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Cooked Auto posted:I don't think DtD was ever meant to have its own voice or humor. It's just annoying because done better, the idea of critiquing RPG design through mashing up all the mechanics of several games could be funny. It just, uh, isn't really done beyond 'Here's all these rules I guess' here. E: I think making DtD a genuinely effective humor game/critique would require actually understanding how all these mechanics do and don't work and putting that in the work, which is not the case here. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Mar 25, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 15:48
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Insert Cajunism Here Difficult Terrain rules are shockingly simple. Difficult Terrain is whatever the GM says it is – climbing past deadfalls, wading through swamps, trying to advance past fortifications, moving in deep snow or through thick crowds. The GM can even use it for locked doors that require you to go around and find another entrance if they want. It takes two Move reflexive actions to travel through a range band of Difficult Terrain rather than one. Further, any attempt to Rush, Disengage or Withdraw across Difficult Terrain gets -3 to the roll, and typically it’s very easy to find cover in Difficult Terrain. We now get a new type of combat action: Gambits. Gambits are technically a special form of Decisive Attack. They don’t deal damage; instead, they allow you to use special maneuvers. The game presents four “universal” example gambits that anyone can use, and suggests that you come up with your own for any crazy maneuvers not covered by other stuff in the combat chapter. If the ST has no idea what an action might be, it’s probably a gambit. Some Charms also require gambits to be able to be used. To perform a gambit, you say what you’re trying and make a Decisive Attack roll. If you miss, you lose Initiative as normal. If you succeed, you roll your Initiative, but rather than damage, you are trying to match or beat your gambit’s Difficulty. If you succeed, the gambit happens. If you fail, it doesn’t. Either way, you lose (Difficulty+1) Initiative rather than resetting to 3. You cannot use a gambit that would send you into Initiative Crash. ExampleS: Disarm (Difficulty 3): You knock a foe’s weapon away. It lands at Short Range of them, and retrieving it requires getting to it and using a Draw/Ready Weapon action in most circumstances. Unhorse (Difficulty 4): You knock a foe off their mount. They take 1B damage and fall prone, and the mount will typically flee in the confusion. (This is deliberately easier than killing a mount would be, most of the time, explicitly because players don’t usually like having their mounts get killed. In “particularly gritty” games, a Difficulty 5 version lets you shoot the horse out from under someone.) Distract (Difficulty 3-5): You feint or otherwise trick a foe into the path of an ally’s Decisive Attack. You declare an ally that isn’t in Crash; they gain all Initiative you lose as a result of successfully using this, but they must Decisive Attack your target on their next turn or they lose it again. A character can only benefit from one distraction bonus at a time. Grapple (Difficulty 2): You enter a clinch with your target, which will be detailed in a bit because they’re more complex. Short form, though? Grappling is mildly terrifying. When designing your own gambits, we are told, you should balance the difficulty against how useful the gambit is, because these things would usually be overpowered if you could do them freely over and over without cost. Because 7 successes on a Decisive Attack is usually enough to take out or kill someone, gambits should usually have Difficulty under 7, as their main advantage at that point is that they don’t reset you to base Initiative, unless custom-designed for use against something that would have more than 7 Health Levels. So, grappling. Once you’ve used your Grapple gambit to start a clinch or grapple (the two words are used interchangeably) you then make an opposed Brawl or Martial Arts roll with your target, the control roll. If the target wins or ties, they escape the grapple on their next turn. If you win, you gain control of the grapple this turn, and maintain it for a number of rounds equal to how much you won by. After that, the target automatically escapes. If you enter Crash, your target escapes. While in a grapple, both you and your target get -2 Defense and cannot use flurries at all. Your target cannot take movement actions, gets -1 to one-handed attacks and -3 to any attacks using two-handed weapons. Every time you are attacked and/or take damage from any source, you lose 1 turn of grapple control. So if you get attacked twice and one of them deals damage to you (Initiative damage or decisive damage), you lose 3 rounds of control – two for being attacked, one for taking damage. During each turn in which you have control, including the one you begin the grapple, you choose one effect: 1. Savage – You choose either Withering or Decisive. For Withering, you make an attack roll against Defense 0, which hits automatically even if you get no successes. For Decisive, you just roll your Initiative in damage, no attack roll required, and reset to base Initiative. 2. Restrain/Drag – This uses up two rounds of control rather than one, and you cannot use it on your initial turn of control if the opponent won the roll. Your foe cannot take action at all on their next turn, and if you take a movement action, your foe is dragged along with you. 3. Throw/Slam – This is identical to Savage, except that you end the clinch prematurely by slamming or throwing your foe. For every turn of control this forfeits, a Withering attack roll gets +2 dice, and a Decisive damage roll gets +1 dice, to a max of (Strength) turns. Any extra after that is lost. The opponent ends up prone no matter what. Decisive slams/throws usually deal Bashing unless you have something particularly nasty to throw the person onto. 4. Release – You reflexively end the grapple early. This can be done at any time. And as a note, without special magic, you can’t grapple poo poo that doesn’t make sense, like an entire army, a t-rex (too big) or a kaiju-sized zombie death fortress (definitely too big). Crippling injuries are a thing, but entirely voluntary. This is because Exalts are really, really hard to cripple. There are benefits to choosing to be crippled if you want it, though. Once per story, after you take at least 3 levels of Lethal damage, you may choose to negate up to all but 2 levels of that damage. (That is – you can choose negate whatever you want, but you must take at least 2L after negating damage.) If this damage would still kill or Incapacitate you, you just mark off your last box before being Incapacitated. Depending on how much damage was negated, you get a different injury. 1-2 Levels: You suffer a maiming wound that impairs the function of a body part or sense, such as losing an eye, half your fingers or half a foot. 3-4 Levels: You lose an entire sense or extremity, such as being blinded, having your tongue cut out, losing a hand or “suffer maiming of his generative organs.” So glad to know that you can get your dick cut off in favor of going blind. 5+ Levels: You lose an entire limb. During a scene where you suffer a Crippling injury from 3+ levels of damage negated, you double all wound penalties. We’ve talked about how some attacks can force you prone before. While prone, you get -1 Parry, -2 Evasion and -3 to all attacks, and you can’t take any movement actions except rising from prone. You also automatically fail any attempt to resist Rush or Disengage actions. So that’s that. We also get a brief sidebar on ammo tracking. Option 1: Track all ammo. Option 2: Call for a roll every five rounds or so to see if a character runs out of ammo, as long as the PC has been shooting people fairly often. The roll is an Archery or Thrown one, with cumulative -1 penalties each time. Failure means you run out and need to get more, which will usually be an Awareness, Survival or War check with difficulty based on how easy it is to scavenge ammo in the area – possibly impossible, in the case of stuff like firedust. Personally I hate both options; I go with ‘you have enough ammo until you botch, which may well wipe out your ammo supplies.’ Next: Clash Attacks. This is a special situation in which two characters attack each other on the exact same tick. In these cases, defense ceases to matter. Clash attacks ignore Defense. Instead, the two attack rolls are treated as opposed, and whoever rolls better wins, getting the hit in and avoiding being hit. If a Clash is Withering, it adds its threshold successes to its damage, and does an additional 3 Initiative damage after damage is rolled. If a Clash is Decisive, it adds one additional damage after damage is rolled. Also, no matter what, the loser of a Clash gets -2 Defense until their next turn. Next time: Mounted Combat and Stealth
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Mar 25, 2019 16:01
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Regarding Exalted: Theoretically, it's fine to have a combat class. What's not fine is having it in a game that's built around combat and/or with rocket tag combat. Coincidentally, this is also a problem in Cyberpunk 2020. (And Shadowrun, and all the 40K games, while I'm at it.)Barudak posted:Are there build your own mega corp rules in Cyberpunk? Because that whole section seems like a waste of treesources SirPhoebos posted:I wish there were random corporation tables or rules for making your own mega corp. SirPhoebos posted:By 2020, Night City is pretty comparable to all the urban centers: a pristine core, a well guarded shell of suburbs, and a mantle of poo poo in between. quote:The police force is mostly corrupt save for the Psycho Squad.
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Mar 25, 2019 16:21
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Would it work in 3E if I made, say, a Twilight caste who also goes hard into Martial Arts or Archery and then be able to contribute on a semi-equal level to the Dawn?
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Mar 25, 2019 16:27
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Halloween Jack posted:Regarding Exalted: Theoretically, it's fine to have a combat class. What's not fine is having it in a game that's built around combat and/or with rocket tag combat. Coincidentally, this is also a problem in Cyberpunk 2020. (And Shadowrun, and all the 40K games, while I'm at it.) The weird thing about the 40k games is that I think that's an artifact of starting with Dark Heresy, which was never sure how much you'd actually be fighting. Since it flirted with being a sort of Call of Cthulhu-esque game about investigating occult horrors and conspiracies. Just most adventures end in violence, because it's still 40k and that's got to have bolters, chainswords, and massive cannons. So combat grew in importance and focus.
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Mar 25, 2019 16:36
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Dawgstar posted:Would it work in 3E if I made, say, a Twilight caste who also goes hard into Martial Arts or Archery and then be able to contribute on a semi-equal level to the Dawn? Insofar as you can tolerate Solar Charms: yes, but you will have greater opportunity costs unless the Dawn is also focusing on something else, since you'll be doing your combat schtick and also whatever nerd schtick you were planning on.
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Mar 25, 2019 16:37
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Mors Rattus posted:Insofar as you can tolerate Solar Charms: yes, but you will have greater opportunity costs unless the Dawn is also focusing on something else, since you'll be doing your combat schtick and also whatever nerd schtick you were planning on. Won't you have the inability to match up because the Dawn can Supernal a combat skill and you can't?
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Mar 25, 2019 16:40
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gourdcaptain posted:Won't you have the inability to match up because the Dawn can Supernal a combat skill and you can't? That also, yes, but you will be able to at least contribute in some way.
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Mar 25, 2019 16:41
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Night10194 posted:The weird thing about the 40k games is that I think that's an artifact of starting with Dark Heresy, which was never sure how much you'd actually be fighting. Since it flirted with being a sort of Call of Cthulhu-esque game about investigating occult horrors and conspiracies. I think it's an artifact of WFRP2e being good for the scale where it normally operates, but it doesn't scale up from swordsman to Thor without breaking. Exalted has a similar problem with Storyteller.
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Mar 25, 2019 16:42
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Halloween Jack posted:I think it's an artifact of WFRP2e being good for the scale where it normally operates, but it doesn't scale up from swordsman to Thor without breaking. Exalted has a similar problem with Storyteller. A lot of the problem was trying to introduce 'tiers' of power and equipment that are wholly above one another. You saw this with how little they actually modified equipment in Old World Armory; a super weapon made of super material comes out to +1 damage because that's a meaningful bonus and about what the game can handle. Meanwhile, in 40kRP, you're going up +4 damage and +4 Pen as you go up in equipment tier and that's for relatively tame stuff. Or Space Marines are outright (originally) doing +d10 damage over all mortal gear. The underlying modified 2e just can't handle that.
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Mar 25, 2019 16:55
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Having a spirit familiar pocketed in your anima at all times is not to be underestimated. My Twilight was probably the strongest member of our circle until the Dawn joined by virtue of a modest investment in Solar Melee and having a giant snake a finger-snap away at all times.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:04
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The Solar Charms are designed according to something John called "hourglass design", which basically means that you get a huge whack of power from Essence 1 Charms, then a bunch of tricks and improvements at Essence 2, and then another big power jump at Essence 3, and then repeat. This means that having only Essence 1 Charms doesn't leave you as far behind as you might think. The design was not carried forward to other splats because it turns out people don't enjoy fiddly dice tricks as much as expected, but that was the idea.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:08
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The 90s loved the idea of making a generic dice system, one that we can use for all our games, from gritty political maneuvering to superhero action! It'll have an optional mass battle system so you can run WWII-era battalion-scale engagements with the same mechanics you use for picking locks! And don't worry, storygamers, because we made Seduce a skill, just like Knowledge(Geology) and Swimming. Turns out that's kind of stupid. Mechanics and tone go hand-in-hand; you can make a superhero game with Palladium rules, but you're going to get a game where Captain America's sheet says that he can operate a radio correctly 19% of the time. So Exalted became a system where "grooming a dog" and "punching mountains in half" have to both fit into a 1-5 scale.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:11
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Rand Brittain posted:The Solar Charms are designed according to something John called "hourglass design", which basically means that you get a huge whack of power from Essence 1 Charms, then a bunch of tricks and improvements at Essence 2, and then another big power jump at Essence 3, and then repeat. This means that having only Essence 1 Charms doesn't leave you as far behind as you might think. love how you're on a first name basis with a sex pest
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Mar 25, 2019 17:12
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megane posted:The 90s loved the idea of making a generic dice system, one that we can use for all our games, from gritty political maneuvering to superhero action! It'll have an optional mass battle system so you can run WWII-era battalion-scale engagements with the same mechanics you use for picking locks! And don't worry, storygamers, because we made Seduce a skill, just like Knowledge(Geology) and Swimming. I mean, it's an appealing idea, a universal system. And if you could make one, it would be pretty awesome since it'd let you effortlessly scale up within the same game if the focus shifted. So I can understand why people keep trying to do it. But at this point, yeah, we've learned that it just doesn't work, because the narrative and tonal assumptions for different types of games and scales of power are just so far removed that the mechanics can't just bend and stretch to follow them. For me, ORE with Reign is probably the system that got closest to handling a wide variety of scales and power levels.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:32
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MollyMetroid posted:love how you're on a first name basis with a sex pest I absolutely refuse to type out his last name on a phone keyboard.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:38
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you know most people don't bother with the ø anyway excuse=weak
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Mar 25, 2019 17:42
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MollyMetroid posted:you know most people don't bother with the ø anyway Nøt bøthering tø use the ø is weak. Shøw døminance and use it møre!
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Mar 25, 2019 17:43
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Mors Rattus posted:Insofar as you can tolerate Solar Charms: yes, but you will have greater opportunity costs unless the Dawn is also focusing on something else, since you'll be doing your combat schtick and also whatever nerd schtick you were planning on. I'm pretty sure that's why Martial Arts charms use Solar XP and not your regular XP, so you can spend your regular XP on charms for whatever your schtick is and your solar xp on your combat stuff. So while you won't be Supernal Fight like the Dawn, you're still pretty dang good. Obviously the Dawn can be spending his Solar XP on evocations to make him the ultimate fight man and he always we will be even if he doesn't, but the combat charms and your regular deal charms are not mutually exclusive if you go the Martial Arts route. Rand Brittain posted:Having a spirit familiar pocketed in your anima at all times is not to be underestimated. My Twilight was probably the strongest member of our circle until the Dawn joined by virtue of a modest investment in Solar Melee and having a giant snake a finger-snap away at all times. Being a sorcerer who's combat ability is a Blood Ape battlegroup is also a valid combat build.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:50
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Why Horses Are Amazing Being mounted in combat is broadly speaking an upgrade. It has a few downsides but not many. Mounts give a bonus to Rush, Disengage and Withdraw rolls based on their Speed Bonus, which is listed in the statblock of whatever mount. There’s also a list given in the combat chapter; short form, horses and simhatas (which are essentially carnivorous war llamas) are the best at this. While mounted, you get +1 to Withering Attacks against non-mounted, human-scale foes, and +2 against any battle groups not armed with Reaching weapons. Also, you get +1 Defense against melee attacks from non-mounted foes unless they use Reaching weapns. The exception: flying mounts. You get none of these combat bonuses from reading a flying mount such as a giant Megatalapan war hawk, and instead your bonus is you can fly. Extremely large mounts, such as yeddim, tyrant lizards or mammoths, render you unable to be attacked at all in melee except via Reaching weapons unless foes climb onto your mount first. However, you also can’t attack foes in melee unless you have a Reaching weapon or they’re on your mount. Mounts are generally not tracked with their own Initiative in combat, though the ST may rule they can have one if they are close to being characters rather than just mount animals or are significantly more dangerous than their riders. Unless a mount has its own Initiative, all Withering Attacks on it are considered to target the rider. Decisive Attacks can target the mount separately, but it is usually a better option to attempt an Unhorse gambit. You can get barding for your mount to armor it up, and can attach weapons to your mount. Barding is identical to normal person armor, but the Mobility penalties are applied to the mount’s Speed Bonus, which can convert it to a penalty in some cases. If the mount is not tracking Initiative, armor reduces Decisive damage against the mount (and the mount only) - -2 damage for light armor, -4 for medium, -6 for heavy. Weapons allow access to special techniques or advantages – adding horns or spikes lets your mount learn how to gore people, similar to beasts with natural horns. A lance mounted on your mount, on the other hand, just lets you wield it as a normal heavy weapon, but it can’t be disarmed, and it lets you make impale attacks. To make an impale attack, you have to make an attack after moving two consecutive range bands towards your foe, and it gives your attack +5 damage if Withering, or +3 damage if Decisive. Ordering your mount to attack someone takes up your combat action, and while it can be flurried, it is considered an attack action so you and your horse can’t both attack at once. In case anyone cares, there is a sidebar on the time required to put armor and saddles on mounts. Stealth! Stealth is rolled as a Stealth check opposed by Awareness checks. If you manage to gain stealth during combat, you can make an unexpected attack. These are subdivided into ambushes and surprise attacks. An ambush is an attack on someone totally unaware of your presence at all. Generally, it’s only possible to ambush in the first round of a fight, and only against someone lower than you on the Initiative order, because after that, everyone is aware a fight is happening. In an ambush, the target’s Defense is dropped to 0 for the attack. Surprise Attacks are attacks launched from stealth against foes that are on the lookout for danger, even if they may not know where you personally are. These only give the target a -2 Defense penalty. You can attempt to re-stealth as a combat action, but it cannot be placed in a flurry. While in stealth, you can’t Rush, and if you want to move at all you must have somewhere to hide where you’re moving to and must make a reflexive Stealth roll to keep from being spotted while moving. Normally, re-establishing or attempting stealth in combat is done at -3, but if you’re moving over open ground as you’re stealthing about, you do it at -5 instead. If you can ambush a target, you may choose instead to hold them at bay. This prevents you from attacking and dealing damage, but instead takes them hostage for several rounds by, say, putting a knife to their throat. You may then interrogate, threaten or otherwise interact with them for rounds equal to how much you beat their Initiative by. If they choose to struggle or escape before that many rounds pass, you can immediately make a Decisive ambush attack against them, which ignores not only their Defense but also their Hardness, and deals +5 automatic damage. If you choose to attack them before the time is up, however, they can defend normally. If the target instead chooses to cooperate with you, you get +1 Resolve and Guile for the duration and they get -2 Resolve and Guile for the duration. If they haven’t surrendered by the time your hostage period ends, you both roll Join Battle to see who goes first, though the hostage rolls at -2. If you win, you can immediately launch a standard ambush attack. If you want to get out of a fight but your foes seem unlikely to accept a surrender and you see little chance of outpacing them all, you may attempt to go to ground. To do this, you must already be in stealth. Then, you must make a Stealth check to maintain stealth for the next three turns, with the first turn being at -3, the second at -4 and the last at -5. If you successfully beat all Awareness checks on those three rolls, you are so well hidden that no one can find you unless you voluntarily show yourself. If you attempt to rejoin the fight, however, you enter at -10 Initiative and are Crashed. Certain effects cause uncountable damage, such as an avalanche large enough to wipe out a town, or an exploding manse. When someone takes uncountable damage, the ST decides what happens. Usually, this will be death, but it may be permissible to allow a roll to survive and merely be incapacitated. Exalts have Charms to deal with uncountable damage; mortals are less lucky. So, for groups of similar makeupm, such as a gang of mortal bandits, an army of soldiers or a rioting mob, battle groups exist. This is an abstraction for these groups of similar NPCs that are not sufficiently notable to be individuals, and can represent anywhere from two to six guards to a thousand soldiers. They are all represented as a single character, but with a number of bonuses. Battle groups only perform withering attacks, but when they attack someone in Crash, their attacks deal actual damage. Withering attacks against them do not reduce their Initiative, but instead deal damage to their special health bar, called Magnitude. They are hard to destroy outright, but will usually flee if beaten badly. They have three traits that a normal character doesn’t, on top of that special Magnitude bar: Size, Drill and Might. Size represents how many members the group has, ranging from 0 (for 2-3 people, who probably should just be individuals) to 1 (6-12) to 5 (1000 or so). If you have an appreciable number more than a thousand, make a second battlegroup for them – 1020, sure you’re fine, but if you have 1300, that’s probably a Size 5 group and a Size 3 one. Increased Size makes a battle group better at essentially everything. Drill represents how well the group works together. It is either Poor (which gives the group penalties to several actions), Average (+1 Defense), or Elite (+2 to command rolls and +2 Defense). Might represents how magical the group is, ranging from 0 to 3. Might 0 is mortals, and has no effects. Might 1 is mildly supernatural – beastmen, Wyld mutants or units bearing a divine blessing might be Might 1, and get a small bonus to attacks, damage and Defense. Might 2 represents highly magical forces, such as minor spirits, first circle demons, warrior ghosts, lesser elementals or Fair Folk, and get a small bonus to Defense and a slightly better one to attacks. Might 3 is for an army made primarily of Dragon-Bloods or similarly powerful beings, and generally you don’t run into them – those are almost always worth treating as individuals and almost never gather in numbers enough to make for Might 3 battle groups of similar beings. They get a large bonus to attacks and Defense. Battle groups, on top of the rules above, have a few others. While they can make only a single attack per turn like anyone else, they can attack multiple people with it. For melee attacks, they attack every foe directly near them. For ranged attacks, they select a primary target; if that’s another battle group, it resolves normally. If it’s a person, the attack hits everyone, friend or foe, within Close Range of that person. Battle groups cannot lose Initiative, but withering attacks deal damage directly to their Magnitude. Successful withering attacks on them generate only 1 Initiative. A Magnitude track is equal to the base health levels of the members of the battle group (usually 7) plus its Size. If a unit runs out of Magnitude, it must make a rout check and even if it survives, it drops 1 Size and gets a new Magnitude bar of the appropriate size. Any leftover damage is then applied to that, which can cause it to immediately need to check for rout again if it’s enough damage. If you cause a unit to drop in Size with an attack, you get an Initiative Break as if you’d Crashed them. The rout check is a Willpower roll with various modifiers to the Difficulty for the situation; if the battle group fails it, they break and flee. Battle groups also cannot grapple, but instead use Engage actions – these work similarly, but can only use the Savage option, based on the group’s weapons, and require no “damage” roll to pull off the gambit – they are considered to automatically succeed at that. This works by the group surrounding and pinning you down with force of numbers. Next time: More on battle groups.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:51
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EthanSteele posted:I'm pretty sure that's why Martial Arts charms use Solar XP and not your regular XP, so you can spend your regular XP on charms for whatever your schtick is and your solar xp on your combat stuff. So while you won't be Supernal Fight like the Dawn, you're still pretty dang good. Obviously the Dawn can be spending his Solar XP on evocations to make him the ultimate fight man and he always we will be even if he doesn't, but the combat charms and your regular deal charms are not mutually exclusive if you go the Martial Arts route. Although the dabbler route requiring a 4 dot merit is kinda weird then... The MA requires a merit approach in general is kinda strange.
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Mar 25, 2019 17:52
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Dungeons: The Dragoning: 7.5 Edition Making of a Hero Now, there are a shitload of rules you'd need to know to actually make a character effectively. But character creation is up first. The game starts off by saying there are no unwilling Heroes in DtD. You might not want the power you have, exactly, but you did want power, and you are going to use that power. A lot. Making your PC is not actually very simple, by virtue of how many fiddly bits and subsystems actually come into play in the making of a PC. You have to choose your Stats, your have to choose your Skills, you have to choose your Race, your Exaltation, your Class, and you might have to buy Magic or Sword Schools depending on what kind of PC you're playing. You also have to spend base EXP on Assets and get extra base EXP by buying Hindrances (the main reason you'd do this is Character Creation is the only place you can buy Assets, and you might need the extra EXP from Disadvantages to afford the ones you want). Oh, you also pick a God. So without further ado, let's get started. I'll give something of a summary of every step as we go, we'll make a character eventually, and as the book goes, I'll fill in exactly what any of the poo poo on the character sheet actually means. Because none of it is explained at this point, not even what a stat or skill actually does. The basic rules of how a test works are not listed until Page 235, after 14 chapters of material on Races, Backgrounds, Assets, Talents, Classes, etc. They tell you all the poo poo long before they tell you how it works. Now, I can tell you most tests consist of keeping your Stat, and rolling Skill+Stat. Weaponry, Brawl, and Ballistics tests instead keep your Skill, and roll Character Level+Skill if you're proficient with your weapon. This was done to try to keep Dex from being the total god-stat it is in most games like this. Dex is still extremely powerful for many reasons. There is also an alternate character creation system done entirely with EXP, but it's not actually balanced with the default at all regardless of what it says, so we're just going to stick with the default system. It's less fiddly for me to deal with and God knows I'm going to be dealing with a lot of fiddling in this system. Step 0 is to come up with a brief concept of who you are and why you're cool. This will probably change on contact with rules. Step 1 has you pick which of your 3 stat types is primary, secondary, and tertiary. You get Physical (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution), Mental (Intelligence, Wisdom, Willpower), and Social (Charisma, Fellowship, and Composure). What's the difference between Charisma and Fellowship? gently caress you, that's what. Some skills say they'll use one, some say the other, that's all; their descriptions are basically identical. All stats start at 1 dot. You get 6 dots for your primary, 4 for your secondary, and 2 for your tertiary. No stat can go to 5 at this point; 4 is your max. Your Racial Bonus can raise a stat put to 4 here to 5 when you get to your Race. Simple enough, standard White Wolf stuff. You also pick Physical, Mental, or Social skills as Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary. All skills start at 0 dots. You get 8 dots of your Primary, 6 Secondary, 4 Tertiary, and no skill can be above 3 yet. It can go to 4 if your Race boosts it in Step 2. Step 2 has you pick your Race. Your Race will give you your base Size (which is actually really important), a Racial Ability, some Racial Assets you can buy if you wish, a +1 to one of your stats (Most offer 2 stats, Humans offer any stat), and a +1 to two skills. Those skill/stat bonuses can break the starting caps. You can be a Human (Flexible, boring), a Dark Eladrin (Dark Eldar/Drow), an Aasimir (Space Marine), a Tiefling (Chaos Space Marine), a Tau (Communism Starfleet), an Elf (Elf), an Eladrin (Eldar), an Ork (Football Hooligan), a Dragonborn (Lizbiz), a Squat (Dwarf), a Gnome (Everyone hates gnomes), or a Halfling (Hobbit). No real description of the races is given in these sections beyond a basic concept, but your race choice matters a lot. As you are a Super Awesome Hero, you are completely free to be as against type as you wish for your Race; who's going to tell you to stop being a nice guy Tiefling or a humble Elf? Step 3 has you choose your Exaltation, and this is extremely important. This is your big extra power source, and as some of them only really interact with certain parts of the system, choosing some of these on certain character concepts is mostly a waste of time. This is the Big Special Thing that makes your mashup PC Original and protects them from all stealing. You can be a Vampire (Bitey), Werewolf (Also bitey, big), Atlantean (Syreneth/Solar Exalted/Mage), Daemonhost (Hellpower), Paragon (Action Hero), Chosen (Power of God), or Promethean (Cyborg). Again, these are really important; they give you a whole suite of extra powers and a resource stat. Everyone's resource stat mostly works the same. Whatever you choose will be at Level 1 for now and won't be able to be raised during PC creation. Any PC can be any Exaltation, and part of the exercise in PC creation here is going to be seeing how terrible the PC we make turns out after we make them blind. Step 4 has you choose a Class. Classes are like a blind idiot's version of the WHFRP2e Career system, though they don't explain them much here. They determine what you can spend EXP on while you're in them; which skills, which stats, and what Feats you can buy. You finish a Class by buying all its Feats, at which point you get a small permanent bonus and can buy into a new class, which can raise your Level; your PC Level is the level of your highest Level class. The class tracks are Paladin, Bard, Shootman (Guardsman), Fightman (Swordsman), Smashman (Barbarian), Wizard, Thief, Cleric, and Assassin, plus some basic 1st level Ratcatcher, Peasant, Scholar and Mercenary action to get you the pre-reqs to go into a new class tree. See, to enter a Class, you have to meet its Pre-Reqs. For instance, to be a Guardsman you need to have Ballistics Skill 2 and Athletics Skill 1. I have also just told you significantly more about the class system (and faster) than the game will for many, many pages, because you will need this bare minimum to say what class our luckless person should be. Step 5 has you choose backgrounds. These are also done by dots, and cannot be above 3 dots without spending starting EXP. You get 7 dots. They can be in Holdings (Stuff), Allies (Friends), Artifacts (Magic Stuff), Backing (Also Friends), Contacts (Also Friends), Fame (Fame), Followers (God how many Friends are there), Inheritance (Stuff), a Mentor (Singular Friend), Status (Also Fame), or Wealth (Stuff). They are nebulous. Step 6 has you pick your God. There are 3 pantheons: Kahyoss (Sorry, The RUINOUS POWERS), who are supposed to be less generally evil than they used to be. The Blessed Pantheon, who are all supposed to be kind of nice-ish but a little dickish. And the Grey Council, who are noncommittal except for Vectron, who is a totally real God who definitely exists and not an accident of speech during a galactic meeting in a British sketch comedy show. Your God determines what parts of your Alignment will annoy you. Alignment exists explicitly to get in your way and irritate your PC in this game, which is actually a pretty accurate implementation of Alignment. You can worship Khorne (Fight), Nurgle (Despair), Slaanesh (Party), Tzeentch ('Clever') or Malal (Holy poo poo, Malal? Oh wait, they made him generic Nihilism/Entrophy, rather than The God of Being Tied Up In Copyright Issues and Quietly Dropped From The Setting) for Khayoss. You can worship Sigmar (Community; he's actually nicer here than his cult generally is in WHFRP), Bahamut (Shiney Dragon), Cuthbert (Cudgel/Law; the god of STOP RESISTING), Pelor (Generic Good), or Moradin (Dwarf) for Blessed guys. You can worship Acererak (Magic, skulls), The Raven Queen (Death), Luna (Shapeshifting, Change), Corellon (Elf, Dickery, Arrogance), or Vectron (Definitely Real) for the Grey Council. You start at 'Devotion 6'. You don't know what this means yet. It's important-ish. Finally, at Step 7, you get 600 EXP to spend. You can raise stats by 1 dot by paying 100xCurrent level, you can improve Devotion for 50xcurrent level and that's a waste, you can buy Skill dots for 50xcurrent level, backgrounds for 50 per dot (100 if it's a dot above 3), Feats for 100, Fighting Schools for 200, Magic Schools for 200, New Skills for 100, improve your Magic or Fighting School a rank for 100xCurrent (but you're stuck at 1 at creation), improve your Exalted Power Stat for 200xCurrent (But it's capped at character level, like Fighting/Magic), and this is the only place they tell you all these costs. You can also buy Assets for 100 each and gain Hindrances to get an extra 100 EXP each. You can only spend EXP on stuff your class actually allows. Then you get a useless little selection of starting equipment that no-one cares about, because if you need gear you probably took a Background for it. Or a Daiklave. Finally, you work out your Size (Very, very important; you divide all incoming damage by Size to determine how much you actually take), Static Defense (10+3x(Wisdom+Dex)-2xSize), HP ((Willpower+Con)x2)), Mental Defense (5+5xComposure), Resolve (Social HP, Willpower+Composure), Speed (Str+Dex), and Hero Points (You have 2). Hero Points are plot armor/Fate Points. Then you come up with your actual backstory and see how it matches your concept now that you have stats on paper. Keep in mind, I've given a lot more information here than the game does. You really, really can't make a PC with just the PC creation rules here; you need a lot of filling in. Give me a general concept (Race, Class, Exaltation, maybe a little other guidance) and I'll make a (probably terrible) PC. As we go through the reams of rules for this game, we will see the true extent of that character's failings. One of my pet peeves in games is games that put character creation well before you actually know how to play, even in a rough outline. Especially games with heavily un-guided character creation with no 'rails', so to speak. It makes it extremely easy to make a useless character by accident. For instance, some of those Exaltations are pretty much worthless with certain character concepts. Which ones? You don't know, while the game tells you they're all valid. This is especially a problem in a game that's trying to be over the top power fantasy, where making a mechanically useless PC undermines the core concept of the game. Yes, yes, joke game, but 'over the top power fantasy' is clearly the rules' intent for all PCs. Thus, if the rules lead to you making a character who can't act crazily because of mechanical weakness, they've failed the core concept, and done it without being funny in the process. Next Time: God only knows what will come out of PC creation Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Mar 25, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 18:02
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gourdcaptain posted:Although the dabbler route requiring a 4 dot merit is kinda weird then... The MA requires a merit approach in general is kinda strange. Your question wasn't about being a dabbler, it was about being as good if you really try and if you're spending the maximum amount of Solar XP on Martial Arts charms you aren't a dabbler, that's you doing that as a secondary thing. The merit thing is because the martial arts are really strong, almost exponentially so if you combine multiple styles and being able to spend Solar XP on charms is also strong. You have to level up multiple skills to do that, but it's definitely worth it and levelling up skills is cheap anyway. You can get spells with your xp too letting you get "summon a demon" so you can have a demon (or 10) fight for you instead. Still not as good as the Dawn at fighting but, he's the fighter, so, he should be the best one.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:11
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My usual gambit of MAKE MEDIA CHARACTER is useless here, because that's exactly what the system wants you to do. 
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Mar 25, 2019 18:18
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Leraika posted:My usual gambit of MAKE MEDIA CHARACTER is useless here, because that's exactly what the system wants you to do. The funny thing is this is actually surprisingly hard to do in this system, because of the extra fiddly layers like Exaltation.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:24
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Make a Tau bard who sings folk-rock ballads about the Greater Good.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:33
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Make Literally Nolan North, ALA Saint's Row 4.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:34
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If DtD won't include anything from RIFTs, then by the gods we will: Make Erin Tarn.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:44
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SirPhoebos posted:If DtD won't include anything from RIFTs, then by the gods we will: I am not sure I can capture the essence of Erin Tarn.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:47
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Night10194 posted:I am not sure I can capture the essence of Erin Tarn. useless fashy lore nerd isn't doable in a system involving 40k?
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Mar 25, 2019 18:58
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Mors Rattus posted:useless fashy lore nerd isn't doable in a system involving 40k? Any of the Exaltations are at a dangerous risk of making her more useful or interesting and that would ruin the essence of Erin Tarn.
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Mar 25, 2019 18:59
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I figure that the best stat sheet for Erin Tarn would just read: That idiot blogger who's somehow always around.
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Mar 25, 2019 19:09
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Dungeons: The Dragoning: 7.5 Edition Okay, I have found a solution for the Erin Tarn situation. Here comes our Tau Bard, ready to change the world with the power of Rock and Roll. Por'Sui'Kim, Rockerboy, is going to be our hero because I liked the Cyberpunk 2020 review and he's already got experience being a horribly unoptimized PC. Being a Bard, he'll prioritize Social attributes. Bards need a 3 Charisma, so that's sort of a no-brainer; he'll take 2 dots in Charisma for 3, then 3 in Fellowship for 4, and 0 in Composure for 2. He's a passionate guy, not a man with nerves of steel. He'll take Mental for his secondary, because the Illusion magic Bards get uses Intelligence and he's a well read guy. He'll put 2 dots in Int, 1 in Wisdom, and 1 in Willpower. Finally, he's got Physical stats, and he puts 1 in Constitution and 1 in Dexterity. He's kind of noodly. As his Fellowship is 4, he gets a Specialty: A situation where his Fel counts as 1 higher. He takes 'While on Stage' because he's building to be a performer. For Skills, he'll obviously prioritize Social, too. He You may notice he is not a broadly competent person! You really can't make one of those in this system. In a lot of ways, he'd be better off taking 1s in more skills in some of the mental stuff, but it's funnier this way. Part of this exercise is to show how badly someone made to concept can turn out. As a Tau, he gets +1 to Composure or Intelligence. He'll take Intelligence, being a very smart guy. He also gets +1 to Persuasion and Common Lore, which gives him Persuasion 4 and a Specialty. He takes 'When Talking About The Greater Good'. He is going to be an Atlantean (Has the soul of an ancient Syrenth/Solar Exalted), because Paragon is more action-heroy and shiny magic soul magic goes well with being a guy who sings folk sometimes. He was originally going to be a Promethean, for Rockbot 5000, but then I noticed they take a huge -2k1 penalty to all Social rolls outside of other Exalts and that would ruin him so completely that I cannot do that to poor Kim. As an Atlantean, he has extra magic (He gets a School of his choice that he can always learn from regardless of class), he can do magic tricks with his magic hands (basic special effects, prestidigitation, etc), he treats every skill in the game as something he can improvise on the fly at Stat-1 (good for Barding), he gets to speak Syrenth, and using his Power Motes, uh, causes Paradox and we'll get to that. But he also gets Motes from his Gnosis 'power stat'. His Motes are based on Charisma+Int+(Gnosisx2), and he starts with Gnosis 1. All that Charisma and Int is paying off for Kim! He also gets to pick 3 skills; eventually, he can get all of them to 6 dots. He also gets to count them as 1 higher whenever dealing with Syrenth. He'll take Perform, Persuade, and Charm; he knows the ancient Syrneth Empire that he got his magic soul from fell because they didn't Embrace the Greater Good and so he's going to sing at any other Atlanteans he finds until he convinces them all with his folk-rock ballads and prevents the Great Curse or whatever with the power of space communism. As for his free magic, he's going to take Evocation so he can do cool special effects and also kill people with mind bullets, which is a very important part of rock. You thought I forgot Erin Tarn, didn't you!? I did not! He takes Mentor (1): Erin Tarn, famed blogger and Rogue Scholar who totally promises she totally knows all about the eagles-and-skulls human Imperium that Kim has found himself in. She will certainly not lead him astray, nor try to persuade him to stop trying to overthrow the insane fascists with a skull fetish because 'oh no what if the Next, he chooses who to worship. Being a rock-star, you'd expect Slaanesh, but no, he's actually a Sigmarite. It's the God of Community! Sadly, while he respects Vectron, and totally acknowledges that Vectron is a real God who exists, he does not follow him primarily. For his EXP, he buys up a rank of Diamond Mind Sword School, which he can use to construct special Fencing attacks or use after Feinting. He also buys Weapon Prof (Fencing) for 100 EXP, since Bard gets both of these. He picks Energy Burst for his spell for Evocation (Hey, Evocation runs off Charisma! Everything's coming up Kim) since it'll give him a basic 'blow people up' move. He spends 200 to raise Dex to 3; he knows Dex is important. In everything. He starts looking at Assets and Hindrances, since he can only take those now. He obviously takes Appearance (+2k0 in all social situations where he can be seen to be the handsomest, shiniest Tau). He takes Clueless to get 100 EXP back; this means he's a newcomer to the wider galaxy and sounds more like a fun plot hook than a drawback. He then also takes Big Britches (Overconfident) because c'mon, have you seen rock stars? He'll also take Farsighted as a Tau, which gives him better mental defense (5 more) and more Resolve. Then, because he can, he'll raise Strength to 2 because having a 1 in it felt sad. He'll pick the Void equipment package because it includes classy clothing and a pair of shades. Everything else about it is meaningless. And there he goes, Por'Sui'Kim, Water-Caste Rockerboy and master of fencing and the magic of an ancient people. Ready to change the world with his guitar and also maybe mind bullets. And led by an idiot blogger he can't get rid of. Also, holy poo poo, all the flipping around through pages to make him took for loving ever. And I've read this book a couple times! Making a character for this is like pulling teeth. Next Time: What Any Of This Means
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Mar 25, 2019 20:03
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SirPhoebos posted:Question for FATAL & Friends The Chromebooks. I want to see mllaneza defend his writing.
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Mar 25, 2019 21:38
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SirPhoebos posted:
Are we leaving out the gang that consists entirely of people who have gotten plastic surgery to look like members of the Kennedy family, or are they not in this version
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Mar 26, 2019 14:27
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Are we leaving out the gang that consists entirely of people who have gotten plastic surgery to look like members of the Kennedy family, or are they not in this version No they're there. If I do the Night City supplement I'll cover the gangs in more details. I glossed over this section because all the gangs really blended together and I wanted to pick one highlight. I went with the gang that would lead to the most bad table jokes.
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Mar 26, 2019 14:31
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Should I assume that's a Dead Kennedys joke?
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Mar 26, 2019 14:41
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Army Time I just want to note: I actually like the battle group rules, by and large. They provide a good way to handle mooks and can actually be threatening, in sufficient numbers or ability. It makes an army of mortals actually matter, which was a bit of an issue. Anyway, continuing on with those rules – battle groups move normally, but depending on their size, they may be gigantic enough to span entire range bands between other people. Thus, individual characters can move through them as if they were Difficult Terrain, but it costs 1 Initiative per round spent doing so. Battle groups cannot move through each other, however. Battle groups also do not need to take disengage actions to move away from any foe at least 2 points of Size smaller than they are. They can spread out to cover more space, but if there’s more than 10 yards between the members of the battle group, all bonuses from Size stop existing, and those are…sizable, pardon the pun. So it’s probably not the best idea to spread your soldiers so each one has 30 feet of empty space around them. All these rules cover battle groups that are, essentially, leaderless and operating autonomously. Even allied battlegroups or those owned by PCs will be controlled by the GM most of the time. However, sometimes an individual hero will take direct command of battle groups. To do this requires command actions. To be able to issue a command action to a battle group, you must either by their recognized leader or a known hero to the group that they see as trustworthy and worth following in battle. There are three different types of command you can give: order, rally or rally for numbers. You can’t flurry any of them, and your battle group must be able to understand your orders – most typically, this means shouting them to subordinate officers, using signal relays or relying on battlefield magic to deliver them. Issuing a command is a War action, with the attribute involved based on how you’re leading. Intelligence is used if you’re not actively participating in combat but are issuing orders over a distance, such as by signals. Charisma or Appearance are used for leading from the front, with the former for exhorting your troops on and the latter for leading by example. An Order action causes your soldiers to perform the action you tell them to, adding your successes on the roll as bonus successes to all actions they take in that turn. Rally actions are taken for allied battlegroups that failed rout checks, intervening before they dissolve entirely. You make a War check to beat their rout check, and if you succeed, they recover. Rally for numbers lets you make a War check to heal Magnitude damage, at 1 Magnitude per 2 successes, though it can’t increase Size or raise the battlegroup over its max. A battle group can only benefit from this benefit once per battle, but if it loses a point of Size, that resets the limit. Certain battle groups also have perfect morale, generally due to being mindless and therefore incapable of fear. They never rout and will not retreat unless ordered to do so. They get +3 Magnitude over normal, but cannot rally for numbers at all, as their casualties are all deaths or injuries rather than fleeing soldiers. In the Second Age, this is primarily zombies and similar. We also get special rules for chasing down and slaughtering fleeing battle groups, though I have no idea why anyone thought they were needed. Gotta have them massacre rules, I guess? But basically when a battle group routs you can take an action to chase down and murder a bunch of the fleeing soldiers. Strategic War is next – a basic system for use when two militaries clash. Essentially, the way it works is that the two leaders of the armed forces decide on a stratagem they intend to use, then make opposed War rolls, modified based on any circumstances and advantages they might have to implementing their strategy. Whoever wins the roll and rolls well enough to implement their stratagem – you need to do both – gets to enact their plan. Each stratagem modifies the circumstances under which the ensuing combat happens, because yes, you then play out the combat between the battle groups and any PCs involved. If you win the War roll but don’t roll high enough to match the threshold successes required by your stratagem, then the fight happens without any special rules. Example stratagems: Back to the Sea (Threshold 1): You force the enemy into terrain where they can’t retreat or escape. The enemy cannot take Withdraw actions, and any Size loss among the enemy is due to death or injury. Slaughter actions are “vastly more effective” than normal, but since those are basically entirely GM ruling for how well they work anyway, that’s not super meaningful. The enemy’s Rally For Numbers actions cost 3 successes per point of Magnitude restored. Strategic Placement (Threshold 1): You force the fight onto ground that helps you in some way, such as Fair Folk forcing a battle in the Wyld or Abyssals in a shadowland. There are no mechanical benefits to this other than that the normal effects of wherever you’re fighting occur. Demoralized (Threshold 2): You ravage enemy supply lines or otherwise demoralize the enemy. They get -1 to all rout checks and Command actions. Fortifications (Threshold 2): You force the enemy to fight on your prepared ground. The enemy begins the fight at Long Range of your forces and treats the entire battlefield as Difficult Terrain. Your forces treat it as normal terrain. Ambush (Threshold 3): You pull the enemy into a trap. All attacks your forces make during the first round are considered ambush attacks, and all attacks your forces make for 3 rounds after that are considered surprise attacks. Pincer Attack (Threshold 3): You trap the foe between multiple fronts. The enemy gets a -1 onslaught penalty throughout the entire fight. Now, social influence. The basic mechanic here is the influence roll, which involves a social attribute and relevant skill rolled against someone’s Resolve. Success lets you influence a character’s feelings or beliefs or get them to do a thing for you. Occasionally other rolls may be used, like Socialize for trying to read people. All influence rolls are based around either altering Intimacies or trying to persuade someone to do what you want. If you aren’t exploiting an Intimacy somehow, social influence does not work, period. You can’t get someone to do something if they have no reason to care at all. The stronger the Intimacy, the easier it is to convince someone to do what you want. Unlike combat, there’s really not an initiative order. Folks just go in whatever order makes sense in the scene. If a decision really needs to be made, it goes in order of who has highest Wits+Socialize, with the ST breaking ties as they like. Your primary defensive values against social influence are Resolve and Guile. Resolve represents your strength of will and resistance to persuasion, and is based on your Integrity. If you choose to apply your Resolve against social influence, it means you’re skeptical – if you’re happy to accept whatever’s being said, no rolls are needed. Guile is based on your Socialize, and is your ability to conceal your intentions and feelings. While Resolve resists most actual influence attempts, Guile resists the Read Intentions action, which is the core of how people discover Intimacies. Intimacies also modify Resolve – either up or down. Only the most relevant Intimacy in either direction is used, however, and they can cancel each other out. A Minor Intimacy gives +2 Resolve when used to oppose social influence, or -1 Resolve when used to support social influence. A Major Intimacy gives +3 Resolve or -2 Resolve. A Defining Intimacy gives +4 Resolve or -3 Resolve. The primary social actions are: 1. Instill. You are trying to influence what someone feels or believes. On a successful roll, the target forms an Intimacy towards whatever belief you were trying to get them to care about. You can always use Instill to give Minor Intimacies, but it’s much harder to alter an existing one. Strengthening a Minor or weakening a Major can only be done if the target has a different Minor or better Intimacy that supports the attempt. Strengthening a Major or weakening a Defining can only be done if they have a different Major or better Intimacy that supports it. Further, strengthening an existing Intimacy requires that any evidence or argument you use must be more compelling than whatever caused the original Intimacy. 2. Persuade. You are trying to convince someone to do something for you. Without an Intimacy to support such a roll, you can only convince people to perform trivial, relatively risk-free actions, like handing over a single coin. With a Minor Intimacy supporting you, you can convince people to perform Inconvenient tasks, those which involve mild danger or hindrance, so long as it wouldn’t seriously disrupt their life or livelihood, such as by causing severe injury, pissing off their boss or causing heavy financial loss. They may do things that take more than a scene to accomplish, but only if it won’t disrupt their life to do so. With a Major Intimacy supporting you, you can convince people to perform Serious tasks, which may carry risk of harm or even death, such as convincing a farmer to join a militia or an herbalist to sell you illegal poisons. However, they will not do anything that is almost certain to kill or ruin them. They will, however, be willing to perform tasks requiring extended periods of time, even if they involve joining some organization to do or other long-term commitments. With a Defining Intimacy supporting you, you can convince people to perform Life-Changing tasks. That could be almost anything. If you succeed at persuasion, they’ll only stop if the chance of death or ruin is utterly unavoidable, and even then, the ST may rule an NPC is willing anyway. 3. Bargain. This is like Persuade, but it doesn’t rely on the target’s Intimacies as much. Instead, you offer a bribe, gift or favor that the target believes is of equivalent value to what you want them to do, taking into account their Intimacies, wealth and status. 4. Threaten. This works like Bargain, in that it doesn’t care about Intimacies. Rather, you present the target with something they don’t want, and threaten to do it if they don’t obey. You may also use this in place of Instill to cause or grow Intimacies of fear towards you. However, for this to work, the target must fear your threat more than whatever you want them to do. Also, any use of Threaten, regardless of success, causes the target to form an immediate negative Tie towards you, with the target’s choice of context. This may also weaken any positive Ties the target has towards you at the target’s option. 5. Inspire. You inspire a specific emotion in the target. On a success, the target feels that emotion, but they choose what form it takes. They may form a new Intimacy, act on an existing Intimacy based on the passion evoked in them, or otherwise do something to reflect the emotion they’re feeling. They do not have to drop everything to act on the inspiration, but they must genuinely resolve to do something. This does not have to involve creating or strengthening Intimacies, but is often appropriate. Further, an inflamed passion may be treated as a Major Intimacy for purposes of Resolve and persuasion for as long as the target is acting on it. However, you don’t automatically know what passion you’ve actually inspired without using a Read Intentions action, and without magic, you can’t tailor the outcome of your Inspire actions to specific targets. 6. Read Intentions. You read what someone else is trying to achieve. If you succeed on a Socialize check against their Guile, you get a brief description of what they want out of a social interaction. Alternatively, you may attempt to determine their Intimacies. Before rolling, you must say what kind of Intimacy you’re looking for (‘Does he love anyone’ or ‘how does he feel about the Immaculate Faith’ are both good examples.) If they have one, you learn it (but only one – if multiple fit, the ST picks one). If they don’t, you learn that. This isn’t magical – it’s just reading how people behave, and so it may be difficult to learn things like who someone is in love with unless they’re also present or the person has some evidence of their identity on them. Someone unaware of being observed gets -2 Guile. Next time: The Sexy Bonus and How Not To Be Persuaded
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Mar 26, 2019 14:42
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PurpleXVI posted:Also am I reading it right that you can "farm" initiative off of a weak enemy and then use that to murder a tougher enemy? Because mechanically it sounds potentially interesting but thematically it sounds like the protagonists ignoring the big bad for three rounds while they kick over one of his henchmen, kicking him whenever he tries to get up and then suddenly they turn towards the boss and annihilate him in a single round. Its sort of an issue, though they do try to limit it. So, as someone already alluded to, battlegroups are a thing for mooks so your exalt can do the crazy things like personally destroying whole army units and whatnot. These groups do not follow the same rules about gaining/losing initiative; successful withering attacks against them give you the one automatic init, but no more, and the damage is just applied to their "health". Also, I partially lied about them being for destroying armies. That's certainly true for a size 5 battlegroup, but the smallest size 1 groups are meant to model around a half dozen people. So, generally, people in a fight that are too weak to really be anything but init sponges should normally get grouped as a battlegroup and run that way. Its not perfect, and there's some wonky elements (for example, from a mechanical perspective summoning 5-6 fighty demons and having them fight individually can be way more powerful than they would be as a battlegroup), but it does cover the biggest cases where farming init might emerge. There's also IIRC some sidebars noting that if an individual is too weak to be meaningful to combat, you shouldn't get init for attacking them (so stabbing fleeing peasants to power up to kill the bandits attacking the village is out). Also you can't do weird things like whack the dawn with functionally invulnerable soak to get those +1 inits over and over before going in to a fight.
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Mar 26, 2019 16:48
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You can also design your encounters around this, which is something I tried to do for my bestiary on martial artists, which will be showing up on the Vault as soon as I get the final cover art back. For example, I made one tank-type enemy who has a marking ability: if you get marked and try to attack anybody other than the tank, it costs 1 Initiative and all enemies gain 3 Initiative. Alternately, one of the martial art types is Mouse. At one point, Mouse stylists were going to gain 1 Initiative on any turn when they don't get attacked, so that any enemy who gets left alone for a while powers up. (In the end they wound up gaining Initiative whenever someone fails at something instead.) There are all kinds of fun little games you can play with Initiative if you're into that kind of design.
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Mar 26, 2019 17:00
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