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JackMann posted:Thanks to your reviews, I've decided to write up some encounters for Pathfinder, with the hope that they'll actually be useable by a GM to plop into his games. Here's the first one. Cool! That would definitely be a keep if I was reviewing it - I like how there's an internal tension between doing the right thing and loading up on useful potions. I wouldn't necessarily even give any of the potions back to the PCs if they arrange for their return - sick people need those! The rep with that church and town is a much cooler reward. Of course, I also like that greedy enough PCs might just buy up all the potions without inquiring about their providence, and only find out later where they came from.
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Dec 2, 2017 02:51
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Dark Matter: Xenoforms Culturally Appropriating the First Nations of North America: The intro paragraph notes that in spite of the levels of development in North America, there’s still plenty of weird poo poo around. We’ll start with something not stolen from a native culture. Frogmen:  Frogmen are carnivorous amphibious humanoids that may be related to kinori and/or humans in some distant way. Frogmen aren’t extremely intelligent and don’t really ‘get’ human behavior or technology. They avoid combat and will only fight as long as it takes for them to flee in general. Frogmen tend to avoid humans when possible, but have a mutually hostile relationship with kinori in general. Basically the kinori tend to see them as a pretty solid food source in a pinch, and the frogmen are aware of this and will sometimes pre-emptively attack (but since they’re bad at cause and effect they don’t see any connection between these attacks and the following retaliatory raids). They sometimes capture kinori technology and it’s noted that frogmen actually figuring it out would potentially be pretty bad, as they’re surprisingly numerous. The adventure hook concerns a drunk driver whose car ended up in a lake, at which point he was attacked by “frog people” as he escaped the car. He then claims that they’ve been trying to get him at his house since that night, but if the players try to stake out his house they discover that it’s actually a group of kinori also interested in the frogmen. The rest of the details are left up to the GM. Verdict: I kinda like these guys, they’re pretty flavorful and could be a nice one-off or part of a larger campaign. Nataska:  Nataska (the black ogre kachina) are a type of Hopi spirit literally used to frighten children into behaving. While they were formerly assistants to another form of spirit, the increased levels of dark matter have caused them to gain enough power to go independent. In former times they would appear before parents and attempt to purchase their children from them in order to consume them. Now they generally will wait for children to be unattended then ask if anyone is willing to bargain for the child (knowing that nobody is around), though fortunately they are still bound to negotiate should they be found before their meal. They don’t speak English though so I hope you’ve got someone who knows some languages. Nataska always travel in pairs and carry huge nasty saw things. They’re pretty tough and will fight until both are below half health generally, though should one be killed the other will fight to the death out of anger at the lost of its partner. I would not counsel fighting them at all frankly, because they’re loving wizards with those saws. Negotiating is difficult but is a much better option unless and until things break down. The adventure hook begins with the heroes investigating the disappearance of several young people from a jail in Arizona (under the suspicion that they’re being sold into slavery). Some of the inmates claim that evil spirits controlled by the warden are responsible. The warden does seem suspicious (he’s Hopi and periodically locks down the facility while the Nataska hunt), but the hook also offers the alternative that he might in fact be there to try and stop or contain the Nataska rather than controlling them. Verdict: These guys are actually kind of cool, and just in general speak to the decent question of “what happened to all the spirits and monsters of cultures that are now largely destroyed?” With a lot of research to make sure you were treating them appropriately, I feel like a really cool campaign could come out of dealing with the consequences of a group of spirits that are no longer filling the roles they’re supposed to. Wendigo:  The Wendigo, if you didn’t know, is the spirit of cannibalism. It possesses people it thinks are cool (a wendigo thinking you are cool does not necessarily say good things about you frankly) and turns them into monsters who consume human flesh. A Wendigo isn’t much more than an animal, though one aware enough about humans to be very dangerous. Wendigo are actively hostile, but prefer to use stealth and terror as their weapons. They like to follow groups and howl all night to prevent them sleeping, with some penalties laid out and the chance on a critical failure to flee into the night (at which point obviously the Wendigo tries to eat you). While it has claws and a bite listed, as with the Congoraptor it’s not really allowed to use those until it’s successfully executed a takedown on a target and got them prone. The adventure hook has the PCs stalked through the frozen woods by a wendigo. It’s sort of boring and obvious honestly, they probably could have done better. Just like with this monster. Verdict: Not a fan honestly. To me the Wendigo is expected and this one is and does what you’d expect a Wendigo to do without any of the interesting twists some of better adaptations in this book have. Next time we’ll be moving into Central and South America, with a much better adaptation of a famous monster.
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Dec 2, 2017 03:11
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There's a Bronze Age setting for Demon in one of the splatbooks (either Player's Guide or Storyteller's Guide, probably the latter) that's pretty close to a Biblical setting.
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Dec 2, 2017 03:12
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If a wendigo can't be Daryl the Wendigo, it is a mediocre wendigo.
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Dec 2, 2017 03:39
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Nessus posted:I think that Garou society would have accepted it if a homid-born guy eventually got Wolf Enough that he decided to do that in wolf form, but would've considered it gross if he tried to do it in Homid. You can certainly argue that the idea of Garou and changers generally as some kind of meta-species that can come out of either their animal or human relations is grody, of course. Correct. One of the Oaths of the Moon is 'Hey, you should start a family. But with humans. Just humans.'
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Dec 2, 2017 04:35
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Nessus posted:I'd think you could combine Bible Times with the Med basin Roman empire and have an interesting and robust setting with a lot of options that people might not expect due to being ignorant. Something like Testament, then?
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Dec 2, 2017 05:09
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Nessus posted:The ones who included Brucellosis Lass were the Bratovitches or Szantovitches, something like that. Their job was to mind the castle while the mawster was away, breed up the hounds and horses, and get into fist-fights with werewolves. (One might fairly assume there were relatively few of the latter, because a dot of Potence and a dot of Fortitude means the Garou has to hit you twice, not just once.) Kurieg posted:"Oh no, somebody staked Vampire Dad. How are we going to wake him up?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmPu3QeI-vA&t=3222s
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Dec 2, 2017 05:10
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Selachian posted:Something like Testament, then? I remember that getting reviewed and being very, very disappointing.
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Dec 2, 2017 05:14
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There are a lot of books that show how D20 really is not the adaptable multi-genre game it claims to be, but Testament really stands out.
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Dec 2, 2017 05:44
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Kurieg posted:You aren't exactly helping your case. You're still positing it as a fetish, as if I'm saying "naw, sister loving is cool and you should focus game on it". I say that I don't understand why it is suddenly too real or too spooky when it appears in the setting background with ghoul inbreeding, nature spirits doing something to squirrels and so on. Where's the line between fun and games where mass slaughter/substance addiction control/urban conspiracy cover ups are still cool, but some villain having the Habsburg jaw is super bad on cheapening-of-rape level?
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Dec 2, 2017 06:06
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You've picked a really weird, gross, dragon cum spattered hill to die on, and you're mad at the rest of us because you've done a poor job of describing its topography.
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Dec 2, 2017 06:49
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JcDent posted:You're still positing it as a fetish, as if I'm saying "naw, sister loving is cool and you should focus game on it". I say that I don't understand why it is suddenly too real or too spooky when it appears in the setting background with ghoul inbreeding, nature spirits doing something to squirrels and so on. Where's the line between fun and games where mass slaughter/substance addiction control/urban conspiracy cover ups are still cool, but some villain having the Habsburg jaw is super bad on cheapening-of-rape level? Because most of the time when that poo poo comes out it's either as a one-line throwaway to rank up some 'bad guy' points. Or it is a fetish thing. Or you have to crank it up so high that it ticks over into "No this person is literally so much of a deviant monster it doesn't even count as human anymore" like some elder vampire who dominates people and forces them to gently caress wild animals because inflicting his deviancy on other people is the only thing that grants him even the briefest levels of amusement. Even then if you don't have the writing chops to pull it off well it can come off as grimdark-mc-edgelord bullshit. And like I mentioned before the reason why the bullshit with Zeus and your comment there about nature spirits and squirrels. When both of the actors are fundamentally inhuman, or one of the actors is explicitly magical. It becomes more "acceptable" but you still need to be careful of it crossing over into fetish territory. Like this one girl I knew in high-school who trained her dog and cat to gently caress on command for her amusement. Don't write poo poo like that
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Dec 2, 2017 07:04
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Also let's be clear: There is a power differential in most classical RPGs between the GM and players, and if you codify sexual violence or weirdness like incest stuff in your game at the GM/setting material level, you are opening up that differential for abuse at certain (not a majority, obviously, but definitely some) tables. Best to leave that stuff for a table to decide if they actually need or want it for their game. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Dec 2, 2017 |
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Dec 2, 2017 07:14
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Feinne posted:Frogmen:
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Dec 2, 2017 08:43
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Halloween Jack posted:You've picked a really weird, gross, dragon cum spattered hill to die on, and you're mad at the rest of us because you've done a poor job of describing its topography. Hey, my weird hill to die on is "no female Astartes," everything else is just me being curious as to why you folks have such a weirdly strong reaction to stuff like that. Night10194 posted:Also let's be clear: There is a power differential in most classical RPGs between the GM and players, and if you codify sexual violence or weirdness like incest stuff in your game at the GM/setting material level, you are opening up that differential for abuse at certain (not a majority, obviously, but definitely some) tables. Well, this I understand more. I won't pretend that "lol just talk to your GM" is a be all, end all advice when it comes to games. Kurieg posted:Like this one girl I knew in high-school who trained her dog and cat to gently caress on command for her amusement. Don't write poo poo like that Aaand now I understand you.
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Dec 2, 2017 09:40
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 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness Revised Edition, Part Two: "When running my own campaigns, I frequently deprive characters of all their various powers and possessions." Just About Any Palladium Book posted:Warning! ... does not lead off this book, as this book predates Rifts and those sorts of cautionary warnings. However this book may have led to that, as it represented Palladium's first and probably only clash with parental figures, but we'll be getting to that in just a bit. Instead, Wujick starts out by bringing up the fact that anthropomorphic animals have had a long history in fiction, citing comics like Cerebus and Howard the Duck to cartoons like Warner Brothers and Superdog. As such, he kind of offers it as a kit for anthropomorphic animals in general, though I imagine somebody trying to run a Looney Tunes game might be disappointed when a mole PC whips out an uzi and guns down the dog chasing him. To his credit, though, he names and thanks all of his playtesters on this book. Now, here's the weird part: this book is only based around the first four issues of the black and white comic book, plus the Raphael one-shot. Not much was established yet, but no other mutant animals existed in the comic other that the titular turtles and Splinter (the mutant rat). In fact, the black and white version of the comic book has almost no other mutant animals than the turtles themselves. You have Leatherhead, a pacifistic sewer alligator mutated by the same alien ooze that mutated the turtles. Later on, we'll have Bloodsucker, an ordinary leech that gets mutated for a short time by drinking Raphael's blood... and that's about it. There are other mutants and oddities, to be sure, but additional mutant animals? Those are almost entirely a product of the cartoon and Playmates toyline, with their need to have waves upon waves of marketable characters. As such, the RPG diverges almost entirely from the comic, having a whole underground of mutant animals floating around - not many, but enough that there are different groups of mutants introduced with each adventure, each with their own ridiculous origins. This isn't a complaint per se, but more a curious observation of how the game diverges from the actual comic.  We're told this is a complete game several times, but with a concession that they couldn't include every animal you might want. After the playtester credits, we immediately get into a diatribe regarding random character generation. See, this book is unusual for Palladium character generation at the time in that it introduces a new point-buy trait: Biological Energy, hereby abbreviated as "BIO-E" universally hereafter. Each animal gets a certain amount of BIO-E points to either retain natural traits, mutate closer to humanity, or alter their size. However, the book retains things like random rolls for attributes, animal type, origin, etc. Wujick gives three reasons for retaining these:
We then get "how to play a role-playing game" where we are asked to envision ourselves as Raphael confronting a bat-mutant burglar with a gun, and asks "What are YOU going to do?" Flip out and stab a bat, duh. Next: A Palladium primer. 
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Dec 2, 2017 12:37
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JcDent posted:You're still positing it as a fetish, as if I'm saying "naw, sister loving is cool and you should focus game on it". I say that I don't understand why it is suddenly too real or too spooky when it appears in the setting background with ghoul inbreeding, nature spirits doing something to squirrels and so on. Where's the line between fun and games where mass slaughter/substance addiction control/urban conspiracy cover ups are still cool, but some villain having the Habsburg jaw is super bad on cheapening-of-rape level? A big factor in how far or bad a game can go with that is if it's a background setting detail because you really want to do a historical game set during the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire or mythological Greece where it crops up versus providing in-depth rules with the presumption that player characters will use them. It's the same sort of divide between whether or not, say, The Lady of Pain should be statted out or left as deliberately incomprehensible. The minute you start providing rules, you have to expect some player or GM to abuse them. Then you have to contemplate how far other people are willing to carry those rules, and how putting down bestiality rules alongside combat and faction management or whatever will alter a reader's perception of their importance to the game's creator, the people who play it, and the game/its setting. It doesn't help that the vast majority of times where deviant or transgressive sexual stuff comes up in RPGs it's clearly part of some fetish the writer has, like in Witch Girls Adventures, everything Chris Field writes, and probably a lot of the oWoD stuff. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Dec 2, 2017 |
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Dec 2, 2017 14:05
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I recall the Targaryeans (or however the hell you spell it) have been compared to Egyptian royalty, who had a long history of sibling and even parental incest. I didn't realise the TMNT RPG came so early in the franchise's existence. Been kinda funny given how many recent incarnations have hewed a bit closer to the originals while combining various elements. (TCRI comes up in the recent series)
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Dec 2, 2017 15:32
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Unbeknownst to you, the last D&D campaign you played in was just your DM pulling random cards from The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 45: The Deck of Shadows and Spells A small set today, mostly for organizational reasons. 270: A Party Shadowed The PCs are in a “dangerous section of the city late at night,” and are passing by a small graveyard. That’s why the city is so dangerous - graveyards are horrible monster-spawning deathtraps! Case in point, four shadows start following the PCs, toying with them and trying to lure them into shadowy areas like dark alleys, and then they attack. They’ve got some treasure in one of the crypts: 1200 gp, a potion of speed to help the PCs break the sound barrier, and a periapt of health. Shadows in the middle of a city? Even under the best of circumstances, I never understand why shadows aren’t an unstoppable plague, a nation-destroying blight across the earth. If they’re perfectly capable of leaving this graveyard, there should be no city left at all. I dunno. I’ll say keep, I suppose, but barely. It’s just not very interesting. I’ll just say the shadows are a very, very new phenomenon, the first one showing up only a couple days ago, and that they’ve been grabbing one new recruit each night for inscrutable undead reasons. 271: Shadows in the Mist Near an old marshy graveyard at dusk. Six shadows attack. If three are destroyed, the rest will retreat, but attack again “if the PCs look for the shadows’ treasure.” (A few thousand gold in “the split trunk of a rotting oak.”) Interesting - as a PC, I wouldn’t have assumed the shadows even had treasure at all. I would, however, be DEMOLISHING this graveyard and every other one I encounter. Freaking undead-spawning danger zones. When I get my own domain, it’ll be 100% cremation and dumping the ashes into the sea. If we’re not coastal, we’ll find trade partners who are. Both of these encounters are “shadows attack, near a graveyard.” This one is even less interesting than the last, so pass. 272: Dancing Bait There’s a table in the middle of a dungeon room with a 10-charge wand of lightning on top of it, and also a frisky chest spell, that super-annoying enchantment from the Tome of Magic that makes an object grow legs and skitter away from any people who approach it. In this case it’ll skitter right down a hallway, around a bend, past a trap that will make a portcullis close behind pursuers, and straight into a mind flayer’s cave. (The table is bait.) Ridiculous, but not without the potential for entertaining gameplay. Keep.
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Dec 2, 2017 16:01
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Nuns with Guns posted:A big factor in how far or bad a game can go with that is if it's a background setting detail because you really want to do a historical game set during the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire or mythological Greece where it crops up versus providing in-depth rules with the presumption that player characters will use them. It's the same sort of divide between whether or not, say, The Lady of Pain should be statted out or left as deliberately incomprehensible. The minute you start providing rules, you have to expect some player or GM to abuse them. Then you have to contemplate how far other people are willing to carry those rules, and how putting down bestiality rules alongside combat and faction management or whatever will alter a reader's perception of their importance to the game's creator, the people who play it, and the game/its setting. It doesn't help that the vast majority of times where deviant or transgressive sexual stuff comes up in RPGs it's clearly part of some fetish the writer has, like in Witch Girls Adventures, everything Chris Field writes, and probably a lot of the oWoD stuff. Oh, I am not argueing that having rules for bestiality or incest is not unnecessary and hosed up, even in a scrunt RPG. I'm just saying that it's strange, for me, the reaction to them being in, say, oWoD. Unless loving wolves or marrying your ghoul cousin was presented as something cool that you should do in game.
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Dec 2, 2017 16:10
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Inescapable Duck posted:I recall the Targaryeans (or however the hell you spell it) have been compared to Egyptian royalty, who had a long history of sibling and even parental incest. The Ptolemaics actually, who were ethnically Macedonian. They were very incstuous but it was most likely due to Ptolemy I being the descendant of Macedonian nobility and not wanting an Egyptian family taking the throne. Most "native" dynasties usually didn't have the preoccupation with incest. The Targaryens draw influences from them because they're both foreign conquerors and have an obsession with the purity of their bloodline. The Targaryens are probably more obsessed with it because of the flame resistant trait Dany has and less worrying about local usurpers.
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Dec 2, 2017 16:18
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Inescapable Duck posted:I didn't realise the TMNT RPG came so early in the franchise's existence. Been kinda funny given how many recent incarnations have hewed a bit closer to the originals while combining various elements. (TCRI comes up in the recent series) Yeah. The TCRI aliens actually get their name "Utroms" from a later RPG supplement, AFAIK - the comic actually never names them, just calling them "TCRI" or "aliens". Which means a lot of the cartoons use a name for them established by the RPG. But then, there's an adventure and NPCs in this book that get referenced by an episode of the 2012 cartoon, albeit adjusted enough to dodge copyright issues. (Also, they even got toys. But we'll get to that.) Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Dec 2, 2017 |
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Dec 2, 2017 16:21
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JcDent posted:Oh, I am not argueing that having rules for bestiality or incest is not unnecessary and hosed up, even in a scrunt RPG. I'm just saying that it's strange, for me, the reaction to them being in, say, oWoD. Because it rarely, if ever, was handled well in early white wolf stuff. And yes, garou can "gently caress wolves" but 1) they're werewolves, and exclusively did so in wolf form. 2)Wolves are presented as intelligent actors within the context of the Werewolf book, they don't communicate in ways that humans are capable of understanding but the Garou definitely do. 3) It really wasn't presented as something cool and good beyond the fact that the wolf blood in most garou is apparently running thin and most human-born werewolves are rightly a little squicked out by it. Marrying your Ghoul cousin is more a sign that vampires are supremely hosed up people with addiction for blood. edit: that's not even getting into brucato's goddamned feral sex majyks. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Dec 2, 2017 |
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Dec 2, 2017 16:37
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Kurieg posted:Marrying your Ghoul cousin is more a sign that vampires are supremely hosed up people with addiction for blood. The Giovanni are pretty much obsessed with it because they're degenerate backstabbers and don't trust anyone because they murdered a whole clan that they used to belong to get where they are. Their end goal is to shatter the walls between the world of the living and the dead, where Wraith takes place, because they have a monopoly on necromancy among vampires and they think it will make them gods. They're an example of White Wolf creating antagonist, NPC groups but making them playable because that was the design philosophy of the time. A Giovanni was a member of the Pentex board of directors too so it's not like they were hiding that too much. All the independent clans are gray antagonists and aren't meant as player characters. They just end up being player characters because of that era of game design and White Wolf being cool with it due to distribution requirements.
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Dec 2, 2017 16:50
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On the more WoD side of things, it's still weird to me that vampires don't seem to be kings of WoD. Mages and werewolves sound more powerful individually. Is it the same in nWoD? Should have made Genius: The Trangreasion official instead of coming up with loving Beast the Edgening
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Dec 2, 2017 18:27
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JcDent posted:On the more WoD side of things, it's still weird to me that vampires don't seem to be kings of WoD. Mages and werewolves sound more powerful individually. Is it the same in nWoD? quote:Should have made Genius: The Trangreasion official instead of coming up with loving Beast the Edgening Just because Beast is bad doesn't mean that Genius is good.
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Dec 2, 2017 18:44
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Well werewolves and mages have to basically deal with two forces of nature that are integral to the functioning of the universe, which is to say the divide between the flesh world and the spirit world and the relationship between earth, the abyss and the supernal. All a vampire has to focus on is daily existence as a predator in a persistently hostile environment. The stakes are much lower for vampires. Werewolves and mages are indeed more powerful but werewolves have to deal with their fact that all of their problems can no longer be solved with murder and mages have to deal with the weight of existence pushing back against them. There's no...king, there are just various roles and niches that they all fit into. Which, interestingly, not the case for vampires. Vampires are aberrations on the natural order, predatory parasites that have to carve out a little home for themselves if they want to survive. They're good at what they do (mental and social stuff) but that's really it. Also seconding the notion that Genius isn't great. Genius was written by folks who loved the idea of the Technocracy but wanted the Technocracy to be the scrappy underdogs that functioned mechanically like Mage society if there was no Technocracy. As such there are many more problems with Genius that were created by fan interpretations not being good.
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Dec 2, 2017 18:48
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Does not help that I did a review of Genius, and about half of the splats are taken directly from oMage groups.
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Dec 2, 2017 19:39
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Genius is pretty bad, yeah. So is Princess, before you ask. And vampires are number one best, flat out, at mind control fuckery. Mages can do better with focus but vampires do it way easier. Combat wise they aren't generally monsters, tho they can fake it by buffing up their stats a lot with disciplines. But combat is way less useful to most vampires outside of the bite, which basically ends fights with mortals immediately one on one.
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Dec 2, 2017 19:56
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Vampires are basically a sleazy bunch of assholes who have just enough power to have an edge on the targets they actually care about (humans) while having such petty goals that they don't really step on the toes of the 'more powerful' types in the setting. E: Hell, I think that kind of applies to both WoDs, doesn't it?
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Dec 2, 2017 20:12
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I might stand corrected. And I basically know fuckall about nWoD, since the difference between "I don't understand half of what I'm reading, but this sounds cool" in oWoD and nWods "Atlantis, ladders and some other stupid poo poo" made less than willing to read. Then again, I like Genius basically on the same surface reading. Never played any WoD game outside Bloodlines, so I can only get the surface impressions. Small country, insular nerd. Also... Princess?
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Dec 2, 2017 20:32
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:The Ptolemaics actually, who were ethnically Macedonian. They were very incstuous but it was most likely due to Ptolemy I being the descendant of Macedonian nobility and not wanting an Egyptian family taking the throne. Most "native" dynasties usually didn't have the preoccupation with incest. The Targaryen incest also I think serves a narrative goal in the series. We're supposed to find it disgusting, and it helps the reader quickly buy into the early picture we have of the Targaryens as batshit inbred tyrants, which is also the narrative most of our viewpoint characters hold to. Then we get to know Dany and she's different, and gradually more and more comes out that undermines the straightforward narrative we start with. Its a decent progression throughout the series, and while yeah there are hints that the story we hear at the start is one-sided, having things like "the Targaryens practiced incest" tends to make us dismiss them more than we might otherwise. Now, all the REST of the incest, rape, and other edgy stuff, that's not so narratively useful.
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Dec 2, 2017 20:35
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JcDent posted:Also... Princess? You have dug too greedily and too deep
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Dec 2, 2017 20:36
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Kurieg posted:Just because Beast is bad doesn't mean that Genius is good.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:13
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A scrap of paper with incomplete Yahtzee rules is better than beast.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:20
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Back when beast was reviewed didn't somebody post a podcast about it?
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Dec 2, 2017 21:21
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I always felt that Vampire got the short end of the powerz stick due to being the first game in the franchise. They were the benchmark against which things like werewolves (already described as being furry masses of Celerity and Protean on angry, angry legs) were measured... and frankly, because of some serious Pet Splat issues. They're good at what they do, but they're nowhere near as flashy as what followed. But hey, Masquerade.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:26
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I am slowly working my way through… Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Children of the Horned Rat All right. It’s been roughly four chapters of talking about rats and now we are diving into the rest of chapter 5, which covers skaven weaponry, equipment, and magic. This might take a while. There’s a lot to go over and the warlock engineering rules are… difficult. Before regular weapons and equipment, first there is a note that common Skaven weapons and armor tend to be of Poor or Common quality, but they’ll still use Hand Weapons, Slings, and such from the WFRP Core book. Also of note is that there are prices listed for the unique Skaven weapons, but they are given in Warpstone Tokens, the Skaven currency. But the items listed in the Core book are in human coins. And there is no price conversion tool. A human trying to buy a Skaven weapon is not allowed anyway, but a Skaven trying to buy themselves a Hand Weapon or other common gear is going to have problems. There’s no obvious way to convert things. When I run it, I handwave that a Warpstone Token is worth ten Gold Crowns, but that’s my quick and dirty fix. Anyway, the weapons. Starting with the melee weapons, we have the Plague Censor. This is basically a big flail with its head containing a special warpstone concoction made by Clan Pestilens that is lit before battle. Mechanically, it is a flail from the Core book with some nasty special rules added on. Anything struck with it must take a -20 Toughness Test or take d5 wounds that ignore armor and Toughness Bonus. The turn after they are struck they take a -10 Toughness test to avoid the same thing. And assuming they’re still alive, after 24 hours they take a +10 Toughness Test or gain a Mutation. In addition everyone within 2 yards of someone carrying a lit Plague Censor must take a Toughness Test every round or take 2 Wounds regardless of armor and Toughness Bonus. This includes the bearer and their allies. So, all those rules add up to a substantial amount of pain and suffering for pretty much anyone. And as an aside, this is in addition to the normal damage of being hit with a weapon that is already very painful to be hit with. A foe is looking at a potential 2d5+2 wounds that they can’t use any damage resistance against on top of any damage taken from being hit by a flail in a game where a starting PC has roughly 10-12 wounds and tends to end around 16-18 wounds at top tier. And then might suffer a character ending Mutation if they somehow don’t die. A Plague Censor Bearer might be hitting a couple PCs per round, too. Don’t give this to an enemy facing your PCs unless you want to make it clear you hate them and want them to suffer. Give this to your Skaven PCs if they’re insane and want to die surrounded by the corpses of their enemies. Moving back into the realm of sanity, we have the Punch Dagger. Basically short stabbing blades gripped to use when punching or wrapped to the forearms of Clan Eshin ninjas, this is a good off-hand weapon with Balanced and Defensive, giving bonuses to Parrying which it trades a point of damage to get. Fair enough. Rat Claws are basically a set of brass knuckles from the core book that also give you a +20 bonus to climbing tests. These are basically half tools as well as weapons used by Clan Eshin infiltrators to get where they want to be. Kinda niche, but there’s nothing wrong with them. Tail Blades tend to be a bit of a sidearm of sorts, being weapons attached to the ends of a Skaven’s tail. Generally hoped to give you an edge, upper class Skaven are fond of ornamental ones while clanrates will tie anything they can get to their tails. You need a special Tail Fighting Talent to actually use this in battle. Not generally worth bothering with unless you happen to be a Clan Eshin Assassin or something. Things-Catchers are large poles with a hoop around the far end, lined with spikes facing inward. A common tool for Clan Moulder to use when catching research subjects or errant warbeasts, it’s a two handed weapon that gives you a point of extra damage and the Snare rule to capture targets. Dangerous and will result in man-thing tears.  Moving on to ranged weapons, we have the Blowgun. Used pretty much entirely by Clan Eshin, it’s a silent weapon they use to deliver poisoned darts to targets. It doesn’t do much real damage without poison, and it needs to do at least one Wound to a target to deliver the desired poison, so this won’t reliably harm anyone wearing much armor. Another niche Eshin weapon that depends a lot on the target and what kind of poison they’ve gotten their paws on. Plus requires a special Talent to use reliably. Poisoned Wind Globes are softball sized glass spheres filled with a deadly warpstone based gas developed by Clan Skryre. You need the Throwing Talent to use without penalty, but you simply heave it at a foe. It will break and release a cloud of gas about 3 yards in radius. Anyone caught in the gas cloud takes a -10 Toughness test or take d10+4 Wounds without the benefit of armor or toughness. The cloud will persist for d5 rounds and may drift in a random direction. Also, if you miss your BS test to throw it, it scatters from your intended target. Or you might simply drop it at your feet. Hilarity ensues. Deadly, definitely. But awkward to use and you can try avoiding the gas cloud. Ratling Guns are a signature Clan Skryre weapon, being of a two person warpstone powered machine gun. It basically looks like a rat-portable minigun. Sadly, it works out very poorly here. It fires a straight line template ahead of hit, anything in a couple yards of the line taking a Strength 3 hit. Then it requires ten rounds to reload. For comparison, a normal arrow is also strength three. And a human blunderbuss does the same thing without requiring two people and ten turns to reload. This is frankly absolutely terrible. It’ll scare your players if they haven’t seen the rules yet, though. Smoke Bombs aren’t exactly weapons, but whatever. These are used by Clan Eshin for concealment in a pinch. They work exactly like a Poison Wind Globe to use, but the cloud they create is simply oily black smoke instead of poison gas, greatly limiting vision. No problems here and it’s something anyone can think up uses for. Warpfire Throwers returns us to the realm of Skaven madness. Another Clan Skryre heavy weapon, this one makes enough hype to make people forget the Ratling gun. It is a crew operated flamethrower that uses a sticky, warpstone laced fuel. It uses a cone template (a teardrop shape that’s about six yards wide at the far end and about 12 yards long), doing a Damage 4 hit to anyone touched by it. This damage ignores armor. In addition, targets must pass an Agility Test or catch fire. It can only be extinguished by total immersion in water or dirt or hastily scraping off the flaming jelly with a -10 Agility Test. Survivors get to take a +10 Toughness test that day or gain a Mutation. It’s not quite as insane as the Plague Censor on a single target, but it makes up for it by hiding a wide area at once. It also still has the 10 Round reload time, so the weapon team will only get one shot. Character ending Mutations still suck, though. Without that, it’s a lot more fair. And a Skaven crew are not likely to be picky about separating a PC party away from all the Skaven it’s fighting before firing. The Warplock Jezzail and the Warplock Pistol are the final weapons. These are basically muskets and pistols from the Core Book, but they have traded the Impact rule away to gain Armor Piercing, another point of damage, and greater range. All told, it’s a fair trade that makes these guns good for cracking open heavily armored foes from afar even if they’re as not as reliable damage dealers as normal guns. Warplock weapons use special powder and mechanisms to fire, but there are rules to use them with normal gunpowder. This makes them notably less potent, of course. There is also some non-combat gear that Clan Skryre has developed. The only one I’ll be mentioning here will be the gas mask. Typically used by Clan Skryre Globadiers, these gas masks and big backpack filtration systems are designed to fit Skaven and will give their wearer a +20 bonus to any tests to resist poison gasses or inhalable toxins. Handy for when you drop your poison gas grenades or that crazy Pestilens rat next to you decides today is a good day to die with that Plague Censor. There are other items here, but they really relate to Warlock Engineering, so I’ll cover them when I get to that at the end of this chapter. Talking about non-combat material makes a good segue into warpstone, though. Here is where we get more detailed rules about what it does. These rules are a little scattered throughout the chapter. As discussed before, Warpstone is basically solidified and condensed magic. The dark, unrefined kind. It packs incredible magical power for its size and weight because of that. Skaven absolutely love it. They are naturally resistant to its debilitating effects and can ‘safely’ use it far more than anyone else. Just touching unrefined warpstone will cause damage and mutation to people. Touching unrefined warpstone without protection gets you an automatic Damage 3 hit that ignores armor and toughness. You also lose one Wound permanently. Even Skaven suffer these effects. In addition, any spellcaster insane or unlucky enough to use a spell when standing next to this stuff gets a +6 to casting checks (A phenomenally massive bonus on what is often 2 or 3d10 rolls). The downside is they must roll an additional dice that doesn’t apply to the casting check, but only exists to increase the odds of a miscast. In addition, the spellcaster is liable to the unpleasant side effects of using Chaos magic as listed in the core book. Skaven will take this warpstone and refine it into ‘safer’ and more useful forms. Typically, it’s put into items and drugs or refined into Warpstone Tokens to use as currency. In addition, these tokens can be eaten by a Skaven for a +3 to their next casting check. The downside is that for miscasts, doubles count as triples and triples count as quadruples. This is an incredibly dangerous downside and standing next to the unrefined stuff seems marginally safer and more helpful. The ‘upside’ to this is that warpstone is addictive to Skaven. A Skaven using warpstone tokens like this take a -10 Willpower test or will be addicted to warpstone. An addicted Skaven must consume at least one Token a day. Failing to do this will inflict a -10 to all stats per day he has gone without warpstone. If their Toughness reaches zero, they die. This addiction is also incurable. The bright side is that a warpstone addict ignores the penalties for consuming warpstone. Warpstone dust can be made instead of tokens, which can be snuffed or consumed to have the same effect as a Token. It can also be used to create mutations from touching it in non-Skaven, making this a favorite toy of Chaos cultists. Be careful looting Skaven. Sidenote, anyone who is not a Skaven attempting to use warpstone this way gets all the above listed benefits and curses, but also has to take a -20 Toughness test per dose used or gain a Mutation. It’d certainly make an exciting, if short, lifestyle choice. Next: Skaven magic. kommy5 fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Dec 2, 2017 |
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Dec 2, 2017 21:27
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I'm really not a fan of the extra mutation surprise on the two weapons that have it. Those things are nasty enough with being armor-ignoring sources of serious damage without also having 'Oh and you mutate' save or get hosed rules thrown on top.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:31
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Hunt11 posted:Back when beast was reviewed didn't somebody post a podcast about it? Uhh, yup, I'm the one who reviewed it and the one who posted the podcasts. Kurieg posted:
Kurieg posted:We did a podcast based on the Kickstarter preview when it first came out We also did a podcast earlier this year about conquering heroes that I don't think I posted here.
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Dec 2, 2017 21:41
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