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potatocubed posted:Yup, that's a d20 holdover alright. The one where you want to throw the characters against e.g. a mind flayer but they're only level three so you have to come up with several levels' worth of pointless filler before they get to the actual story. Adventure paths in particular are really bad for that. Couldn't you just ... make a level 3 version of a Mind Flayer? Like, when I was wrapping up my D&D 4e campaign, I wanted to cap it off with a bang, with the party fighting Tiamat herself. The party was only level 25 or so, and Tiamat is written as 35 ... so I just reduced her HP and AC and Defenses and attack rolls to what's appropriate for a level+5 monster, and removed or modified abilities that they wouldn't have the tools to deal with (such as an At-Will Dominate).
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Aug 10, 2017 10:47
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The d1000 chaos mutation table is my favourite thing in all RPG's and I will drag it out to use it in any system I'm running if given even a ghost of an excuse.
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Aug 10, 2017 10:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:Couldn't you just ... make a level 3 version of a Mind Flayer? Monster Manuals. You were expected to pick a monster of the right CR and plop it straight into the game. As a GM, you weren't really expected to be doing a lot of making or modifying monsters on your own, except by adding templates. Official modules would do the same for most of its monsters, with a small number of unique monsters to spice things up. This was partly because they were trained to GM using monster manuals themselves, and partly to make those monster manuals seem valuable. If they've statted up a monster at CR 18, they need to get your party powerful enough to take it on in the course of the adventure. As well, if you've created an advancement system that takes place over twenty levels, you want to make encounters that happen all throughout there. If you only have stuff that's CR 1-5 and CR 15-20, people are going to wonder what the hell you're supposed to do from levels 6-14. Not that these are particularly good reasons, mind.
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Aug 10, 2017 11:25
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I remembered that I once read in an old monster manual about mind flayers gone primitive That's a nice starting point and possibly adds something unknown to the mix.
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Aug 10, 2017 12:18
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gradenko_2000 posted:Couldn't you just ... make a level 3 version of a Mind Flayer? Technically, but d20's Challenge Rating has always been an imperfect science and downgrading monsters was never that well-supported. So yes, you can, but designing stuff at the very low CR end tends to be really fidgety because one wrong ability or roll can turn things into a TPK much more easily than 4e. I remember the time an assassin vine nearly wiped out a low-level 3.5 party I was running for, given its ability to sneak up on people, grapple them while dealing ~21 damage, and ability to laugh off most elemental attack spells at its CR. So it goes.
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Aug 10, 2017 13:38
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During the 3.5e era, when WotC realized mind flayers were so popular, they created a weaker variant in the CR 8 range (IIRC), precisely because it's not easy to just scale down high-level monsters in D20.
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Aug 10, 2017 14:57
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I think the thing I hate the most about the Flensor (aside from the horrible module that it resides in), is that it's so thematically jumbled. It's a super-lethal flayed meat-man! But it's also a mind-controlling rape-monster. It's completely stupid.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:08
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Sudden thought, probably best for the Warhammer thread, that if you want real poo poo to go down in Warhammer Fantasy to hurt the Old World, start the equivalent of the Thirty Years War.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:34
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Inescapable Duck posted:Sudden thought, probably best for the Warhammer thread, that if you want real poo poo to go down in Warhammer Fantasy to hurt the Old World, start the equivalent of the Thirty Years War. That was basically the time of the three emperors and everything did almost crumble but it was stopped thanks to a combination of the Elves joining in the Dwarf project of making the Empire into the bulwark of the world and enough outside threats that the Empire was forced to get their act together.
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Aug 10, 2017 15:39
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Warhammer Fantasy: Tome of Corruption Cultists: The suckers, lost causes, head cases, and idiots that make all this possible. Most people in the Old World can find a family shame somewhere in their family tree. Someone who listened to someone who was telling them something they really shouldn't have listened to. For most people, the paranoia and the threat of cult activity is a much 'realer' thing than thinking about swarms of eight foot tall, plate armored hellvikings, because most people have seen a cultist exposed in their community in their lifetime. Until the Storm, the main contact with actual armed forces of Chaos was just battles with raiders and beastmen. Cults hold real dread for the people of the Old World, because despite the propaganda they know almost anyone could be revealed to be in league with darkness. As we went over in the mutation chapter, some families can trace an uncle with a third eye or something who was driven into the woods and ended up joining with sinister forces, or a soldier who dropped his halberd and walked off north, never to be seen again, after seeing too much killing. Everyone knows it can happen here. The key to Chaos's offers to its cultists is immediacy. Chaos cultists almost never get what they wanted long term, but short term the opportunity to indulge, the lure of revenge, or the desire for protection in a moment of terror are powerful enough lures. There's a stereotype of cultists as The Guy Who Doesn't Belong, but the ones that go that route end up dead very, very quickly and don't pose much threat. The dangerous ones get their first taste of what they want and then settle in, acting as upstanding members of the community (and often accusing adventurers and other outsiders who investigate them of being cultists, themselves, since they fit the stereotype better) while they attack it from within. Alternately, that fine, upstanding member of the community who's secretly a cultist might not even know they're a cultist yet. Cults often start with an innocuous face; a warrior brotherhood formed within a regiment of soldiers, a group of traveling doctors, a rich society of art collectors, or a 'common sense' collection of agitators and pamphleteers, for instance. They don't go right to 'Hey, how do you feel about Khorne?' until they have blackmail material, or have already made the initiate implicate themselves in cult activity that could get them burned, too. Cultists do it for a lot of reasons. Ambition is one; the Dark Gods legitimately don't care what gender, race, or social class you are. They're happy to ruin anyone and everything, given they want to destroy the world. A Bretonnian knight who finds she's spurned by the Lady at the rank of Questing Knight might listen to other creatures who don't care that she's a woman under her armor. A servant might begin listening to the cults as a way to revenge himself on the idiot noble he serves. A noble might eagerly seek out the help of monsters to ensure the world stays in its proper place, with him as privileged master of the universe, no matter the cost. Sometimes people are just plain tricked into serving a cult and never even realize they're working with Chaos until the axe falls and they wind up on an altar or the Hexenjaeger's pyre. Some (especially nobles) join because they're privileged, pampered, and bored; they can't imagine something could actually harm them since they've lived their life in great comfort, and have no idea what sort of danger they're walking into. Others join because they have nothing left, and either want to take everything away from others or perceive the Gods as the only ones offering succor. And finally, plenty of people join because they believe Chaos's hype about itself, think it's going to win, and desperately want to be spared (Note: They will definitely not be spared if it wins). Any character of any career might be a cultist, but there are particular careers for established cultists who serve as officers for their insidious organizations. A Cult Acolyte is a second tier Advanced Career, granting a bunch of minmaxed abilities and skills to fit in with their God. These careers don't actually break any of the 'rules' (they don't go higher than the normal caps on a lot of 2nd tier career stat advances, have a normal number of skills and talents, etc) but rather serve as a way to customize a character into a proper cultist lieutenant for Chaos players or for normal PCs to find at the heart of some local conspiracy. They can also go into unique 3rd tier careers: Cult Magi. A Cult Magus of Khorne, for instance, is a very, very solid 3rd tier melee fighter. Acolytes and Magi also start to pick up Chaos Magic, outside of Khorne, who despises all weavers of the magical arts as nerds. Magi are meant to be the 'boss' enemy of a Chaos cult plotline, someone who is much more able than the common cultist and who directs the cult from its center. People join cults of Khorne because they've either seen too much killing and violence and lost all hope, or because after getting a taste of it they find they like it way more than is healthy. Cults of Khorne don't last long, usually. They're serial killers at their best, at worst once they hit a critical mass they just attack the nearest creature with a pulse and don't stop until they're all dead. An important detail about Khornate worship is that he's especially pleased with people who kill people who used to be their friends and families, as proof of their devotion to the pure act of murder. Similarly, he doesn't brook much excuse for not killing a shitload of people regularly. Every now and then, you'll get a smarter Magus who has enough of the God's favor to be a little more subtle, and these sorts try to infiltrate knightly orders and warrior societies; these are a good place to find skilled fighters who are used to blood. The example cult of the Crimson Skulls does exactly this, especially trying to get at and convert Ulrican Templars and playing on their bitterness about the influence of Sigmar. They now control a powerful Ulrican knightly order, the Brotherhood of the Axe, and burrowed deeper when they used the precept of 'Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows' to fight bravely in defense of Middenheim against Archaon. They had judged he was going to lose, blood was blood, and if they came out of the war as heroes, they'd be in a perfect place for the cult to gain more and more influence among Ulrican knights. A brave and actually pretty cunning gambit! And one your PCs can foil. I actually like the Crimson Skulls, much as I usually despise Khorne. They're the right mix of rules-lawyering their idiot god and long range planning to be genuinely dangerous, they're trained knights and fighters rather than rabble, but they're also walking a tightrope and desperate to stay hidden. PCs could easily give them a push. They're also the main bad guys of a large part of the Official Campaign. People join cults of Nurgle for a simple reason: Despair. Nurgle prays on despair more than any other Chaos God. He spreads his plagues, then promises not to hurt you any more if you follow and help spread them further. Then he loves you and laughs with you while you cause the deaths of thousands. Nurgle is basically an abusive relationship: Hurts you, forces you to do things, then shows a little kindness and laughter so you'll cling to the sign that things will be okay while he says he loves you. This is intentional and genuinely pretty uncomfortable. Nurgle also feeds on the panic that spreads in the wake of illness. People in the Old World are terrified of sickness, despite the Shallyan's attempts to soften attitudes towards the ill. These attitudes towards illness, that brutal quarantines and any measures possible to prevent their spread, come from the Black Plague of 1111. It killed significantly more people than the real Black Death (which is an accomplishment) specifically because it was an actual biological weapon, being intentionally spread by Clan Pestilens (It's funny that unless the Plague Rats really are Nurglite heretics, as has been hinted several times, the source of the plague that gave people the perception Nurgle depends on wasn't even Nurgle) in the Skaven's first real bid to take over the entire surface. People will do anything to prevent that happening again. Also, you know, they live in a world where they know a dark god is trying to spread biological terror, and so are right to attribute a lot of epidemics to malice. Still, locking people in a district with the sick and dying at swordpoint has a way of making those sick and dying listen to Papa Nurgle. The example cult of Nurgle is the Children of Doom. They started during the Plague, when a group of priests of Sigmar begged Nurgle to save them after their prayers to Sigmar went unanswered. They genuinely believe Sigmar was murdered by the other Gods, jealous of his power and majesty, and that his divine corpse is putrefying and rotting the world. Only Nurgle can protect mortals from this divine sickness, and if they worship him in all things, the plagues and trials of life will eventually pass, leaving them to live in comfort and paradise. They've grown enormously in the last 1400 years, aided by the fact that their founder pleased Nurgle enough to be ascended to a Demon Prince. With such a powerful patron as an intermediary, they plot to spread disease further, to hasten the end and the new life that will come after, from their secret lair underneath Marienburg. They're meant to be a Whole Campaign enemy, with the players eventually finding their way into the dark lair and banishing the Demon Prince to shatter their plans at the end of a long campaign. They're alright as enemies. Slaaneshi are everywhere, for obvious reasons. The God of wine and song is obviously going to find followers. Slaanesh cults like to recruit via addictive drugs or hallucinogenic episodes, after which the initiate will have done things that make it very hard for them to go to the authorities. They consider addiction a proper sign of their God, after all; always wanting more and never being able to fulfill the cravings is the most Slaaneshi thing there is, outside of seeking perfection. Slaaneshi also patronize exciting new artists, playwrights, and artisans, then reveal themselves once the person proves to have the proper mindset or once the person has already done something for their 'patron' that would get them into trouble. Slaanesh can be done fine, but Slaanesh is not going to be handled especially well in this book. There's a lot more emphasis on crazed parties and Caligulan excesses. A lot of focus on the sadistic and masochistic aspect rather than the basic 'This is the God of Stuff People Want, and Will Do Bad Things To Get' stuff. I am very disappointed in their handling of Slaanesh in general. The Big Example Cult is your usual bog standard sexparty murdercult, but the minor cult presented is much more interesting. They're a group of scholars and philosophers who see Slaanesh as the ultimate symbol of the goals of utilitarianism. After reasoning that the Dark Gods are reflections of human emotion, and that Khorne was Hate, Nurgle Despair, Tzeentch 'hope' (God, do I hate that, we'll get into that later), and Slaanesh Pleasure. After thinking about it, they decided that Slaanesh was the only one worth building a life around, since Slaanesh offered a life of measurable good and life is finite anyway. As artists of argumentation, Slaanesh helped them to write the exact right paragraphs, find the proper turn of phrase, or the right citation, and this only deepened their conviction that Slaanesh was the right choice. Now they're out to take Academia by storm, eagerly arguing and spreading their reasoned philosophical findings that Slaanesh is the only principle worth living for. A bunch of nerdy philosophers eagerly appealing to Satan for academic writing prowess and trying to convert fellow academics is way cooler than a sex murderparty. Tzeentch is written as the God of Hope. Tzeentch is not the God of Hope. Tzeentch is the god of suckers and bad writers. Also wizards. Tzeentch cults ensnare people to join them for pretty much any reason you can think of so long as it makes the Tzeentch cultist feel clever. Tzeentch cultists tend to be demagogues with (initially) specific political and philosophical agendas, convinced that they are the genius who is going to get a good deal out of the God of Tricking Stupid People. They scurry around and create complex conspiracies because it makes them feel clever, taking roundabout methods and paths to their goals, and usually losing sight of them in the process. They also like magic, and Tzeentch can make someone with no talent at all into a wizard. The Big Cult for Tzeentch is the Purple Hand, who I gather were the main bad guys of the big 1e Official Campaign, but who are really your generic faux-illuminati types. They always have some new plan and whatever dude you just stabbed wasn't 'really' important or whatever, god I hate Tzeentch. They're careful and clever and operate in small cells but there's very little on what they want besides 'be (what we see as) tricky' and 'Tzeentch wins'. You know what players really love in a game? When there's a bad guy whose 'cleverness' consists of 'He has the script and so 'knows' all these ridiculous steps will eventually get his goal to come about' and 'If you beat him he goes nu-uh you didn't'. Players loving love that. You should do that all the time.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:Couldn't you just ... make a level 3 version of a Mind Flayer? You know that, and I know that, but... I was thinking specifically of the first adventure of Shackled City where there's an entire dungeon which exists solely to dole out enough XP that the PCs are level 2 before they start interacting with the actual plot, despite the fact that you could just start at level 2 -- and once I noticed that I started seeing it all over the place in large-scale 3.P adventures. If you convert these adventures to a different system (which is what I was doing) you pretty quickly notice that most of the dungeons in D&D adventure paths are filler to ensure that the characters are adequately levelled and equipped for the planned climax. I wouldn't be surprised to note the same thing going on in AAH, since it grows directly from the same seed. There's probably an essay in here somewhere about this being what happens when you crowbar an actual narrative into a system which was never intended to handle one, but I have to be somewhere else so I can't write it right now.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:14
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In the Old World, they have mad robed cultists wielding daggers in their tentacles instead of crustpunks selling newspapers about Lyndon LaRouche. So don't say Chaos never gave you nothin'.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:15
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You stand before the copromancer's most opulant feast. Dare you enter his magical realm?
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Aug 10, 2017 16:23
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Halloween Jack posted:In the Old World, they have mad robed cultists wielding daggers in their tentacles instead of crustpunks selling newspapers about Lyndon LaRouche. So don't say Chaos never gave you nothin'. Incidentally, this is the proper way to do Tzeentch.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:24
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potatocubed posted:You know that, and I know that, but... I want to wrap this post in a bow because it says so much that I haven't been able to put into words about trying to play D&D as a "plotted epic storyline" Thanks
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Aug 10, 2017 16:27
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The one thing I will give the Pathfinder APs is that they at least make it easy to just ignore XP entirely by having a summary at the start of each one that goes: "Characters should be X level before hitting this point in the adventure, Y level at point 2, and Z at the finish" which makes it fairly easy to skip out on filler encounters and avoid unnecessary side dungeons.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:35
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Kurieg posted:You stand before the copromancer's most opulant feast. Dare you enter his magical realm? I'm amused that the illusory platters were still explicitly described as 'steaming'.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:39
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Night10194 posted:The Big Cult for Tzeentch is the Purple Hand, who I gather were the main bad guys of the big 1e Official Campaign, but who are really your generic faux-illuminati types. They always have some new plan and whatever dude you just stabbed wasn't 'really' important or whatever, god I hate Tzeentch. They're careful and clever and operate in small cells but there's very little on what they want besides 'be (what we see as) tricky' and 'Tzeentch wins'.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Tzeentch sounds fun if you play him as a Twitter edgelord who's all "I win, because I meant to do that! I'm not mad, actually I find this all very funny!" as you swing a horseman's pick into his stupid face "Members of this Order are charged to always defeat the followers of Tzeentch by outsmarting them. Bear in mind that Tzeentch worshipers are usually very surprised by being punched in the face, so this counts as outsmarting them." Basically, Tzeentch himself has no actual plan, is loving with everyone to see what he can make people do (this is canon), and his followers have always come off as a succession of 'No really, I didn't believe in that guy at all, but you? You're a *winner*' types.
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Aug 10, 2017 16:49
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Man, while the adventures are godawful, I'm absolutely loving the way you are covering the AAH F&F. I love the way that I'm actually invested in how G-unit (and their extended family) handles the absurdity of the situation. I must say that of all the dream-cages, the London pastiche was the best of a bad lot. A sandbox-y stealth thing could actually be a bit fun if like, the setting details, characterizations, trappings and really everything else was changed.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:02
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unseenlibrarian posted:The one thing I will give the Pathfinder APs is that they at least make it easy to just ignore XP entirely by having a summary at the start of each one that goes: "Characters should be X level before hitting this point in the adventure, Y level at point 2, and Z at the finish" which makes it fairly easy to skip out on filler encounters and avoid unnecessary side dungeons.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:02
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Night10194 posted:"Members of this Order are charged to always defeat the followers of Tzeentch by outsmarting them. Bear in mind that Tzeentch worshipers are usually very surprised by being punched in the face, so this counts as outsmarting them." Deptfordx posted:The d1000 chaos mutation table is my favourite thing in all RPG's and I will drag it out to use it in any system I'm running if given even a ghost of an excuse. https://twitter.com/dril/status/134787490526658561?lang=en
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Aug 10, 2017 17:07
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Yeah, that last dream cage was pretty much what I was worried the whole thing was going to be - literally you just get railroaded from place to place and MUH FETISHES. Somehow the final boss just keeling over and dying made everything better, though. 
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Aug 10, 2017 17:07
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The Lemondrop Dandy posted:Man, while the adventures are godawful, I'm absolutely loving the way you are covering the AAH F&F. I love the way that I'm actually invested in how G-unit (and their extended family) handles the absurdity of the situation. Getting hunted by a serial killer in a place where neither of you can see very well while trying to move carefully to rescue victims by sound cues is, at least, a strong if hard to pull off concept for a horror scenario.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:11
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Halloween Jack posted:In the Old World, they have mad robed cultists wielding daggers in their tentacles instead of crustpunks selling newspapers about Lyndon LaRouche. So don't say Chaos never gave you nothin'. You bring that up and suddenly I want a Warhammer Modern. A Warhammer 2K20, if you will.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:31
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Night10194 posted:Getting hunted by a serial killer in a place where neither of you can see very well while trying to move carefully to rescue victims by sound cues is, at least, a strong if hard to pull off concept for a horror scenario. Eh, I dunno. Could use more poo poo eating.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:42
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Castello Cormano, that is such a deep cut! potatocubed posted:I wouldn't be surprised to note the same thing going on in AAH, since it grows directly from the same seed. Bieeardo posted:I'm amused that the illusory platters were still explicitly described as 'steaming'.  Night10194 posted:Getting hunted by a serial killer in a place where neither of you can see very well while trying to move carefully to rescue victims by sound cues is, at least, a strong if hard to pull off concept for a horror scenario.
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Aug 10, 2017 17:54
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Warhammer Fantasy: Tome of Corruption You should really just burn the books. Chapter 5 is where I start to notice a real pattern in why this book is way less exciting than Bretonnia, besides the weaker material. Very little of the material feels 'player facing'. Bretonnia was full of 'Here's some cool ideas for adventures and also unique mechanical stuff for the region that your PCs can use to do fun stuff'. Night's Dark Masters was as much about 'Here's how you kill these awesome bastards' as 'These bastards are pretty awesome'. The Chaos book? Most of the material presented so far is designed to make life harder for the players. New ways for them to get screwed over by save or die rolls even if they win combats, that sort of thing. Objects of Chaos is gonna go into that hard. I'm gonna spoil it right now: Absolutely none of these items are worth using if you're not in a Chaos campaign and the correct use for all of them is destroying them as fast as possible. Chaos likes to get into art sometimes, especially Slaanesh. We're talking the standard gothic horror 'inspired by visions of hell or the insane pursuit of perfection, this can drive people crazy' art, for the most part. This also leads to occasional crackdowns on anything that seems to be getting too abstract or experimental, despite it often having nothing to do with Chaos. The first candidate is the Grim Feast, a 5 century old picture of people being fed their relatives at a fancy dinner. It's got Khorne in it. Looking at it for too long makes you make a WP test or try to murder your own family. It can be solved by the application of fire since it isn't magically warded or anything. It's not really a worthwhile plot thread. The Blessed Ones is another evil picture. Cults say this painting of a weird garden scene gives you eternal life if you put a drop of your own blood on it. Cults are sorta lying about this. If you do, two demons appear and drag you into the painting to add to the scene forever. Also looking at it gives you an Insanity point if you fail WP. Again, it can be burned or cut to pieces and it's got demons right in the picture. Any PC who fiddles with this thing is a silly person. Grimoires are actually relatively 'common' magical items. If you write enough about magic in a book, the book starts to get a little magic. Most grimoires are approved by the Colleges or passed down from elfs, and are as safe as anything gets with Arcane Magic. If you're using the Trappings system, mages need to seek out Grimoires in order to promote into their next careers, so they're always hotly sought by wizards. Since they're also magical by nature, it's easy for Chaos wizards to mess with an otherwise safe Grimoire and try to put little traps and tricks into the magic to ensnare wizards as they try to learn from it. This is a reasonably clever way for grabbing wizards, who need the books anyway and often can't tell if they're bad without studying them carefully. Memetic traps in spellbooks are fine. The famous books include one that forces you to keep reading it unless you make a ton of WP tests in a row, and gives you Insanity. Once it gives you 6 Insanity, you've fully read and understood it, and from now on can always Exit your career into Chaos Warrior because it's designed to convince you it's a true book of prophecy about how Chaos is totally going to win. It's one of the hidden books down in the Vaults under the Temple of Sigmar and is implied to be the one that caused Archaon. The Catalogue of Flesh is a book that has a loving eye on the cover, an actual blinking eye, why aren't your PCs burning this thing yet? It's actually possessed, because it's a volume of demonology that, when completed, summoned a demon. The demon started eating the Warlock who summoned it but got interrupted by Witch Hunters and ran to hide while they arrested and burned the Warlock, but got stuck in the book since it was magic. This one at least has some reason to fiddle with it: It contains a bunch of true names of demons (which can be used by powerful mages to Banish them) and gives a huge bonus to Demonology checks when used. While you handle it, there's a chance the demon wakes up and tries to eat you by draining Toughness until it explodes and mutates everyone in a large template. This one's okay. Still better off probably not using it. The Codex of Terrible Damnation is more of the same, being a how to on starting cults and invoking dark powers (which also gives you a chance of mutating while reading it) that lets you exit into the various Chaos tracks if you finish it. The Liber Malefic is interesting in that it's a widely available text for hunters of evil...in its abridged, sanitized form. It's still terrifying, having been written by a veteran Witch Hunter after he was struck with terrible visions of what lay beyond, as a guidebook on how to kill the things he'd seen. Reading the full version of the man's visions, hidden in the temple of Sigmar, is going to cause one Insanity. Not a point, an actual Insanity. But it gives you a +30% to Academic Knowledge (Magic) permanently. The abridged version is helpful and much more manageable, giving a WP test or gain one IP in return for a permanent +10% to Academic Knowledge (Magic). Finally, there's the actual Tome of Corruption. A text by a wizard who thought he could catalogue all of Chaos for its defeat. He ended up publishing one version, then wandering off to do 'research' on the Realm of Chaos itself, never returning. It gives tons of academic bonuses, teaches Dark Tongue, and lets a user use the Dark Magic trait without having it. It causes a WP test or +1 Insanity Points every time you use it for a test, though. Most of the books aren't worth using. The Eye of Morkar is weird because its entire entry is written as though it was Morkar the Uniter that challenged Magnus the Pious, not Asuvar Kul (Morkar challenged Sigmar), which is hilarious to me. The authors couldn't keep the various Everchosen straight, I guess, since they all boil down to 'rear end in a top hat in spikey armor'. It can be used to boost any spellcasting roll by +Mag, but if you cause a miscast you roll twice and take the worse result. The Helm of Iron And Blood is a magic helmet of Khorne, usually encountered on the head of a Champion of Khorne. It was originally given to one of his champions to be an excellent hat, but it grabs people who are exceptional at BS or WS and tried to force them to put it on when it isn't currently on an evil spikey guy. It then makes you make a WP-20 test or it bonds with your head forever. Then it tries to force you to go Khorne. It can be removed by exorcism. It also makes followers of Khorne follow you about, expecting you to lead them to some skulls. The Jade Idol is an evil jade idol from distant Cathay, which moved via a succession of merchants who would accidentally awaken it, then be smart enough to sell the drat thing when it started filling their heads with 'You know what'd be awesome? A murder sex party'. It eventually found someone who said 'Hell yeah, I love murder sex parties' in Nuln, who then got burned by Witch Hunters. The idol went missing in the destruction of his estate. It provides +1 to all casting rolls if around when you're doing wizbiz, +3 if placed in a bowl of blood. It makes your spells count as using Dark Magic. It also tries to show you its magical realm, causing WP+10 or gain 1-2 IP. It's not worth using, smash it. You'll notice a bit of a theme here, where the items give minor benefits while being obviously evil and you're better off destroying them since they do permanent damage to your PC if you don't. This is what I mean by 'All this stuff seems to exist solely to make things annoying for players'. Part of the problem with Chaos is that engaging with its stuff is full of ways to hurt you, but doesn't give significant benefits or ways to try to learn how to ward or banish it. The one book with the true names is one of the only ones where it might be worth risking it, otherwise +30% to a single knowledge skill is in no way worth an outright Insanity (which can be character-ending), etc. They don't give the kind of big benefit they'd need to give to be tempting, they're just gotchas. Chaos also loving loves drugs. Allure comes from a Lustrian plant brought back by explorers in 1492 (haha, I see what you did there). It's a lure for a carnivorous plant that uses it to stone birds out of their minds so it can eat them, but when given to a much larger human, it greatly enhances thought and sensation (+10 to Perception tests, +10% to other Int tests) for hours. As long as you don't go to sleep while on the junk, you're fine. If you go to sleep, though, your psyche wanders close to the Realm of Chaos, and you see things that can cause Insanity Points. Worse, you have a 20% chance of something trying to possess you, which if you recall is a Save or Probably Die. As long as you know not to sleep on this stuff, it could be a useful buff. The visions are at least useful; they should warn you of dangers and plots that are incoming in the next adventure. The Cordial of Tzeentch is made out of ground pieces of a Changer of Ways, a Greater Demon. As you might imagine this stuff is beyond rare. Taking it has no permanent effect: You roll a d10 for every stat you have, with a 1-2 dropping it by 20, a 3-4 dropping it by 10, a 5-6 increasing it by 10, etc up to a 9-10 increasing it by 30. This lasts for d10 hours. Weirdly, aside from the RNG chance you lose some stats for the better part of a day, eating ground up greater demon doesn't hurt you at all. Plaguestooth Balm is made from the body fat of those who died of the Neglish Rot. It's a trap by Nurglites, making a person suffering terrible diseases temporarily asymptomatic and addicting them. Moreover, they eventually develop a tolerance and the relief stops after a few vials, and they likely gain a mutation. This is fine, this is the stuff Nurgle does all the time, with the whole 'Oh I can make it stop hurting whoops I lied and also you infected more people'. Then there's good ole Warpstone, beloved wizard cocaine plutonium. Warpstone is congealed magic, in a dangerous and unstable form. Warpstone dust is literally snorted and eaten by Skaven wizards like particularly awesome coke. Humans who do this gain mutations. Don't snort the plutonium. This means cultists love to hide warpstone dust all over the place to spread mutation by contact or accidental ingestion. A character who snorts warpstone or eats a Skaven warpstone token without dying will get +3 on their next casting roll, but miscasts get more severe, with doubles counting as triples and triples counting as quadruples. This is in no way ever worth doing for a human (it's awesome for Grey Seers). Touching significant chunks of unrefined Warpstone causes 3 Wounds, 1 of which will be *permanent* and a -20 Toughness test or gain a mutation. Using magic within 6 yards of it gives a massive +6 casting bonus, at the cost of making miscasts more severe and invoking permanent painful side effects if you get any Doubles, too. Warpstone is not worth dealing with for human PCs. Like everything else in this chapter. In general, if your players were hoping for dangerous but cool loot from adventures against Chaos, they aren't gonna get it. Which means Chaos also drops very little treasure that won't kill your PCs, another strike against it when fighting it. Next time: Places Chaos Hides.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:19
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I think my favorite take on Tzeentch is that as the Lord of Change and Magic, it's pretty much constantly tripping over itself to make its plans more and more complicated, which can mean that there's always some flaw or twist that can be exploited by the heroes. That and I like to believe that Tzeentch doesn't really care as much for outcomes so much as the act of scheming and plotting itself. A Tzeentch cult better be careful that the big boss doesn't decide to throw them to the wolves because Tzeentch thought it was part of some greater plan down the line.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:21
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Also Tzeentch is one hundred percent a god of hope, in that hope is the vulnerability all cons exploit.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:26
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Mr. Maltose posted:Also Tzeentch is one hundred percent a god of hope, in that hope is the vulnerability all cons exploit. Yeah, it's more that I get sick of stuff using the Hope aspect to be 'Any positive change in the setting is just Tzeentch nyehehehe!' rather than 'This is a huckster using your dreams of infinite wizard power to make you do stupid poo poo.' I dislike him getting used as an excuse for trying to keep the settings (both of them, though this is more a thing in 40k) static.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:29
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Night10194 posted:The Grim Feast, a 5 century old picture of people being fed their relatives at a fancy dinner. It's got Khorne in it. Looking at it for too long makes you make a WP test or try to murder your own family. It can be solved by the application of fire since it isn't magically warded or anything. It's not really a worthwhile plot thread. Murder you're famil?
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Aug 10, 2017 18:38
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Writers often do a poor job of selling Tzeentch, in that he's supposed to be change for it's own sake. He's the god of the empty demagogue trying to co-opt a popular revolution against the excesses of the nobles, and he's the god of the counter-revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government of the people.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:42
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Night10194 posted:Yeah, it's more that I get sick of stuff using the Hope aspect to be 'Any positive change in the setting is just Tzeentch nyehehehe!' rather than 'This is a huckster using your dreams of infinite wizard power to make you do stupid poo poo.' I dislike him getting used as an excuse for trying to keep the settings (both of them, though this is more a thing in 40k) static. To be honest, this is the same feeling I have about the Lahmians. "Feminism is a plot by vampires to help them take over the world!" is not a plot hook I care for.
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Aug 10, 2017 18:47
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wiegieman posted:Writers often do a poor job of selling Tzeentch, in that he's supposed to be change for it's own sake. He's the god of the empty demagogue trying to co-opt a popular revolution against the excesses of the nobles, and he's the god of the counter-revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government of the people. In general, I wish they did more with the explicit awareness that Chaos is trying to co-opt and parasitize social movements, and is helped in doing this by authorities who are trying to cling to power trying to tar every push for reform as Chaos. Cythereal posted:To be honest, this is the same feeling I have about the Lahmians. "Feminism is a plot by vampires to help them take over the world!" is not a plot hook I care for. The canon Lahmians are not good and I went into that in NDM with stuff like all the focus on Nefereta being motivated purely by spite or their town that was supposed to be their vision of what the world under them would look like. You can do better stuff with them, but it isn't by using them as written directly in the book. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 18:55
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Cythereal posted:To be honest, this is the same feeling I have about the Lahmians. "Feminism is a plot by vampires to help them take over the world!" is not a plot hook I care for. It's also a weird angle to come at the Lahmians from. They have power by making sure that people who get appointed to important offices have one of them as their uncle's mistress, not by actually seizing the reins of government.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:13
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Night10194 posted:it's a true book of prophecy about how Chaos is totally going to win Ye Most Fell Bookke of Thee End Tymes: Omnibus Editionne. Shame about that book getting the Everchosen wrong. A magical spellbook that is almost entirely accurate aside from hints that it's from the wrong timeline would be a genuinely interesting artefact of Chaos.
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Aug 10, 2017 19:58
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Loxbourne posted:Ye Most Fell Bookke of Thee End Tymes: Omnibus Editionne. One fan theory for why the Waywatcher is so irritable all the time in Vermintide is that she's seen the entire canon End Times and is desperately trying to stop things from going pauldron.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:00
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I should note that at least as of a few editions ago, it was not "hinted" that Clan Pestilens was straight up worshipping Nurgle over the Horned Rat, so much as printed outright in neon letters. The Plague Priests and Plague Monks manage to get around it by "officially" declaring Papa Nurgle to be an aspect of the Rat, which no one buys, and by giving everyone the loveliest toys for killing large civilian populations short of Clan Skryre's maddened scribblings about machinery. e: it is however listed as one of the reasons why Thanquol, Big Dick Grey Seer, loving hates them. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Aug 10, 2017 |
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Aug 10, 2017 20:04
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wiegieman posted:Writers often do a poor job of selling Tzeentch, in that he's supposed to be change for it's own sake. He's the god of the empty demagogue trying to co-opt a popular revolution against the excesses of the nobles, and he's the god of the counter-revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government of the people. He's Alexander Kerensky, is what you're saying.
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Aug 10, 2017 20:11
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