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Now for a section on roleplaying for Adventure. Chapter 7: Roleplaying It starts with a discussion of character teams, and making sure that people don’t end up with characters that overlap so badly that one or the other of them won’t have much to do. They point out that similar sounding characters can in practice have very different roles if they do a good job of thinking through how the operate and what their specialties are. They then discuss the focus of a team, which speaks to how the characters are even together. They give some examples of ‘focused’ team types, where everyone is there for the same reason (whether they’re scientists, investigators, vigilantes, what have you). It moves on to some advice for dealing with situations where you have players who can’t always be around. They suggest everyone give the Storyteller a brief description of their character’s personality so they can run them as an NPC (or give them to another player, but they note that’s much more fraught since some people will have the temptation to drive their temporary character like a rented horse, hard and in in the rain). They even note that if someone really fucks up at acting in character for someone else (including you as Storyteller) you should lean into that poo poo and whoops they were replaced by the diabolical Chameleon or somesuch. Another option is to have a stable of characters who are just run by whoever’s there (with people able to make most sessions getting ‘dibs’ on a character that’s ‘theirs’). It finishes in some advice as to how to handle Cliffhangers if players can’t make the next session. This is all some really good advice for casual groups, honestly. We get some more advice on thinking through what motivates the group and why they’re together. We then get some advice on what to AVOID from the pulp genre, namely what it terms The Doc Savage Problem. A lot of pulp’s signature characters, while they might have allies and running characters and such, are at the end of the day the main character of their stories. Everyone else exists to further their plot. This isn’t just Doc of course, The Shadow and The Phantom and who knows who else are the same. You’re cautioned against making everything about one character, which no poo poo. They then make sure to tell you not to make everything about your special snowflake NPC, which hell yeah. I will say there can be a good niche for player-equivalent npc allies if you’re just in a situation where you don’t have enough players and they’ll be unable to complete combat encounters as a result. But you need to be super careful about it. They then talk a bit about the setting. They note that where not otherwise contradicted it’s supposed to match real history, and that does mean players can and likely every so often will come into contact with real rear end historical people. Run historical characters with a sense of respect for them as dead people even if they’re lovely people and equally don’t let your players try and run roughshod over history using their out of game knowledge. Maybe Hitler really is a fairly stable veteran of the Great War and focuses on his mediocre art, but have you heard about this Nazi movement Klaus Hoessler started? They’re really scary, they might be a problem. Magic gets discussed, noting that magic isn’t real per se it’s all Z-waves but at the same time this can all LOOK like magic, be interpreted as such by the users/viewers, and since Z-waves have always existed it’s possible any given thing you decide could have actually been Z-wave powered not-magic. It also suggests if you want an actual hidden magic game you should play loving Mage, though not in so many words. They suggest you go look up actual old photos and such to help make the setting feel real when they’re somewhere historical, which is a great idea. They also point out that maybe you don’t even care about long-term repercussions, like say running a one-shot story. Just figure out how/if the characters hosed up history afterwards if you run again. In another sidebar they talk about aliens, giving a couple of options. First of all, you could dig out Trinity and just loving have some of the aliens from that show up. They’re all pretty cool and aren’t necessarily even going to be ‘bad guys’, some of the Trinity aliens are pretty chill and fun. The other option is that Z-waves have propagated to nearby planets and made little green men from Mars a real loving thing (in the same way they’ve made there be an actual secret hollow Earth). They then have the two paragraphs that make Aeon much better than a lot of settings of the era. They’ve said this before but they reiterate, while there is theoretically a metaplot you can and should just loving ignore any of it that you don’t like. If some part of Adventure doesn’t work for you gently caress it change it the game’s not about their ‘clever’ metastory. And never, ever feel like you need to do something JUST to maintain consistency with Aberrant and Trinity. They point out the specific deets of those settings are just one possible chain of events, and if you don’t like them or gently caress something up significantly then whatever, it won’t happen that way. And that’s totally your call for that to happen. We’ll see this in the Trinity adventure series I have but they’re also much better in general about letting the players actually be important to events that are major in the setting. When earth is to be saved, while your victory is made plausible by outside assistance you’re still the ones who actually deal the final blow against the threat. We then get a lot about what Pulp really is. The big thing they note is to remember that pulp is very black and white. Even when characters are ambiguous in their moral choices or might have some really good points, at the end of the day The Shadow’s a good guy and Fu Manchu’s a bad guy and that’s that. The political upheaval going on in depression-era America is also a big theme, with pervasive crime and corruption. Air travel hasn’t become commonplace yet, and to a large extent that’s what kills the ‘wonder’ of the world between Adventure and Aberrant. They also bring up a good point, because there’s a pulp elephant in the room if you’re familiar with fiction of the era. Horror is pretty common and Lovecraft’s work was pulp as gently caress (The Dunwich Horror is a great example of a pulp-y Lovecraft story), but you’re not running Call of Cthulhu so find a good middle ground on it. There’s then a bit on what Pulp ISN’T. Pulp isn’t noir, for one. Noir isn’t so much black-and-white as just all black. It’s equally not camp. You’re not supposed to be quite that over the top or silly. This isn’t a superhero game yet, that’s later. Just to keep in mind. Genre and period conventions come up next. It’s all about action, and sometimes it’s the bad guys doing pre-emptive action on the heroes. Be crazy in your stunts, action movie poo poo is the word of the day. The setting is unavoidably really loving racist at a level that most people will find uncomfortable so make sure you’re handling that carefully. Science is also key to the genre, but don’t let things mire down in it. It then gives some storytelling advice, nothing that really need summaries since it’d kind of apply to any game but it’s actually pretty good poo poo. We close on some thoughts on creating villains, with our final paragraph noting that skull shaped fortresses tend to be very explosive. Love this book. Next time we’ll be talking about the story characters they include in the book, which are actually pretty cool. After that I’ll make some more characters, then we’ll move on to Aberrant.
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Nov 5, 2018 15:17
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You've brought up some of the broken Knacks in Adventure; is it as broken as I've heard Aberrant and Scion are? Maybe not, without Hyper-Attributes. drat near every White Wolf game seems to be plagued by a) stuff that breaks the action economy, b) offense racking up much faster than defense, and c) stuff that can magickally snipe you from miles away. Kai Tave posted:This is an extremely important point. Unknown Armies isn't really playing some long-form "gotcha" about magic. All the stuff about normal non-magical people being able to hold jobs, have positive relationships with others, etc, that stuff is important not to try and tell you the reader and/or player "god these adepts are so fuckin stupid for doing this," it's to emphasize that magic exacts a terrible cost but people still pay that price because magic is still real powerful poo poo. If magic was both insanely costly and self-destructive as well as being completely worthless the entire premise of the game would fall apart. Which isn't to say that a lot of adepts don't wind up face down in the proverbial (and literal) gutters, but UA is in large part a game of "what are you willing to do to try and grab a handful of real power?" There's a reason that Alex Abel, a man who by all accounts had won at life as hard as it was possible to win, bent his vast fortune towards the pursuit of magic instead of just bankrolling his own puppet US President or something. oriongates posted:It can definitely be hard to grok that Adepts are a completely warped point of view. If you're trying to play a dipsomancer on the weekend you aren't getting the idea. To a dipsomancer sobriety is the nightmare world that everyone else lives in and alcohol is the only way they can wake up from the nightmare. The world only makes sense when it's kind of fuzzy...AA is like a group of cthulhu cultists worshipping some mad, evil god they can't understand. Stolze's own novel features two Entropomancers and an Avatar of the Mystic Hermaphrodite who are a hosed-up, dysfunctional family, but not directly because of magickal compulsions. It's because of their larger goal: they brought up their son to be the Mystic Hermaphrodite in a bizarre scheme to produce a magickal messiah. They got the idea from some Satan-worshippers they took down. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 16:13
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I think my problem with the farmer adept is I know a couple farmers, and the lifestyle required to generate charges by raising livestock means they won't have any time to actually do anything but use those charges to help them farm more. Since the whole Adept thing is based on obsession, I'm going to assume you can't have some chickens in the backyard you tap for the occasional minor change. Running a farm is a 24/7 operation, so it's a compelling NPC class (particularly with the human sacrifice angle) but not something I could see working with PCs unless it's a very, very low-stakes campaign or something where sessions can have months of in-game time pass between each setpiece.
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Nov 5, 2018 16:27
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Big Mad Drongo posted:I think my problem with the farmer adept is I know a couple farmers, and the lifestyle required to generate charges by raising livestock means they won't have any time to actually do anything but use those charges to help them farm more. Since the whole Adept thing is based on obsession, I'm going to assume you can't have some chickens in the backyard you tap for the occasional minor change. Running a farm is a 24/7 operation, so it's a compelling NPC class (particularly with the human sacrifice angle) but not something I could see working with PCs unless it's a very, very low-stakes campaign or something where sessions can have months of in-game time pass between each setpiece.
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Nov 5, 2018 16:34
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Strange Matter posted:That's actually not quite what happened. This honestly seems like a great set-up or season finale for a TV series.
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Nov 5, 2018 16:59
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Strange Matter posted:Turns out farmwizards are UA3's version of Videomancers. Sounds about right, yeah. Though the one dude I have in mind has what could be an interesting paradoxical "gently caress nature even as I nurture it" quirk: his hobby is growing plants in New Jersey that have no business growing in New Jersey. Between his tiny farm, some estates he's worked at and family members' houses there's a bunch of rare, often tropical vegetation that has no loving business being here but it's alive and he won't loving let some measly ice and snow kill it.
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Nov 5, 2018 17:27
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Sounds about right, yeah. Though the one dude I have in mind has what could be an interesting paradoxical "gently caress nature even as I nurture it" quirk: his hobby is growing plants in New Jersey that have no business growing in New Jersey. Between his tiny farm, some estates he's worked at and family members' houses there's a bunch of rare, often tropical vegetation that has no loving business being here but it's alive and he won't loving let some measly ice and snow kill it. i think that's kind of what makes avatars more interesting to me than adepts - the flexibility to redefine your role by living it. if you want to take the concept of The Masterless Man but decide that your twist is that it's a modern update and instead of being a wandering killer, you're a self-employed entrepreneur who can't ever voluntarily work for someone else, or pay taxes, or make use of public goods, or accept charity, you can totally make that your thing (maybe The Self-Made Man) and if you can convince enough other people that your take is the right one, it literally becomes so. adepts are purposely pigeonholed into only doing one thing, and while that gives them much greater power over their limited purview, the lack of flexibility just feels cookiecutter. i imagine that adepts of X have a lot more similarity than avatars of Y, because avatars are much more open to your personal interpretation of that role.
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Nov 5, 2018 18:24
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Adepts are pigeonholed into using certain methods to get charges and to approaching problems in certain ways. Your goals in the Underground can be drat near anything. I do think there should be flexibility in the schools if it's necessary for a cool character concept, but I don't think it would be possible to include a good build-your-own-school rubric in the rules. That's got to be worked out with the GM.
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Nov 5, 2018 18:28
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Barudak posted:Touching on murder grandma in The End- 2 people a month mysteriously die in a town of 266. In a year nearly 10% of the population is dead. Theres pulling numbers from your rear end and theres not even doing napkin math for the hard numbers you provide. I just checked on murder grandma in the The End d20 Lost Souls edition (oooo edgy). No further description but the population of Rakow was changed to 666! Cue lameass spooky music. Going through the revised, they did raise pretty much all the colony's population and added a few more, but I'm not going to cover them because the writing is at the same level as 1e.
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Nov 5, 2018 18:29
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Halloween Jack posted:Adepts are pigeonholed into using certain methods to get charges and to approaching problems in certain ways. Your goals in the Underground can be drat near anything. Then you have Adepts who like speedrunners in the video game of life, taking advantage of glitches in the universe's code to blast themselves into higher tiers of power, but only by walking a razor's edge of viable action. If you falter for even a moment in the bizarre rituals that make your schtick work your entire power base collapses entirely, because magick isn't supposed to work that way. The universe wants Avatars to exist because they interact directly with the Stratosphere and are playing by the rules. Adepts are an ugly side-effect of an anthropocentric cosmology where the creator is a composite demi-urge of individuals who are super into a specific way of life and not so concerned about the coherence of the world they made, as long as they get to inject their flavor into it.
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Nov 5, 2018 18:37
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I tend to side with the adepts who believe that the world of UA is weird because it was a hack job done by committee.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:11
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Halloween Jack posted:I tend to side with the adepts who believe that the world of UA is weird because it was a hack job done by committee.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:31
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Strange Matter posted:I've always found it a little disappointing that there's no end-game for Adepts the way there is for Avatars (Ascension), but actually there is-- score a Major Charge and do something crazy to reshape the world in your image. Or get extremely horrible, petty revenge on someone.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:33
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Halloween Jack posted:You've brought up some of the broken Knacks in Adventure; is it as broken as I've heard Aberrant and Scion are? Maybe not, without Hyper-Attributes. So Adventure is pretty easy to break (I did it once in the super-science post and I'll have a whole update of doing it more after we get through the last update of the book). Aberrant is kind of hard NOT to break, which almost sort of makes everything balance out. There's a couple of ways to get multiple extra actions, you can get laughable offensive dice totals (though you can also get laughable soak for any OTHER setting), and there's some deep bullshit available. Have you ever wanted to punch someone and inflict 25 automatic successes of aggravated damage on them? Because that's a thing that can happen in Aberrant. That's like, kill a V:tES Antediluvian poo poo. The most powerful Novas can dps down Caine's statblock that only contains the words 'gently caress you'. When we get into how Nova powers work, there's no reason to think magic is anything more than 'comparable' to their poo poo. Feinne fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 19:41
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Here's the thing, though: Can you make an Aberrant who can say "nah" to 25 automatic aggravated damage? I notice WW games tend to give short shrift to Strong Tough Guy in favour of Fast Guy, even more so than most games that have a Dex-is-the-God-stat problem.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:45
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Halloween Jack posted:I do think there should be flexibility in the schools if it's necessary for a cool character concept, but I don't think it would be possible to include a good build-your-own-school rubric in the rules. That's got to be worked out with the GM. Actually the Adept chapter in UA3 starts with a section on building your own adept school! It's pretty loose and interpretation heavy, but it works by balancing the impact being an adept has on your life in terms of charging and tabooing with the cost and power of your formulas. It looks pretty useful, though I haven't had cause to use it yet.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:46
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Halloween Jack posted:Here's the thing, though: Can you make an Aberrant who can say "nah" to 25 automatic aggravated damage? I notice WW games tend to give short shrift to Strong Tough Guy in favour of Fast Guy, even more so than most games that have a Dex-is-the-God-stat problem. In the new version almost certainly - I know you can make a Scion who does it, though also in the new version (and Scion) nothing actually does that much damage at once in the first place, either.
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Nov 5, 2018 20:08
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Also when all else fails there's always gutter magick. Just assemble a ton of thematic poo poo and arrange it for your purposes, pump a Charge into it and stand the gently caress back.
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Nov 5, 2018 20:11
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Hostile V posted:Also when all else fails there's always gutter magick. Just assemble a ton of thematic poo poo and arrange it for your purposes, pump a Charge into it and stand the gently caress back.
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Nov 5, 2018 20:21
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Strange Matter posted:How does Gutter Magick work if you're an Avatar? Where do they get charges from? Eat very frequently at restaurants sponsored by Mak Attax, I'd imagine.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:11
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There are adepts who can get charges very easily, and there are ways to transfer charges (as well as, if I remember correctly, a very well kept secret of a Ritual that can create a charge.)
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Nov 5, 2018 21:16
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Halloween Jack posted:Here's the thing, though: Can you make an Aberrant who can say "nah" to 25 automatic aggravated damage? I notice WW games tend to give short shrift to Strong Tough Guy in favour of Fast Guy, even more so than most games that have a Dex-is-the-God-stat problem. Yes though it's harder, since you have to use a power that makes you super tough against relatively specific forms of attack.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:17
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The main takeaway from UA is that it's bum-fights with mages.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:56
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Mors Rattus posted:In the new version almost certainly - I know you can make a Scion who does it, though also in the new version (and Scion) nothing actually does that much damage at once in the first place, either. So they've balanced being strong and being fast?
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Nov 5, 2018 22:20
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Dawgstar posted:So they've balanced being strong and being fast? Yes. Among other things, Strength and Dex are now both purely attack stats (primarily for melee and ranged respectively), and your defense is based on the best of your three Resilience stats - so Stamina, for example, in someone physically focused.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:24
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Agrimancy reminds me of what Zizek said about Ayn Rand. Like, other farmers would be creeped out by you just coming out and saying that the entire enterprise is about domination and exploitation.Humbug Scoolbus posted:The main takeaway from UA is that it's bum-fights with mages.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:31
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Avatars feel very different from adepts because much of the whole basic process of what avatars are is taken whole cloth from Last Call. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's a good book. Maybe some adept stuff was inspired by it too but avatars as they exist are an inspiration from this book in particular and have barely changed in translation. So if avatars sometimes feel like they're part of an entirely different genre than what adepts are doing, it's 'cause they are.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:35
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 Thus Spoke Aroaleta posted:.. and Gorameios filled his lair with gold and jewels, stolen from the dark vaults of Saar-Atman; so infected by taint were the treasures, that the serpent was suffocated into an early death and the spirit of the conjuror won back the riches. In the nest of Gorameios does Saar-Atman forever brood. CHARACTER CREATION The players rules start with creating characters, with a little overview of the rules mixed in. They're simple enough that I don't really mind that as I do with most rpgs that sequence everything poorly for reference. It's mostly traditional in how you approach everything. The system is classless but in that shadowrun style where you have archetypes established that you want to consider. The first step is to pick a broad category, which is divided into the classic trio of Warrior, Rogue or Mystic, the catchall category for magic users. The Advanced Player guide splits off Rogue with an additional Hunter archetype, focused more on ranged attacks and awareness abilities. There's a list of good archetypal builds to work with, which are well-designed but have a little room to maneuver. You then need to pick your ability scores, which have a few problems.
There's also a few derived stats.
 interrupting Numbers with Cool Dude The basic mechanic of the game is rolling under your stats on a d20. You can either use 80 bits of point buy to get your stats or use the premade array. There's a maximum of 15 for starting out. Either way there's too many stats you really want to have high: Strength and Resolute are vital, and a decent vigilant and quick are always useful since they're defensive. Accuracy is a surprising dump stat since you can get substitutes with abilities easily, so you tend to pick between the remaining 3 for the middle range unless you have a build in mind. There's a note about how having low stats is good for defining your character, which rubs me the wrong way all of those notes do. After that, there's races to pick. Humans are divided up into Ambrians and Barbarians, although they're pretty similar. They both get a choice between two traits. Both can get Contacts with a particular group, and Ambrians can choose Privileged for a lot more starting money and Advantage on social checks within their community. Barbarians can take Bushcraft for reliable food-gathering while in Davokar or other wildernesses. They're both probably better than Contacts.  those 50 thaler go a long way Changelings are the replacements the Elves leave when they steal human children. Nobody's exactly sure why they leave anything behind, but Changelings tend to be disliked and have little connection to the elves beyond a physical resemblence in their natural form. They get the Pariah trait, which gives disadvantage on social checks but advantage when it's other people of your kind. They get the ability to buy the Shapeshifter trait as an exchange, and it's what you'd expect.  dunno why they have pariah I bet a lot of people would like to smooch that blue Goblins are strange little wierdos who come from the forest. They tend to be bombastic and wildly emotional, with a strange sense of humour, with hard to watch games like Hide the Boot, Tame the Ogre, Trim the Thistle, Tighten the Temple and Want a Smack, Molok? They're short lived: when they get to around 30 years old, they feel a calling to enter the deep forest, and they never return. Probably. They also get Pariah as a trait, despite their popularity in Thistlehold as day-laborers. In exchange, they get access to the ridiculously good Survival Instinct ability, that gives them an extra movement action, and at higher levels gives free armor and the ability to swap Movement for an extra Combat Action.  Always Consume Goblin Content Ogres are big brutish creatures that wander out from the forest, with no memories or name. This tends to lead to them being adopted by whoever finds them, introducing them to whatever culture they have and instilling some identity. They aren't stupid or anything like that, although they tend towards taciturn calm many mistake for it. They get Pariah as well, but can take the Robust ability, which is ridiculously good and gives you free armor and damage in exchange for no non-light armor and reduced Defense.  the famous scout Vitreona and her Ogre friend Deterror are the subject of many songs and tales The Advanced Players guide offers a few options that are rooted a little deeper into the lore and aren't as suited to new players, but are pretty cool. The Elves that are encountered in most games aren't the entirety of the race, they're an order of Warriors committed to defending the world from Symbaroum. Most have never been to their homelands in the west and are born into Guerilla War with hellish monsters and the humans that may provoke it. Their initiation ceremony is mostly Elders begging them for forgiveness. The elves have a life-cycle of increasing Elfness, starting at Spring Elves that are basically fairies, and rolling through the seasons with increasing power. Nobody's quite sure what's after winter, but the Elven Prince and Commander is close. Elves are Pariahs as well but can take a special trait for accessing the Elve's Ancestral Memories and temporarily getting a non-magical Ability.  Abducted Humans are the people swapped for changelings, used as conscripts and spies. Although the elves would never admit it, but they really like their company. They get Bushcraft like barbarians, and can speak Elvish but not read it.  I wish my lovely Elf dad would tell me whats going on Dwarves are loving weird and I'm here for it. They emerged as worms from the body of the World Serpent and were shaped by Symbaroum's Sorcerors into a labour force. Their birth tied them to the fate of the world, and could never be truly controlled, and developed an extreme sense of community and complex coded speech that is basically cockney rhyming slang mixed with a book of proverbs, and never wrote anything in case their Symbar masters would read it. They moved to a fortress city in the mountains, and most of the dwarves in human communities are ex-nobles who were kicked out after a bloody rebellion. They get the perks of Perfect Memory (which means nothing in rpgs) and Earthbound, which means they take physical damage instead of Corruption, because they don't have a soul in the usual sense. Their semi-magic language also lets them take a Curse ability as if it wasn't magical.  The Trolls that aren't hungry monsters live in underground kingdoms, holding court in halls festooned with their artefacts and decorations. They have a fairly brutal culture built upon how much you can contribute, and leadership goes to whoever is willing to fight and scheme for it. They see conflict as a way to improve themselves and their community, and don't show mercy to those who refuse it. Trolls get access to a few abilities usually reserved for monsters, and probably shouldn't because that would be overpowered. In exchange they get pariah again and the GM's expected to be harsh about it.  The Undead are caused by the incoming twilight of the world: some people who die come back afterwards. You get access to a bunch of abilities made for Undead enemies, which are pretty powerful, but the undead really aren't popular and you'll probably have an angry mob appearing if you can't hide it. A small price to pay for total immunity to corruption, half-damge from non-magic effects and a chilling aura that stuns people. Their art is pretty boring and this post is too long so just imagine a zombie dude. It's a good spread of races overall. the main book fits adventurers without special knowledge of the setting, and despite balance issues and the overuse of Pariah, they're all interesting choices. Next time: Abilities. So many Abilities
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Nov 5, 2018 23:57
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Thus Spoke Aroaleta posted:“... and he who was called ‘first among equals’ was nevertheless the fastest, the toughest and the most skilled with the spear; he was Maiesticar, the pillager who thrust Spiderbane at the heart of the Spider King, and all the way through.” Abilities: Your character's abilities are the meat of how your guy is built, and the majority of your character's advancement. There's a lot of them, but they all follow roughly the same structure. Each ability comes at 3 ranks, Novice, Adept and Master, and cost 10, 20 and 30 points respectively. You start with 1 adept ability and 3 novice ones. The game's action economy is 1 Movement and 1 Combat Action, and you can only use 1 Active ability per combat action, so stacking more dramatic effects doesn't work. There's also Free actions that are mostly for passive buffs, and Reactions that have their own trigger. Some abilities (mostly magic ones) require you have invested in a single archetype, or qualify as a Profession, a prestige class with a bad name for the more heavy duty combatants in the setting. There's too many abilities to go through each one, so I'll do a brief overview.  It's criminal that there's no Witcher knockoffs in the game Non-Combat ones are pretty rare. Most end up giving you some utility stuff in some sense, but anything really oriented towards non-combat is a minor boon you can take (which aren't interesting and I can't be bothered discussing), or a magic Ritual. The main ones are Loremaster, which helps a bit with artefacts but mainly allows you to ask the GM for setting info or speak more esoteric languages like elven or Symbaroum, which is very handy. Beast Lore wraps up every D&D ranger class feature into one, also boosting other player's damage against your favored enemy (in a very broad category). There's a couple crafting abilities that can be fun if you gently caress with the core book. There's also Witch Sight that lets you see people's alignment and Corruption, which saves time. Useful Passives are always handy, since they get around poor stats and the limited action economy. Everybody will want to get into these and focus their good aspects, or increase survivability. Every warrior that went for Strength will have Iron Fist, which replaces Accuracy with Strength for melee attacks and gives extra damage later, for instance. At some point, everybody's going to grab Rerolls against mind-affecting magic, increased stats and They're often kind of boring on paper, but when you can reliably do your fundamentals you can get in and out of very interesting situations.  This is apparently a Gentleman Thief. says a lot about the state Yndaros is in. Fighting Styles are a big part of most character's investment. It tends to increase damage and offer an active ability as a capstone. Two-Handed Force lets you ignore armor at Master Level, Polearm Master is defensively powerful and gives you free attacks when you approach enemies and at Master, stop people from attacking you if you hit them with a free attack, and the rest give stuff like extra attacks and other benefits. The Advanced Players guide gave new abilities for different sorts of weapons, so if you're using that you'll take one for as many categories as you can get. It's a pretty simple system that works out well, although there's things that are fundamental enough everybody in an archetype will get it. Next up: Magic Abilities
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Nov 6, 2018 01:21
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So it's supposed to be super-obvious that Ogres are what happens to goblins that disappear into the forest, right?
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Nov 6, 2018 01:28
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unseenlibrarian posted:So it's supposed to be super-obvious that Ogres are what happens to goblins that disappear into the forest, right? actually goblins turn into Trolls, ogres are increasingly common failures of the process, but yeah they're related.
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Nov 6, 2018 01:34
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Strange Matter posted:How does Gutter Magick work if you're an Avatar? Where do they get charges from? IIRC there's a ritual that can give anyone a minor charge once a month, even if you have no adept/avatar powers (you just can't do anything with it). it's based on your birthday and the further away from the date you get, the harder and more elaborate the ritual becomes, but then when the calendar wraps and you start closing in on your birthday, it gets easier and easier. on your actual birthday you just have to say some specific ritual phrase and BLAMMO free minor charge. in-setting, even knowing that this ritual exists puts your life at risk, both from people that want to learn it (and think you might know it) and from people that want to keep it a secret (and think you might know it). actually learning this ritual is presented as something that you could build a whole campaign around, because it very nearly violates one of the setting conceits about magic (you can't get something for nothing) and even if the original ritual only works once a month, you just know that if the right adept learned it they'd have the insane level of focus required to tease out the components and modify it so that it would work more frequently, or maybe rig it to pay out a significant charge. the other piece of the puzzle re: your question is that avatars aren't really supposed to be doing gutter magick. they technically can, but their whole thing is tapping into the gestalt unconsciousness of humanity. an avatar that's playing their role well is probably going to get much better mileage out of applying their existing powers in a creative way, rather than trying to cobble together something that they're barely equipped to handle.
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Nov 6, 2018 04:22
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I mean Avatars are the Gallants to the Goofus of the Adepts as far as I could see from reading over UA2e so even if they can technically do gutter magic they generally probably wouldn't because they have better things to do.
Feinne fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Nov 6, 2018 |
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Nov 6, 2018 06:14
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So you basically get a minor charge as a birthday present?
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Nov 6, 2018 08:41
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Strange Matter posted:It's telling that Avatars are basically how the mystical underground is supposed to work. You get broad but largely subtle power in exchange for proscribed behavior, but the rules are lenient. You don't even need to really believe what you're doing. As long as you follow the rules it works. What's funny is that "speedrunning the universe to cheat your way into True Power" is exactly what the guy in Fly to Heaven did by attempting to brute-force his way into the Statosphere by turning himself into an Avatar of The Terrorist. And if they players don't manage to stop him it works.
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Nov 6, 2018 08:50
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Freaking Crumbum posted:IIRC there's a ritual that can give anyone a minor charge once a month, even if you have no adept/avatar powers (you just can't do anything with it). it's based on your birthday and the further away from the date you get, the harder and more elaborate the ritual becomes, but then when the calendar wraps and you start closing in on your birthday, it gets easier and easier. on your actual birthday you just have to say some specific ritual phrase and BLAMMO free minor charge. The third piece of the puzzle is that gutter magick doesn't actually require charges. If you have them and can spend them, they're good for a bonus on your roll (+10% for a minor, +20% for a significant, and they don't even bother listing for a major because why would you do that), but they aren't necessary to make the magic work. All you need to use gutter magick are the appropriate symbols and either an identity with the Casts Gutter Magick feature (Adept and Avatar identities get this free) or a single Hardened notch in Unnatural. So the answer to "how do avatars use gutter magick" is "with a straight, unmodified roll of their Avatar identity."
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Nov 6, 2018 08:51
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I feel like Adepts can't really game the system that much since they're that crazy. Also, it's not like in Genius the Transgression where insanity powers your magic, but that their insanity resonates with reality in some way - otherwise, any crazy person would be a wizard and asylums would get very Silent Hill, fast. That and Trump would be a major, idk, Demagogumancer. Lose charges if you ever admit that you're wrong, gain charges every time you ouright lie to a bunch of people and nothing bad happens to you.
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Nov 6, 2018 09:31
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JcDent posted:That and Trump would be a major, idk, Demagogumancer. Lose charges if you ever admit that you're wrong, gain charges every time you ouright lie to a bunch of people and nothing bad happens to you. There's an Avatar path called the Demagogue which is pretty much entirely this.
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Nov 6, 2018 10:53
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I thought adepts couldn't use charging rituals? Or at least not safely, because they violate the principles upon which adept magic is based and knowing that you could get significant charges out of a ritual is literally mind breaking.
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Nov 6, 2018 13:53
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Anniversary posted:I thought adepts couldn't use charging rituals? Or at least not safely, because they violate the principles upon which adept magic is based and knowing that you could get significant charges out of a ritual is literally mind breaking. Nah, they can use them, it's just that most adepts don't think they exist/make sense because, to an adept, their charging method is pretty much the core of their hosed-up worldview--basically, they view the entire concept of "a thaumaturgic ritual that gives you charges" with about the same credulity as a normal person views "if I get blitzed enough I can teleport." On the rare occasion an adept does discover a functional charging ritual and actually tries it, they generally have very good reason to keep it secret, since it's probably a huge advantage against other adepts.
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Nov 6, 2018 14:18
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