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grassy gnoll posted:SKAVEN, A MORAL TALE Kinda want to play a campaign surrounding a minor Skaven clan who have decided that they've never been any good at open warfare or politics and instead will be remembered forever through their theatrical prowess. This of course involves holding Council members hostage to get them to show up, etc.
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Dec 6, 2018 19:53
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By popular demand posted:The best quote about the oVamp Sabbat described them as fun to watch: Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 20:06
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I think another important thing about Skaven (and Dark Elves, for that matter), is that even if they are a threat, they will inevitably own goal themselves through their own societal issues and twisted mindsets, meaning that even if they win today, the fun can go on. The greatest sin of Chaos (aside from the Big Four being boring), is that if they win, the fun stops. They're not bad villains as far as it goes but they're not good in a format where there's any doubt about who wins at the end of the day, and the worst part is how "Chaos winning is inevitable" is constantly pushed by Games Workshop, because that's exactly backwards from what it should be.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:07
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Draxion posted:Kinda want to play a campaign surrounding a minor Skaven clan who have decided that they've never been any good at open warfare or politics and instead will be remembered forever through their theatrical prowess. This of course involves holding Council members hostage to get them to show up, etc. Honestly, most of the Skaven who matter got there by deciding that their Thing was more important than the scheming, and subordinated the plots to their obsession with some sort of mad science or being really good at murdering.
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Dec 6, 2018 20:08
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I forget, wasn't it Ikit Claw who in at least one edition of the Skaven army book could use literally every lore of magic bar maybe High? Just to continue on with Skaven magic being busted as gently caress. But also yes, part of the "charming" aspect of Skaven is that they're literally living a Fantasy version of Paranoia, so even though you know it'd be awful if any of them won, you can't kind of help but root for one of them to do so, because everyone he's backstabbing is at least as bad as he is, and somehow all Skaven are the underdog because they're constantly working very hard to sabotage themselves by sabotaging everyone around them.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:05
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PurpleXVI posted:I forget, wasn't it Ikit Claw who in at least one edition of the Skaven army book could use literally every lore of magic bar maybe High? Just to continue on with Skaven magic being busted as gently caress. Skaven Seers get Mag 3 at Career 2, faster than any other caster type in the game, and have a Lore full of surprisingly easy to cast and insanely useful spells. Including stuff like 'CN 25 to inflict 6-15 Wounds, no reduction, every round for Mag rounds' or 'CN 14 Hit everyone in an AoE for 5-14 Wounds, no reductions if they fail a Tough-10 save'. They get AoE, they get utility, they get to ignore Toughness and Armor surprisingly often (this is an EXTREMELY BAD IDEA), they get cheap single-targets, they get a cheap single target that also stuns, and they can teleport. And all of it is easier to cast than most Collegiate magic. Also at 3rd tier they get a second attack per round in melee for some reason. The only more insane caster is the Bray Shaman and it was way more clear that you kind of weren't supposed to have one for a PC. E: Oh, also, Skaven have Dark Magic by default (so they can toss in an extra unkept die, though it will count for miscasts) AND they can eat Warpstone tokens (their GP) to add +3 to a casting roll without risking exploding or mutating (it does make miscasts go up 1 step in severity). They have just bonkers spellcasting. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 21:11
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The main cost to all this is that: 1. All other Skaven careers are awful. 2. Skaven by default have very poor Fate...except for Gray Seers.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:19
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Thanquol is legitimately one of the most powerful wizards in the world. This is the guy who Teclis sees at work and is reminded that he should probably practice more. It's just, he's Thanquol.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:19
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Mors Rattus posted:The main cost to all this is that: Almost every Skaven advanced career is stronger than its equivalent human one. This is one of the problems I'll be talking about when we get to the rats mechanics. The Clan Chieftan is no poo poo the strongest non Chaos Lord/Vampire Lord fighting career in the game except MAYBE Grail Knight from their Virtues. Also, having played a vampire, '0 fate' is actually a pretty bad balancing mechanic because it takes away one of the major 'meaningful decisions' you make in game often. It definitely makes you weaker, and you definitely feel it. But also, only Common Skaven really have totally lovely fate. Stormvermin are close to Elfs in Fate (just with the small chance of having 0) and Grey Seers have the same Fate as dwarfs. Admittedly, you only have a 10% chance of making a non-Common rat. E: It would take some truly tremendous luck, but it's possible to make a Skaven with 100% S and T. And like 30-40 Wounds. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 21:22
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I keep meaning to pickup Total Warhammer 2 for the Skaven and Lizardman but I just haven't gotten around to it on account of being so goddamn terrible at battles in the first one.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:50
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Night10194 posted:Almost every Skaven advanced career is stronger than its equivalent human one. This is one of the problems I'll be talking about when we get to the rats mechanics. The Clan Chieftan is no poo poo the strongest non Chaos Lord/Vampire Lord fighting career in the game except MAYBE Grail Knight from their Virtues. Huh. Could've sworn I remembered Skaven careers being stacked heavily against PCs surviving.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:51
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Mors Rattus posted:Huh. Could've sworn I remembered Skaven careers being stacked heavily against PCs surviving. Oh, your FIRST career is. But that also just means it only take like 5-6 advances to get out of Clanrat. It's all the promoted careers that rock. Also a lot of the Great Clan 1st tiers are actually pretty decent.
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Dec 6, 2018 21:53
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wiegieman posted:Thanquol is legitimately one of the most powerful wizards in the world. This is the guy who Teclis sees at work and is reminded that he should probably practice more. It's just, he's Thanquol. Thanquol also has the advantage that the Horned Rat thinks he's funny as poo poo and basically has him surrounded by an aura that makes the bad things that by all rights should happen to him hit someone else. For example after one of his many failures he's been summoned before the Council of Thirteen, certain they're going to fuckin' kill him because it's so painfully obvious that it was that the fuckup was all on him and no amount of dissembling is going to save him. Then when he gets there, before he can even start thrashing around claiming traitors top to bottom sabotaged him, the Council basically are like 'nah man you did good, you hurt the man-things and you got that warlord clan that was scheming against us gutted so that we could just wipe them out at our leisure, it was everything we could have hoped for'. That is what it is to live as Grey Seer Thanquol. Also this man-thing and dwarf-thing KEEP SHOWING UP IT ISN'T FAIR.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:41
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Yeah, Thanquol lives this bizarrely charmed life where he just continually fails upward. Hell, he managed to get his personal, specially designed, actually competent and powerful cyborg rat ogre killed...and then they reanimated it as a zombie robot rat ogre for him, with even greater competence.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:44
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, Thanquol lives this bizarrely charmed life where he just continually fails upward. I think his charmed life in the game equated to a 4+ Ward save. Maybe when you made saves it deflected onto nearby units? That sounds pretty Skaven-y.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:22
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Dawgstar posted:I think his charmed life in the game equated to a 4+ Ward save. Maybe when you made saves it deflected onto nearby units? That sounds pretty Skaven-y. That's exactly how it worked. Everyone should be glad he constantly outthinks himself because as noted he's a poo poo-hot wizard.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:30
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Children of the Horned Rat RatNazi.gov Rat people being nazis and all, they love government! As long as they're in charge of it. To that end, they've developed a system where the most powerfully placed rats rule over all the others, and also live forever (until they don't). This is the Council of Thirteen. Here you will always find 4 reps from the Great Clans of Eshin, Pestilens, Skryre, and Moulder, who form a voting bloc that glares meaningfully at any of the 7 Flavor of the Month Warlord reps that squeak about making trouble or trying to move up in the world, then the Seerlord, master of the Grey Seers. The 13th seat is always left open so that the Great Horned Rat can swing buy and chill if he wants. This is literal: Every now and then the Councilors see a huge, shadowy, horned face appear in the 13th seat. They're not entirely sure it's the actual GHR, or if the way they open each session by doing lines of space coke might be loving with their heads, but they're terrified to offend him and always do what he says when it happens. The Council's main objective is That is not hyperbole. Warlords can challenge other Warlords who are on the Council to single combat to try to take their seat. Note this only works if you challenge a Warlord Clan rep; you try this poo poo with a Great Clan Rep or the Seer Lord they will destroy you and your entire clan, you will go directly to Rat Hell, everyone will have a good chortle about it. You'd think this would lead to constant challenges to personal combat, but A: You gotta hold the seat once you win it, and boy are a lot of people gonna be after your tail to take it from you and B: Skaven goddamn hate fair duels and personal combat. Actually fighting another guy, from the front when he knows you're coming? On even footing? That's horseshit and most Warlords won't stand for it. Most Warlords would prefer the method where they destroy the entire Clan of the Council Rep, since that involves a lot less personal danger (directly). THIS is why having a seat is so dangerous; you've got to defend against all comers and the rats' whole 'competition makes us strong' thing means that the Council may cheat in your favor if they like you, but they aren't going to outright forbid people taking a swing at you. Finally, you can engineer something horrible happening to a clan or Councillor, and then when the seat is empty, the Councillors draw lots at random to see which Lesser Clan gets the honor of the new seat. This is a totally randomized and completely fair way of interpreting the will of the Great Horned Rat and no-one ever messes with it or tricks anyone about it (they all do, immediately, forever). The Council votes on major decisions, which you'd think would make the 7 Lesser reps the strongest block by numbers, but they're always being bribed, cajoled, and threatened by the Greater Clans, and there's always the option of flipping the table and killing a couple Lesser Clans (which the Greaters can definitely accomplish, they're defined by massively outnumbering and outmaterialing any individual Lesser) which the Lesser Reps have to be aware of. In general, the only thing the 4 Greater Clans can agree on is there should probably only be 4 Greater Clans. Everything in Skaven society is set up to force the weak to work together on a level Skaven just usually don't do if they want any chance of challenging the strong. In the case of a split vote (6-6), the Seerlord interprets the Great Horned Rat's 13th vote. In practice, this means ties tend to break in favor of whatever the Seerlord wanted. Still, Seerlord, I'd be a little wary about actually claiming the will of the Great Horned Rat as your own; he's got a sense of humor and he's always watching you. Our illustrious Great Clans begin with Eshin, the Ninja Rats who Ninja. Eshin is both critical to the Council, and smart enough to generally try to support the Council as a political institution (to ensure they continue to benefit from being part of it) rather than chasing short-sighted gains for Eshin. See, one thing all Skaven fear is death. Eshin is really good at making it hard for you to say 'I am 100% safe from death after making them mad' on a personal scale. Skaven fear being assassinated a lot more than they fear losing a battle; a Warlord is usually at the back and might get away if his army is destroyed. There's no 'run and fight another day' when someone sends Snikch at you. That's you, the leader, the important guy, dead, which means you're going to make decisions around not having highly competent assassins dispatched to murder you. They're not infallible assassins, but they're good enough that anyone who crosses their clan now has to start accounting for 'get killed to death by ninjas'. Eshin doesn't actually talk themselves up externally. They let results speak for themselves. They collect secrets, wealth, and power, but they don't use their blackmail. No-one is quite sure what their ninja plan is, but they've got to have one, right? There's no way Skaven would be content with just serving as a powerful, respected secret police force and spy network, right? That couldn't be it. So far, Eshin has primarily done its murdering and spying well, and unlike Pestilens, they got their position by providing a legitimate and needed service, not by taking it in a brutal civil war. Their reputation for relative honesty means that when they want to make up an accusation, people believe them. Their enemies have noticed that the Eshin can call you out as a heretic or traitor at any time and be believed, even if they got the manner of your treason or heresy wrong (let's be fair, every powerful Skaven is probably committing some form of treason or heresy). They also really like kung fu and martial arts weapons, using little punch daggers, learning tail fighting and the deadly art of the open paw so they can snap peoples' necks, and they climb and do parkour all the time. To move up in Eshin, you actually have to accomplish things and learn new martial arts. They rent their little Night Runner mook ninjas out to other clans and Warlords, and if you learn to do a sick jump kick they promote you to Gutter Runner, where you Clan Moulder is a business. Clan Moulder is a very successful business. Skaven love having monsters and minions and custom bio-organic-weapons to throw at people, and Clan Moulder supplies them like a competent Umbrella Inc. The rats of Moulder tinker with the squishy bits of living creatures while occasionally screaming "NO TIME-PLACE FOR TEST-TEST! ACTIVATE PROTOTYPE! GET-GET COMBAT DATA!" in their more unhinged and unguarded moments (I mean who doesn't dream of doing that sometimes). They do this to make custom organisms who are good enough to get the other rats to buy them, but weak enough to die a lot in combat so that the other rats keep having to come back to replace them. The Rat Ogre is their signature triumph. They also rent out animal handlers and monster control specialists, while paying other clans (or their own lower ranking members) to get-bring them new specimens and samples to work with. Little guys LOVE samples. Also, aren't all little. Moulder's motives are simple. They want to make money, they want massive prestige, and they want to build the ultimate life form. I mean really, who can object? From their home in Hell Pit up on the Empire-Kislev border, they keep making newer and more powerful monsters, only ever renting the weaker ones and concealing the truly powerful horrors, or reserving them for their own army. By integrating their living weapons into every Skaven army, and more importantly, by making every Skaven army dependent on their handlers to control them, they've put themselves in a situation where if a customer objects to performance or refuses to pay, they can just shrug and pull their handler contract. The ensuing biological horror should sort things out without the Moulder even needing to send in the troops. Moulder has additional security from providing personal bodyguard beasts and custom pets to most of the wealthy of Skavendom. But even more importantly, Moulder are the Under Empire's doctors. They provide the anti-aging treatments all the elite of the Under Empire are addicted to. They could, of course, stop doing this if anyone questioned them too much. That would be a bad time for their customers, wouldn't it? They know they've got everyone over a barrel on business, so they don't make it obvious or push the issue. Best to keep that in their back pockets in case someone objects to the important work of IMPROVE-IMPROVE in quest for the ultimate life form, no? Next Time: Master Exploder and actual, literal Mors Rattus Night10194 fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 23:34
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It should be noted that a Rat Ogre team has a much higher survival rate when led by a Master Moulder, because they actually know the weaknesses of their Large Boys and work around them.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:11
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Or when a Grey Seer is riding on their back and acting as a psychotic little rat nazi wizard turret.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:12
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Night10194 posted:Biology plays a role, sure, but their biology and impulses could have just as easily pushed them into extreme cooperation given how social they are.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:21
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Night10194 posted:By integrating their living weapons into every Skaven army, and more importantly, by making every Skaven army dependent on their handlers to control them, they've put themselves in a situation where if a customer objects to performance or refuses to pay, they can just shrug and pull their handler contract. The ensuing biological horror should sort things out without the Moulder even needing to send in the troops. Giant monsters as a service rather than a commodity.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:23
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U.T. Raptor posted:This is more or less how the Skritt in Guild Wars 2 work, in fact. It's just weird to look at how relatively chill the rats were until their big 'build a paradise drill' plan exploded and killed most of them. They could have been happy! We could have had nice underground happy rats! But no, their drill did as everything Skaven build does, and we are destroyed.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:25
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Love my race of hosed up rat Starscreams
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Dec 7, 2018 00:34
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I really enjoy how every Skaven organization appears at first glance to be incredibly competent and dangerous, and then a brief consideration of structural factors shows how actually they all basically undermine any chance of INHERIT-INHERITing anything. Moulder being the most amusing, in that their business strategy of planned monster obsolescence means that they have effectively weakened every Skaven military force immensely under the guise of arms manufacture. But the Eshin ninjas, despite their basic competence, also seem to mostly get their money from assassinating other Skaven (given that most of the people a given ratman wants killed are also rats). Skaven: Civilization-level self-destructive spite made manifest as a healthy green glow.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:37
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PurpleXVI posted:Giant monsters as a service rather than a commodity.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:39
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PurpleXVI posted:Giant monsters as a service rather than a commodity. The only thing the Greater Clans don't sell as a service rather than something you buy and own yourself for your own use is all the extra bonus diseases you'll get from having Plague Monks hanging around. Those are gratis.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:41
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Halloween Jack posted:Nationalize kaiju. I imagine anything the Skaven nationalized would be looted and privatized by the Great Clans at a rate broadly comparable to a swarm of piranha going after a cow.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:41
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ChaseSP posted:Love my race of hosed up rat Starscreams The greatest summary of Skaven that I have ever read was that they're all a race of rat Starscreams who can maybe one day reach the lofty heights of rat Skeletor.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:44
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Let the Skaven discover book-printing and literature, they'll be too busy writing and publishing their own massive and embellished autobiographies to go to war against anyone, except maybe to conquer more ink and wood pulp supplies. Honestly that sounds almost like a real Skaven plot. "I'm so loving perfect and awesome that if only everyone understood that, and how inferior they are in comparison, they'd surrender and become my minions..." [warpstone gears creak, then the Skaven writes his own absurd 500-page autobiography in a couple of hours while on a warpstone snuff bender] "...now I just need everyone important to read it!" [hires Eshin assassins to sneak copies of his book into famous libraries and unto rules' night tables]
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Dec 7, 2018 00:50
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And all this is why I find the Skaven so utterly boring as a race and force in the setting. You can't wipe them out, and they're never going to take over the world, and they have no goals or desires of their own except taking over the world. They're jobbers just like the Beastmen, and an even bigger joke to me because they typically job to themselves.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:52
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It is, mind you, still possible to gently caress up TOO HARD, like the time the Council of 13 literally pissed off the Horned Rat so much that he grabbed all of them, melted them down, and poured them into a giant rat-shaped daemon mold to make the first Verminlord.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:53
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Mors Rattus posted:It is, mind you, still possible to gently caress up TOO HARD, like the time the Council of 13 literally pissed off the Horned Rat so much that he grabbed all of them, melted them down, and poured them into a giant rat-shaped daemon mold to make the first Verminlord. I knew there should've been a disclaimer/warning on 'btw sometimes the Seerlord claims two votes and then is pulled into the air and devoured by invisible demons while screaming because GHR absolutely didn't appreciate being spoken for'.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:56
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Cythereal posted:And all this is why I find the Skaven so utterly boring as a race and force in the setting. You can't wipe them out, and they're never going to take over the world, and they have no goals or desires of their own except taking over the world. I feel like literally every rat has desires and goals other than taking over the world; their society is fun because it's theoretically geared towards INHERIT-INHERIT but how that works out is every individual Skaven is scheming to grab their slice of the cheese. Beastmen are boring because there's no real diversity or texture on the small scale, and that means their large-scale goals seem to actually be their small-scale goals. On the other hand, I already have like three different rat schemes that players could get involved in that have occurred to me. One being the Secret Skaven Space Program, based on the Hellboy arc Conqueror Worm - you play as adventurers raiding a Skaven-taken old castle that's the base for a rocket launch, then thirty years later those same adventurers late in their career as they track the returning Morrslieb Expedition capsule. Another being 'Skaven get into publishing.' Skaven plans are terrible and easily disrupted, which is kind of perfect for adventuring, and the plans themselves are interesting and for lack of a better word zany.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:00
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They are the enemy most likely to lose to 3-6 random people tipping the first domino. E: One reason Vermintide worked so well! You can buy a bunch of fun characters repeatedly fighting their way through hordes of the rats to gently caress up critical points until they annoy the Seer enough to get him to come out and get hammered. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 01:02
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, Thanquol lives this bizarrely charmed life where he just continually fails upward. He got that one killed too. He was on his 14th Boneripper at the end of fantasy.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:05
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Cythereal posted:And all this is why I find the Skaven so utterly boring as a race and force in the setting. You can't wipe them out, and they're never going to take over the world, and they have no goals or desires of their own except taking over the world. Again, how is that any different than capital C Chaos?
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Dec 7, 2018 01:10
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or Orcs and Goblins, which are the same as skaven but stupider.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:16
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The other key is that every Skaven has desires. All of them. Desires they feel comfortable putting ahead of taking over the world because c'mon, man, those guys are all furless and so their brains don't work because they're too cold (Thanquol will make this point later in the book), so it couldn't possibly hurt if I just, you know, do my own thing a little. We're obviously going to win and oh no everything's on fire how did those adventurers and their little dog possibly mess up my perfect stratagems!? E: Also, interestingly, for everything the rats crow about how the 'corrupt Empire will be picked apart by greed' and all, you can pull their poo poo right back on them. After all, every Warlord who knows about your famous Skaven-killing party is going to be scheming to 'use' you to ram you into his enemies and rivals. Maybe even plotting to help you along a little. Once you know who they are and why they do things, you can use that yourself the same way they think they're playing you. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 01:27
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Night10194 posted:They are the enemy most likely to lose to 3-6 random people tipping the first domino. But if it hadn't been for those meddling Sure the plan will inevitably fall apart before it gets to 'inherit-inherit', but the PCa saved tens of thousands of lives and prevented a permanent weakening of the city. That's an achievement.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:52
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Speaking of the great clans I am reminded of the Gotrek and Felix book Skavenslayer were they were planning on taking over Nuln, each great clan put out their own plan for taking over the city. Clan Eshin tried to kidnap the Countess. Clan Skrye tried to steal a bunch of stuff from the collage of engineering like a Steam Tank, so they could slap warpstone engines on them. Clan Pestilens tried to infect the city with a plague from the graveyard. (So when people tried to pay their respects to the dead or bury the dead from the plague more people would get infected.) Clan Moulder tried to release a bunch of specially bio engineered rats into the city. The rats could eat like 100 times their body weight in a single day, were born pregnant giving birth to about 100 new rats in a few days, could eat anything, grew to maturity in a day, lived about a week, and after about a month all new generations would be stillborn. So they would not be a problem when the skaven took over the city. Naturally all of these plans backfired. (With help from Gotrek and Felix after being told by Thanqoul they were happening.) MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 01:53
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