditional-knight-looking MDC armor and a floppy hat with a plume. We also get a horse, but we can trade that for a robot horse or motorcycle which uhhh yeah we do that. I wanted some light power armor to ride in while on our robot horse but no, that will have to wait until later books.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 00:20 |
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For our foray into bird bardness, we're heading into the next book in the Central Casting series: Heroes for Tomorrow. As you can imagine, this brings the system into the sci-fi world, adding entirely new forms of weirdness for your characters to experience. As I have an actual goal this time, I'm going to be indulging in some number fudging this time around. My aim is to:
Table 101: Character Race is our starting point. Normally, we'd roll d10, with 1-7 being human, 8 being mutant human (with enhanced stats... and a special GM-only entry that says 'give the character a bunch of secret disadvantages and don't tell the player until they come up'), and 9-10 being alien being. We're forcing 9. Then we'd roll d4 twice, tens and ones, to choose what kind of alien we get. We're forcing 14. Aerial. Flyers, often with bird-like or bat-like wings. Well. That was easy. Next, we go to Table 102: Technoculture, because of course it can't just be 'culture' because we're in spaaaaaaaaaaaaace. This table has three subtables: Table 102A: Tech Level, Table 102B: Culture, and Table 102C: Alien Technology. Here the instructions get confusing. I've decided that Bird Bard is from a whole planet of birds, and Table 102A says that we should go to Table 102C first to see how that planet's technoculture differs from the galactic norm. But Table 102C says we should first roll on Table 102A! After careful reading, I discover the difference: normally, when you roll on Table 102A, you add the Future History Modifier, but when Table 102C has you roll on Table 102A, you don't add it unless the planet's technoculture is similarly advanced to the galactic whole. Wait. Future History Modifier? Okay, so Table 102A says we determine her Future History Modifier (which only applies to PCs, presumably so NPCs will tend to be more backwater) by going to Pages 13-14. So let's do that now. We have four options: Tarnished Tomorrows, basically Cyberpunk; The Final Frontier, basically Star Trek; Imperial Space, basically Star Wars; and Post Holocaust, basically Fallout. Obviously this would be pre-determined for a real campaign, but for our purposes we roll d4=2 and get The Final Frontier, which gives us a Future History Modifier of 1d6+6=7. It also tells us that:
However, that's just the base value. Returning to Table 102C, we now roll d20 three times, once each for transportation technology, weaponry, and communication technology, to see if there are any weird variations in the local tech. d20=14; transportation technology is 1d4=3 levels below the base tech level (so it's level 2, Bronze Age.) d20=6; weaponry is on par with the base tech level. d20=12; communications technology is 1d4=1 level above the base tech level (so it's level 6, Industrial Revolution.) Perhaps travel is difficult and dangerous on her planet, so they've compensated by finding ways to communicate over long distances without having to actually go anywhere. We now return to Table 102A, this time to determine the tech level of the galaxy as a whole (and also Bird Bard's personal tech level). Adding her Future History Modifier this time, we get d20+7=20. That makes the galactic tech level Mixed technology and means we have to roll again, without the Future History Modifier. d20=10. Spacefaring Age. Literacy chance: 95%. Unself-aware artificial intelligence is now found in some large computers. Most planets and major satellites in the solar system contain autonomous colonies or independent "nations". Sublight "manned" exploration of nearby stars begins. Education Points: 20. We also roll d6=1 on a subtable. A key aspect of the culture's technology is more typical of a higher Tech Level (such as Transmatter being used by a Federation starship to beam crew planetside). At this point, I decide that I want this to be a Stargate-esque setting. Faster-than-light travel is not available to the cultures of the galaxy; instead, ancient artifacts are used to open gates from one planet to another. These objects are indestructible, but also unreproducable. Wars have been fought over who gets to use them. On Bird Bard's homeworld, journeying to the site of the Ring is an arduous pilgrimage. (Unfortunately, that means owning a starship is out... but she might get some sort of puddle jumper.) Now we head to Table 102B. Here we roll d100+Tech Level Modifier (which is the 10 we rolled on the previous chart)=35. Developing. Culture Modifier: 6. Survival Skills: 6 Ranks. Education points: 3d4=7. We can divide the six ranks of Survival skills between Wilderness, Rural, and Urban, but have to put at least three into her primary environment. A Developing Culture is one that's making great strides to improve itself. Perhaps the discovery of the Ring, or of its function, is relatively recent, and Bird Bard's people are striving to earn a place on the galactic stage. At any rate, we now roll d6=1; this does nothing, but if it had been three or higher, she would have gained some Traits, mostly Lightside Traits. It took a while, but we're clear of Table 102. On to Table 103: Social Status! We roll d100+Culture Modifier of 6=57. Her Social Status is Comfortable. Social Level Modifier: 4. Title Modifier: 3. Education points: 1d4=4. She has a +5% to be literate, a 45% chance to own a sport weapon, and the standard wealth for the campaign. From here, we head to Table 104: Birth & Family. This one has four subtables. We start with Table 104A: Birth Legitimacy. Rolling d20=3, we find that Bird Bard is of legitimate birth. Table 104B: The Family tells us that she (d20=10) was raised in a creche. Table 104C: Siblings and Birth Order tells us that she has d6-1=0 siblings; the other kids in the creche must be from other mothers. We don't visit Table 104D: Other Relations because we weren't instructed to. So far, things are going pretty smoothly! Table 105: Place of Birth also has four subtables. Rolling d10=2 on Table 105A: Homeworlds tells us that Bird Bard was born on her racial homeworld. Table 105B: World Types also has us roll d10=9. Desert world. Has atmosphere but little or no water. (That may explain why transport technology is so primitive. Maybe everyone's clustered near the poles, like Kharak in Homeworld.) Table 105C: Place of Birth uses 2d8+Tech Level (5)=14. (I used the planetary tech level, not Bird Bard's personal one, because she was born there. The rules don't specify.) That's in a birthing center or clinic, which gives her a Birth Modifier of 0. And again, we don't visit Table 105D: Exotic Places because we weren't instructed to. Table 106: Unusual Births first has us roll on Table 106A: Unusual Births. (Yup.) d100+Birth Modifier (0)=58. She had an unusual occurrence! That means we roll d100=83 on Table 106B: Birth Events. Character is born immediately after Something Wonderful occurs (go to Table 521: Something Wonderful... to determine the nature of the occurrence.) Well, I do believe this is the first time we've had to jump to another table entirely! d20=13. Character receives a severe injury that does not heal properly and almost kills him before he is rescued by a benevolent (but slightly mad) scientist who replaces the damaged limb or organ with an experimental bionic prosthesis which grants the character superhuman powers. Go to Table 861: Bionics to select the replacement part and its appearance. The GM must determine the additional powers it grants. Cool! Let's find out what she gets. First we roll 2d8=7 on Table 861A: Replacement Parts to discover that her (d2=2) right hand was replaced. However, because replacement hands normally call for a tech level of 9 or more, and her planet's is only 5, we automatically roll a 1 on Table 861B: Function. That means this is an experimental device; we reroll on the table, d10+1=9, and determine that the new hand exceeds the original in function, but has a 10% malfunction chance in a stress situation. In addition, because this is an experimental device, the malfunction chance is raised by d20=13%. Finally, we roll d10-1=5 (the -1 is for the device being experimental) and determine that the part is an obvious machine. So, let's roll this all together. When Bird Bard was born, some sort of talon rot set into her right hand. To keep the rot from spreading to the rest of her body, the doctors amputated her hand. However, a visiting surgeon from the galactic alliance was able to construct a prosthesis using native materials combined with his technological knowhow. It's a crude steel thing, and often (23% chance) seizes up if she asks too much of it, but on the bright side she's got a grip that can crush a steel can. Groovy. On to Table 107: Parents & NPCs! I've decided that Bird Bard is in a matriarchal society. Her mother d20=5 has a single occupation, which we select from Table 413A: Occupations, and her dad works in the creche. Here we roll d10+Social Level Modifier (4)=9, which directs us to Table 413E: Occupation Table IV, on which we roll d20=4 and discover that her mom is... a career criminal. Oh dear. Not this again. Table 864: Crimes tells us that we roll d20=3 and determine that she's a burglar. (I note here that the table has been rewritten a bit, and it's now clear that you only apply the punishment for the crime if the text directing you to the table indicates the criminal has been caught. Now contemplate the possibility of a two-year-old committing racketeering, armed theft, and murder and getting away with it.) Another d20=12 tells us that she's an average career criminal with a long list of offenses. So apparently when she brings home the space bacon, she's stolen it from the space pig. Moving on to Table 107B: Noteworthy Items, we roll d3=3 to determine how many things Bird Bard remembers as interesting about her folks. We then roll a d20 and a d6 for each one; on the d6, 1-4 means mom and 5-6 means dad. d20=20, d6=1. NPC is noted for his extremely unusual personality. Select 1d3 exotic personality traits on Table 644: Exotic Personality Traits and link them together in some fashion. Collectively, they should make the NPC character even stranger, possibly a real weirdo. Okay. Rolling 1d3=2 times on that table gives us d20, d20=7,17, which is an Allergy and a... Oh my. Oh my. We get to use... That table. Allergy first. d10=10 on Table 644D: Allergies is an allergy to... energy radiation? d6=2 tells us she's allergic to solar radiation, and d10=6 tells us it's a serious allergy, giving her an asthmatic reaction. She can treat it with drugs, but even then she'll have itchy eyes and sniffles. And now, the infamous Table 644F: Sexual Disorder. 2d8=9. She's into domination. Let's finish up Table 107B before we try to weave this together. d20=6, d6=5. Bird Bard's dad was affected by an exotic event which is spoken of often. Go to Table 540: Exotic Events to determine what occurred. Rolling d20=3 there gives The character stumbles into a stellar gate, a portal between worlds on different star systems, and is transported to his current location, a world far away from his home. Select the Culture of the new surroundings on Table 102: Technoculture and the type of planet on Table 105B: World Types. Any family is left far behind, so if the character is a child or adolescent, it is as if the character's parents had both died. One more go on Table 107B. d20=17, d6=2. Bird Bard's mom is noted for an unusual ability or physical feature. Select this oddity on Table 859: Talents, Mutations & Modifications. Rolling d20=15 here tells us that she has a psionic power, which sends us to Table 862: Psionics; rolling d20=5 here tells us that she has Clairvoyance III (Astral Projection), which allows her to view a remote location as if she was there, even walking around. So. Let's try to put this all together. Shortly after Bird Bard was born, her dad vanished into the Ring network when a freak burst of technobabble destabilized it. She's pretty sure he survived, but if he hasn't come home yet, he probably can't. With her mom barely able to leave the house during the day, Bird Bard wound up being raised in a communal creche so she could be properly socialized. Mom never seemed to have trouble paying for things, though; she'd go out late at night with a night-black outfit and some strange objects stuffed into a duffel bag. Sometimes she'd come back with a stack of cash; other times, she'd bring pretty things that she'd sell for cash. Either way, she paid the bills. Is Bird Bard's mother psychic vampire Catwoman? Bird Bard's Character Sheet posted:Name: Bird Bard
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 01:15 |
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World Book Africa is pretty crazy, and not really in the good way. It has the four horsemen of the apocalypse along with piles of Egyptian gods. Alien Rope Burn covers its ridiculousness pretty well in his F&F Review Again, starting from: pre:IQ 14 PP 6 SDC 18 ME 9 PE 11 HP 12 MA 19 PB 5 PS 11 Spd 15 The Phoenixi RCC. The Children of Bennu the Phoenix (actually a heron but Rifts don't give a poo poo), except they are actually just some bird dudes from another dimension. It’s a RCC so we get some stat changes. Here they are, retroactively applied to our original rolls: So yeah, not only better stats, but we have more MDC than most normal body armors, and are a bigger magic and psychic energy battery than mid-level wizards and psychics. John Bird here is also impervious to fire and heat, doesn't breathe air, can see like a hawk, has 200 foot nightvision, can see invisible, heals at 10x human rate, and communicates telepathically. When threatened, Phoenixi can burst into flames and get another 20 MDC per level, add 2d6 MD to their hand to hand attacks, and throw fireballs that do 3d6 MD. When they die, they instantly regenerate. What. Yeah. Just don't die more than once every 12 hours and you are totally fine. In addition to all of those bonuses, we get another +2 to initiative, +20% to save vs coma and death, +2 to save vs foreign chemicals, and we know the Telepathy, Pyrokinesis, and ALL healing and physical psi-powers, and ALL fire magic spells, mystic portal, dimensional portal, and close rift. Yeah. That’s like, 8th level spellcaster and psionic poo poo at level 1. Guess you have to have somewhere to spend those piles of ISP and PPE. For skills, we get: pre:Math: Basic 80 WP Axe Math: Advanced 80 WP Archery Astronomy 45 WP Energy Pistol Land Navigation 60 Hand to Hand: Expert Navigation 55 Wilderness Survival 45 Intelligence 46 Language: Dragonese 98 Literacy: Dragonese 65 Language: Gobbeley 73 Philosophy 35 Ventriloquism 20 Prowl 30 Safe-Cracking 24 Dance 35 Play Instrument 40 Sing 40 Impersonation 34 Juggling 40
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 02:28 |
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WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY THIRD EDITION WHFRP3e (a mouthful, I know) has some very confused character creation. Some random, some point buy, some class-based stuff; it's hard to see how it all fits together until a finished character emerges. Keep that in mind as we go, and I think you'll see just how wonderful this system's achievements are. To explain WFRP3e's general conflict resolution (because it's gonna be coming up a lot throughout generation), a player (or GM) assembles a pool of special dice based on a number of factors (stats, skills, challenge rating, bonuses and penalties). They roll this, then count up the symbols and see what the symbols mean based on context (the action used, the environment, the target, and a whole load of other things). These symbols are: pre:Success: Counts toward accomplishing the task - you need 1 or more successes for the task to work. Righteous Success: A success, but you also get to roll another die of the same type and add it to the pool. Challenge: A failure - this subtracts from the total successes. Boon: Trigger special positive effects, or cancel banes. Bane: Trigger special negative effects, or cancel boons. Sigmar's Comet: Positive critical - triggers a Sigmar's Comet marked effect, or converts into a success or a boon. Chaos Star: Negative critical - triggers a Chaos Star marked effect, or turns into a bane. Delay: If there are any of these in the result, the action takes longer to recharge or the character is moved down in initiative. Exertion: If there are any of these in the result, the character suffers 1 stress (for a mental task) or 1 fatigue (for a physical task). pre:Characteristic: blue d8; standard positive symbols; get from your characteristic used on the roll. Challenge: purple d8; standard negative symbols; based on the challenge rating of the action. Conservative: green d10; low-risk, low-reward, but can cause delays; converted from characteristic dice based on stance. Reckless: red d10; high-risk, high-reward (causes exertion); converted from characteristic dice based on stance. Expertise: yellow d6; only dice with Righteous success; get them from trained skills. Fortune: white d6; some extra positive symbols; gotten from bonuses to the roll. Misfortune: black d6; some extra negative symbols; gotten from penalties to the roll. WHFRP characters are kind of similar at their base to a lot of other fantasy RPGs. We start with Characteristics, which give a rough shape to our character. These are: pre:Strength: Brawn and physical strength. Toughness: Endurance, constitution, and vigour. Agility: Dexterity, coordination, and gross motor control. Intelligence: General intellect, reasoning, and powers of deduction. Willpower: Nerve, discipline, and force of will. Fellowship: General charisma and ability to apply your personality. We also have a list of skills, but this is where we diverge slightly; each skill has a base characteristic and a rating from 0 to 3. When you roll the skill, you make its base characteristic roll but get to add a number of expertise dice based on the skill's rating. There are also some other things we'll get, but that's better explained as we go. First step: Select a race I like to have the system choose for me, and luckily WHFRP3e provides a random race generator (we're only using the base book races). We roll 4 fortunes dice and get 1 success, which means we get to choose between a Reikland Human and a Karak Azgaraz Dwarf. The Dwarf's a little more interesting, so we'll go with that. That nets us: pre:Children of Grungni: During character creation, train one - Discipline, Resilience, or Weapon Skill. Grudge: Add 1 fortune die to all Melee Strike and Ranged Shot actions against Greenskins and any target that has wounded you. Sturdy: +5 encumbrance limit. Night Vision: 2 less misfortune dice are added to your pool from darkness penalties. Wound Threshold: 10 + Toughness rating. Default Characteristics: Str 3, Tgh 3, Agi 2, Int 2, Wil 2, Fel 2. Creation Points: 20. Second step: Draw 3 careers, keep 1 We get a little more randomness. This game operates on a career system; every character has a career, and that determines what you can buy with experience and what you get at the start. We shuffle the giant deck of basic careers and draw Mercenary, Dilettante, and Troll Slayer. Dwarf Troll Slayer, I say? Hell yes. The Troll Slayer is a Dwarf who has commited some sort of Dwarven sin, and to atone they have to achieve honorable death in battle at the hands of a powerful foe. They don't wear armor, and fatalistically charge into the fray with weapon swinging and absolutely no regard for their wellbeing. From Troll Slayer, we get: pre:Restrictions: Basic Career - Dwarf. Traits: Basic, Combat, Fanatic, Slayer. Primary Characteristics: Strength, Toughness. Career Skills: Athletics, Intimidate, Resilience, Weapon Skill. Stance Meter: 1 conservative, 3 reckless. Advance Options: Action 2, Talent 2, Skill 1, Fortune 1, Conservative 0, Reckless 1, Wound 3. Talent Sockets: Tactic (2x). pre:Troll Slayer: While in a Slayer career, you cannot wear armour, but have a natural Defence of 1 and a natural soak value equal to 1+ the number of Slayer careers you have completed. Third step: Invest creation points From being a Dwarf, we get 20 points to spend. Here's a chart of what we can get: pre:Characteristic: points equal to the new rating (max rating of 5). Wealth: Broke: 0 points. Get ragged clothes, dagger/quarterstaff, and 5 brass coins. Poor: 1 point. Get durable clothes, cloth rucksack, dagger/quarterstaff/light crossbow/hand weapon, 50 silver coins. Comfortable: 2 points. Get travelling clothes, bag with another set of clothes and knick-knacks (candles, tinderbox, etc.), dagger/quarterstaff/light crossbow/handweapon, 2 gold coins. Affluent: 3 points. Get exceptional clothes, sturdy backpack with another set of close, healing draught, dagger, a few knick-knacks (candles, tinderbox, etc.), rapier/longbow/great weapon/hand weapon, 5 gold coins. Skill: points equal to number of trained skills minus 1 (max 4 trained skills), plus a number of specializations equal to the number of trained skills - 2. Talents: points equal to the number of talents taken (max 3 talents). Actions: points equal to the number of action cards taken minus 1 (max 4 action cards). Because we are a mighty killer, we'll spend 5 points to get our strength up to 5 and 3+4 points for Willpower up to 4. Troll Slayers are said to not care for possessions, but we do need some sort of axe, so we'll put 1 point and take poor. I'll put 2 points into skills, 2 points in talents, and the last 3 points in actions. We'll choose these shortly. In the end, we have: pre:St 5, To 4, Ag 3, Int 2, WP 4, Fel 2 Wound Threshold: 14 Wealth: Poor Skills: 3 trained, 1 specialization Talents: 2 Actions: 4 Let's choose the skills. We have 4 skills available from our career, and 4 points, and we can't put more than 1 training in each stat at creation, so this is easy - we get ranking 1 in Athletics, Intimidate, Resilience, and Weapon Skill. I'll also take the Weapon Skill specialization of Hand Weapons, since I want to focus on axes. That means that whenever we roll a skill we have trained, we get an expertise dice, and whenever we attack with a hand weapon, we get an additional fortune dice. Now for Talents. Talents are kind of like feats from D&D - they're small bits of rules that we get (usually) passively. We can have as many as we'd like, but can only attach a number to our character no greater than the amount of talent sockets we have. We have 2 Tactic sockets, so we can have 2 Tactic cards attached at a time. Luckily, we only get two cards from the points we spent, so we don't have to worry about that. Looking through the deck of Tactic cards, we pick: pre:Exceptional Training: Exhaust this card to negate up to 2 banes generated by a Strength, Agility, or Toughness check. Timely Surge: Exhaust this card to add 2 fortune dice to any Strength check. If the check fails, suffer 1 fatigue. Action cards are the meat and potatoes of combat and social interaction. They allow you to make special actions that have better, more interesting benefits than generic characteristic/skill rolls. All characters get the following actions for free: pre:Assess the Situation Guarded Position Melee Strike Perform a Stunt Ranged Shot pre:Block Dodge Parry We'll take both the Slayer cards, since that's thematically appropriate: pre:Troll-Feller Strike Slayer Melee, recharge 2 Weapon Skill (St) vs. Target Defence + 1 misfortune die Requirements: Melee weapon equipped, engaged with target, you must be outnumbered or facing a physically larger opponent Special: You may not use any Active Defences while this card is recharging Successes 1: You hit for +1 damage 3: You hit for +3 damage Boons 1: +1 damage and ignore your target's armour soak value for this attack 2, reckless: +3 damage, +1 critical Sigmar's Comets 1, reckless: Inflict 1 critical wound, then inflict normal wounds equal to its severity Banes 1: Suffer 1 fatigue Chaos Stars 1: Suffer 1 wound pre:Shrug it Off Slayer Reaction Support Defence, recharge 0 No check required Requirements: Toughness 4+, must possess the Troll Slayer career ability card Special: When you are hit by an attack, you may add 5 recharge tokens to this card to increase your soak value by 2 for this attack only. You may do this after damage has been announced We still have two more to pick, so I took these: pre:Saga of Grungni Ancestor, Saga, Ongoing Support, recharge 5 Discipline (WP) + 1 challenge die Special: You may only be under the effects of one Saga at a time. When you play a Saga, return any other Saga cards you have in play to your hand. Effect: While this card is recharging, allies with whom you are engaged may not be targeted by any hostile effect that could target you instead Successes 1: You begin chanting the Saga of Grungni 3: As above, and you recover 1 stress and 1 fatigue Boons 2: Add 1 recharge token to this card Banes 1: Remove 1 recharge token from this card pre:Wrath of Morgrim Ancestor Melee, recharge 2 Weapon Skill (St) vs. Target Defence Requirements: Melee weapon equipped, engaged with target, suffering 1 or more wounds Successes 1: You hit for normal damage 2: You hit for +2 damage Boons 2: +1 damage for every 3 wounds you are suffering (round up) Sigmar's Comets 1, reckless: +1 damage for every 2 wounds you are suffering (round up) Banes 1, conservative: Add 1 additional recharge token to this card 1, reckless: Add 2 additional recharge tokens to this card Chaos Stars 1, reckless: Convert one of your normal wounds into a critical wound Fifth step: Determine stances WHFRP3e features a thing called the stance meter, which represents the way the character is approaching actions at the moment. There are three possible stances: reckless, which is risky but can have great effect; neutral, which is, well, neutral; and conservative, which trades amount of success for constancy at the risk of slowness. Our career lets us have up to 1 conservative and 3 reckless steps, so we'll take them all and assemble our meter, which looks something like this: pre:CONS NEUT RECK RECK RECK 01 01 02 03 +----+----+----+----+----+ | | /\ | | | | | | \/ | | | | +----+----+----+----+----+ Sixth step: Select a party sheet WHFRP3e features something beyond individual character creation - each party of adventurers has a sort of archetype they fill, with bonuses and penalties based on it. I shuffle the party sheets and draw: pre:Intrepid Explorers Party, Adventurers, Idealistic 8 step meter Party Tension Meter 5: All party members suffer 1 fatigue 8: All party members suffer 2 fatigue, then tension resets to zero Hale and Hearty: Members of this party may spend fortune points from their personal supply to perform manoeuvres during encounter mode. Sockets: Reputation, Focus With all this done, we've finished our character (with a little lookup from the equipment section) and are ready to face an honorable death! pre:Morgorotha, the Dwarven Troll Slayer 1 Wound Threshold 14 St 5, To 4, Ag 3, Int 2, WP 4, Fel 2 Skills: Athletics (Ag) 1, Intimidate (St) 1, Resilience (To) 1, Weapon Skill (St) 1 Specializations: Weapon Skill - Hand Weapon Equipment: Weapon: Hand Weapon (Axe); 5 damage, 3 critical, melee, 3 enc Armor: None; Defence 1, soak 1, 0 enc Encumbrance Limit: 30 Stances: conservative 1 - neutral 1 - reckless 3 Talents: Exceptional Training, Timely Surge Actions: Assess the Situation, Guarded Position, Melee Strike, Perform a Stunt, Ranged Shot, Block, Dodge, Parry, Troll-Feller Strike, Shrug it Off, Saga of Grungni, Wrath of Morgrim Asymmetrikon fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Mar 6, 2014 |
# ? Mar 6, 2014 02:46 |
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Roll 11d10 or Don't: Let's Keep Making Characters in Greg Stolze's Reign All right, time to jump on the bandwagon along with the rest of the cool kids and make ourselves a bardic bird, or a birdic bard. Some combination of bird and bard. Immediately a conundrum presents itself: Reign has no bird people. As I mentioned earlier the default Reign setting is strictly a humanocentric one...there are no elves or dwarves, no cat-people or lizardmen, and no bird people. And by extension there aren't really any rules for non-human races either. A supplement later released by Greg Stolze called Nain would provide rules for non-human races using the One-Roll Engine, but for the purposes of this thread I want to stick with the default setting of Heluso and Milonda, and fortunately there's still a way we can get our bird on. In order to do so we'll be stepping away from the default random generator included in the core rulebook and looking at one of the generators later released in the supplemental material, and in order to do that we're going to want to take our first look at one of the major nations outlined in the corebook. In Reign, what matters more than how pointy your ears are or whether you have fangs or not is where you come from, and the core rulebook details four of the setting's largest and most influential nations. The one we're looking at today also happens to be the first one the book outlines, the nation of Uldholm. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... quote:This is the ballad the Uldfolk sing. Once upon a time Uldholm was a pretty traditional fantasy nation, the sort led by a monarchy that claimed a divine right to rule. The problem was that another much larger and more aggressive typical fantasy empire had their sights set on Uldholm (among other nations) and began a campaign of conquest against them. And things might have proceeded in a fairly typical fantasy fashion except for one very significant difference...the Empire liked to make use of a special school of sorcery known as Bloodcutting. Bloodcutting was ("was" being the operative word, the Empire has since engaged in an extremely ruthless and effective purge of the Bloodcutter school) essentially a form of sympathetic magic. It did one thing and it did it very well...through the judicious application of magic and a sharp piece of steel, a Bloodcutter could use a single victim to strike out at that person's entire family, no matter how distant. All they needed was a single person and through them they could kill that person's parents, their children, their aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, anyone related to them by blood. The power of the Bloodcutters was the power to murder a lineage. And so the Empire used the Bloodcutters to annihilate the Uldish monarchic lines whenever they could. All it took was the capture of a single relative and an entire royal line would be wiped out overnight. Other rulers fled, gathering their entire families and fleeing for safety, but this left Uldholm disorganized and without leadership and it wasn't long before they were all wiped out regardless. Other nations saw this and got the message...fall in line, pledge fealty to the Empire, and you get to rule as our puppet and you and your entire family can avoid extinction. The problem that the Empire didn't foresee was that rather than surrender with their nobility extinguished, Uldholm continued fighting. It turned out, much to everyone's surprise, that the Ulds didn't really need any nobility in order to continue to function, and what was once an all but assured Imperial victory turned into a bloody and grueling guerilla campaign that the Empire was ill-suited to deal with. Between a suddenly intractable military front on the one hand and mounting domestic tensions at home the Empire was forced to abandon their campaign. Uldholm had won their independence, and they'd done it without needing anyone in a crown telling them how to go about it. No Gods or Kings, Only Man Present day Uldish society has embraced their lack of divinely-appointed rulers and considers itself the most egalitarian nation in the world, where nobody is exalted over the other because of divine mandate or who your parents were. A common farmer can rise to a position of great influence and power, personal initiative and ingenuity are highly prized, and hard work is fairly rewarded. The truth of the matter is that while all of that is pretty much the case, there's more to it than that. Instead of nobility Uldholm has a Senate of trade guilds, fifteen of them in total, encompassing everything from farming to soldiering, lawyers to sorcerers. It's true what they say about a common farmer rising to a position of great influence and power, but like all Senates there are politics aplenty. Hard work is rewarded...provided you belong to one of the officially sanctioned guilds, that is. Better hope that you don't practice a non-guild trade, or that you don't get blackballed by guild politics, or that you were born in Uldholm since only native Ulds can belong to a guild. If you can't get by then the problem must lie with you rather than the system. Grab those bootstraps and start pulling. So Uldholm is a strange mix...all of the nations in Reign are, there are no clear-cut "good guys" or "bad guys," everyone is just folk...being simultaneously the most progressive nation culturally and politically while at the same time finding new and inventive ways to recreate the same old societal divides. About half of the nation is guildless...joining a guild requires the applicant meet several criteria as well as paying an entry fee which can range from Wealth 3 all the way to Wealth 5 for the more prestigious guilds. Nonetheless the good of the guilds is seen as the good of the nation, and the guilds comprise both a Senate and a Council which act in concert as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government. The guilds do also actually act as guilds as well, with new members beginning as apprentices (who have no vote but can attend meetings and propose measures to be voted upon), graduating to journeymen (who receive a single vote), and if they're very skilled (and perhaps have the money for it) may eventually rise to the rank of master (which grants them two votes and assorted other privileges). The Ulds do reward initiative and ingenuity more than other nations tend to, that much is true, and Uldholm is renowned throughout the world as a nation of masterful artisans and craftsmen. One of their most treasured national secrets is that of aquaducts and civic sanitation, and the fact that fewer Uldish children die of filthborne diseases as a result has given other nations the erroneous impression that Ulds are incredibly promiscuous. Their soldiers make use of specially designed crossbows and siege engines in warfare, and they boast two predominantly Uldish schools of magic, Flame Dancing which is all about setting poo poo on fire and Wings of Words, a school that allows the practitioner to send messages on the wind, fly, spit lightning, and control the weather. It's that second school of magic that we're particularly interested in, because that's where we're going to get the bird for our bard. Next time: more digressions, this time about magic, and also making a character.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 03:11 |
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Looking back, this one is just as dumb as the rest, but as a kid, having a bunch of robot and gun porn was sweet as hell, and they got to fight the gargoyles and monsters and they weren't obviously Nazis like the Coalition even though they are German. Again, Johann Doe: pre:IQ 14 PP 6 SDC 18 ME 9 PE 11 HP 12 MA 19 PB 5 PS 11 Spd 15 Still, sweet cyclops helmet and codpiece. We dive straight into skills, and you know I'm gonna grab physical skills because I hate our stats right now and robot piloting poo poo because I'm holding out for the equipment section. pre:Math: Basic 60 WP Automatic Rifle Literacy: Euro 55 WP Energy Rifle Language: Euro 98 WP Heavy MD Radio: Basic 60 Hand to Hand: Expert Computer Operation 55 Robot Combat: Basic Pilot: Robots and Power Armor 79 Combat Driving Pilot: Tanks and APCs 60 Pilot: Truck 59 Wilderness Survival 45 General Athletics Climbing 55 Swimming 65 Running Weapon Systems 55 Body Building Kick Boxing Acrobatics pre:IQ 14 PP 7 SDC 42 ME 9 PE 14 HP 12 MA 19 PB 5 PS 16 Spd 27 Oh yeah, that’s some GI Joe poo poo. Unfortunately it needs two crew (gunner and pilot), so no solo tanking for Johann. It'll do 95mph, and can swim along at 10mph in the water. Its main body has 300 MDC, and most other parts (individually specified, of course) are 5-30. Its main cannon is an Ion weapon that does 1d4*10 MD. It has a hatch mounted laser gun that does 4d6 MD. On the front of the tank it has two rail gun turrets that do a 1d4*10 MD 30-round burst (each). On the back it has a mini-missile launcher that will do 1d4*10 MD with normal missiles. If that wasn't enough it has two flamethrower turrets on the back that do 1d4 MD each. So, we need a buddy and our tank has pretty lovely armor, but we can tear rear end around at high speeds and shoot ions at people. Next time: South America! CJ Carella!
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 18:38 |
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The ion cannon does as much damage as a three round burst from your standard rifle. That is a pretty awful tank gun.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 19:19 |
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goatface posted:The ion cannon does as much damage as a three round burst from your standard rifle. Not everybody can have a rad hover battle tank with a huge gun: (it does 2d4*10!)
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 19:23 |
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I remember buying this book, but the only thing I remember is it having a sweet cover and some conquistador robots. Pretty sweet, huh? I'm going to make one of that guy, on the cover. Again, John Doe: pre:IQ 14 PP 6 SDC 18 ME 9 PE 11 HP 12 MA 19 PB 5 PS 11 Spd 15 The process turns us into a crazy 7 foot tall 400 lb monster and we have a 5% chance of our body rejecting the magical grafts after 1d4 years. If that happens, we have to save vs Coma/Death at -15% or we are hosed. Even if we make it, we get huge penalties for months and then some minor penalties permanently. Then it happens again 1d6 years later, and again 2d4 years after that! If we survive all three times, we are safe. We also become really inhuman and have an 80% chance of developing an obsession. Obsession: 1d100 39 yup, so lets see what… Obsession: 1d100 67 Roll from the core book ugh Obsession: 1d100 10 Coalition States. Oh that’s not so bad, we are obsessed with loving up the skull-crazed Nazis from Chicago. We become a MDC creature, with 1d6*10+400: 440 MDC, which we regenerate at 4d6 MDC per minute. Our PPE and ISP drop to 1d4 each: 4 3 but can't be sucked out by bad wizards. Our attributes jump up, like we had an RCC. Non-MDC heat, cold, and weapons don't hurt us, of course. We don't need to eat or breathe and can survive in outer space. MD heat, fire, plasma, and cold do half damage. We are immune to poisons, drugs, and magical potions. We get the following spells built-in, usable 3/day as if we were a 5th level wizard: Blinding Flash, Globe of Daylight, Chameleon, Armor of Ithan, Magic Net, and Shadow Meld. We can also use rune weapons and other wizard crap. We can detect psychic and magic energies within 50 feet, and sense supernatural beings nearby. We get a bunch of bonuses to combat stuff, too. We take double damage from rune weapons, wormwood magic, and millennium tree wands, staves, and weapons. We only get a few skills, but we get a decent number of secondary skills to fill, and I'm taking ALL of the physical ones. pre:Radio: Basic 60 WP Energy Rifle Wilderness Survival 45 WP Sword Piloting: Sail Boat 75 WP Energy Pistol Language: Spanish 98 WP Flamethrower Language: Euro 73 Hand to Hand: Martial Arts Demon and Monster Lore 45 General Athletics Aerobic Athletics Body Building Boxing Forced March Gymnastics Kick Boxing Outdoorsmanship Physical Labor Running Wrestling pre:IQ 14 PP 23 MDC 440 ME 9 PE 39 PPE 4 MA 24 PB 3 ISP 3 PS 50 Spd 70 We also get Mystical bionic lungs, retractable claws (1d4 MD per finger), and 1d4+1: 5 other cybernetic implants during the transformation. I'm assuming these are just like normal cybernetics but a wizard did it. Lets go with Bionic Booster Jets (Jump 20 feet high and 30 feet across), a Multi-Optic Eye (including telescope, macro lens, passive nightvision, thermal imaging, light filters, and a targeting display), two extra hands and arms, and poo poo, a clock calendar.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 22:01 |
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Man that seems a little crazier than I remember, but I didn't remember the extra cybernetics and part of that is all those physical skills. I forget is the strength supernatural? Thus giving a massive carrying capacity. And if I remember correctly it specifically can harm vampires with its natural attacks. It is basically built to hunt and kill vampires, and other supernatural monsters.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 22:54 |
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Ryuujin posted:Man that seems a little crazier than I remember, but I didn't remember the extra cybernetics and part of that is all those physical skills. I forget is the strength supernatural? Thus giving a massive carrying capacity. And if I remember correctly it specifically can harm vampires with its natural attacks. Yeah, the strength is supernatural, and it specifically does 2d6 HP damage to Vampires (4d6 on a power punch, plus strength bonus). So with like 8 hand to hand attacks per round at a pretty good chance to hit, dude is gonna paste a vampire like my WB1 character in a couple of rounds. I think I am going to take the Rifts characters in groups of 6 and run them up against some tough-ish challenge to see how they fare in combat. This should show how these numbers work and also give an idea of some of the power creep as we get to later groups.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 23:19 |
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South America and Russia were my favourite Rifts books - South America mostly for the aliens who were hilarious failures at everything they did, and Russia because of Ramon Perez's art.
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 23:22 |
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SMALLVILLE: MY FANFICTIONS! Last time on Marvel High School, we met our players and set up some of the pieces. Now it's time to move on to the next stage of the high school pathways, Upbringing. If we were using the core pathways set, we would move on to youth. Before everyone picks their pathway, it's time to go back to the pathways map and start modifying it. Everyone gets to add a Location (Diamond) to the map. These are recurring places in our emmy award winning drama show, that have significance to the characters in some way (2d4 resource, just like a starting extra). After that, everyone gets to draw a line from one Extra (Circle) or Location they have created to any other Extra or Location, to start filling in the background relationships between the characters. We wind up like this: Peter adds the Daily Tony's a bit off on his own right now, but that's going to change in short order. For now though, we need to have every character select their Upbringing Since Peter was born ordinary, he gets to select between a neglected, encouraged, or troubled upbringing. Uncle Ben and Aunt May supported and backed him every step of the way, so he selects Encouraged. This lets him step up Duty or Power, add or step up a distinction, step up a relationship, and step up a relationship, asset, or resource. Peter steps up Duty, really emphasizing Uncle Bens good influence on him. Peter could step up Genius to a d6 with his distinction pick, but instead opts to take a new distinction, Agile at a d4. Peter is a pretty skinny, weak, bookish kid, so getting picked on by bullies has honed his evasive abilities something fierce. At a d4 peter can reroll a dice in any pool including his agile dice, if he chooses to drop everything he's carrying. For his relationship, Peter steps up his link to Jen, since she seems to be watching out for him and she goes to the same cafe as his aunt. He then steps up his Genius distinction to a d6, since his encouraged upbringing nurtured his intellectual capacity. PETER PARKER VALUES DUTY D6 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D6 POWER D4 TRUTH D6 RELATIONSHIPS Tony Stark D6 Jen Walters D6 Thor D4 ASSETS Genius d6 (Spend a plot point to reveal that you have studied the basics of a subject) Agile d4 (Reroll a dice in an agile pool when you choose to drop everything you're carrying EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Aunt May 2d6 Daily Bugle 2d4 Tonys Rich origin lets him pick between a neglected, encouraged or nurtured upbringing. He selects Neglected, Mom died when he was young and his dad was always away on business trips, so he was raised by a series of nannies. This lets him step up Glory or Justice, step up or add a distinction, step up a location, and step up a relationship, resource or asset. Tony steps up Glory, he always pushed himself to be the best so his father would approve of him. With his distinction Tony adds Smartass at a d4, his upbringing has left him somewhat caustic to others. This lets him earn a plot point and give his opposition a d6 whenever he's shooting his mouth off in a dangerous situation. Stark Tower gets stepped up to 2d6, and Tony decides to step up Wealthy to a d8 distinction. This unlocks the next trigger, he can spend a plot point to reveal that he owns a large non-unique item such as a car, warehouse full electronics, or private plane which counts as a d8 Useful Detail (Something in a scene that can be added to your dice pool on top of what's on your character sheet. Anyone can do this at a d6, Tony just gets a bit of a better effect when he brings up how amazingly flush he is while doing it). With two triggers from wealthy requiring plot points to spend, that smartass distinction is looking like a smart choice on Tonys part. TONY STARK VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D6 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D4 POWER D8 TRUTH D4 RELATIONSHIPS Peter Parker D4 Jen Walters D4 Thor D4 ASSETS Wealthy d8 (Spend a plot point to reroll one dice in a contest or test that can be swayed by money. Spend a plot point to reveal that you own a large non-unique item that counts as a d8 useful detail) Smartass d4 (Earn a plot point and give your opponent a d6 whenever you're a smartass in a dangerous situation) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Pepper Potts 2d6 Stark Tower 2d6 Jen gets the same choices as Peter, neglected, encouraged or troubled. She selects Troubled, reasoning that her mother dying when she was young and her father being in a high pressure policing job has left her with a somewhat shaky emotional bedrock. She gets to step up Justice or Truth, step up or add a distinction, step up a resource, and step up a resource, relationship or asset. Jen pumps up her Justice rating to a d6, she doesn't like seeing the world be unfair to people. Jen uses her distinction pick to add Impulsive, she's prone to acting first without thinking. At a d4 rating she earns a plot point and adds d6 to trouble whenever she acts rashly. She steps up her link to Stans cafe to 2d6, since she really needs a place to cool off sometimes, and also steps up her link to Thor to a d6. Since his brother bullies her favorite cousin, they've probably had some acquaintanceship with each other. JENNIFER WALTERS VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D6 LOVE D4 POWER D4 TRUTH D8 RELATIONSHIPS Peter Parker D6 Tony Stark D4 Thor D6 ASSETS Persistent d4 (Earn 1 plot point and add 1d6 to the trouble pool when you get too pushy with someone you know you shouldn't) Impulsive d4 (Earn 1 plot point and add 1d6 to the trouble pool when you act rashly) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Bruce Banner 2d6 Stans Cafe 2d6 Thors status as an alien gives him access to the Neglected, Toxic or Nurtured upbringings. He selects Nurtured, reasoning that Odin always saw him as the golden boy and probably gave him a little too much attention. This lets him step up Love or Duty, step up or add a distinction, step up an extra or heritage, and step up a relationship, asset or resource. Thor decides to step up Love, he does care about his fellow being even if mortals are a little quaint sometimes. With his distinction pick, Thor gains Weapons Master at a d4 due to his training in Asgard. He can spend a plot point to decrease an opponents injured or afraid stress pool against him when he's armed (Essentially, the mere sight of Thor wielding a hammer is enough to put people on edge, and he's good enough with one that he doesn't need to do as much damage to people to put them down). Thor then steps up his connection to Loki, since all that loving attention from Allfather Odin definitely drove Loki to resent Thor and provided fuel for their conflicts. He also steps up his Super Strength to a d6, due to his status as a god. THOR VALUES DUTY D6 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D6 POWER D4 TRUTH D6 RELATIONSHIPS Tony Stark D4 Jen Walters D4 Peter Parker D4 ASSETS Asgardian Heritage d4 (Earn a plot point whenever you act dismissively and disdainfully towards your "inferiors") Super Strength d6 Confident d4 (Earn a plot point when you choose to act first in a situation) Weapons Master d4 (Spend a plot point to decrease an opponents Afraid or Injured stress pool against you) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Loki 2d6 Asgard 2d4 NEXT TIME: ALPHA, BRING ME
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# ? Mar 6, 2014 23:29 |
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To judge our level 1 party (consisting of a Rogue Scholar, Secondary Vampire, Kittani Warrior, Knight, Phoenixi, NGR Soldier, and Anti-Monster), we will put them against a tough monster. Our party is kind of big, because I forgot about the core book character, but it is ok since the Scholar and Knight are sort of worthless. Rifts doesn't have any sort of Challenge Rating or way to judge how mean something is, but that is ok, because I want something mean. Not quite as mean as one of the Four Horsemen, but enough that they will have a tough time killing it, and probably not kill a second one if it gets that far. That way, I can use the amount of damage done as a score for each time. The Rifts Conversion books have a bunch of stuff for playing things from other Palladium games, and Conversion book 3 is full of demons, so probably a good source for a foe for our party. They are going to fight an Arch Fiend. An Arch Fiend in a Robot. pre:Level: 1d4+3 7 IQ: 2d6+10 21 PP: 2d6+12 15 MDC: 4d4*10+40 180 ME: 1d6+14 15 PE: 3d6+10 17 PPE: 3d4*10+40 120 MA: 3d6+10 21 PB: 2d6+6 9 HF 15 PS: 2d6+14 21 Spd: 2d6+20 25 Streetwise 65 Intelligence 82 Land Nav. 88 Track Humans 77 Escape Artist 87 Pick Locks 82 Palming 72 Concealment 65 Locate Secret 72 Demon Lore 87 Basic Math 98 Prowl 72 Climb 92 Literate: Elven 82 Literate: Euro 82 Literate: Gobb 82 Attacks per melee: 5 or 2 magic Bonuses: +3 Initiative, +4 strike, +2 parry/dodge, +5 pull punch, +3 roll, +3 magic saves, +10 horror saves, +6 damage. Magic: All level 1 spells, plus Chameleon, Shadow Meld, Multiple Image, Fear, Escape, Mystic Portal, Magic Net, Circle of Flame, Fire Ball, Fiery Touch, Repel Animals, Turn Dead, Animate & Control Dead, Exorcism, Banishment, Desiccate the Supernatural, and Heal Wounds. pre:Titan Footman Power Armor MDC by Location: Backpack Mini-Missile Launchers (2 towers) 60 Belly Laser Turret 20 Forearm Vibro Swords (2) 30 Leap Jets (2, back) 30 Hands (20) 20 Arms (2) 60 Shoulder Plates (2) 80 Legs (2) 100 Head 90 Main Body 240 Running 50mph Leaping 12', 100' jet-assisted Physical Strength Equal to PS 24 (+9 Damage) Weapon Systems: Mini-Missile Launcher: Fragmentation 5d6 MD in 20' radius, AP 1d4*10 MD in 3' radius. 1 mile range. 10 missiles in each launch tower. Can fire in volleys of two. Belly Gun: 2d4 MD, 4d4 MD twin blast. 1000' Range. Unlimited payload. Grants an extra attack per melee. Vibro-Blades: 2d4 MD. Restrained Punch: 6d6 SD Full Strength Punch: 1d4 MD Power Punch: 2d4 MD Claw Strike: 1d6+2 MD pre:NG-LP25 Laser Pulse Submachine-Gun: 2d6+1 MD, 5d6 MD 3-round burst. 1000' Range. 36 shot long e-clip.
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# ? Mar 7, 2014 00:17 |
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Our arena is a flat plain, our teams 1200' apart. In the center of the battlefield is a small ruined building, roughly 600' from the party and the enemy. It is dimly light by a non-sun light source. The Scholar is in his ATV, the Vampire on foot, the Kittani in K-Universal light power armor, the Phoenixi floating nearby, the Soldier in his tank with the Knight as his gunner, and the Anti-Monster on foot. Roll Initiative! 8#1d20 13 1 18 9 6 9 6 1 Monster: +3 = 16 Scholar: +0 = 1 Vampire: +2 = 20 Kittani: +0 = 9 Soldier: +0 = 6 Phoenixi: +2 = 11 Knight: +0 = 6 Anti-Monster: +2 = 3 Everybody has multiple attacks, so each person gets one attack in order of initiative, then we go through again over and over until nobody has attacks left. Vampire goes first, his speed isn't quite high enough to get to the cover of the ruins and his psionics are pretty useless, so he turns into a bat! The archfiend is next and launches a pair of fragmentation mini-missiles at the group. He isn't proficient so he doesn't get his bonus to strike, but he can try to get people in the blast at least. The target is the mini-tank, and we only roll once for the entire volley. Attack: 1d20 13 A 5+ is a hit. People could sacrifice an action to try to dodge, but they can probably take it and will get to roll with impact anyway. I'm going to roll damage once because gently caress doing it for everyone. Damage: 10d6 34 The mini-tank takes 34 to its main body. The ATV takes 17. Everyone else gets to roll with impact. Roll with impact: 4#1d20 6 19 10 5 The Kittani definitely dodges (roll to beat the hit roll), the others add their modifiers. The Phoenixi is close, with a modified 12, but not quite. So the mini-tank takes 34, the Kittani 9, and everyone else takes 17. Except the vampire, who is immune. The Phoenixi goes next, and with a fly speed of 50, covers 750' of ground in one action, flying past the ruins. The Kittani is in laser rifle range, and fires a burst. 1d20: 1d20 13 A hit! The Archfiend tries to dodge. 1d20+2: 1d20+2 13 Matching it is good enough, and the robot hops out of the way. The soldier and knight go at the same time. The soldier, driving, guns it, zipping 2000' around the arena. The knight returns a volley of four armor piercing mini missiles of his own. 1d20: 1d20 9 A hit. Or four hits, whatever. The Archfiend dodges. 1d20+2: 1d20+2 18 Sacrificing one action to get out of the way. Anti-Monster is next. With his speed of 70, he moves 1050' and almost closes the gap. The Scholar pops the hatch on the ATV to zap at the archfiend with his laser rifle. 1d20+1: 1d20+1 8 Hit! 3d6: 3d6 16 Finally, some damage! That is the first action of the first round. gently caress Rifts forever. I'm going back to making stupid characters.
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# ? Mar 7, 2014 03:37 |
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Dagon posted:Our arena is a flat plain, our teams 1200' apart. In the center of the battlefield is a small ruined building, roughly 600' from the party and the enemy. It is dimly light by a non-sun light source. The Scholar is in his ATV, the Vampire on foot, the Kittani in K-Universal light power armor, the Phoenixi floating nearby, the Soldier in his tank with the Knight as his gunner, and the Anti-Monster on foot. Legitimately the first thing I thought of, seemed fitting.
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# ? Mar 7, 2014 04:05 |
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Ars Magica: Master of all he surveys Let’s take a reminder look at Malik! pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Characteristics Strength -3 Intelligence +3 Stamina +2 Perception +2 Dexterity -2 Presence +1 Quickness +0 Communication +2 Personality Grumpy +2 Pious -1 Inquisitive +3 Abilities General Area Lore: Andalusia (Geography) 1 (5 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Geography) 1 (5 XP) Brawl (Dodging) 2 (15 XP) Charm (Magi) 2 (15 XP) Etiquette (Magi) 2 (15 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 3 (30 XP) Guile (Keeping Secrets) 2 (15 XP) Intrigue (Negotiations) 3 (30 XP) Spanish (Slang) 3 (30 XP) Arabic (Poetry) 5 (75 XP) Survival (Hills) 2 (15 XP) Academic Latin (Hermetic Usage) 4 (50 XP) Artes Liberales (Logic) 2 (20 XP) Philosophiae (Ritual Magic) 1 (5 XP) Arcane Code of Hermes (Political Intrigue) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Magic Theory (Intellego) 4 (50 XP) Parma Magica (Mentem) 2 (15 XP) Penetration (Intellego) 2 (15 XP) Finesse (Precision) 2 (15 XP) Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Flawless Magic (3) Affinity with Intellego (1) Piercing Gaze (1) Affinity with Code of Hermes (1) Educated (1) Puissant Intellego (1) Skilled Parens (1) Inventive Genius (1) Flaws Weak Scholar (-1) Weak Spontaneous Magic (-1) Dependent (-3) Driven: Root our corruption (-1) Pessimistic (-1) Outsider (-3) Arts Creo 5 (15 XP), Intellego 10 (38*1.5 XP), Muto 5 (15 XP), Perdo 8 (36 XP), Rego 5 (15 XP), Auram 8 (36 XP), Herbam 8 (36 XP), Mentem 6 (21 XP), Corpus 6 (21 XP), Vim 6 (21 XP), Animal 3 (7 XP), Imaginem 1 (1 XP) Spells Hunt for the Wild Herb (InHe 5), Shriek of the Impending Shafts (InHe 15), Converse with Plant and Tree (InHe 25), True Sight of the Air (InAu 15), Whispering Winds (InAu 15), Ask the Wind (InAu 25), Room of Stale Air (PeAu 15), The Invisible Eye Revealed (InVi 15), Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie (InMe 20), Sight of the True Form (InCo 25), Whispers Through the Black Gate (InCo 15), The Inexorable Search (InCo 20), Tracing the Trail of Death’s Stench (InCo 20), Perception of the Conflicting Motives (InMe 15), Posing the Silent Question (InMe 20), Thoughts Within Babble (InMe 25), Broom of the Winds (CrAu 15), Wreaths of Foul Smoke (CrAu 10) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic) Filthy Moor 2 (Local)
Okay. And because we took Flawless Magic, every spell we have is mastered at Level 1. If we learn any new spells, they will be mastered at Level 1. Further, as of errata, any Spell Mastery XP we gain is doubled. So, let’s pick out our spell masteries. Hunt for the Wild Herb: This one isn’t so useful with any of those, but...we’ll grab Quiet Casting because why not. Shriek of the Impending Shafts: We’ll grab Still Casting. It lasts long enough to not need Fast Casting, but it might be handy to be able to do while bound. Converse with Plant and Tree: We’ll take Penetration, on the off chance we run into a magic tree that doesn’t want to chat. True Sight of the Air: Quet Casting, for the same reason as Hunt the Wild Herb. Whispering Winds: Quiet Casting because we want to be able to use it subtly. Ask the Wind: Still Casting, for variety. We’re far less likely to meet a magic wind than a magic tree. Room of Stale Air: Multiple Casting, I think. We can poison multiple rooms! We don’t need Penetration because our target is the air itself, not the people who breathe it - they just have to deal with the results. The Invisible Eye Revealed: Still Casting. It targets us, so we don’t need Penetration or Resistance. Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie: Penetration. We’re wizard cops - we want to be able to question wizards. Sight of the True Form: Affects us only, so we’ll go for Quiet Casting for subtlety reasons. Whispers through the Black Gate: Quiet Casting, because I flipped a coin. Corpses largely do not have magic resistance - ghosts do, but we’re handling corpses here. Even if a ghost got involved, that’s already a very good Penetration booster. The Inexorable Search: Penetration. We’re already using an arcane connection, but we want to be as good at this as possible for fugitives that don’t want to be found. Tracing the Trail of Death’s Stench: Still Casting, because I flipped a coin. We don’t need penetration for this. Perception of the Conflicting Motives: Penetration, for obvious reasons. Posing the Silent Question: Magic Resistance. Our mind must be a steel trap! Thoughts Within Babble: This only affects our hearing and ourselves, so...Quiet Casting. Broom of the Winds: Penetration. We want to be able to hit people with it. Wreaths of Foul Smoke: Multiple Casting, so we can make more smoke walls! pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Characteristics Strength -3 Intelligence +3 Stamina +2 Perception +2 Dexterity -2 Presence +1 Quickness +0 Communication +2 Personality Grumpy +2 Pious -1 Inquisitive +3 Abilities General Area Lore: Andalusia (Geography) 1 (5 XP) Area Lore: Castille (Geography) 1 (5 XP) Brawl (Dodging) 2 (15 XP) Charm (Magi) 2 (15 XP) Etiquette (Magi) 2 (15 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 3 (30 XP) Guile (Keeping Secrets) 2 (15 XP) Intrigue (Negotiations) 3 (30 XP) Spanish (Slang) 3 (30 XP) Arabic (Poetry) 5 (75 XP) Survival (Hills) 2 (15 XP) Academic Latin (Hermetic Usage) 4 (50 XP) Artes Liberales (Logic) 2 (20 XP) Philosophiae (Ritual Magic) 1 (5 XP) Arcane Code of Hermes (Political Intrigue) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Magic Theory (Intellego) 4 (50 XP) Parma Magica (Mentem) 2 (15 XP) Penetration (Intellego) 2 (15 XP) Finesse (Precision) 2 (15 XP) Spell Mastery Hunt For the Wild Herb 1 (Quiet Casting) (5 XP) Shriek of the Impending Shafts 1 (Still Casting) (5 XP) Converse with Plant and Tree 1 (Penetration). (5 XP) True Sight of the Air 1 (Quiet Casting) (5 XP) Whispering Winds 1 (Quiet Casting) (5 XP) Ask the Wind 1 (Still Casting) (5 XP) Room of Stale Air 1 (Multiple Casting) (5 XP) The Invisible Eye Revealed 1 (Still Casting) (5 XP) Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie 1 (Penetration) (5 XP) Sight of the True Form 1 (Quiet Casting) (5 XP) Whispers through the Black Gate 1 (Quiet Casting) (5 XP) The Inexorable Search 1 (Penetration) (5 XP) Tracing the Trail of Death’s Stench 1 (Still Casting) (5 XP) Perception of the Conflicting Motives 1 (Penetration) (5 XP) Posing the Silent Question 1 (Magic Resistance) (5 XP) Thoughts Within Babble 1 (Quiet Casting) (5 XP) Broom of the Winds 1 (Penetration) (5 XP) Wreaths of Foul Smoke 1 (Multiple Casting) (5 XP) Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Flawless Magic (3) Affinity with Intellego (1) Piercing Gaze (1) Affinity with Code of Hermes (1) Educated (1) Puissant Intellego (1) Skilled Parens (1) Inventive Genius (1) Flaws Weak Scholar (-1) Weak Spontaneous Magic (-1) Dependent (-3) Driven: Root our corruption (-1) Pessimistic (-1) Outsider (-3) Arts Creo 5 (15 XP), Intellego 10 (38*1.5 XP), Muto 5 (15 XP), Perdo 8 (36 XP), Rego 5 (15 XP), Auram 8 (36 XP), Herbam 8 (36 XP), Mentem 6 (21 XP), Corpus 6 (21 XP), Vim 6 (21 XP), Animal 3 (7 XP), Imaginem 1 (1 XP) Spells Hunt for the Wild Herb (InHe 5), Shriek of the Impending Shafts (InHe 15), Converse with Plant and Tree (InHe 25), True Sight of the Air (InAu 15), Whispering Winds (InAu 15), Ask the Wind (InAu 25), Room of Stale Air (PeAu 15), The Invisible Eye Revealed (InVi 15), Frosty Breath of the Spoken Lie (InMe 20), Sight of the True Form (InCo 25), Whispers Through the Black Gate (InCo 15), The Inexorable Search (InCo 20), Tracing the Trail of Death’s Stench (InCo 20), Perception of the Conflicting Motives (InMe 15), Posing the Silent Question (InMe 20), Thoughts Within Babble (InMe 25), Broom of the Winds (CrAu 15), Wreaths of Foul Smoke (CrAu 10) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic) Filthy Moor 2 (Local) Next time, our scribal grog.
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# ? Mar 7, 2014 17:19 |
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SMALLVILLE: MY FANFICTIONS! Last time we determined our characters upbringings, now we get to add their Attitude, the way they present themselves to others. If we were using the regular lifepath options, we'd get to pick a Focus instead. Either way it's back to the pathways map, and everyone gets to draw an arrow from them to a new or existing diamond or circle, then drawn an arrow from an existing diamond or circle to another diamond, circle or square. This is where the leads start to really get mixed up in each others lives. I'm going to need to redraw this thing at least twice before I'm done with this, aren't I? Peter decides to create Mary Jane as a new extra, saying that he crushes on her. He also draws an arrow from Aunt May back to himself saying that she must protect him, emphasizing their strong bond. Tony draws an arrow from Mary Jane back to him, saying that she's crushing on him, while drawing another arrow from himself back to her, saying that he barely even knows she exists. After all, what kind of good high school drama doesn't have implausible relationship triangles? Since Tony drew an arrow from himself to one of Peters extras, Peter has the option of upgrading her to a Feature, a more fully fleshed out NPC who plays a bigger part in the PCs adventures. He does so, so both Tony and Peter move her from being a 2d4 extra to a d4 relationship. Jen wants to get in on this MJ action as well, linking the redhead to herself, saying that they're best friends. She then links herself to Loki, stating that she despises him for all the torment he heaps on Bruce. Thor decides to upgrade Loki to a Feature as well (Relationships and extras don't need to be positive, hating someone can drive you just as well as loving them), then creates the Football Team extra declaring himself star quarterback. He then links the Football Team to Peter, saying that they bully him incessantly. These steps are where you really need to start talking out the links you put down. Everyone at this table is cool with creating drama and stirring things up a bit, but Peter might not be cool with Tony linking himself to Mary Jane like that, or with Thor saying who his bullies are. Still, if everyone understands that creating more drama and conflict is a good thing, they can start feeding into each others extras and features in really cool ways. Now, on to Attitudes. Peter can pick between Arrogant, Dedicated or Curious. Arrogant really doesn't fit with Spider-Man, but the other two are both good choices for a young Peter Parker. Peter goes with Curious, since the famous drive that Spider-Man displays only really comes in after Uncle Ben dies, and that's further down the lifepath. Also he really wants some webshooters. Peter gets a new distinction or gear, gets to step up a distinction or gear, and gets to step up a relationship or resource. With his new gear, Peter creates Webshooters at a d4. This works like an ability or distinction, except that it automatically comes with a Limit, of gear. This means that his webshooters can be taken away from him or run out of fluid or he can forget to have put them on that morning or whatever. He then steps them up to d6, since his curiosity led him to spending a lot of time in the lab working on these doohickeys. Thors Super Strength is a prepackaged ability. Gear is a little more build your own, but building abilities isn't too hard. It just needs an Effect (What it can do), Descriptor (How it does it) and a Limit (What makes it not work). He uses his relationship or resource step up to increase his link to the Daily Bugle. Ol' JJJ appreciates an inquisitive mind. PETER PARKER VALUES DUTY D6 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D6 POWER D4 TRUTH D6 RELATIONSHIPS Tony Stark D6 Jen Walters D6 Thor D4 Mary Jane D4 ASSETS Genius d6 (Spend a plot point to reveal that you have studied the basics of a subject) Agile d4 (Reroll a dice in an agile pool when you choose to drop everything you're carrying Webshooters d6 (Effect: Movement, Descriptor: Swingline, Limit: Gear) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Aunt May 2d6 Daily Bugle 2d6 Tony can select from Arrogant, Mysterious or Dedicated attitudes. He goes with Dedicated, because it's the only one that gives him easy access to a suit of power armor in the next step, plus it fits with the vision he has for tony. Mysterious attitude doesn't really cut it, while Arrogant isn't quite how he sees this version of Tony going. Dedicated means that he's driven and pushes himself hard. Dedicated lets him step up or add a distinction, step up a distinction or ability, and step up a resource or relationship. He adds Genius as a distinction and steps it up, same as what Peter has. He then steps up his relationship with Peter, as both players agree that Tony probably helped him build his webshooters, which is good bonding activity. TONY STARK VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D6 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D4 POWER D8 TRUTH D4 RELATIONSHIPS Peter Parker D6 Jen Walters D4 Thor D4 Mary Jane D4 ASSETS Wealthy d8 (Spend a plot point to reroll one dice in a contest or test that can be swayed by money. Spend a plot point to reveal that you own a large non-unique item that counts as a d8 useful detail) Smartass d4 (Earn a plot point and give your opponent a d6 whenever you're a smartass in a dangerous situation) Genius d6 (Spend a plot point to reveal that you have studied the basics of a subject) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Pepper Potts 2d6 Stark Tower 2d6 Jen gets to select between Dedicated, Curious or Reckless. For a budding young She-Hulk, Reckless is an easy pick. She doesn't think about her actions, she just does. Reckless gets her a new distinction, lets her step up an extra, and step up a relationship or resource. For her new distinction, Jen grabs Not Born Yesterday. For a high schooler, she's fairly jaded (hah) and savvy about how the world and people work. At a d4 rating, she gains a plot point whenever she chooses to buy a reasonable lie. She steps up her connection to Bruce to 2d8, since he's the only extra she has left, and also steps up her new link to MJ to a d6. Besties gotta stick together after all. JENNIFER WALTERS VALUES DUTY D4 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D6 LOVE D4 POWER D4 TRUTH D8 RELATIONSHIPS Peter Parker D6 Tony Stark D4 Thor D6 Mary Jane D6 Loki D4 ASSETS Persistent d4 (Earn 1 plot point and add 1d6 to the trouble pool when you get too pushy with someone you know you shouldn't) Impulsive d4 (Earn 1 plot point and add 1d6 to the trouble pool when you act rashly) Not Born Yesterday d4 (Earn 1 plot point when you choose to buy a reasonable lie) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Bruce Banner 2d8 Stans Cafe 2d6 Thor can be Arrogant, Reckless or Mysterious. Any of these work, but Thor goes for [/b]Mysterious[/b]. He doesn't want anyone at school to know that he's a god/alien from Asgard, so he keeps his past close to his chest. This lets him add or step up an ability or distinction, add or step up a heritage or distinction, and step up a relationship or resource. Thor chooses to add Electric Blast as an ability, god of the storm and all that. He steps up his Asgardian Heritage to a d6 so he knows more about his own culture, then ups his link to the football team to 2d6 thanks to him being star player. THOR VALUES DUTY D6 GLORY D4 JUSTICE D4 LOVE D6 POWER D4 TRUTH D6 RELATIONSHIPS Tony Stark D4 Jen Walters D4 Peter Parker D4 Loki D6 ASSETS Asgardian Heritage d6 (Earn a plot point whenever you act dismissively and disdainfully towards your "inferiors") Super Strength d6 (Effect: Enhancement, Descriptor: Muscles, Limit: Uncontrollable) Confident d4 (Earn a plot point when you choose to act first in a situation) Weapons Master d4 (Spend a plot point to decrease an opponents Afraid or Injured stress pool against you) Electric Blast d4 (Effect: Attack, Descriptor: Electric, Limit: Rubber) EXTRAS AND LOCATIONS Football Team 2d6 Asgard 2d4 NEXT TIME: AMBITION!
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# ? Mar 7, 2014 22:47 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 00:16 |
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When last we left off, aside from a digression onto that table, Bird Bard was looking like a relatively sane character. But then, so was our first character before... the Incident. Let's see what incidents await on Table 208: Significant Events of Childhood & Adolescence. We roll d3=3 for number of events in childhood and d3=2 for number of events in adolescence. We'll assume Bird Bard ages the same way humans do for simplicity. That means we roll d12 thrice=8,8,9 for when the childhood events occur and d6+12 twice=18,14 for when the adolescent events occur. We'll roll the events in chronological order. For each event, we roll d20 and add her Social Level Modifier of 4. First roll, d20+4=15. A future history-specific event occurs. Select the event on the table most appropriate for your game's future history classification--Table 525: Tarnished Tomorrows; Table 526, Final Frontier Events; Table 527, Imperial Space Events; Table 528, Post Holocaust Events. [R] We'll be going to Table 526. We roll d8=2. Character is part of an exploration mission in which 1d6 new, inhabitable worlds are discovered. Use Table 522: Otherworld Events to determine what kind of planets have been found and then give each an interesting name. Roll a d6. On a result of 6, the character gains an unusual pet. Select pet on Table 751: Unusual Pets. Well, this is exciting! We add d6=2 new planets to the Ring network. Table 522 has three subtables, but we'll only be using the first one, Table 522A: Other Worlds. 2d8 twice=13, 11. One's an airless asteroid; the other's a desert world. (As the earlier roll specified inhabitable planets, I decide the asteroid has some sort of habitable structure around the Ring.) We then roll d6=5. Close, but no pet for Bird Bard. But something else happened when she was 8. d20+4=19. Character develops jaded tastes for exotic and possibly expensive pleasures. [D] Okaaaaaaaay. I think I'll hold off on determining what pleasures exactly until we roll Traits. Next, the age 9 event. d20+4=15. That means another visit to Table 526 and another [R] trait. d8=6. Character discovers ancient, alien ruins and finds 1d3 alien artifacts (select on Table 854: Gifts & Legacies) and a strange device. GM: select a device on Table 855: Techno-wonders, but keep its function a mystery. Interesting! d3=1. We roll d20=20 on Table 854. Roll again. The resulting item definitely has at least one special function and some great significance to the character's destiny and the overall scheme of things. Exciting! d20=3. An Unusual Pet. Roll type of pet on Table 751: Unusual Pets. This pet will survive at least until the character starts adventuring. Looks like Bird Bard didn't miss out on that pet after all! Table 751 has two subtables. First we roll d20=18 on Table 751A: Special Pet Types. Robot animal. These are not true creatures, but mechanical constructs designed to look (and often act) like the real animal. Select details regarding the robot on Table 750: Artificial Persons. Do not use Table 750C: Body Types. Reroll the animal type on this table. Oh my! Time to roll d20=20 on Table 750A: Primary Function. ...Spacecraft. Yes. Okay! Add 1 to Table 750B die roll. Select additional details regarding this vehicle on Table 866: Spacecraft. So first we head to Table 750B: Intelligence Levels. d10+1=4. Self-aware. The machine knows it exists and desires to maintain its own existence. Capable of creative problem-solving. Excellent! That's actually better than the AIs of the setting. On to Table 866. This has five subtables. First, we roll d20=5 on Table 866A: Ship Type. Scout ship. A small maneuverable craft capable of traversing space and exploring a planet. Next we roll on Table 866B: Space Capabilities. However, we decided earlier that interstellar travel was only feasible using the Ring network, so I'm going to restrict this roll to d7=2. Short range system ship. Travel to nearby planets and moons. It doesn't have the range to go anywhere in a solar system, but Bird Bard can visit the Luna colony. Next, we roll d20=3 on Table 866C: Armament. The ship is unarmed. d20=3 on Table 866D: Special Features. No special features. d20=18 on Table 866E: Liabilities. Large Crew. Ship requires a large crew to run, at least 1d4x100% more crew than a similar ship. Well, that's unfortunate. d4=3, so it needs four times the crew of a normal ship in its class. Returning to Table 751A, we roll d20=4 and get 'cat'. On to Table 751B: Special Pet Abilities. d20=16. Pet breathes fire--1d6 damage. So the ship isn't unarmed after all. Lastly, the GM turns to Table 855... d20=14. Self-aware electronics. This is a machine that possesses all the requirements for sentient life, possibly even a soul. Could be a computer, a robot, or another device listed on this table. Table 750: Artificial Persons gives more information on sentient robots and computers. He isn't explicitly told to head to Table 750, but he'll do so anyway. d20=10 on Table 750A. It's a cleaning robot. He already knows it's self-aware, but he rolls d10=2 on Table 750B anyway. Flexible. Can make logic decisions based on information outside its original programming. d20=12 on Table 750C. Humanoid. So the GM tells us that Bird Bard's new ship comes with a humanoid cleaning robot, not truly intelligent but capable of understanding simple commands. Handy, that. What he does not tell us is that it's actually fully sentient--and not bound to us by any sort of loyalty program. He further decides, being an old-school anime geek, that the special function of her pet is that it can transform from cat to ship and back again. Oh, and almost forgot: d6=2. As specified by the Final Frontier setting, it's a bit of a clunker. The GM decides that, in addition to the high crew requirement, the ship has no autopilot whatsoever; the computers can plot courses, but not execute them. That's it for childhood. On to age 14 and adolescence. d20+4=5. A Fateful event occurs. Roll for Hi-Lo on the subtable below. d2=2. Something Wonderful occurs. Determine what happens on Table 521: Something Wonderful... [L] Off to Table 521 and a straight d20=3 roll. Unfortunately, that result isn't suitable (as she doesn't have a lover or spouse; if she did, she'd have a child), so we roll again. d20=7. The town where the character lives is destroyed, but there is little loss of life. However, after the disaster passes, the area is rebuilt and becomes a boom town, more prosperous than ever before. The Social Status of the character's family raises by one level (but never above Wealthy). Cool! That bumps her up to Well-to-Do and raises her Social Level Modifier to 5. Comparing the benefits of Comfortable to Well-to-Do, we see that she has 1d4=3 more Education Points, an additional 25% chance of being literate, and 150% of normal starting money; however, she loses the chance to own a sport weapon. Back to Table 208 for one last roll, this time d20+5=21 thanks to her new Social Status Modifier. Rivals force the character's family to move to a new locale, probably on another world, or face reprisals. [N] Interesting. We'll go into more detail once we finish rolling. Skipping over Table 209: Special Events of Childhood and Adolescence, we go to Table 210: Education. Here's where we get to spend those education points she's been collecting (and not be completely useless like our first character was!) First we roll d4,d10=2,2 and read it 'tens and ones'. 22 is Poor Education. Select the character's occupation on Table 413B: Occupation Table I. Give the character an additional 1d4 Education Points. Well, that's a shame, but we could do worse. Bird Bard gets d4=2 more education points, and we head off to Table 413B. Now, we could roll on this table, but remember, we have yet to address the 'bard' point of 'Bird Bard'. So I examine the table and... uh oh. There aren't any music-related occupations here. I could back up a bit and choose a different education result... but should I? I'll ask the die. d2=1. Yes, I will fudge the earlier roll. But how? Careful examination of all of the subtables of Table 413 reveals a couple of possibilities. If we can roll on Table 413A: Occupation Selection, we can get from there to any of the other subtables. We can also get to Table 414A: Final Frontier Occupations, Table 419: Hobbies (practiced as an occupation), or Table 865: Unusual Skills (practiced as an occupation). As previously noted, Table 413B doesn't have any music-related entries (it does have Spacer, which might be useful, but I already determined I was going to try to get a musical result). We could get a 'craftsman' result, which would send us to Table 417: Crafts, but we'd need to hit specifically Table 417C: Craft Table III to be able to be an instrument maker, composer, or poet. We can't get there from Table 413B or Table 413C, but we can get there from Table 413D, so that's an option. Table 413C also has 'Instructor' as an option, which would again let us get to Table 417C to teach a suitable craft, or back to Table 413A, or to Table 865. Table 413E offers 'Entertainer' or 'Media Personality', but Table 413F isn't useful. So before we do anything else, we definitely need to get to Table 413A. But how? Well, we need a better education. Specifically, we need to roll at least a 26 on Table 210. I head back to that table... and see a note that I should have added my Social Level Modifier and Culture Modifier to the original roll! Whoops. So we should have rolled 22+5+6=33, which is a Typical Education, which gives Bird Bard 1d4=3 more education points (on top of the 1d4 she already collected from our mistake) and sends us to Table 413A. To recap our options at this point, we can:
Now we can buy Skill Ranks in Occupation: Musician. There's a table that shows how much each Skill Rank costs, but the short version is that Rank N costs 2^N-1 Education Points, multiplied by the skill cost multiplier (note that it's called something different here!) Bird Bard has accumulated 39 education points, which puts her Occupation: Musician skill at Rank 4. ((2^4-1)*2=30.) She also has 9 Education Points left over, which we can use to select skills on Table 865: Unusual Skills. But why select when we can roll? d20=18. Miscellaneous skills; we roll a further d10=7 and get Bargaining. The table does not, however, tell us the skill cost modifier! Taking a look at the tables for occupations, I see that 'street vendor' has a base cost multiplier of 1, so I decide to use that cost. Bird Bard now has a Bargaining skill at rank 3. ((2^3-1)*1=7.) She also has 2 Education Points left over. d20=16. Theatrical ability; we roll a further d10=4 to get 'story-telling', which I'm going to assume has a skill cost multiplier of 1, so she gets that at rank 1. For her last Education Point, d20=4; she has Gourmet Cooking at Rank 1. And now, a brief digression. As you may recall, this is a book meant to be used with any RPG system, but it still has to offer some idea of how much things are. So what are these skills worth? Well, there's a list on Page 3:
With that, we can finally move on to Table 211: Significant Events of Adulthood. We'll just roll once here, as we're making Bird Bard a starting adventurer. d4,d10=1,10; reading that as 'tens and ones' gives us a 10. While exploring an unfamiliar area near his home, the character has an encounter with a trapped alien beast. Instead of slaying it, he frees it. The freed beast disappears. Later, the character is trapped by falling debris. The same beast reappears and frees the character. [L] Flavorful, but not exactly impactful. On to Table 312: Alignment & Attitude! Over the course of Bird Bard's life, she's accumulated [R][D][R][L][N][L]. Let's roll them in order.
We're now done with the tables, but we still have a few more steps. We'd have to roll for literacy, except Bird Bard has an 125% chance of being literate, so we're good there. We have to allocate her six ranks in Survival; we put three in Urban, two in Rural, and one in Wilderness. And if we were playing for real, we'd need to convert this into a character in that system, complete with rolling or buying attributes. Oh, and we have to make sense of it all. Here's my stab at it. Bird Bard has had an interesting life since the day she was hatched, when an infection nearly claimed her life. The doctors were forced to amputate her right hand to save her life, but a visiting surgeon from another world was able to develop an experimental prosthesis. It's a temperamental thing, prone to breaking down at the worst moments, but it's better than no hand at all. And it does have one advantage over her natural hand: it has immense grip strength, capable of crushing wood, steel... and bone. (I noticed that I'd never had the GM decide the additional powers the prosthesis gave Bird Bard. Given that it already granted extra strength, I decided to kick it up a notch and make it superhumanly strong.) She never knew her father; he was a technician working in the capital city as a Ring technician, and one day a mysterious power surge caused it to activate while he was making repairs. She's sure he wasn't killed instantly, but where he was sent she doesn't know. She still holds out hope, though, that he'll return someday. In his absence, it fell to her mother to support the family--the usual arrangement in her matriarchal society, but due to a dangerous allergy to the intense sunlight of her homeworld, her mother only left the house at night. Rumors began circulating around the creche that Bird Bard's mother was making her money through exploiting the perverted urges of the lesser gender. Exploiting men she might have been, but as Bird Bard grew, she begain to suspect it was a different sort. She knew her mother had the strange ability to know what was happening in distant places without being there, and sometimes, the night after she would lay in trance for almost an hour, she would come home with strange objects she forbade Bird Bard from talking about. At any rate, they were able to live comfortably. Ring travel is in high demand, and therefore expensive, but when Bird Bard was eight, her creche was selected by a city-wide lottery to travel through the Ring and have the field trip of a lifetime, joining a Ring survey team that had just finished surveying a few new Ring addresses. The desert world did little for her, looking as much like home as it did, but the strange, barren asteroid, with its Precursor habitat surrounding the Ring, excited her imagination in a way she'd never experienced before, leaving her eager to seek out new worlds and new civilizations--then, as she realized the odds against getting to do so, crushingly depressed. No one would ever give her such a chance again, so she decided to seize one. Talking her mother into letting her travel to the Gate center, then talking the technicians present, some of whom knew her missing father, into letting her have an unauthorized tour, she was able to convince one of the technicians to test-fire the Ring with the coordinates of the alien habitat... then, crushing the controls with her mechanical hand, she flew toward the Ring. The guards were unable to keep her from entering the Ring, security being designed primarily to prevent unwanted objects from arriving, and soon she was on her own on another world. They found her, eventually. There was only so much room on the habitat, after all. But before they did, she found her way to the habitat's dock, and to one of the ancient ships docked within. To this day, she doesn't know what she did that others didn't. When she put her hand on the thing that looked like a touchpad to open the ship's airlock door, it flashed a brilliant magenta, and a strange voice spoke. Then the whole thing... folded up, smaller and smaller, until what once was a scout craft that could hold a dozen people was a simple mechanical cat. Hearing guards approaching, Bird Bard doubled back to the Ring and jumped through. In the confusion of the guards capturing her on her emergence, the robot cat eluded capture. It showed up at her house a few days later, while she was sulking in her room, having been grounded for a week for her escapades. She hid it from her mom, and though she suspected her mom knew anyway... nothing was ever said. Five years later, a new satellite, designed to detect vital reserves of phlebotinum, detected a massive concentration... directly under the capital city. Heavy mining equipment was brought in, and half the city, including Bird Bard's neighborhood, was razed to make room for mining. Those who had to relocate, however, were paid generously for the land they'd once owned, and they were able to buy a house in a more upscale neighborhood. This windfall, combined with a more profitable venue for Bird Bard's mother to ply her trade, meant a better life for both of them. But these golden times didn't last forever. Bird Bard's mother had made a miscalculation: in moving into a more affluent neighborhood, she'd moved into the territory of more... shall we say, organized employees. When she robbed the wrong home, and when said employees politely explained to her the penalties for, er, nonunion labor, she decided it was just the time for her and her daughter to take a nice long location on another world. Bird Bard missed her homeworld, harsh as it might have been, but-- (rolling 2d8=9 on Table 522A: Other Worlds) --their new home on a glacial world was certainly different... and she had a craving for different. Her chance to satisfy that craving finally came as she came of age. She'd gone out on a trade trip from one settlement to another; entertainment was in high demand on the planet, and she was able to make a comfortable living traveling from settlement to settlement, playing her music in the common halls and taverns. When the caravan stopped for the night, she found that her pet 'cat' had gone missing and ventured away from the caravan to find it. To her shock, it was being attacked by a fearsome snow beast. She shouted at the beast, only to be attacked by it, and though she fended the beast off with a sonic beacon, it wasn't before it damaged her compass--which meant she couldn't find her way back to the caravan. That's when the 'cat' saved her life. As if responding to her distress, it began to grow and twist and stretch, and before she knew it, the scoutship sat before her in the snow. She couldn't fly it by herself, of course, but it had its own life support systems, and she was able to stay warm and safe until scouts were able to locate the ship and her in it. As soon as she stepped outside, it folded itself up again, neat as you please. There was quite a stir when she returned home, the story returning with her. But Bird Bard didn't care about any of that. All she cared about was that she could finally satisfy her craving for adventure--just as soon as she could convince a dozen or so people to sign on with her... Bird Bard's Character Sheet posted:Name: Bird Bard
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# ? Mar 8, 2014 01:11 |