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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Daeren posted:

I'm going to argue this when we get to the mechanics.

Well, I mean they aren't massive threats. If I were writing the game I'd make a single hero capable of taking on an entire cadre of Beasts by himself, probably needing the players to sacrifice one or two of their own to get over in a straight fight. Because they're literally your antithesis. They should be scary.

But Beasts don't have plot immortality anymore(or if they never did I can just blame the Kickstarter copy for being weirdly worded :v:) So at least Heroes are marginal threats rather than annoyances.

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OvermanXAN
Nov 14, 2014
I've been considering how to try to fix Beast quite a bit myself while reading this, and it's *really* hard to do because it's really hard to do anything interesting that hasn't been covered by another nWoD splat already (Or JAGS Wonderland, in the case of what I've ultimately come up with), but it's hard not to desperately TRY because it feels to me like there's some really interesting concept buried deep down under the poo poo that's salvageable, but it may be wishful thinking. I think it's the rough idea of something that is literally an expression of primal fear.

At any rate, my thoughts are roughly thus: Have the Beast be in a Jekyll and Hyde situation. The basic effect is that there's something dark inside you alright. But you're only tangentially aware of it, it's just at the very fringes of your consciousness. When you sleep, it takes over your body, warps it into something monstrous and primal, and goes out and *does* things. You don't know what it does, but you wake up to find things in your room not quite how you left them, and you hear things.

But it's not something that comes from without, it's created from your own mind. And what makes it terrifying isn't that it's trying to do bad things or it wants to ruin you, but that it's trying to *help* you. It wants to *protect you*. You encountered something out there that was unnatural and terrifying, and your mind's somehow manifested something even more terrifying, a monster based on your deepest, darkest fears, to go hunt it down. But the problem is, it doesn't want to go away, whether it dealt with the initial problem or not. It wants to keep helping you, but it's basically nothing but your id and it has very... questionable ideas about what helping you might be.

Generally it's hunting down other splats or whatever gribblies are out there, because anything that unnatural is clearly not safe for you. But maybe you wander past where it killed a Werewolf the other day and there's a crime scene, and then suddenly it's offed a vascu guy because he's investigating the crime scene, and suddenly you have a manhunt coming after you. The point is, the consequences sooner or later hit you in the waking world. And then suddenly you remember everything and you're left with how to deal with the fact that you've not been fully human in a while, you've been burning bridges and making enemies and you weren't even aware of it, and now you have *everyone after you*. And you have to decide how you deal with it. Do you accept what you've become and try to take some control, or run away and let your 'Beast' handle everything for you while you pretend it's not happening? Are you going to try to make things right for whatever crazy stuff it got into without your knowledge? Are you willing to kill people who may have an entirely legitimate grievance against you?

Anyhow. Unrelated to any attempt to salvage something from this pile of poo poo, anyone else notice that Beast is somewhat similar to Wraethu in that it's a game that portrays something it's trying to present as an analog for LGBT people as horrible, murderous individuals, and yet claim that they are *absolutely right to be*, and that anyone who won't just sit back and let them do their creepy poo poo is a horrible person and deserves what they're getting?

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

OvermanXAN posted:

I've been considering how to try to fix Beast quite a bit myself while reading this,

The best way to fix Beast is to give nChangeling some tweaks and reskins and play that instead.

Foglet
Jun 17, 2014

Reality is an illusion.
The universe is a hologram.
Buy gold.

Kurieg posted:

Because I hate myself, and love this thread, I picked up the Beast Fiction Anthology.

The first story is an Eshmaki Nemesis gaslighting and murdering her mother(and framing her mother's boyfriend) with the help of her older, sexy Anakim boyfriend and a shrill harpy of a vampire that's their roommate.

She only expresses any kind of remorse because she lied to her dad about it.

Could you please provide similar brief summaries for each of the stories in the anthology? Thanks in advance.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Here's how to fix Beast

1. Fire everyone at White Wolf who defends it.
2. Burn all physical copies and delete everything off RPG.net and the like, tell backers it's for their own good.
3. Donate amount raised from Kickstarter to appropriate charities.
4. Drink heavily.

I'm starting to remember why I dove back into 3rd Edition D&D around the time of the Beast kickstarter.

Kavak fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Apr 28, 2016

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I'll probably do a brief summary of all the stories after I'm done with the main Beast book.


If only because the last story re-introduces Changing Breeds to the Chronicles of Darkness.


I was almost out. I was free. Dave Brookshaw why hast thou forsaken me.

OvermanXAN
Nov 14, 2014

Kurieg posted:

If only because the last story re-introduces Changing Breeds to the Chronicles of Darkness.

So Matt's trying to burn Onyx Path and White Wolf to the ground on his way out or something? I can only assume he must have decided that they had committed some sort of slight against him and that he must destroy them by making GBS threads on everything he can touch. I really can't see why the heck else he'd do that. What is the point? Wasn't Changing Breeds so bad that they basically tried to pretend it didn't exist?

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kurieg posted:

If only because the last story re-introduces Changing Breeds to the Chronicles of Darkness.

This proves my theory that every thing bad can be connected to Changing Breeds one way or another.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Looks like Savage Worlds RIFTS is going to be a thing finally. The Kickstarter cleared $177,000 on the first day, beating it's goal of $8,000.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/rifts-for-savage-worlds

As a result, they've dropped the first sample, the Glitter Boy.

https://www.peginc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Savage-_Rifts%C2%AE_Glitter_Boy_preview.pdf

I kinda like it. It gives you the benefits and drawbacks of the Glitter Boy pretty concisely, something you really couldn't get with the five pages of cruft you got with the original.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Young Freud posted:

Looks like Savage Worlds RIFTS is going to be a thing finally. The Kickstarter cleared $177,000 on the first day, beating it's goal of $8,000.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/rifts-for-savage-worlds

As a result, they've dropped the first sample, the Glitter Boy.

https://www.peginc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Savage-_Rifts%C2%AE_Glitter_Boy_preview.pdf

I kinda like it. It gives you the benefits and drawbacks of the Glitter Boy pretty concisely, something you really couldn't get with the five pages of cruft you got with the original.

Okay, Siembada's ship if ever attitude vs. Hensley's we will not start the KS unless it is 98% finished product. Who will win?

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Okay, Siembada's ship if ever attitude vs. Hensley's we will not start the KS unless it is 98% finished product. Who will win?

Well, pretty much the conversion looks to be entirely on Pinnacle's end, with only Siembedia giving his blessing, so it looks like a done deal.

Also, it looks like Mega Damage is going to be done the same way as Heavy Armor in other Savage Worlds games, where only Mega Damage weapons can affect Mega Damage Armor. That said, you can easily just chunk it and have things still be reasonably powerful. The Glitter Boy's boom gun seems to be as powerful as a tank gun from other settings.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Yeah, it's interesting to see the way it hashes out. With the rules for bracing, the sonic boom, and its utter inability for stealth, the glitter boy turns into a potential huge liability if not played right. It's too early to say how it balances, but in terms of vanilla Savage Worlds, whatever it hits is probably going to Go Away.

It's certainly better than Palladium's generic big bag of damage soak and damage deal, but I'm more interesting to see how more complicated suits of armor work out, given Palladium's tendency to weigh their designs down with a big gun, mini-missiles, a little gun, some actual missiles, eye lasers, and finger-buzz-claws. Seeing if they bring every fiddly element over will be interesting.

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.
I note the writeup of the glitterboy deliberately avoids discussing some of the dumber stuff from the original writeup, like specific (Actually not all that fast by comparison) muzzle velocity, etc.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
That's really cool, actually. It reflects KS's comments in Sourcebook One about the Glitter Boy being slow, ungainly, and designed to be deployed in squads like a tank on legs, better than its RAW stats.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It's certainly better than Palladium's generic big bag of damage soak and damage deal, but I'm more interesting to see how more complicated suits of armor work out, given Palladium's tendency to weigh their designs down with a big gun, mini-missiles, a little gun, some actual missiles, eye lasers, and finger-buzz-claws. Seeing if they bring every fiddly element over will be interesting.
I can't imagine they're going to make the other suits any more complicated, given that for the most part SW's power/gear design philosophy is more or less "what's the bottom line of what you're trying to do". It's pretty much the diametric opposite of the normal Palladium "add more subsystems and numbers" mindset.

unseenlibrarian posted:

I note the writeup of the glitterboy deliberately avoids discussing some of the dumber stuff from the original writeup, like specific (Actually not all that fast by comparison) muzzle velocity, etc.
Well, yeah. I can't imagine many people ever gave a poo poo about that stuff apart from Kevin.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

LatwPIAT posted:

My principal example within this is nWoD fan's obsession with X-splats and Y-splats. Every idea I've seen for a homebrew nWoD line starts off with "Creature: the Title. You play a Creature. There are five X-splats and five Y-splats." of some kind, completely oblivious to what purpose X-splats and Y-splats should serve, or why there should be five of them. And there's always 5x5, despite the fact that Changeling had 6x4. (And oVampire primarily ran on only 7 X-splats, while oWerewolf had a 13x5x3 model.)

Seeing everything and their mother forced into this 5x5 corset really makes me cringe. It's like there's a "Fill-in-the-blanks" template somewhere that everyone uses without asking why.

In order words: WoD fanbooks are the slasher movies of the RPG scene.

Count Chocula posted:

Because Vampires are overdone and uncool, and people want to play something different.

Vampire snowflakes aren't as beautiful or unique.

Kurieg posted:

If only because the last story re-introduces Changing Breeds to the Chronicles of Darkness.

What a perfect fit for the Beasts. No we just need to isolate these two into their own little sub-setting and forget about them.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Count Chocula posted:

Because Vampires are overdone and uncool, and people want to play something different.

So cross out Vampire, write "mysterious monster otherkin," and congratulations, you've just saved yourself from having to buy Beast.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Kurieg posted:

I'll probably do a brief summary of all the stories after I'm done with the main Beast book.


If only because the last story re-introduces Changing Breeds to the Chronicles of Darkness.


I was almost out. I was free. Dave Brookshaw why hast thou forsaken me.

Dave Brookshaw wrote that one, and given he's a good writer and knows what Changing Breeds is for, I am fairly sure he's taking the piss.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Kai Tave posted:

So cross out Vampire, write "mysterious monster otherkin," and congratulations, you've just saved yourself from having to buy Beast.
You're also a third of the way to writing your own WoD heartbreaker!

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

Doresh posted:

What a perfect fit for the Beasts. No we just need to isolate these two into their own little sub-setting and forget about them.

Anthrocon: The Fursecution - A Storytelling game of personal drama, and shame

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Mors Rattus posted:

Dave Brookshaw wrote that one, and given he's a good writer and knows what Changing Breeds is for, I am fairly sure he's taking the piss.

Yeah I just finished reading it. And the Shifter acts like how you'd expect them to act given the high level view of Changing Breeds, not how the book actually describes them acting (She spends ample time in her war form and doesn't poo poo on anyone's shoes for smoking). And it's probably one of the better written stories in the book. The feeding method of the POV Beast is incredibly petty still but she also speaks to how it barely keeps her fed and that it's a fig leaf of a justification that keeps her from being a mass murderer.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Thesaurasaurus posted:

Anthrocon: The Fursecution - A Storytelling game of personal drama, and shame

Tumblr: The Denial - A Storytelling game about First World Problems.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG


Part 14f: A series of unfortunate events

As stated a few times previously, Orrorsh doesn't have "magic" in the same way that other realms have magic. I mean, yes you can have ranks in the various casting skills and learn spells from the core book and so on. But that form of magic is very rare; it's incredibly hard to find someone to teach you, and even harder to find spells to learn.

Instead, Orrorsh has the power of the occult.

What is the occult?

quote:

- A mad scientist works in his lab. He bends over a corpse, feverishly scratching out notes on his small pad. Glass beakers filled with strange chemicals glow with unholy light. It is his goal to animate the corpse. His notes are nearly indecipherable. His mind takes mad leaps of logic and is driven by an insane intuition. Yet it might work. The scientist believes it will. The scientist's obsession is sincere. He will do anything to succeed.

- A Victorian woman sits on the floor of her attic. The door is locked. Her children and husband are asleep. Strewn about her are strange flowers and leaves she collected from the jungle. A pile of bones rests by her right knee. In her hand is a piece of chalk. She draws out the picture of a man's body on the floor and marks the illustration with strange symbols. She cannot stand her boorish husband. Her goal is to make him to respond to her will. The objects and the runes are guesses at a formula for summoning power to herself-they are half memories of tales she heard of magic's dark power since she was a little girl. She possesses a gift - the gift of hatred.

- Professor Sjahrir, professor of anthropology at ·the University of Jakarta, is a good woman. When the invasion began she knew that she could not stand idly by and watch her country taken over by the colonial invaders. Then she discovered the mystical nature of the invasion. A creature, red, pulsing, formed of countless limbs, killed her husband. She hunted it down, but found that she could not kill it with a gun. The creature nearly killed her, but she escaped. She sought help from others who knew of the magic of the invading reality. She discovered its true nature - and she discovered its weakness. She stands now in a tool shop in the city of Jakarta. No one else is about. She has a sword with her. It was her grandfather's. He captured it from a Japanese soldier when the Japanese occupied Indonesia. The forge is now hot enough. She takes the vial from her pocket, unstops the cork, and pours her husband's blood along the blade.
Occult magic is ritual magic; a way of devising a formula that twists the local reality just enough to bend it to the desires of the person performing the ritual. Occult magic is also a way for people to open themselves up to the Power of Corruption, thus feeding the vicious cycle that is Orrorsh.

It's also another attempt to work the desired tone of Victorian horror into the rules. Shocking, I know.

quote:

This magic system has a different feel than magic in most high-fantasy worlds. Orrorsh is a different place. If you examine horror movies and horror stories you can quickly see that a common element is that the protagonists are dealing with forces they do not precisely understand. They might make guesses as to how the supernatural works. They might even be right, but beyond that guess there's another mystery,and then another and then another. The key is the idea of the unknown. Places of horror are places with lots of unknowns. If the Storm Knights know everything about how magic works, then they are wizards. If they don't know how to make the mystical energies of Orrorsh bend to their every whim, then they are guests in a land they do not understand. They're not powerless. They are certainly not as powerful as Storm Knights in other realms, and that can be frightening.

We wanted to mimic the feel of arcane research in horror stories. The reader never knows exactly how Victor Frankenstein creates his monster in the novel Frankenstein, and there's reason to believe that only Frankenstein himself could repeat the act. In the movie Alien, when Ash gives his jerry-rigged gizmos to the crew so they can track and herd the monster, the attitude is definitely "We don't know if this stuff is going to work, but we have to try." The weirdness of Orrorsh should never be fully understood by the Storm Knights or their players. If it is, it isn't weird anymore.
Okay then.

Performing an occult ritual is pretty ridiculous, even by Torg standards.

Occult rituals are composed of one or more event sentences, which are the descriptions of the things the people performing the ritual want to have happen. Each event sentence consists of a Noun, a Verb, and a specific Object, and sentences can feed into other sentences.

quote:

The grammatical terms of the event sentence are capitalized to distinguish them from actual grammatical terms. We do this because there are some important differences between a grammatical sentence and an event sentence.
Yes, thank you Torg. I think I could have figured that out for myself.

Anyway, event sentences tend to fall into the pattern of "This NOUN will VERB the OBJECT"; for example, "this sword will kill my husband's murderer", or "this formula will animate this corpse".

Of course, you can't just have a sword become magic or pull a corpse-animating formula out of your rear end. So once you have your overall goal sentence, you put in a few setup "steps" before it to explain how you're going to actually make your end-goal happen.

quote:

It is also possible to have more than one sentence string as part of an event. This happens when the occultist needs to pursue several objects to make the occult event work, and then brings them together at various points. In these cases, a period is used to denote the end of a sentence string.
Look at that last sentence. Look at it.

quote:

When several smaller event sentences come together they form a Compound Noun. The first sentence of the last string ("This blood and fire shall enchant this sword") uses a Compound Noun, as the blood and the fire are the nouns of the sentence.
What the hell was wrong with these people that they felt the need to tell us this? And what's worse, the examples don't follow this format! How did they keep managing to introduce rules then not use them two paragraphs later!?


Me IRL trying to figure these loving rules out.

Anyway, the reason you'd want to add more sentences to your ritual is because the more Objects (sometimes refered to as "props") you have in your process, the more effective the ritual will be. Basically the players are rewarded for coming up with a bunch of ridiculous tasks, not to mention setting up their own adventure hooks to get some of the more out-there requirements.

So let's say I want to create a ritual that will lead me to the tomb of a vampyre by doing the old hold-a-dowsing-stone-over-the-map trick. I'll set my overall event sentence as "This map and dowsing stone will reveal the vampyre's lair." Simple enough. But now I want to put together the steps that will get me to that point. So let's put together a few steps to set this all up:

quote:

1. I will aquire the fang of one of the vampyre's progeny; this fang will become the dowsing stone.
2. I will aquire the blood of one of the vampyre's victims.
3. I will dip the fang in the blood to empower it.
4. I will hold the blood-coated fang over a map of the region; the fang will hover over and drip blood on the location of the vampyre's lair.

The GM is encouraged to set up situations where players have to resort to using the occult to solve their problems, such as a situation where the PCs need to make a special weapon in order to kill a Horror. This way, you keep the flavor of the realm while giving the PCs something to do to solve their problems other than making a bunch of research rolls.

It also leads to this 90's-as-hell GMing sidebar.



I just love the whole monocle-popping idea that the players might have some say in what's happening in-game. It's just a reminder of how far we've come. (Although if you've ever read any of the published Torg adventures, you wouldn't be that surprised.

So once you've done all the things to the thing to make your thing happen, you have to generate an occult total, and bear with me because this is one of those sections where things aren't presented in a logical order.

Generally speaking, you're going to roll to see if the ritual succeeds when you get to the last of your events. In the above example, that'd be the step where I'm holding the bloodied fang over the map.

UNLESS you have "occult sub-events", which are described at the end of this section after a bunch of other concepts. If the GM decides that a step is complicated enough to require rolling, then the character has to make a roll at that point against a difficulty of 12.

So regardless, making the occult roll. Oh wait, nope, there's a step before you make the roll that's described after the part that tells you when to make the roll.

Have I mentioned that these books aren't organized very well?

See, because the players are the ones defining the effect they want, they have to stat up the end effect as a "spell", enchanted item, or monster as needed. You (the player) want to create a superzombie? Then you (the player) need to stat that superzombie up.

Unsurprisingly, there's no guidelines on stating said stuff up. I guess you can just assign values however you want, bearing in mind that the values you assign will affect the final difficulty of the ritual. So for my ritual, I'm going to have to stat it up as a spell.

quote:

Dowsing Spell
Effect Value: 15
Bonus Number to: effect
Range: 26 (~100 miles)
Duration: 0 (Instant)
Cast Time: 9 (1 minute)
Note that when creating a spell effect, you don't need to worry about axiom levels, skills (it uses the occult skill), backlash (doesn't happen), or difficulty.

Now that we have all that, we can finally determine the difficulty number. The base difficulty of a ritual depends on its type; spells use the effect value, weapons use their max damage value, and if it's a creature or other effect you use the [SCENE MISSING]. Luckily I made a spell effect so the base difficulty is 15, adjusted for the range to the target. The GM can tweak the difficulty up or down a bit depending on how horror-genre-y the overall effect is going to be.

Then the player rolls their occult skill, getting +1 to the skill for every prop involved in the ritual (not counting the ritual's final target). But that's too easy, so of loving course we have to get a half a page of restrictions.

quote:

Once an occult event string is designed in an adventure, no more than one occult prop becomes effective per scene during which the characters deal with the occult event. Dealing with the occult event includes obtaining the props, doing the necessary research, and experimenting in the laboratory. If an event string contains six props, but the characters only spend four scenes gathering props, arcane bits of this and that, or puttering around the lab before generating the occult total, then the occult value is increased by +4 rather than +6. lf players are not willing to spend game time on the occult event, do not give them the bonus for occult props and objects.

All of the props are still necessary. If the occult event requires six props or objects, all six are needed before the event can be completed. If players design a lengthy event string in the hopes of large bonuses, they are stuck with working their way through the entire string to get the occult event to work at all.
More than most stuff I've posted, this really makes me with there was a good Fate hack for Torg so you could just fractalize the ritual instead of all these ridiculous rules.

So you make the roll, and if you succeed then the final effect happens. Failure doesn't seem to have any kind of special downside. In fact, you're not even required to get any corruption from the Power of Corruption unless the GM determines you commited an evil act as part of the ritual. And since you're not required to perform at least one evil act as part of a ritual, you could be occulting left and right and never suffer a karmic ping.

We close out occult rituals with the limits on rituals, which would have been handy at the beginning of this section instead of almost at the end. There are only four:
1. Occult rituals have to have a singular final effect. Rituals are intended to be a one-problem solution. I couldn't use the above ritual to track down any vampyre, just one specific one and that's it.
2. You can't affect anything that you don't know about. So you can't make a "kill every monster in Orrorsh" sword unless you've encountered every single monster in Orrorsh.
3. You need some sort of lab or workshop.
4. When performing a ritual, there's no cap on how many points of Corruption you gain from the Power of Corruption. Usually you can't get more than 5 for a single act, but depending on how heinous you are ("I turn the oceans around Indonesia to blood") you could get upwards of 20.


"Hey, watch where you're pointing that thing!"

From here we smash-cut into actual spells. As stated previously, standard magic-skill based casting is rare in Orrorsh, so the big trick to using the new spells is actually finding them in the first place.

Let's go to the highlight reel!
  • Artistic Grace is an illusion spell that gives an artistic work the "appearance of brilliance" for about a month. People seeing it have to pass a stat check or think the work is the greatest thing they've ever seen.
  • Boiling Blood does require a bit of blood of the target's "creature type", and deals irreducible damage over four rounds.
  • Death Haunt torments the target with images of his own inevitable demise. This gives a penalty on all actions taken due to distraction by your own impending mortality.
  • Eye Spy allows you to see through an eye taken from a corpse. You can make the eye roll around like BB-8, only gross instead of adorable.
  • Fear just lowers a group's Perseverance.
  • Madness drives someone mad. The GM gets to pick the type of madness, so he could make the person catatonic, or homicidal mania. Hope he's in a good mood!
  • The Mark of the Hunted can only be cast on someone you've got a hostile or enemy reaction relationship with. It creates a mark on the target that the caster can always see, even if it's covered up or the target changes shape.
  • Seduction lets you use your spellcasting result in place of social skills when manipulating someone of the "desired" sex.
  • Slow Death causes the target to suffer from a cardiac arrest, only it's stretched out to about an hour instead of taking a few seconds.
  • Summon Scarabus calls forth a common Orrorshian monster, which will do your bidding if you beat it in a test of wills.
  • Transmute Lead to Gold does what you'd expect, and also as you'd expect it only lasts for a day.
  • Youth halts the aging process of the caster, Dorian Grey style but with a mirror instead of a painting. Oh, and you have to cast it every week.

The next chapter is the list of Orrorshian miracles, many of which are appropriately Old Testament.
  • Bless Missile is commonly used by regimental priests, and has to be cast on an ammo stock. Blessed ammo deals damage twice to any target; the normal physical attack, and a spiritual attack on top of that.
  • Blind, well, blinds the target for an extended period. The blindness can only be lifted by a member of the Sacellum or a priest of the target's religion.
  • Crucifixion lets you fire metal spiked from your hands (no, really, that's what it does) that nail the target upside-down to the nearest hard surface if they hit. Breaking free requires the target to fight against the hardness of the surface they're crucified to.
  • Hell's Fire can only be used on creatures, and just does a ton of damage.
  • Paralyzation is another does-what-it-says miracle.
  • Pillar of Salt can only be cast in chruches, or in areas that have a Spiritual axiom of 18 or higher. When successfully cast, the target is permanently turned into a pillar of salt. The only way to avoid this is to make an active defense if you know it's coming, otherwise you're screwed. The only way to reverse the spell is through occult means or big magic/miracles. Oh, and be careful when moving the victim.
  • Plague calls forth a plague of small technically harmless creatures of your choice. Snakes and frogs are fine, vipers and badgers are not. Basically it's a wide-area intimidation effect.
  • Satan's Mark is the same as the core miracle Curse, just with tweaked numbers and effect. It also lowers your Charisma when dealing with members of the Sacellum.
  • Sins of the Flesh makes the target's skin rot, opening lesions and cuts all over their body.
  • Staff of Righteousness is a week-long ritual that creates a staff that increases the wielder's Strength and melee weapons when using it.
  • Tempest causes the area around an object (like a house, an airplane, or a boat) to erupt in violent storms.
  • Ward Enemy is another modified core miracle, and prevents supernatural entities from affecting an area.


I guess he saved for half?

And there we are. Orrorshian magic of various stripes.

And once again, we get back to Torg's "good idea, poorly implemented" problem with the occultism rules. The whole point of occult rituals being easy to perform is that the Gaunt Man wants to tempt people into evil deeds in exchange for power, so they get started on the Power of Corruption slippery slope. But it's entirely possible to create occult rituals that don't involve anything that would be considered an "evil act". Thus defeating a large chunk of the point of occult rituals.

It's almost like they didn't understand how to enforce their own ideas, or something.

NEXT TIME: Things that go bump in the night

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
I do like a lot of the Orroshian spells, and the only time I saw Plague cast in game was to summon a plague of lemmings.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
So for future reference and people who've been paying attention to Beast discussion. Apparently they changed some rather fundamental things about the way Heroes are created (mainly, they aren't anymore) despite the fact that the first and second chapters imply that they are. So, just ignore that whole rant I had about Heroes being tragic figures. Cause now they're something much worse, of course they won't address that until chapter 5. For reference that's page 200, right now we're on page 44.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Kurieg posted:

So for future reference and people who've been paying attention to Beast discussion. Apparently they changed some rather fundamental things about the way Heroes are created (mainly, they aren't anymore) despite the fact that the first and second chapters imply that they are. So, just ignore that whole rant I had about Heroes being tragic figures. Cause now they're something much worse, of course they won't address that until chapter 5. For reference that's page 200, right now we're on page 44.

What a clear and well-written book.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

I do like a lot of the Orroshian spells, and the only time I saw Plague cast in game was to summon a plague of lemmings.

I was actually going to make an Abby Soto joke with the Pillar of Salt spell and the werewolf picture, but then realized that it wouldn't make sense when the post was archived since the context would be gone.

Yes I take the archive into account when writing these now. Yes I know that's silly.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kurieg posted:

So for future reference and people who've been paying attention to Beast discussion. Apparently they changed some rather fundamental things about the way Heroes are created (mainly, they aren't anymore) despite the fact that the first and second chapters imply that they are. So, just ignore that whole rant I had about Heroes being tragic figures. Cause now they're something much worse, of course they won't address that until chapter 5. For reference that's page 200, right now we're on page 44.

Oh boy, I actually don't know what this is. Something to look forward to, I guess.

Tasoth
Dec 13, 2011

Kurieg posted:

So for future reference and people who've been paying attention to Beast discussion. Apparently they changed some rather fundamental things about the way Heroes are created (mainly, they aren't anymore) despite the fact that the first and second chapters imply that they are. So, just ignore that whole rant I had about Heroes being tragic figures. Cause now they're something much worse, of course they won't address that until chapter 5. For reference that's page 200, right now we're on page 44.

So, what, they're just like beasts now? Only instead of saying their teaching lessons, they're just abusive pricks who embrace it?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tasoth posted:

So, what, they're just like beasts now? Only instead of saying their teaching lessons, they're just abusive pricks who don't bother with even the flimsiest justification?

Beasts embrace it real hard.

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Tasoth posted:

So, what, they're just like beasts now? Only instead of saying their teaching lessons, they're just abusive pricks who embrace it?

So they're just like beasts, but more tolerable, huh.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Spoilers for a future chapter of Beast even though that's dumb as hell
Heroes are born "just like Beasts"(and yes I will have words about that), High integrity heroes realize their place in the world and that Beasts are serving a noble purpose. And therefore leave them alone. Low Integrity Heroes hate that Beasts get all the attention and want to kill them all and steal their glory and write their name across the collective unconscious of mankind in Beast blood. Yes it's basically a binary line between "Abuse Counselor" and "Serial Killer" with no inbetween. Beasts no longer make heroes, they just attract them when they do something 'bad'.

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Kurieg posted:

Spoilers for a future chapter of Beast even though that's dumb as hell
Heroes are born "just like Beasts"(and yes I will have words about that), High integrity heroes realize their place in the world and that Beasts are serving a noble purpose. And therefore leave them alone. Low Integrity Heroes hate that Beasts get all the attention and want to kill them all and steal their glory and write their name across the collective unconscious of mankind in Beast blood. Yes it's basically a binary line between "Abuse Counselor" and "Serial Killer" with no inbetween. Beasts no longer make heroes, they just attract them when they do something 'bad'.

And, unless they changed it from the December draft, the actual mechanics Heroes use to find Beasts means that Heroes will never, ever actually catch them unless they literally find one red-handed.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Daeren posted:

And, unless they changed it from the December draft, the actual mechanics Heroes use to find Beasts means that Heroes will never, ever actually catch them unless they literally find one red-handed.

Sort of. Open Gateway and the new Hive Rules basically mean a sufficiently powerful hero can go on a Horror killing spree if someone in the hive manages to do something nasty enough.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kurieg posted:

Spoilers for a future chapter of Beast even though that's dumb as hell
Heroes are born "just like Beasts"(and yes I will have words about that), High integrity heroes realize their place in the world and that Beasts are serving a noble purpose.'.

The problem with this is, no they don't and low integrity heroes hate of beasts is completely justified

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Kurieg posted:

Sort of. Open Gateway and the new Hive Rules basically mean a sufficiently powerful hero can go on a Horror killing spree if someone in the hive manages to do something nasty enough.

Well, yes, but the trick is that they can't level up without killing Beasts.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
They're NPCs they can kill as many Beasts as the ST wants them to.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

NutritiousSnack posted:

The problem with this is, no they don't and low integrity heroes hate of beasts is completely justified

Everyone's hatred of Beasts is completely justified. I'm having a hard time thinking of any lines that wouldn't see Beasts as, at best, competition. Maybe Slashers, but that's about it.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cythereal posted:

Everyone's hatred of Beasts is completely justified. I'm having a hard time thinking of any lines that wouldn't see Beasts as, at best, competition. Maybe Slashers, but that's about it.

Slashers would see them as posers and also fun to murder.

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I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

Doresh posted:

What a clear and well-written book.

It turns out, when you launch a Kickstarter and receive a response from a large proportion of your fanbase of general horror at huge swaths of the book's content, it's not actually feasible to try to rewrite everything problematic in a month instead of backing out of the campaign. Who knew?

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