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"It wasn't me! This accursed hound-shape dealt it!"
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Nov 16, 2017 16:14
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kommy5 posted:I totally want to run a game about dragons coming up with crazy schemes to artificially inflate the worth of their hoards. Dragons of the South Sea Company. Entire kingdoms would be ruined and plundered through stock manipulations and debt derivatives. And only brave adventurers putting together investigative committees could hope to stop them and would struggle mightily to slap the dragons on the wrist. A group I DM'ed for once kind of ran in the opposite direction. The set-up was that they were about level 3 or 4 and this entire region was being terrorized by a Bronze Dragon, which was of course way out of their league, so they started doing a bunch of different "quests" to give them a shot at taking it out. They fashioned a lightning rod out of unobtainium in a far-off mine to absorb the dragon's lightning breath, they equipped local militias with elven longbows to give them a shot at driving away the dragon from his usual hunting grounds, they bartered for a grappling harpoon so that it couldn't fly away when they eventually fought it, and then I dropped a hint that dragons derive their power from their hoard - the more valuable it is, the more powerful they are. They interpreted the "valuable" part a different way, and started making deals with traders and merchants to dump as much gold into the region as possible, and then helped the Thieves' Guild run a heist to steal a minting press. The way they figured, if they restamped thousands of gold pieces into local coinage, the dragon's hoard would become less "valuable" due to hyperinflation. It worked. I lowered the dragon's stats by a bunch, and it's dragon breath would get absorbed, and it couldn't fly away, and it got cornered by archer militias, and it was weakened enough that they beat it in a straight fight. The game died shortly after that, but the next challenge was supposed to be getting the area to recover from being turned into the Weimar Republic.
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Nov 16, 2017 16:31
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Mors Rattus posted:Okay so, all hominids descend from this alien race called the Pak. The Pak have three life stages; the third is 'Protector.' Protectors are extremely intelligent, sterile, have no genitals, and are instinctually compelled to protect their bloodline over all else. If they have no bloodline, they can generalize this urge to their species or, in some cases, anything that resembles it.
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Nov 16, 2017 16:33
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 Starfinger Alien Archive Part 08: "Though lacking the consciousness necessary for even an oral history, ellicoths maintain a racial memory of the planet’s destruction and the time before it, describing a deep-seated sadness at the way things are and a longing for a time of green fields and tall trees — a time no living ellicoth has ever known." Our spread of monsters for today is of three different monsters from the House of El:
 Electrovore (CR 2) From the "wild planet of Velorr", these apparently used to feed on electric eels because they feed on electricity. Sure. But they snuck on board spaceships and apparently were spread across the galaxy. That'll teach people to explore places. Should've stayed at home. In any case, they can feed off of either mechanical power or your nervous system's power, in an misunderstanding of human physiology that seems downright Matrixesque. They aren't much of a threat individually, but can rapidly reproduce and start chewing on wires and draining power. Apparently they double their number every two months or so which seems like it could de-electricify whole cities in a year or two to those of us who understand math, but there you have it. We get a chart on how long and how many electrovores it takes to incapacitate a ship based on its size. They aren't tough as far as monsters go, as small flyers. However, they can do an area effect electrical burst by spending an RP, and its attacks against electrically charged targets (including people) grant it an RP on a critical hit. They're at least an interesting threat, though, and only the kind that really works in a sci-fi or modern setting, so I'll give these guys a pass. And there's electrified gauntlets that regain charges on crits like they do, so there's your PC material, you.   Elementals (Tiny CR 0.333, Small CR 1, Medium CR 3, Large CR 5, Large CR 7, Greater CR 9, and Elder CR 11) Still here, almost no actual details other than just statblocks and "grafts" to modify them to each of its four elements. What does an air elemental do its spare time? What does it want? Is it happy with its lot? I dunno, look it up in some other game.  There seems to be a rule that every monster is exactly two pages, presumably so you can leave the book open and have the whole writeup. And though that's a neat notion, it's strained to the point of nonfunctionality by writeups like these and the dragon writeup that just presume "you know this poo poo from   Ellicoth (CR 9) Giant mutant alien elephants from Eox that were were changed by radiation from being peaceful herbivotes to monsters that drain life energy from other creatures. Like you do. Or unlife energy, since they can apparently feed on the undead, and that's most of their diet. Sometimes they gather in groups and invade the havens of the bone sages to get at their sweet, sweet zombie hordes. However, some bone sages have tamed them through magic or "neurotech linkages" and use them as weapons of war with big well-armed howdahs. When they die naturally, they go to  Well, giant soul-draining creatures that probably try and murder all the things are probably the real monsters, even if they have racial memories of their happy past and green fields it's so tragic... but they'll still presumably snack on your soul so wh'ev, get me my rocket launcher. In any case, they're 50' murder machines that can run fast and gore you, have a aura of medium radiation that poisons you (as per the radiation rules), and can do a draining + staggering attack that can restore its HP if it does HP damage. It's almost alright at the base concept of "natural creature that adapted to feed on undead", but the zombie elephant angle is way overplayed. Next: F is for Ant-Man. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Nov 16, 2017 |
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Nov 16, 2017 16:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm very late to this, but this whole system is taken from Pathfinder Unchained's alternate monster creation rules: Ahhh, thanks for bringing this up! Yeah, the numbers are slightly different, but it seems to be adapted / adjusted from that system, looking back at it on the SRD.
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Nov 16, 2017 16:46
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Halloween Jack posted:Everyone on Ringworld is a Pokemon. That is scarily close to the truth.
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Nov 16, 2017 17:14
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Ringworld also feels kinda like Talislanta meets Tekumel, if there was actually a lot of focus on the spacefaring society that resulted in Tekumel's existence. Someone did an OSRish RPG called Humanspace Empires based on spinning out the scant details of Tekumel's premise into a full-on space opera setting.
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Nov 16, 2017 17:18
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Anyway my vote is for the critters because I want to see what they make of some of the Ringworld hominids and if they're playable. (Many of them should be, though I suspect the RPG came out before the final two of the four Ringworld novels, where the series goes whole hog on new hominid species of every possible type, and whether or not they rish.) (Actually, I wonder if the game will bring up rishathra, which is semi-ritualized sex between members of different species on the Ringworld, an act used for various types of diplomacy.)
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Nov 16, 2017 17:29
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I remember rishathra being surprisingly less weird old man fetishy than I expected, but I don't know if that was a skewed perspective because I was reading through Heinlein's catalog at the same time I was reading Niven.
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Nov 16, 2017 17:36
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Mors Rattus posted:Anyway my vote is for the critters because I want to see what they make of some of the Ringworld hominids and if they're playable.
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Nov 16, 2017 17:45
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I remember rishathra being surprisingly less weird old man fetishy than I expected, but I don't know if that was a skewed perspective because I was reading through Heinlein's catalog at the same time I was reading Niven. I think that the books treat it relatively respectfully, but it is definitely also fetish material for Niven. He just doesn't, like, go into graphic detail, because that's not the kind of writer he is. I mean, this is a guy who goes to cons with a badge reading 'I have sex outside my species' prominently displayed.
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Nov 16, 2017 18:27
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Y'know, I think I avoided reading Ringworld because I flipped through one of the books, and almost immediately found a gross rape scene. And now that I think about it, that might have been a World of Tiers novel. 
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Nov 16, 2017 18:42
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That's Philip Jose Farmer, not Niven.
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Nov 16, 2017 18:44
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All this Pak stuff reminds me of Øyvind Thorsby's comic The Accidental Space Spy (warning: unimpressive but reliable MS Paint art), which is all about a bunch of aliens with more and more ridiculous reproductive strategies extrapolated from the basic concept of "things you do to gently caress will get extremely exaggerated over thousands of generations" - specifically the part about the Castrators, who all have a natural blade they use to castrate (or neuter, it's bigender) their own parents and relatives so their instincts shift their caretaker urge to the next closest genetically viable family member. (rear end warning 2: when that comic decides to extend its "logic" to humans it gets real nice and  )Maybe it's the other writers in the collection more than Niven himself, but the handful of random Man-Kzin Wars books I've read always made the setting feel very Libertarian Gunwank - "look at you NWO Nanny State Earth Liberals, you're so peaceful you're like herd animals and only us wilderness (white) colonists with our ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY GUNS can save you from evil space cats." I'm hoping that's a dormant thread in Ringworld? I want to read other Known Space stuff but it's a lovely year IRL to read people stroking themselves about how great and necessary guns and "the killing instinct" are.
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Nov 16, 2017 18:53
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Warhammer Fantasy: Realm of the Ice Queen Drink the fish guts, man. An important note: Despite the Ice Witch and Hag getting a couple new Petty spells, both get a bunch of the petty magic spells from the main book. Importantly, Ice Witches do have Magic Dart, so they have a cheap and easy little attack spell to pull out as an apprentice. Lest you underestimate Magic Dart, consider that a 50-50 (60-40 if you pull off Channeling first) shot for Damage 3 that can't be dodged or blocked and bypasses demonic damage reduction is actually really good at Career 1. Spells can also Fury just like melee or ranged, and use a WP test to do so. Hag Petty Magic is much more focused on trickery and hedge magic, Ice Witches can do a minor stun touch attack and some basic combat magic. Also, any character can purchase any Petty (Arcane) spell for 100 extra EXP, so a Hag could still pick up Magic Dart or something (or Sleep, Sleep can be fantastic if you make the WS touch attack and they fail WP) if she wants. As for new spells, the new Gods get a couple Petty spells added to the mix. Dazhini can learn a minor spell that halves wounds taken from fire (magic or otherwise) and summon magical campfires that require no fuel and warm the body, something that could be useful out on the Oblast. Hags get a little blessing that lets a character keep a spent Fortune point 30% of the time; the spell lasts until the character saves a Fortune point with it. That's a pretty good blessing for Petty Magic! They can also inflict minor Curses that inflict -10 on Fellowship for a day and annoy the target until they do as the witch wants. Finally, they get a new spell that blesses someone they spit on with +10 to resist anything Chaos does to them for an hour. Worth being spat upon. Ice Witches get a simple 'Don't freeze to death' spell and a spell that drops the ambient temperature to freezing for a full day in a small area. The second doesn't sound so useful until you remember they can overcome their whole Ley Line business by being in an area of freezing temperature, and that if they cast their spells from an area that's freezing cold, they automatically count as using an Ingredient for a CN bonus. So a witch in summer lands down south can summon a little area of freezing cold to be her spot of power if someone raises her frosty dander and requires icing. Torini can summon the power to make it seem like it's about to storm, scaring animals and making them huddle together or run away. They can also bless a weapon to do +1 damage for a minute. The latter is more powerful than you'd think, given that a point of damage can mean a lot for whether an attack gets through or gets deflected entirely. Also note it doesn't specify type of weapon. A Torini could bless a musket or bow just as well as an axe. This can lead to a gun that does Damage 6 Impact AP in the hands of someone who knows how to use a gun real well. Ursunyi petty spells are pretty simple, too. They have a basic +10 to survival and navigation tests blessing. They have a spell that makes you count as though you've received medical attention (stopping Bleedout from nasty crits, etc). Nothing major, especially as Initiates and Priests have Heal anyway and so that medical attention spell is kinda meh. There's also some new Lesser Magic, and some of this stuff is very nice. For CN 14, Arcane OR Divine casters can learn a spell (Ghost Shield) that will stop ghosts from approaching a sacred circles of salt. This keeps out spirits, demons with Ethereal, and undead, equally well, for an hour per point of Mag. And they don't get a Save or anything. They're expelled from the circle at the end of a successful casting and can't come back in until the caster lets them. For CN16, any caster can hide all of their deformities (from magical aging, mutation, Marks, or anything) for an hour per point of magic with Glamour, with the natural note that 'this spell has been the source of disturbing tales of ancient hags seducing young men' (sigh). For CN 14, Kislevite wizards and priests can draw on the power of a place of power with Tap, letting them gain an extra dice that does not count towards miscasts when performing actual big Rituals if they are already in an empowered place like a Waystone. Finally, the best spell, for CN 4 you can automatically know if someone is trying to steal your horse. You summon a little spirit called a Vazila to watch your horse and he comes running if anyone messes with it. The Hags' actual Lore won't come up until a Hag Witch's 3rd career, Hag Mother. Their magic relates to the spirits, lets them destroy ghosts, heal sickness and injury, trick people, and do something no-one else can do: Hags can actually permanently cure Chaos mutations. Banish Spirit is a simple CN 16 spell that lets the Hag instantly destroy a creature with Ethereal if it fails an opposed WP test with her. What's a little annoying is some of the listed spirits (like Frostfiends or Dryads) aren't Ethereal, so the Hag can't actually deal with them. Just ghosts and ghostly things. It requires her to wave around the heart of an elk. Cleanse Body requires a cup of raw fish guts. After the hag casts her spell to empower the horrible potion with CN 13, the subject has to drink it and make a WP test to keep it down. If they succeed, they instantly cure one disease of the Hag's choice and heal d5+the Hag's Mag characteristic Wounds, no matter how badly hurt they were. That's pretty great! Cleanse Soul is one of the big spells, considering Hags never get up past 3 Mag and it requires CN 24. Now, they'll get the +3 for using an Ingredient because they have to, and will probably Channel a big spell like this that's cast out of combat, so it's 'really' only 18, which is about 50-50 on 3d10 (Disclaimer: I am not good at probability). You and the target both roll tests, you rolling WP-10, them rolling Tough-10, and if you both succeed, they're cleansed of one Mutation. If they ever fail a future Toughness save by 30+ it comes back, but this is the only 'safe' way to clear mutation in the printed material for the game, despite multiple books referring to Shallyan methods or ways to seek cures. Oh, yeah, the target also has to drink a cup of bear's urine. Wily Hags love making people drink stuff. Command Spirit is a CN 11 spell that requires the brains of a fox and lets you take control of any spirit (not just ones with Ethereal!) with an opposed WP test. If you succeed an Academic Knowledge (Spirits) test, you can make it do the full range of actions! If you don't, you can only have it do basic stuff like move or attack. Lasts for 1 minute per point of Mag. Cursed Pledge is a CN 18 spell that requires an item of significance to the target. You demand someone does something for you, and if they fail a WP-10 test (WP+20 if the demand would be something outrageous like 'jump off a cliff' or 'kill your wife') they will suffer a Greater Curse unless they work towards doing what you asked. As you can imagine, this power is one of the reasons people try to keep their childhood toys or clips of their hair away from Hags. Greater Curse is covered in the Greater Curse spell, but these are things like 'The target gains one disease, randomly, per day they fail a toughness test' or 'The target gets 2 extra dice that only count towards miscasts on any spell use'. They're *mean*. Deny Spirit is like a permanent version of Ghost Shield, forcing an spirit (ethereal or not) away from an area until it beats you on an Opposed WP test. You've got to wave a newt's spine around for this one; I guess you already used the eye and you're committed to reducing waste. Form of the Ancient Widow is probably not so great since Hags have absolutely no combat abilities outside of this spell, but it looks scary as hell. It takes 3 full actions to cast. It's CN 26. You need two fistfuls of solid Kislevite dirt with your own, fresh blood upon them. It turns you into a giant, 9 foot tall behemoth of claws and vengeance as you take the terrifying form of the Ancient Widow herself, getting +20 to Str, Tough, WS and +1 Attacks, Natural Weapons, Fearless, Frightening, and Keen Senses. It only wears off when you go to sleep or take a critical hit (or decide to end it). Note that you're still sane and able to use normal spells just fine while you're a juggernaut of angry vengeance. Fortune Told is a CN 14 spell in the generic 'Ask the GM some questions and get vague and unhelpful answers' mold but with a twist that makes it much better. You need an item directly applicable to the target's question, and the target needs to ask you a question. The spirits answer through you, in a vague and cryptic manner from the GM, but the target *also* gets to reroll the first 3 tests they fail relating to the question because the cryptic bullshit suddenly makes sense in context. So, say, 'Can Vassili defeat the dread Chaos Lord Skurv' might lead to Vassili getting an answer that's big on metaphor but then, when he's actually fighting Skurv, he's got 3 rerolls in the pocket as it all suddenly makes sense and the Spirits' forewarning saves his life at the last minute. That's a great way to do this kind of 'ask the GM' spell! Greater Curse is one of the big ones, a CN 16 spell that again, requires an item close to the target like hair or a personal possession. The target takes a -10 WP save and if they fail, they're cursed. *Killing you will not lift the curse*. Curses can do all kinds of nasty things, but each Hag only learns one Great Curse with the spell; additional ones are 100 EXP. I already went with the Curse of Sickness and Curse of Witches, but Misfortune, Madness, and Weakening are all horrifying, too. Misfortune causes the target to always count the highest of the 2d10 used for percentile rolls as the tens die. Weakening makes them suffer a Tough test at +10 each day or lose -1 from all stats, permanently, for aging. If they lose 20 points, they die of old age despite it only having been a month or so. Madness gives them WP+10 or gain an Insanity point every day, until they go insane. A Hag can remove the curse with a second casting; outside of powerful divine intervention, this is the only way to escape a Great Curse. You really shouldn't have pissed off Baba Nadia. Hag's Curse isn't an actual curse, but rather a CN 8 spell that needs a tiny lock of hair. If the target doesn't have a Hag's Curse (remember those little prohibitions from character creation?) roll and give them one now, as you see what could bring misfortune to them. In future dealings with the target, your frightening foreknowledge of them gives you +10 to Intimidate them. Haunting is a CN 14 spell where you steal a fist-sized item from a location to curse, then you piss off some spirits and let them loose there to have fun. Like Greater Curse, a Hag only learns one kind of Haunting for free with this spell. If the building or forest or whatever, you targeted is very large you only curse one section of it. Curses can cause food stored in the area to molder, leather to rot, characters to take -10 to everything in the area, little spirits to steal pistols and coin purses, and all manner of annoying trouble. Once again, the only way to fix it is to either hire another Hag to use Deny Spirit on the place or placate the original Hag and get her to cast the spell again. I told you about pissing off Baba Nadia and you didn't listen. Lucky Claw lets you take a claw from a three-legged dog and put a CN 11 blessing on it. Whoever bears it has an extra Fortune point until they spend it, at which point the charm crumples. Simple, but handy. Past Revealed is a CN 20 divination requiring an item applicable to your question, as you interview the local spirits about an event that took place in this area at any time. It basically gives you a slightly unreliable eye-witness account from spirits that don't necessarily understand anything they saw. Resist Chaos is a CN 17 spell with a twist on it. It requires you to wave around a snow owl's gizzard and bless an area, affecting up to 2xMag characters. Those characters gain Resistance to Chaos, becoming immune to mutation and getting +10 to all tests to resist Chaos in any form for 1 minute per Mag. If the target is unwilling, they get a WP-20 save to avoid the spell. The twist is, anyone affected by this spell cannot cast spells themselves until the spell ends. You can effectively shut down a mage with this! Summon Spirit is a CN 12 spell that lets you call a spiritual creature like a Dryad by using an ingredient determined by your GM. The creature appears and will be pleased with you if you succeed a WP test, otherwise you're going to need to break out Command Spirit or else things could get ugly. Finally, Whispers of Taint enhances the normal Hag sense of terrible foreboding by burning the hand of a Chaos worshiper and making a CN 12 test. It gives you +20 to all Magic Sense tests related to detecting the taint of Chaos for 1 hour per point of Mag. As you can see, Hags don't really do direct combat. What they do is blackmail, trickery, healing, divination, and spirit summoning. I wish their spells used their crazy high Int (they are the only class in the game to get Int+40) rather than their WP, though, to drive home that they're tricky and clever wizards. Next: They have an Ice Witch!? RUN!
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Nov 16, 2017 18:54
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Pieces of Peace posted:All this Pak stuff reminds me of Øyvind Thorsby's comic The Accidental Space Spy (warning: unimpressive but reliable MS Paint art), which is all about a bunch of aliens with more and more ridiculous reproductive strategies extrapolated from the basic concept of "things you do to gently caress will get extremely exaggerated over thousands of generations" - specifically the part about the Castrators, who all have a natural blade they use to castrate (or neuter, it's bigender) their own parents and relatives so their instincts shift their caretaker urge to the next closest genetically viable family member. (rear end warning 2: when that comic decides to extend its "logic" to humans it gets real nice and That's deffo an authorial thing. Niven himself spends very little time on weapons most of the time. His protagonists are usually concerned with: 1. can I run? 2. if not, can I fight? And once those are answered, little other details is needed. In Niven's personal stories, combat itself is actually pretty drat rare in general. Gil the Arm gets in more fights than just about anyone else, IIRC, and I don't think he ever uses a gun for much. Niven himself writes very little about the Man-Kzin Wars directly - I don't think he's especially interested in the details of the wars so much as the end result. Ringworld itself features an extremely sympathetically played Kzin, Speaker-to-Animals/Chmeee, who isn't evil at all. The UN/ARM forces are generally portrayed as villainous and scheming, as is the Patriarchy. Niven very much does not trust governments, and that'll be repeated fairly often, but he's not a gun nut kind of libertarian. He's more terrified of cops and the justice system and believes both that the police will end up being manipulative, controlling assholes by necessity and also that this is a terrifying prospect. (Actually, one of his short story themes is the existence of "Free Parks" - areas you can go to in which the only rule is 'do not hurt each other', with anyone doing so getting zapped by floaty robots that knock people out - as is their victim. The short story about these areas is essentially 'why this entire idea is terrible: the story'.) Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Nov 16, 2017 |
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Nov 16, 2017 18:59
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Niven has expressed the occasional horrible opinion, but I can't recall them ever finding their way into his work (at least, except for his collaborations with the late Jerry Pournelle, who was a walking flame war). Halloween Jack posted:Y'know, I think I avoided reading Ringworld because I flipped through one of the books, and almost immediately found a gross rape scene. And now that I think about it, that might have been a World of Tiers novel. I can't recall any rapes in the World of Tiers, although it's been a while since I read it. Could it have been PJF's A Feast Unknown, which was deliberately written to be sick, offensive, and over-the-top?
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Nov 16, 2017 19:15
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Mors Rattus posted:(Actually, one of his short story themes is the existence of "Free Parks" - areas you can go to in which the only rule is 'do not hurt each other', with anyone doing so getting zapped by floaty robots that knock people out - as is their victim. The short story about these areas is essentially 'why this entire idea is terrible: the story'.)
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Nov 16, 2017 19:17
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darthbob88 posted:This story, I assume? Because yeah, that sounds like a nice idea, until the over-arching peace enforcement goes away. That'd be it, yeah. And I'd say the weirdest and grossest thing Niven does fictionwise outside of 'collaborate with Pournelle' (and even then, Mote and especially Gripping Hand are the best things to ever come out of that universe) is his view on schizophrenia. Specifically: The secret of ARM's dominance is that, when on duty, all agents of ARM either are unmedicated schizophrenics or are medicated to become schizophrenics. Niven seems to think that schizophrenia makes you ruthless, paranoid and extremely smart. The fact that ARM is entirely schizophrenic is concealed in-universe, and schizophrenia is noted as entirely curable with medication, which the naturally schizoid ARM agents take when not on duty.
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Nov 16, 2017 19:39
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Well, "Schiz" is just a catch-all term for crazy people in this setting. They've solved most of their problems so thoroughly that anyone who could be ruthless, paranoid, or violent is considered a crazy person who needs (and will get) medication, and anyone who can't be a ruthless paranoid killer when the situation calls for it isn't fit for ARM work. They back off on this when the Kzinti show up and and the hyperdrive gives humanity an outlet for expansion and aggression, but it's still there in the core worlds.
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Nov 16, 2017 19:49
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Prism posted:I imagine that stuff will come out when Nessus actually gets to the Ringworld stuff. Pieces of Peace posted:Maybe it's the other writers in the collection more than Niven himself, but the handful of random Man-Kzin Wars books I've read always made the setting feel very Libertarian Gunwank - "look at you NWO Nanny State Earth Liberals, you're so peaceful you're like herd animals and only us wilderness (white) colonists with our ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY GUNS can save you from evil space cats." Niven himself is definitely right/libertarian leaning, but based on his perspectives in his fiction, he is also in touch with consensus reality. While he has non-flatlander cultures disdain Earth being big and cozy, he also makes it clear that an 18-billion-strong social-democratic world state is, in fact, basically an OK thing, and works out. (It is subtly suggested that there may be Protectors involved on the down-low. Jack Brennan was definitely involved in structural design.) In one of his other books, cryo-frozen people are transferred into new bodies through a destructive process, and the attitude of "The State" is: "You should be thankful we're doing you a favor, you parasite, and giving you a second chance at all; you froze yourself and left us the hard work." This is portrayed antagonistically, but not as an irrational perspective. Niven's attitude towards weapons seems accurately portrayed by Mors; it was probably not smart for the UN, once unified, to disarm as thoroughly as they did, although perhaps it was wise - why risk losing your peaceful world in order to maybe possibly have a leg up on a war with aliens, when the only aliens you've encountered are Dolphins and one guy who was in a stasis field? The story Mors referred to was actually intended to show the fragility of anarchy; when the police drone oversight that keeps the "Free Park" free is brought down by a local EMP, people get stuck there, mill around for a while, and within less than a day, people are keeping the helpless and elderly from the public water fountains - you know, for fun, haha, it's a troll, haha. That said, Niven absolutely hung out with more crunchily Zardozian libertarians. His books with Jerry Pournelle are substantially more right-leaning, and the only one I would recommend without reservation is "The Mote in God's Eye" and its immediate sequel. "Footfall" is interesting for its aliens. "Lucifer's Hammer" has a level of background Racism Radiation too high for your correspondent, even if it is not exactly "The Turner Diaries." e: The thing with the ARM is kind of funny since it significantly predates our media fascination with violent psychopaths/sociopaths/whatever, but Niven at least does not portray either the experience of being ill in this way as pleasant or positive or some route towards being sexily smouldering while hypercompetent. Nessus fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Nov 16, 2017 |
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Nov 16, 2017 20:50
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 Vampire: The Masquerade (2nd Edition) quote:God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us. Chapter 1: Introduction Following “To Mina With Love,” Vampire has a brief introductory chapter which provides an intro to roleplaying, lays out its themes and creative goals, and raises some particulars of the setting. It’s not exactly succinct, and jumps between these three agendas repeatedly. Yet it makes the authors’ goals very clear. First, they very much wanted to capture an audience that was new to roleplaying. Second, playing Vampire: The Masquerade is not like playing other roleplaying games. Vampire is serious business. And don’t you forget it, or the cost may be your very soul! gently caress, now I’m doing it. It’s difficult to convey Vampire’s self-seriousness without lengthy quotations, but I’ll try. It promises “stories of madness and lust...from the darkest recesses of our unconscious minds.” The myth of the vampire is the perfect embodiment of our antisocial yet relatable impulses. The promise of perverse thrills is couched in warnings that playing Vampire requires facing your inner demons. “Madness as well as wisdom rewards those who dare to gaze into eternity.” Looking back, it’s easy to see why most people seemed to play Vampire as a game of political intrigue or, failing that, edgy superheroes. Vampire folklore is employed to tell many stories about the dark side of human nature, but fears of alienation, exploitation, rape, disease, and death are at the forefront. Diving into the “darkest recesses” of these themes is a lot to ask, especially from an audience new to roleplaying. I think there’s a strong argument that the elements of Vampire that differentiated it from the works of Rice, Hambly, et al. were the key to its success. Storytelling and Myth Vampire posits that before mass media existed, people were active participants in storytelling. Modern humans are passive receivers, unconsciously absorbing narratives through our television screens. Our worldview is being manipulated by an oligarchy of artists and their patrons, usually to our detriment. Roleplaying is not merely a hobby, but a way to become an active participant in the stories that inform your perspective. Vampire may be the first game to posit roleplaying as a method for personal growth; I can’t think of an earlier one. Vampire also makes it clear that in order to get the most out of it, you must be on board with its creative agenda: romance and tragedy. Despite its punk aesthetic, Vampire’s moral universe is one where good and evil exist in stark contrast, and the characters are cursed to do evil in order to survive. This makes the PCs tragic heroes, like in the works of Aeschylus or Shakespeare; the curse of vampirism takes the place of the prophecies and exigencies that doom such heroes in spite of their best efforts. (I’d say Kindred are more like Romantic heroes, e.g. Faust and Heathcliff, but I’m dutifully summarizing the text for you.) For this reason, the prospect of winning and losing is much different from that in other roleplaying games. “Winning” requires a victory over the self, or finding a way to serve a greater good. It’s possible that the only victory for your character is a noble death.  No, don’t pop it! Roleplaying This chapter provides an introduction to the roleplaying hobby that, by today’s standards, verges on patronizing. It explains that there is no board or minis, and invokes Cops’n’Robbers and Cowboys and Indians to explain roleplaying. Readers are advised to procure 10-sided dice, pencils and scratch paper, and a table to put them on. However, as Vampire explains the role of the players and the GM, it presents more of its creative agenda. The GM is called the Storyteller, and is responsible for entertaining the players and balancing the “skeleton of the story” against their ability to improvise. Players have near-total control over what their characters say and do, but the Storyteller runs the world, and everyone is encouraged to put story above any PC’s motivations. Vampire is ultimately a very GM-driven game. On the player side, Vampire doesn’t go in for the fallacy of total “immersion.” Players are encouraged to think both as an actor and a player. Act out your character’s responses and motivations, yes--but as a player, drive the narrative towards accomplishing their goals and resolving their story. Vampire goes on to justify its stance with a rather audacious theory of self. It argues that what we call the self is an ad hoc performance, constantly changing from one situation to the next and drawing from many different sources. For that reason, you can never totally immerse yourself in a character, and characters are storytelling tools which can never be as fully-realized as human beings. Using Frankenstein’s monster as an analogy, Vampire argues that quantifying a character as a set of stats, and even giving them many fictional details, is far easier than giving them “the breath of life,” some essential and relatable aspect of yourself. One last, peculiar note on roleplaying in Vampire concerns live-action roleplaying. The game was designed to combine LARP and tabletop, with LARP taking over for “downtime” or scenes that are anticipated to be heavy on drama but light on rules. I’ve never known a group that did that. The closest I can think of is a LARP group doing “interactive downtime” when playing in public, with the expectation that people would roleplay but avoid doing things (like combat) that demand a Storyteller’s attention. Some butthole always fucks it up.  Deal with it Becoming a Vampire In and amongst all this Jungian frou-frou are some notes on the game’s premise beyond “You’re a vampire, deal with it.” Becoming a vampire is an agonizing, traumatic experience. A new vampire awakens from death with a ravenous hunger for blood. They spend months or years under their sire’s tutelage, learning to cope with their vampiric nature. Your sire’s lineage determines your special powers and your familial relations among Kindred. But elder vampires see you, first and foremost, as a cohort of young vampires who have just been released by their sires and “come out” into Kindred society. It’s assumed that the PCs will form a brood (or coterie). This doesn’t make you best friends, but you look out for each other and your mutual interests. In the end, your unlife is ruled by the fact that you need to drink blood to survive. Getting this far doesn’t mean you’re at peace with it--you’ve just got what it takes to survive this long without getting caught or going totally insane. Some vampires strive for Golconda, a spiritual enlightenment that allows you to either become mortal again, or transcend the influence of the Beast. The Hunger is never fully sated, and the Beast always strains against its cage. There's more of this stuff about how being a vampire is sad. It’s really, really sad, you guys. So sad. Next time, on Kindred: The Embraced: The setting chapter. It's J-J-J-JARGON TIME! Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Nov 16, 2017 |
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Nov 16, 2017 21:41
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Night10194 posted:As you can see, Hags don't really do direct combat. What they do is blackmail, trickery, healing, divination, and spirit summoning.
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Nov 16, 2017 21:44
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Dallbun posted:I quite like their general feel. Half loving with your neighbors and commanding respect, half taking no poo poo from daemons, with a healthy side of sending burly young adventurers off to modestly certain doom clutching pieces of a dogs. Something I forgot to point out, though; you get 3 different spell lists for the Lore, each with 8 spells. Additional spells from the Lore can be bought for 100 EXP each. The 3 lists are Koldunja, who get all the various spirit magic and Form of the Ancient Widow (and the curses), Vorozheja, who get all the luck manipulation and divining (and curses), and Znarkharja, who get all the healing and cleansing magic (and curses). They all get Greater Curse. Greater Curse is sort of the 'signature' spell of the Hags and the 'why did you piss off the Hag' spell.
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Nov 16, 2017 21:51
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I will say that The Gripping Hand is superior to Mote in God's Eye, mostly for the fact that it stars an extremely old, crotchety Muslim businessman-slash-spy and his Han Solo-slash-James Bond pilot, rather than Pournelle's favored British aristocracy. Also, for having the Moties be even more active and fun.
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Nov 16, 2017 21:53
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Mors Rattus posted:I will say that The Gripping Hand is superior to Mote in God's Eye, mostly for the fact that it stars an extremely old, crotchety Muslim businessman-slash-spy and his Han Solo-slash-James Bond pilot, rather than Pournelle's favored British aristocracy. Also, for having the Moties be even more active and fun.
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Nov 16, 2017 21:59
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Night10194 posted:Something I forgot to point out, though; you get 3 different spell lists for the Lore, each with 8 spells. Additional spells from the Lore can be bought for 100 EXP each. The 3 lists are Koldunja, who get all the various spirit magic and Form of the Ancient Widow (and the curses), Vorozheja, who get all the luck manipulation and divining (and curses), and Znarkharja, who get all the healing and cleansing magic (and curses). Of note is that these are all altered Slavic words: koldunya is just a witch though not the most common word for one, vorozheya is a female fortune teller, and znakharka is a kind of folk healer (this one is Ukrainian instead of Russian, and I don't know what the equivalent Russian word is). Edit: Checking a second dictionary suggests I could be translating колдунья as sorceress or medium, so they are all appropriate words, even. Prism fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Nov 16, 2017 |
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Nov 16, 2017 21:59
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Nessus posted:Yeah, Pournelle presented a semi-plausible, not-horrifically-inhumane "Human Empire" but Bury and Kevin were way more interesting characters than any of the quasi-American aristocrats. The entire Co-Dominium setting is a little ridiculous, mostly since it assumed that the US and Soviet Russia tag-team dominated the planet for realsies and also colonized space and stuff. (I can only assume the Politburo found the pee tape.) and pretty racist. Pournelle described his own politics as "right of Genghis Khan" and he wasn't exaggerating by much. Probably the simplest and most damning way to explain it is that he and Newt Gingrich were good friends.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:20
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Wikipedia says he launched a website with Ted Rall, which is all I need to know about him
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Nov 16, 2017 22:22
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Comrade Gorbash posted:It's also incredibly sexist and Also, Genghis was remarkably progressive for his time, in some ways........
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Nov 16, 2017 22:30
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Pieces of Peace posted:Maybe it's the other writers in the collection more than Niven himself, but the handful of random Man-Kzin Wars books I've read always made the setting feel very Libertarian Gunwank This stuff only really started up when the Baen Books authorial stable started writing them. It was an established setting point that ARM had suppressed all warfare in the Solar System, and since the spinoff authors were gunwank libertarians they assumed this could only be possible with eeeeeeevil mind control and sinister New World Order poo poo, so that all got grandfathered in and lots of frontier types were created to wave their guns around and mock the sheeple. I dimly remember a bullshit story implying ARM had banned all competitive game shows because they might cause people to imagine themselves better than their peers and that might lead to wanting to own guns. Or in other words, ignore this crap. It wasn't part of the original setting, it was just slotted in by people who wanted to mix their own bullshit into a successful SF setting so they could ride its coat-tails. PS: The best Co-Dominium book is King David's Spaceship. Ignore all others except the Mote books. You will deeply regret ignoring this warning.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:31
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Warhammer Fantasy: Realm of the Ice Queen Beware, you've raised my frosty dander! Ice Witches should be viewed with the fact that their Miscast Table is significantly more dangerous to them than the normal miscast table. At the same time, their spells are very powerful combat magic and I'd argue they're generally as good or better fighters than Bright Mages in the Empire, even leaving aside all their unique ability to go off into Scout, Veteran, Captain or whatever and learn martial combat too. Also, Ice Witches hit 4 Mag at Ice Witch, their 3rd career; a full career earlier than Imperial mages. Make no mistake, Ice Witches are very powerful spellcasters. We start it off with Biting Wind, a Damage 4 Magic Missile cast on CN 23 and requiring a Full Action (The action cost of Ice Magic is much more important since it's often combat magic). That doesn't sound very good? Well, Biting Wind hits everything between the caster and their target, and it doesn't care about intervening obstacles, as written. Being a Magic Missile also means it's affected by the Mighty Missile talent. It also has a long 36m range, so depending on how packed in there the targets are, it can hit quite a few. Anyone suffering a Wound from the razor-edged arctice wind also has to test Str or fall to the ground. Blizzard summons a 24m radius blizzard, anywhere the Ice Witch can see with her naked eye, for CN 18 and a Full Action. Anyone stuck inside cannot see anyone else further than 6m away from them, anyone firing into the blizzard takes -20 BS, anyone stuck in the blizzard takes -20 Agility, everyone reduces their Movement by 1/2, and everyone in the Blizzard takes d10 damage every turn they're inside (roll once, apply the result to everyone trapped within; since this is a damage roll, it can Fury. If it Furies, it hits everyone for the Fury damage). Ice Magic has a lot of 'make rough terrain' or 'slow people down' spells, which makes sense since it's ice magic and also since the witches are often trying to catch and kill nomadic horse raiders. It lasts one round per point of Mag. Chill Voice is a minor blessing that gives the witch +10 to Haggle, Command, Intimidate, or Torture, and -10 to Charm or Blather, because it gives her the biting, cold authority of the Khan Queens. CN 9, Half Action, not an especially useful spell. The penalty doesn't really feel necessary, either, especially as it only lasts rounds equal to Mag. Crystal Cloak is a CN 15 spell as a Full Action that summons a cloak of purest cold for 1 minute. It causes anyone within 2m of you (anyone trying to get into melee with you, basically) to suffer -10 to WS, BS, and Agility, with no save. Also, anyone starting a melee action against you must save with Toughness or lose their turn, unable to brave the cold. Ideally, wizards don't want to be in melee since armor interferes with their spells, but for an Ice Witch who went into the various fighting exits this could be a hell of a trick to pull out in duels. It's a good protective spell, just don't stand next to your friends. Death Frost is basically a straight up instant kill, most likely. It takes a Full Action, and you have to succeed a WS test (which can be Dodged or Parried, admittedly at -20) to touch the target, and you need to hit CN 25, but if you do, your target is probably going to die. They have to save with Toughness-20, and if they fail, they take a Damage 8 hit that ignores armor for *every point of your Mag stat*. If they *succeed* they take a Damage 2 hit, still ignoring armor, for every point of Mag. The book is unclear, but just so this isn't a straight instant kill I'd rule it's a separate hit per point of Mag (letting the defender use their Toughness Bonus multiple times) since that's how other multi-hit attack spells work. Also, if this spell causes a Critical Effect of 6 or higher (or a crit of +5 or more) it will instantly kill the target as they freeze solid. This is why people are terrified of Ice Witches. Frost Blade is a half action to cast, 1 round per Mag, CN 8 spell that summons a magical weapon into your hand. The magic ice sword you summon is one of the best summonable weapons in the game (remember, multiple lores have them) because it scales off your SB (SB+2) and so a Witch who has a fighting career could do some really serious damage with the thing. It also counts as magic (obviously) and thus cuts through the extra 2 DR that demons get, and has Precise, so any Critical it inflicts is +1 point higher as though you'd done one more damage. You can also retain the spell past its duration with a WP test every round. If you're a martial witch, this sword will cut what you will. Form of the Frostfiend is a 3 Full Round CN 27 monster of a spell that has the usual issues that 'turn yourself into a thing' spells have in this system (you straight copy the statline of the creature and it doesn't scale with your abilities), but at least the creature it's copying is very powerful (if a little fragile for how powerful it's supposed to be; it has no armor and a 4 TB). We'll get into Frostfiends when we get to monsters, but suffice to say where there was a Witch there's now an Attacks 3 creature that can fly, has 34 Wounds, has Damage 6 Impact AP claws, and generally is going to wreck up the place. Unlike the angry Hag over north of here turning into the Ancient Widow, you do not retain the ability to speak or cast spells, but you do remain a Frostfiend until you decide to stop the spell, go to sleep, or take a Critical. Hailstorm is a staple for Ice Maidens, being CN 14 and only needing a half action (so you have time to Channel and hopefully use the ingredient, giving someone with Mag 2 good odds on casting it). It summons an area of hail and wind that grounds flying characters and creatures, does Damage 2 every round they stay inside of it, reduces their sightlines to 4m and debuffs their Agi and BS by 20, and halves movement. A lot like Blizzard, just smaller in size and you can't drop it anywhere you can see. You can also make the storm move 2m per point of Mag each turn with a Full Action and a -10 WP test, if you wish to have it chase people or move away so allies can walk through. It lasts for 1 minute. Hawks of Mishka summons magical, angry hawks made of ice who fly around and spook people, as a full action on CN 18. The hawks hit the whole of a large template (10m diameter circle) for a Fear test or freeze in place until they pass Fear. Those 10m further out also make Fear tests, but at +10. Against enemies with poor Will, this can just shut a whole line of guys down with terror as your ice hawks dazzle them. Ice Maiden's Kiss fires off a cone template (16m long, 1m at base, 5m at top) of Damage 5 Armor Ignoring hits for CN 20 and a Full Action. It uses Sudden Death damage like Death Frost, targets can evade with an Agility test only if they're on the very edge of the template/area, and anyone hit by it who survives has to save with WP or be Stunned for 1 round. So not only do you hit a bunch of foes for Damage 5 and ignore their armor, you potentially also stun them. This is one of the reasons they have such a dangerous miscast table, because that's a lot of killing power right there. Ice Sheet uses a Half Action and CN 12 to make a Large Template area slippery. Anyone trying to move through the ice has to make an Agi-10 save or fall and take d10 damage, losing their action. Even if they succeed, they move at 1/2 speed. This patch of ice lasts for 1 minute per point of Mag. Ice Witches have a lot of ways to keep people from getting to them. Even an Ice Maiden can summon an Ice Sheet and while everyone's slipping and sliding, smack them with a hailstorm (which makes it even more impossible for them to get off the drat sheet). Permafrost is a 2 Full Action CN 20 spell that causes a whole 48m area to freeze. On the round of casting, everyone in the area must save at Strength or lose a half action while taking d10 damage that ignores armor (only on the first round). Everyone moving through the area for the next Mag number of days travels and moves at 1/2 speed. Ice Witches can ruin traffic. Shardstorm is the signature direct damage spell for the Lore, at CN 18 and a Full Action with a 48m range. It fires off d10 Damage 3 Magic Missiles, which cannot be split up among other targets. This is affected by Mighty Missile, so a powerful Witch could hit someone for 10 Damage 4 hits in one turn. It's simple and effective, if hard-ish for a Mag 2 Maiden to pull off. Shoika's Call calls on ice tentacles to grow out of ambient water at CN 15 and a Full Action and grab everyone in the area of a Large Template. It also (as you probably guessed by now) slows anyone moving through the area by 1/2. The tentacle storm lasts for 1 minute per point of Mag and anyone passing through that zone of ice takes an Agility save or takes a Damage 4 Ignores Armor hit that grapples them; they must now test their Str against your Int to escape your grasp. Walk the Endless Steppe lets a witch summon cold power into herself for CN 15 and 2 full actions, lasting for a day per point of Mag. While under the influence of this spell, neither magical nor mundane cold can harm you. This will protect you from another Ice Witch, but specifically will not stop your own miscasts from hurting you. Finally, Wall of Ice just summons a wall of ice for CN 12 and a Full Action. 10m long, 6m high, and with TB5 and 10 Wounds per point of Mag, it's a solid barrier that can be tough to break down. So yeah, Ice Witches can make themselves a total bastard to fight by exploiting their save-or-slow spells and their wide variety of ways to ignore armor. They're pure war wizards, and they're really good at it. The opposite of the Hags, really. Next: Dazh's Fabulous Orbital Laser Cannon
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Nov 16, 2017 22:39
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Loxbourne posted:This stuff only really started up when the Baen Books authorial stable started writing them. It was an established setting point that ARM had suppressed all warfare in the Solar System, and since the spinoff authors were gunwank libertarians they assumed this could only be possible with eeeeeeevil mind control and sinister New World Order poo poo, so that all got grandfathered in and lots of frontier types were created to wave their guns around and mock the sheeple. Yeah, Known Space is really only good in Niven's own hands. I haven't found a Man-Kzin Wars book I liked.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:40
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Prism posted:Of note is that these are all altered Slavic words: koldunya is just a witch though not the most common word for one, vorozheya is a female fortune teller, and znakharka is a kind of folk healer (this one is Ukrainian instead of Russian, and I don't know what the equivalent Russian word is). Neat. It's been many years since I took Russian (and I wasn't that good at it, I'm not good with languages without a latin alphabet) but the last term just being Ukrainian would fit fine. Kislev is Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and basically everywhere else all mashed together, so I think the language is intentionally a big mashup too.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:49
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Starfinger Alien Archive Part 09: "Larger frujai colonies sometimes entertain interviews with avid xenobiologists, though the dialogues are as likely to descend into ravenous feasting upon the scholars as they are to explore the deep philosophical musings that occupy the frujais the rest of the time." F these monsters.
  Formian (CR 0.5) and Formian Warrior (CR 3) So, these are humanoid ants usually found on They're low-CR humanoids in these writeups with sonic resistance, using flare guns and laser rifles, though the warrior has a poison stinger that does Dexterity damage on a failed save (and can automatically apply it when it succeeds at a grapple check). The regular formian gets double the bonus when using covering fire, harrying fire, or the aid another action, and can carry more bulk than they normally could for their strength. Both have Hive Mind, which gives them a notable bonus to initiative and Perception when near each other, and they can't be surprised unless they all are. They also have a PC writeup. They get darkvision, blindsense, telepathic communication, and barely-worth-mentioning natural weapons, and sonic resistance. They don't get any of the cool cooperation abilities that the bottom-tier formians have. Boooo on you, Paizo. Boooo.    Frujai Colony (CR 19) and Frujai Soldier (CR 12) Man, I already said I'd had enough of creatures what spawn smaller versions of themselves. If there's another, Starfinger, I'm not going to cover it, I'm just going to say "another one of these!" and move on. So this one are from Orikolai, and are walking plant-hives that spawn plant-velociraptors. It reproduces its small soldiers from corpses, but if the aren't enough natural corpses, it goes and makes some to reproduce from. The soldiers are voracious and try and consume enough to eventually become new hives themselves. Because "dramatic fluctuations" of gravity on their world are common, apparently they've developed the ability to manipulate gravity. So at least they're weird. Of course, they're "surprisingly intelligent" because when you're a spore-produced gravity-controlling velociraptor, we need a note on their "philosophical musings" even though they're just as likely to eat you as to chat with you. Nice try at adding nuance, but it doesn't work unless there's reason to engage with it. And there isn't. These things are extremely dangerous and likely would wreck most ecosystems they'd come in contact with. You'll probably want to kill them. The soldiers are large "plants" with a slam attack and the ability to reposition a target up to 10' or trip enemies at a grain with their gravity, plus a hefty amount of force damage. They get a bonus against a variety of combat maneuvers due to their ability to "control [their] apparent mass", and a bonus on attack and speed when near a frujai colony that's been attacked. They also have the usual plant immunities despite being not seemingly having any plant traits descriptively, other than reproducing through spores. I mean, if they're hunting, carnivorous predators, they'd have to have organs and specialized structures, right? In fact, it probably would have been more interesting and alien to have an animal who became a plant later on in the life cycle, but I'm not an RPG Superstar, so what do I know? The larger version looks a lot like a rakk hive from Borderlands, and is a colossal plant that has the bonus against maneuvers and can use gravity control for two of the following effects, or three if it spends an RP: it can fly, it can control gravity, it can create a shield that gives a bonus to AC, do a powerful force attack, or create an area force attack. It can also create a spare soldier as described above by spending an RP. No more of these, Starfinger, you're past your limit for carrier monsters. Next: G is for Original Monster Do Not Steal.
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Nov 16, 2017 22:53
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Night10194 posted:As you can see, Hags don't really do direct combat. What they do is blackmail, trickery, healing, divination, and spirit summoning. I wish their spells used their crazy high Int (they are the only class in the game to get Int+40) rather than their WP, though, to drive home that they're tricky and clever wizards. Isn't it the case that basically all magic uses willpower? I understand why they would do that giving how most magic is done, but I think you're right that if your spells are really more of negotiating and manipulating spirits than willing something unreal to be real, it would be cool to use something besides the willpower stat (though I'd think Fellowship would be more appropriate).
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Nov 17, 2017 01:43
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Night10194 posted:Neat. It's been many years since I took Russian (and I wasn't that good at it, I'm not good with languages without a latin alphabet) but the last term just being Ukrainian would fit fine. Kislev is Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and basically everywhere else all mashed together, so I think the language is intentionally a big mashup too. I don't actually speak any of them, but I recognized Znarkharja/znakharka and looked up the others because I figured if one was a reasonably accurate modified word, the others might be too. Turns out they were! Given half the time in F&F when a foreign word is used, repurposed, or altered it's completely out of context or just plain wrong, I was pleasantly surprised. Prism fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Nov 17, 2017 |
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Nov 17, 2017 02:00
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To be fair, Warhammer Fantasy has a history of using foreign words on purpose in a way that makes them unusable when played in those languages because they're obvious plot clues or bad jokes. "Gee, I wonder if this guy whose name translates to "Lord Treacherous Bastard" is going to betray us"
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Nov 17, 2017 02:11
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unseenlibrarian posted:To be fair, Warhammer Fantasy has a history of using foreign words on purpose in a way that makes them unusable when played in those languages because they're obvious plot clues or bad jokes. It's fun, though. Especially as someone who speaks just enough German to be able to get some of them.
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Nov 17, 2017 02:16
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Night10194 posted:Shardstorm is the signature direct damage spell for the Lore, at CN 18 and a Full Action with a 48m range. It fires off d10 Damage 3 Magic Missiles, which cannot be split up among other targets. This is affected by Mighty Missile, so a powerful Witch could hit someone for 10 Damage 4 hits in one turn. It's simple and effective, if hard-ish for a Mag 2 Maiden to pull off. I'm not misunderstanding something about how spells do damage, right? They still do a d10 plus the damage value, like shooting someone with a gun? So this is 10 automatic hit attacks that do between 5 and 14 damage? Assuming armor applies, a human target might reduce that damage by 6, so unless you roll 1 or 2 on all the damage rolls you're doing at least 10 and as much as 80 damage to one target. Holy moly. Night10194 posted:It's fun, though. Especially as someone who speaks just enough German to be able to get some of them. While looking up a German coastal town name, I came upon Cuxhaven and couldn't help but laugh at what that sounded like in English, so I dubbed the town in the game "Hahnreihaven" to amuse myself. marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Nov 17, 2017 |
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Nov 17, 2017 02:27
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