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Night10194 posted:Dungeons: The Dragoning: 7.5 Edition
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Apr 2, 2019 02:15
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NGDBSS posted:Honestly? This seems like a perfectly fine way to conclude the review. By now you've shown off basically everything the system had to offer, and if the rest isn't even interesting at being a mess then a short summary of The Joke That Went Too Long works. That was my thought. I was just going to be listing as few mechanics as I could get away with while repeating the same analysis (there's nothing to analyze) for two weeks while hating it. I consider this complete rather than abandoned, personally. AdEva needed the level of detail I put into it because its flaws are instructive and/or awful. Other games, I'm covering a system I have a lot of experience with and explaining why the rules additions work or don't. This? Everything else was going to be me working through stupid dice tricks as fast as possible, plus the Expansion Book showed it wasn't going to get any better.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:20
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Yeah I think that's as complete as we're ever gonna get without doing something cruel like having a lottery where all big writers in the thread get a chapter. ("Mors it's your turn, you gotta do the equipment section...") And as someone who really likes your reviews and enjoys reading them a lot (I recently re-read your review of WHFR2e Vampire stuff because I was miserable on a long train ride and wanted to treat myself), I was basically just reading them because you went to the effort and I wanted to pay it forward. There was no joy there. DtD is the soylent of RPGs.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:27
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I'm torn between going back and doing a bad idea (returning to writing up The Official Campaign, at least through Ashes of Middenheim since it's the only adventure that doesn't totally suck) or just getting on to the City texts from Spires of Altdorf and Forges of Nuln. I also have Lure of the Liche Lord, which features the Tomb Kings but is also really bizarre and a strange look at what the authors think 3rd tier characters look like. Spoiler: The main dedicated fighter character of the '3rd career' party has nothing but 1st tier fighting careers, just 3 of them. Same for the main rogue. The others are, uh, similarly terribly built but at least some of them took classes outside 1st tier. Only a single PC of the whole Pre-Made party has an actual 3rd tier career. Also their caster went to all the trouble to become a Witch, took a single lovely spell with it, and then went into Vagabond and cut herself off from any further casting. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 02:29
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Liche Lord! I voted first so I count x10. According to the rules I just made up. Edit : "features the Tomb Kings" and commenting the rules are wonky locked in my vote instantly.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:35
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Night10194 posted:
okay yeah this one.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:37
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It's also the only book in the entire line that contradicts the core book and suggests enemies can Fury, while introducing enemies who Fury on 9+, breaking the entire Fury rule while also breaking with the system's norm on it. It did provide me with stats for an ancient egyptian mecha that football punted a vampire in a different campaign, though. Also you can befriend the mummy and be made a Nehekaran lord.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:44
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Night10194 posted:It did provide me with stats for an ancient egyptian mecha that football punted a vampire in a different campaign, though. Why are we even talking about this anymore. This is like if I went to the deli and they said, "Yeah you could have this sandwich, or also with cocaine." Yes please! O and more Torchbearer soonish. Maybe even tonight if I get my poo poo together. It's been a rough day or two.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:47
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 Part 6: Chipware & Programs  The chipwre socket is my favorite piece of cyberware from a design standpoint because of their flexible nature. Even with just the core book it provides a way to get around the bloated skill list (of course the real solution is not to have 90+ skills to begin with, but it was the 80s, give some slack). Chromebook 1 adds a slew of Biofeedback chips that have benefits beyond just simple skill bonuses. Of course, some of them are more useful or better written than others. One chip that is badly written but still manages to be useful is the Adrenaline/Endorphin Surge. The chip allows you to ignore exhaustion for up to 48 hours, and during this time “skill penalties due to wounds can be ignored”. Which seems great, except that damage penalizes a characters stats, not their skills. Whoops! While an easy fix it leaves the door open for a Referee to be an rear end in a top hat. At least the second benefit is better written. Up to three times while the chip is active, the user can boost their BOD stat by 1 for a minute, increasing BTM and Stun Saves. The other good Biofeedback chip is the Stress Chip. The most important benefit is that it gives +1 EMP “while using human interaction skills”, which I’m pretty sure is all the EMP skills. While getting all the cyberware installed to use this chip has a chance of costing a EMP, a social-focused character will probably be bugging the Referee about the therapy rules. Even if they don’t, this chip basically reverses the damage and let’s the character take advantage of other chipware. The other benefit of the Stress Chip is it gives a +1 bonus to COOL for the purposes of combat morale. But as I noted in my review of the core book, COOL only comes up once in combat. In contrast, the Increased Neural Feedback Chip is the worst chip in this book for metagame reasons. See, characters can’t just insert a REF-based skill chip and suddenly know Kung-Fu. The user has to practice for two days per +1 skill the chip gives. However this rule is hidden in the lengthy description of chipware in the core book, so most groups (and even published adventures) ignored this rule so that characters could, say, know how to scuba-dive when a scene called for scuba-diving. This chip not only brings the practice rules to a group’s attention, but then doesn’t even provide a good enough solution and are themselves useless. The INFC chips don’t allow for instant knowledge of REF skills, it just reduces the learning time by 1/2. But these chips burnout after 24 hours of use-which is the time it would take to learn the chip! One new type of chip is Memory-Compression chips that provide a suite of skills instead of just one. The maximum of the skill suite can’t exceed +3. Depending on the skill and the character’s stat this could be useful, but more likely it’ll be better to get one chip with the necessary skill at +3. One new skill is introduced here called Culture, and the rules for it are very badly written. “Without this skill, a character will have a +2 on other EMP based rolls when dealing with an NPC from another country”. So, not having the skill gives you a bonus? I'm sure that's not what they meant, but that's what ended up in print. Finally, there are a bunch of Visual Recognition chips that are dependent on the TimesSquare Plus upgrade from the Cybernetics section (which wouldn’t be so annoying if not for the fact that it took up 3 of the 4 upgrades.) One thing I hate about these chips is that in order to use them effectively, a character also needs to have the relevant Expert skill (or Specific Knowledge, which isn’t a thing in CP2020). So rather than reduce the problems of skill bloat, these chips just increase them. Great. One last chip worth mentioning is the M.O. chip, which help the user spot and identify, well, a criminal’s M.O. Only there’s a risk that when you use the chip, you start thinking that you are the criminal. Because that’s just what players needed, opportunities to lose control of their characters.  The last section in this book is Cyberdeck Programs. A lot of these programs are attributed to a Netrunner named Waycon Kid, who I assume is the contributor’s character. These programs are mix of redundant and terrible, but there are a few that stand out. First there’s Vampyre II, a Demon/Anti-IC program that adds programs it kills to its subprogram suite, except there’s a chance every time it uses the subprogram it crashes. Then there’s Bunnies, a program that does nothing except counter Vampye II. Lovely. Then there’s Psychodrome, an Anti-Personnel program that makes the targeted Netrunner too afraid to get on the net until they succeed a COOL check that can be made once a day. Hooray for crippling characters! Finally, there’s Fatal Attractor, which I will quote the description: Chromebook 1 posted:A particularly nasty version of Hellhound credited to the infamous Waycon Kidd. Legend has it, the Kidd ended up as the loser in a romantic triangle, and used this duplicate of his ex-girlfriend to eliminate his netrunning rival. There are not enough emotes to express my disgust. Final Thoughts Overall, the first Chromebook is pretty forgettable. It adds some interesting items, but nothing here is going to greatly alter what a Cyberpunk campaign will be like. The only things that get referenced by other material are the cyberfingers, the TimesSquare Plus, and the Malorian 3516 (also the Punknaught made it into an adventure in Challenge Magezine). And while the 3516 is very good, I wouldn’t say that it’s busted. It’s still a pistol, meaning it has a relatively low range, and it can only fire once a round. And while it does more damage than any other pistol, it’s comparable to the heavy rifles in the core book. While this supplement was mostly unremarkable, it’s necessary to get it out of the way so we can get to the supplement that really fucks with everything. Strap in Choombas, because the next issue of Chromebook is hitting the Data Terms! SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 02:47
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Night10194 posted:Spoiler: The main dedicated fighter character of the '3rd career' party has nothing but 1st tier fighting careers, just 3 of them. Same for the main rogue. The others are, uh, similarly terribly built but at least some of them took classes outside 1st tier. Only a single PC of the whole Pre-Made party has an actual 3rd tier career. Also their caster went to all the trouble to become a Witch, took a single lovely spell with it, and then went into Vagabond and cut herself off from any further casting.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:57
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Even the chrome future is not immune to 'all sexy things in RPGs will kill you'.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:57
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SirPhoebos posted:Overall, the first Chromebook is pretty forgettable. It adds some interesting items, but nothing here is going to greatly alter what a Cyberpunk campaign will be like. The only things that get referenced by other material are the cyberfingers, the TimesSquare Plus, and the Malorian 3516 (also the Punknaught made it into an adventure in Challenge Magezine). And while the 3516 is very good, I wouldn’t say that it’s busted. It’s still a pistol, meaning it has a relatively low range, and it can only fire once a round. And while it does more damage than any other pistol, it’s comparable to the heavy rifles in the core book. The Militech Crusher was remixed for that Cyberpunk 2077 trailer. The M31A1 is used in a lot of places, namely Maximum Metal as an anti-personnel option for powered armor. The Wrist-Racate also appears in a larger form there, too. The Militech 25mm grenades get a lot of play, with a lot of shotguns apparently able to use them like the autoshotgun in Corpbook 2. Also, surprised you didn't mention the Setsuko-Arasaka Police-Military-Security submachinegun and it's poor misogynist joke.
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Apr 2, 2019 03:23
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Night10194 posted:I'm torn between going back and doing a bad idea (returning to writing up The Official Campaign, at least through Ashes of Middenheim since it's the only adventure that doesn't totally suck) or just getting on to the City texts from Spires of Altdorf and Forges of Nuln. I also have Lure of the Liche Lord, which features the Tomb Kings but is also really bizarre and a strange look at what the authors think 3rd tier characters look like. Do Renegade Crowns, because I hate it and love it, but mostly hate and it's instructive of what happens when you build a book around the poo poo peasant concept but are also making a non grogy political point about imperialism
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Apr 2, 2019 04:01
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NutritiousSnack posted:Do Renegade Crowns, because I hate it and love it, but mostly hate and it's instructive of what happens when you build a book around the poo poo peasant concept but are also making a non grogy political point about imperialism I'll get to it after Liche Lord. One day, all Hams will be written. You'll get some similar material here anyway, as Liche Lord takes place in the Border Princes. Zereth posted:Are any of these characters capable of actually overcoming the challenges presented in the adventure in a reliable manner? The Scout and Explorer are both solid; they're also both generally better fighters than the fighter. The Scholar would actually be very good at his job if he wasn't an idiot and had taken Heal during Student (He's there for one thing, it's Int skills, and he has a 70+ Int. If he was also a medic he'd be ace for a support specialist). It's the Witch, Rogue and Fighter who are loving weird. The Fighter's supposed to be a huge badass from his background, too, but he'd get rolled by a single Tomb Guard potentially and there's no way in hell he'll stand up to any of the real threats. He doesn't even have full Light Armor, just partial mail and partial leather. He's a '3rd career' guy but his careers suck (Thug, Militiaman, and Bodyguard) and he'd get his rear end kicked by the technically way-less EXP Highwayman or Veteran in the game I'm running right now even if they didn't have a rifle and a revolver from being set 100 years later. Meanwhile the Witch only knows a single actual spell and it's a generic 'charm animal' spell. In a game about undead and politics and Chaos cults. Also she has the Hedge Wizard Petty Magic so she doesn't even have the super useful Petty (Arcane) fallbacks an Apprentice Wizard would like Magic Dart, Sleep, or Drop. The Rogue is a dwarf and has terrible Agi, so he's actually terrible at Pick Locks and the other skills needed to actually deal with tomb traps. Decent fighter, sort of, though? Seriously, fighters in WHFRP2e loving rock but somehow this guy is just worthless, because he's in 3 of the worse 1st tier fighters and never actually promoted. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 04:08
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Night10194 posted:I'll get to it after Liche Lord. One day, all Hams will be written. You'll get some similar material here anyway, as Liche Lord takes place in the Border Princes. Fair enough. Though as to your point that only Ashes was good --Rough Nights at the Three Feathers is fun-- and one of the better pre written adventurers period
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Apr 2, 2019 04:29
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Young Freud posted:Also, surprised you didn't mention the Setsuko-Arasaka Police-Military-Security submachinegun and it's poor misogynist joke. Huh? . . . MOTHERFUCKER! 
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Apr 2, 2019 04:42
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NutritiousSnack posted:Fair enough. I meant among the Campaign Books: Ashes, Spires, and Forges. Ashes isn't even good, it's just kind of 'acceptable'.
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Apr 2, 2019 04:47
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SirPhoebos posted:Huh? Yeah, the real shittiness about it is that it's a suck-rear end gun that wastes half a page in it's suckiness. It's low-caliber, huge because of the integrated silencer, and pretty much all the light and medium SMGs from the core 2020 book have features that make it a poor compromise. That includes the "no melting - honest" Federated Arms Tech Assault II. They literally burn a half-page on a sexist joke.
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Apr 2, 2019 05:05
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Night10194 posted:I meant among the Campaign Books: Ashes, Spires, and Forges. Ashes isn't even good, it's just kind of 'acceptable'. Ah, okay.
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Apr 2, 2019 05:54
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I want a game that is the game that Leviathan promised to be in its blurb, about ancient civilizations and monster heritage, but not by the people who made Leviathan. I would could however do without any further fan works or released products by people who have seen one very popular "deconstruction" in a genre then assumed that by watching it they know everything about the genre in question.
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Apr 2, 2019 07:05
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An attack program that poses as a fellow netrunner is not a bad idea, then they had to ruin it with the sexism.
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Apr 2, 2019 07:09
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Robindaybird posted:An attack program that poses as a fellow netrunner is not a bad idea, then they had to ruin it with the sexism. even if you eliminate the sexism, that's just a hellhound that acts suspiciously but harmlessly before attacking you
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Apr 2, 2019 07:11
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It would probably be more effective to have SexyNetBabe.EXE be DixieFlatline.EXE and insult your character's skill, execute some top grade hack effect (because it's part of the system it's 'hacking,' genius) and then go for some kind of net contact. When you try to reach out to your new internet father figure, they send the drones.
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Apr 2, 2019 07:48
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Young Freud posted:They literally burn a half-page on a sexist joke. I'm feeling a lot better about the Vehicles section in retrospect.
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Apr 2, 2019 08:07
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 The Rifter 9½, part 2: "To get the perfect effect, the character should have no shirt on (female characters especially) and have a really good war face."  Palladium game development. Giga-Damage™ The next BIG thing from Palladium By So, "Peter" has decided Mega-Damage is old hat, because if everybody has it, and that makes combat dull, since you have to strategize against equal foes. The Rifter 9½ posted:Why Palladium let everybody else get Mega-Stuff is beyond me, but I tell you, it's going to be the downfall of that company yet. (Editor's Note: Over the last 20 years, Percy has predicted the imminent demise of Palladium Books 241 times.) Take that, naysayers! Aren't you just big dummies! Essentially, Giga-Damage converts to Mega-Damage on a 1,000,000:1 ratio - one Giga-Damage equals one million Mega-Damage. In general, the only thing that has Giga-Damage are "small planets" and Giga-Armor. The whole article, of course, is lampooning the most powergamey end of Rifts.  I don't get it, but maybe you do. Giga-Stuff So, we're informed that Giga-Stuff was designed by the Coalition to murder everybody else thanks to Leopold Jupiter, Percy (Peter?) Ferkelberger's PC. Jupiter is a "Giga-Damage creature" with the "Giga-Psionic" power of annihilate enemies, and we're helpfully informed he can murder anybody. Also, a big list of guns!
 Referencing the "MAC II" of Robotech Giga-Damage Q&A Apparently Ferkelberger has been getting flamed and death threats by smart people, and so we get a faux Q&A to fend them off. Firstly, there's no Giga-Armor so PCs can only be the ones with Giga-Weapons and murder all the things. The Rifter 9½ posted:Besides, the time I spend writing up Giga-Armor could be much better spent playing Giga-Bots and Giga-Babes™, my awesome new collectible card game. (Editor's Note: Be afraid. Be very afraid.) Okay, sure. Shooting non Mega-Damage targets with Giga-Damage weapons retroactively removes them from existence and changes the timestream. Also, you can shoot at space and time with one and cause a rift. But upgrading Mega-Stuff into Giga-Stuff can only be done by another of Ferkelberger's PCs, Rollo Masamune, a 100th level Operator with a fully automated G.D.C. Triax Ulti-Max power armor. (That was the supposed competitor to the Glitter Boy in Rifts Sourcebook - it never was.) He thinks magic is lame, but decides he should probably upgrade that Ulti-Max with some. Also Giga-Weapons can murder gods and Superman. Of course, all of this is with a backstory about how his characters changed history so they're rulers of a new Coalition and murdered everything else... speaking of which.  I think this was a character in HōL. Giga-Adventures Though rifts, he suggests going to any world you like and murdering everything from other Palladium games and then your favorite movies and TV shows. The Rifter 9½ posted:With Giga-Damage gizmos you can terminate the Terminators, destroy the Death-Star, and boldly go wherever the heck YOU want! Get the idea? We get adventure hooks like Tolkeen Must Die!, where you have to balance annihilating Tolkeen and keeping their vaults intact to take their magical artifacts. There's The NGR Must Die! where it suggests you slice Germany off of Europe so it's set adrift at sea, and then shoot at it until it sinks. Then we have All Cosmo-Knights Must Die!, where you blow up a sun to attract their attention and then murder them all to prove how tough you are. Finally, we get Repeat your Favorite Adventures by rifting to another world and blowing up the same stuff all over again. Of course, when you realize Coffin didn't play Rifts and did find it fairly silly, well... it makes the whole article feel a bit more earnest. If anybody remembers anything about The Rifter 9½, it's usually this article. Tera-Damage is promised for release in Y3K. It's then explained that Giga-Damage is only being added because the Felkyl... Fek... Ferklberg- I'm not scrolling up to check the name, who can bother? They have "incriminating evidence" to blackmail Palladium staffers with. This includes them "whooping it up at a monster truck rally" and "dropping water balloons from a hotel window at Gen Con". That's funny!  Next: Snappy answers to stupid questions.
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Apr 2, 2019 10:42
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 Neotech 2 Part 3-1: The road goes on and on. Now we’re getting to the field of derived attributes. This means more tables! First up is physique, which in this case is a simple STY+TÅL+3D6 calculation. Results range from Weak (-14) to Massive (49+). Physique also influences how many damage columns that the character will get. The minimum is 4 and the maximum is 8.  The pain! There are three different types of damage you can accrue; Trauma, Pain and Blood loss. Each one of those are represented on the character sheet by ten rows of squares. Using the physique table you are supposed to check how many square you are allowed to use and then fill in the rest so they can’t be used. Chock value is how much the character can resist pain and stay conscious. In this case it’s STY+TÅL+VIL divided by 3 to get the median. If any of those change at any point you need to recalculate your chock value as well. Next up we have to calculate mental stability, we do this by combining PSY and VIL and rolling 3D6 again. Then we check another table to get our mental stability. This goes from Unstable, Stable, Normal, Secure and Stable. But we also get our psychosis columns numbers from doing this. Because this game can’t stop adding layer upon layer of bullshit in the name of realism.  The fear! Much like the damage columns you need to check at how many columns you get based on your mental stability and then fill in the rest. We’ll get into what these rules for these things later. After that we have to roll to see what our character mental value is. This deals with how well they can handle traumatic or terrifying situations. If this value is low you run the risk of suffering from a psychosis from the trauma or mental shock. The mental value is the median of PSY and VIL. Then we have exhaustion. A mechanic that everyone loves I’m sure. It’s TÅL+VIL/4 to see how many exhaustion columns you get, and the rest are obviously to be crossed over. Then we get to Cool. Which is, unsurprisingly, the characters ability (or inability) to keep calm under pressure. But it’s also their self confidence and ability to impress other people. This part is surprisingly a lot more elaborate than the others and goes into a number of details such as GM’s should only roll cool either when its suitable or once per situation. I recall this being rather similar advice in the CP2020 readthrough. But then I’ve also heard that N2 takes after that game a whole lot so this is the first sign of that. If the character succeeds his cool check they get to act as normally, failure makes the check a lever tougher. If they then fumble they get a mental breakdown. Which seems like an unnecessarily cruel thing to do. But if they manage to roll perfectly it means that “the player characters brain and action becomes exemplary and completely logically correct” and all their actions become one rank easier. The cool value is derived from PSY+VIL/5 + 2D6  The art continues to hold itself to the highest standards. Not sure what kind of emotion she’s trying to convey here. Media status is the game’s measurement at how famous the character might be. There is a sidebar mentioning that it can be a double edged sword where the GM can let a character with a high media status be recognized. But at the same time it also sounds like an opportunity to gently caress them over a bit. The suggestions ranging from them being recognized at inopportune times to their cell phone ringing and a journalist wanting them in a live debate as an opinion maker. Used well it can work to add some complications to things but used badly I can see it making things go really badly. Then obviously there is a table to check what media status you might have based on your social status. Initiative is RÖR+SYN/2 + Cool + (Combat Experience x2). All characters start with a 0 in the Combat Experience skill. There are a number of things that can affect your Initiative score. From either gaining more Combat Experience, to your Cool score changing. Then there is also cybertech. Attribute damage will also alter the roll. If the character is wearing glasses or lenses they will only use the base unmodified SYN value. Which seems fairly dickish. Having initiative be dependant on this many factors feels like an absolute nightmare because it’s two attributes, one derived stat and then a special skill on top of that. Because Combat Experience works rather differently from other skills. Should also be mentioned that this is the big thing you use SYN for outside of passive perception. All characters start with a luck score of 11. It’s used to survive those particularly dangerous situations. Or embarrassing apparently as one of the examples is preventing your skirt from blowing up when it’s really windy. An example that seems in rather poor taste when the others involve not getting your skull split open while on top of a train that goes through a tunnel, or finding something to grab onto while falling off a skyscraper. If anyone is wondering we’re on step 16 right now where we deal with the characters weight and length. It’s also here we see our first difference between men and women. To calculate the length of a male character the formula is: STY+TÅL+5D6+140cm. For women its: STY+TÅL+5D6+130cm. Then for weight is Length+2D6-110kg for both genders. Then physique will also modify both weight and length. I don’t know why this has to be rolled and not just decided by the player themselves. But I figure that information will probably be relevant down the line in some fashion.  He was in the middle of a mission when Bill realized that he was missing something. But he wasn’t sure what it was. Was it his lucky hat? Rattling on a bunch of these in quick order: Movement speed (or FÖR) is RÖR+TÅL+10/4 meters. You can run FÖRx2 meters per round, but also sprint at FÖRx3 meters. Carrying capacity (or BF) is STY+TÅL/2 and measured in kilograms. Base damage is for close combat and is based on STY. There is a mention of the two types of damage that use this attribute but we’ll deal with that later. Any changes to the relevant attributes for these will obviously mean you need to recalculate them. N2 also determines the characters primary weapon hand. And it does so in the most weirdest way ever. Either you roll 1D10, where a 10 means the character is left handed. With the explanation that only a tenth of all people in the world is left handed. Using your offhand means any checks are done at a level higher. But! A gracious GM can also allow the player character use the same primary hand as the player themself. So a right handed player can choose to play right handed and vice versa. Realism! At this point we are on step 20 so halfway through this. Mercifully the book gives us a reminder of what you need to do if a base attribute changes. But why it’s buried midway through the creation process, a point where no real attribute changes have happened I have no idea. It feels like something that should’ve been placed at the end instead. But it’s also a point the book stressed repeatedly through this process that if any attribute might change you need to redo calculations for everything that they’re derived of. Then on top of that we have another thing that is going to influence that, which I’ll get to in a second. Before the next major step we get introduced to another special rule, namely easier skills. This reflects the characters natural gift or a strong interest in something which makes a particular skill easier to learn. This means that if the particular skills level is below 10 it gets raised up to that. Also all skill checks gets one level easier than the normal. But why would the game tell us this? Because surprise, it has merits and flaws! Sort of. They’re described as Special Benefits and Drawbacks meant to symbolise various talents the character has that marks them as a slightly special compared to other people. In its favour you can only roll, or choose if you’re allowed to, two of these. On the flipside you can only roll for what drawbacks you have, of which you get a max of two. Unlike most other system you don’t get anything back for the, such as character creation points or anything. You just have two (or maybe even more if you’re unlucky with the rolls) drawbacks. What follows then are two D100 tables for first the benefits and then the drawbacks. I won’t list them all because a lot of them are just “You get skill x as an easy skill.” But at the same time it’s a good indication at what skills are available because you can get bonuses to such things as Boozing, Dancing, Economy, Knowledge of Arts, Design, Maths, Singing and more. Interestingly enough Seduction is the only one of those that shows up twice, first as charmer and then as Seducer/Seductress. This is also the only place where you can get their attributes permanently raised by 2. You can also get extra columns in the damage or such. So I hope you didn’t cross those out with a permanent marker ahead of time. You can’t get above 10 columns though. The drawbacks on the other hand. There are a 98 of them in this case (as the 99-100 roll is a reroll in this case) and much like the benefits they’re rather repetitive. A lot of them just incurring a penalty to attributes, or more commonly just giving you a penalty to social checks. Then there are the two that I would consider the real game derailers of the bunch: Phobia: You character has a fear of something. There is a D100 list of various phobias that you need to roll on such as Agoraphobia (Fear of open spaces), Aichmophobia (fear of knives and sharp objects), Scotophobia (Fear of the dark), Claustrophobia and so on. Mechanically speaking things are somewhat complicated and cumbersome. Because you have to first see what level you need to roll. Ranging from Medium (Ob3D6) to Very high (Ob5D6), decided to by the GM of course. Then you need to roll against your VIL. If you succeed then no biggie, you stand your ground and face your fears. But if you fail you need to get away from whatever it might be. If you’re unable to do that thought you gain a mark on your psychosis chart. If you then manage to fumble you are paralyzed by fright and can’t do anything but to get away from you have a phobia against. It all feels like the Dark Heresy Fear rules in some weird proto form. Mania: The character has an obsession of something. Every day you have to roll an easy check against PSY in order to be able to concentrate on something. When the character isn’t doing anything they will always do something related to their obsession. Followed by another D100 table of various manias like Megalomania, Mythomania, Zoomania, Ablutomania (the need to be clean) and so on. One of those results is also nymphomania. So yeah. That’s a thing you can get in this case. As well as pyromania. The former is really skeevy and the latter one is begging for trouble. Most interestingly these two are also the ones with the biggest range. With both phobia and mania having a range of 22-25 and 50-54 while the rest are either 1 or 1-2 dice results. Kinda shows where most of the emphasis on these drawbacks are going. To me it feels that there is an expectation by the game that one of the PC’s are going to have some massive drawback like that threaten to derail the session. As suddenly they others have to deal with their megalomania or claustrophobia or whatever. The fact that nymphomania is a result is also a big warning sign. I can post the rest of them in a separate list if there is an interest but those two were obviously meant to be the big thing here. The next to last step in this case which is the characters behaviour. Once again you toll on a D100 table (N2-15 to show how far we are with those by this point) to get two of them. Or just pick if the GM allows it. They’re meant to flesh our your character a bit more, which in itself is not a bad idea. But once again I’m not sure why this is part of the character creation process when it could’ve been left at the end where all the fluff usually happens. Feels like pointless minutia and dice rolling for barely any gain. Finally we need to note down on our sheet what skills start with base value. In this case it’s 5, regardless of your social status. With that we’re at step 24. Semi-related question, is there enough interest to see the rest of the games drawbacks as well as possibly its benefits? Next time: From riches to ruin and back again.
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Apr 2, 2019 11:44
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Exalted 3rd Edition: HORSE Ride begins with a Charm made of mini-charms, where when you buy it you get a bunch of minor effects and can buy more for 2 XP each. Mostly it’s stuff like ‘you never fall off your horse unless explicitly unhorsed’ or ‘you can call your horse with a whistle’ or ‘you always know if a horse is a good horse’. Minor but useful horse magic. It’s pretty okay, honestly. Other Ride stuff lets you do stupid horse balance tricks, reflexively disengage while mounted, get a bunch of Ride dice tricks, make your horse stand up automatically, allow your horse to attack on its own, allow your horse to defend you, prevent damage to your horse, speedily put armor on your horse…a lot of it is just, this other thing another ability does, but for your horse, or boosting horse speed. Lots of different ways to make horse go fast. You can also get Charms that let you steal your foe’s horse, trade around Initiative with your horse, or conjure a magic horse out of your butt. More interesting, perhaps, is Hero Rides Away, which lets you lose Limit and gain motes and Willpower when you accomplish goals with the aid of your horse. You can also get Charms to let your horse fly, or to let you use your Dodge Charms for your horse. Honestly, I’m okay with a lot of Ride because it actively does stuff and makes your horse cool and useful. I mean, you’re gonna lose a lot if you aren’t with your horse, but frankly, it’s stupidly hard to kill a horse that has Solar Ride used on it. Still too many boring dice tricks, but what can you do? There are 36 Ride Charms over 6.5 pages. Sail begins with a permanent ‘you are way better because ship’ thing – free dice tricks on all Sail rolls, resistance to fear because…boats, I guess, balance boost, and memory of distance routes. None of which is contingent on being aboard a ship, just knowing how to sail. Sail also provides resistance to deprivation, resistance to social influence if you woke up on a boat, boosts to navigating around danger, penalties to any foes aboard your ship, drawing Essence from your love of your ship, speeding up your ship, preventing creatures of darkness from counting as such when crewing your ship…and a bunch of stuff to boost your rolls in the single player game that is the Sail rules. Lots of dice tricks for that, and your group is going to love you being the unstoppable sailor who gets to roll all the dice while they sit around and do nothing, I’m sure. Sail also gives weather prediction, reduces penalties from weather and currents, gives bonuses to combat for you and everyone on your ship when boarding, gives bonuses to sensing danger when on your ship, prevents Wyld mutation (for your ship and crew), lets you give your ship temporary bonus health, lets you train your crew and boost their stats, and ultimately lets you merge yourself with your ship, allowing its naval combat stats to boost your physical combat stats, and lets you speak the ancient tongue of the sea, understood instinctively by all ocean spirits and Raksha and also by the Lintha and Niobraran League, but not other sea-going nations or groups, plus a bunch of other minor ocean-related buffs. There are a total of 39 Sail Charms over 7 pages. Socialize gets weird. It starts out by making sure you don’t make an idiot of yourself and making positive Intimacies towards you better while negative ones get worse, and does your standard issue dice tricks, sure. And it has Quicksilver Falcon’s Eye, which is…mostly useless, since what it does is tell the character when someone uses their Resolve or Guile against a social influence roll, which is something the player already knows by default, because system transparency. But then it gives an intention-reading radar, so you always know if someone uses a read intentions action near you. But once we get past all the standard intention-reading boosters or Guile-boosters or dice tricks, we get into stuff that lets you make people think you believe the opposite of what you do, or hypnotize people after successfully defending against their social influence because your soul has infinite depths. Perhaps strangest, though, are the persona Charms. These let you set up a fake personality with fake Intimacies that you can take on when you want to act against your real Intimacies for a while without gaining Limit or whatever. You become vulnerable only to your new Intimacies, having essentially lost your real ones until you stop using the persona. You can have a bunch of personas if you want to buy Heart-Eclipsing Shroud a lot. Further, you can then upgrade it so each persona has their own Ability dots and specialties, plus different stats with about half your total XP, and it can have its own Charms your main personality doesn’t know. Your personas get to gain XP along with you, even, at half your normal rate. Which you can later upgrade to 75% your normal rate, but at the cost of each persona getting its own Limit Trigger on top of your normal one. Eventually this lets you, when you die, activate Soul Reprisal to instead of dying become one of your personas permanently, turning your old life into a persona of that personality which is now your core one. The persona stuff gets loving weird. There are 46 Socialize Charms over 10 pages. Stealth starts with a combination of dice tricks and turning invisible when you aren’t moving, or being hard to notice generally. It lets you do stuff like make Join Battle rolls also double as stealth checks, or gain Initiative while stealthing, or help your buddies stealth. Generally useful stealth tricks, really. Mental Invisibility Technique is a bit odd – it lets you sneak so hard that people forget you exist, even if you leave stealth, so long as you don’t start fighting. There’s a bunch of general ambush-boosting stuff, or stuff that lets you do things while stealthed without breaking stealth, such as defending someone else. This is also the ability to go to if you want to hide your anima banner, as it lets you swallow it up and then later spit it out as a blinding pillar of light. Shadow Replacement Technique is pretty weird – it lets you grapple someone and then beat their Resolve with a Stealth roll to enter their shadow and possess them, controlling the victim except if they want to make the victim act against a Major or Defining Intimacy. You can use this to make the victim kill themselves, but you take any damage the victim takes while the Charm is active, too. You can also take Shadow-Crossing Leap Technique, which lets you teleport between areas of cover as long as there is a physical path for your body to travel. There are 22 Stealth Charms over 6 pages. Next time: Survival, Thrown, War
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Apr 2, 2019 13:03
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Mors Rattus posted:Eventually this lets you, when you die, activate Soul Reprisal to instead of dying become one of your personas permanently, turning your old life into a persona of that personality which is now your core one. This really just feels like something that's imposing on Sidereal thematics.
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Apr 2, 2019 13:07
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I've never seen an RPG that showed you floorplans for apartments to give you an idea of how people live in the setting. Is this a Swedish thing?
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Apr 2, 2019 13:47
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Halloween Jack posted:I've never seen an RPG that showed you floorplans for apartments to give you an idea of how people live in the setting. Is this a Swedish thing? I honestly have no idea. Are we still talking Neotech here though? Because if so it must be one of the extra books that I don't have available.
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Apr 2, 2019 13:51
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Halloween Jack posted:I've never seen an RPG that showed you floorplans for apartments to give you an idea of how people live in the setting. Is this a Swedish thing? Does Pendragon having floorplans/maps of castles count? Strikes me as filler.
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Apr 2, 2019 14:05
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Cooked Auto posted:I honestly have no idea. Are we still talking Neotech here though? Because if so it must be one of the extra books that I don't have available. Nessus posted:A lot of modern conspiratoriology is pretty much the same old reheated anti-Semitic bullshit with maybe a thin layer and the occasional confusion of "is he saying THIS or THIS?" For instance, one may quite legitimately and genuinely hate the modern international financial/capitalist system, but if your reason is "it's encouraging white women to date black men and white men to become the little white cuck ball," then you are swallowing an anti-Semitic theory, even if you did not sit down to embrace the beliefs of Adolf E. Hitler. GURPS Illuminati and the RPGs it inspired never rubbed me the wrong way because, by taking the position that dozens of conspiracy theories are simultaneously true, it collapses the central narrative of a single diabolical conspiracy controlling everything. Ok I gotta go bye
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Apr 2, 2019 14:15
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Halloween Jack posted:Oh uh I confused Neotech with the Cyberpunk Chromebook. I'm going to go downstairs and get coffee I won't blame you because it's rather obvious that Neotech takes after Cyberpunk a lot when it comes to rules.
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Apr 2, 2019 14:25
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It feels like the Rifter stuff is 'whatever the writer thought was air quotes wacky' and then Kevin came along behind to play Lou to the writer's Bud. Yikes.
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Apr 2, 2019 15:07
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I'm pretty sure Persona charms exist because the dev team was really into canon NPC Mirror Flag and decided that yes, that is what a true Socialize Master looks like.
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Apr 2, 2019 15:10
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It reminds me of when System Mastery reviewed Macho Women With Guns. I think the standard for comedy, at least in tabletop, is gaming now. Years ago there didn't need to be any kind of theme or throughline, just "Hey, this is wacky!" Remember those mods for Doom and Wolfenstein where you could shoot Bill Clinton and Barney the Purple Dinosaur?
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Apr 2, 2019 15:12
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Food and Familiars Survival is going to be doing a few different jobs. It does allow for wilderness survival here, yes. Its most basic Charm lets you spend an hour to basically automatically gather several days’ worth of food. It also has Charms to let you ignore environmental penalties to Survival checks or to approach normal, non-sentient animals (yes I know that’s not what sentient means) without danger unless they are trained to attack or maddened by pain, disease or hunger. Which honestly strikes me as a really…lovely Charm? Like, yes, animals don’t suck any more, but that’s still not great. Dice tricks abound, but that particular tree also leads into the Familiar-boosting Charms, which are honestly where Survival actually shines. The actual survival tricks are mostly boring or easy to guess – tracking, avoiding being tracked, that kind of thing. However, Survival can turn your Familiars into terrifying warbeasts of immense power. It lets you buff their attacks, gain motes from them, teach them magical abilities, make them huge, mutate them to give them new powers, let them fight immaterial beings, make them fearless…you can get a lot out of just buffing Familiars, especially if you start out with a powerful 3-dot Familiar like a tyrant lizard or similar. I actually am okay with this, if you want to have a familiar matter and continue to matter this is a good way to do it. Also, while many of these Charms have XP costs to activate, there is a sidebar noting that if your familiar dies, any XP you invested in them is refunded. There are 24 Survival Charms over 6.5 pages. Thrown is a combat ability, and that means we’re going to see combat tricks – going around cover, extending range, bonus dice based on high Initiative, that kind of stuff. Thrown also specializes in giving penalties to the opponent for the scene if it can land hits or other weird effects, and in being used for stealth attacks. Fallen Weapon Deflection is a notable weird one, allowing you to use your thrown weapon to either knock disarmed weapons further away or to un-disarm allies by knocking their weapons to them. Overall, though, Thrown’s as direct as any other combat ability, except being better for disarms and other weird tricks more than direct damage of single targets. (And even then, it’s quite good at that, because Solar combat suite. Just…lots of dice trick charms to boost attacks, and often somewhat reliant on stealth or ambush.) There are 24 Thrown Charms over 4.5 pages. It is by far the combat ability the old devs were least interested in. War starts out letting you ignore penalties for having lovely soldiers and increases your unit’s Size. Then it takes a detour into you blessing your siege operators to buff their rolls for a single attack, or a single scene if you spend an hour teaching them how to ballista. You also, obviously, get access to the more standard buffs and dice tricks that make soldiers generically better and more fearless, or which let you ignore penalties for knowing nothing about the foe. After that you can get blessings for having non-lovely soldiers, ways to heal your battle groups when your foe rolls badly, or the ability to use multiple stratagems at once. War doesn’t really throw out too many surprises early on. Until Battle-Visionary’s Foresight, anyway, which lets you secretly name two stratagems, and then if your enemy uses either of them, you automatically counter them and get to act as if you’d won the War roll instead of them. There are, strangely, no War Charms over Essence 3. Why? I don’t know. There are 17 War Charms over 4 pages. Note, Solar War is still quite good, mainly on the fact that its dice tricks do stupid, stupid poo poo and do it early and efficiently. Next time: The Martial Arts and Sorcery Chapter
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Apr 2, 2019 15:25
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord Dramatis Personae So, this is going to be an interesting one. Do you like urbane, reasonable mummies? Weird bad endings? Dungeons crawling? Traps? Political intrigue? Random towns full of torture cults? Six armed statues? Extremely poorly built PCs? Lure of the Liche Lord is a pre-made adventure series involving all those things. It focuses on a region in the Border Princes (The lawless-ish regions east of the Empire and Bretonnia, infested with monsters and small principalities) where lies the tomb of a powerful Tomb King, Karitamen. He was a great warrior of Nehekara, a minor noble who had proved himself as a soldier and tactician and earned his rank despite his minor nobility. Karitamen was a skilled and benevolent ruler for a long time, but he was afflicted by something common to the nobility of Nehekara: A total fear of the way he was going to get old and die eventually. He sought all kinds of magical ways to stay alive longer, and in doing this he slowly became a less and less capable ruler, his overriding fear of how he was going to lose his vaunted strength to age overwhelming his compassion for his subjects. Ironically, after he was killed in an uprising when a noble used a magic Chaos dagger to pierce his defensive enchantments, he was brought back to eternal life anyway. Nagash had happened and the Tomb Kings were created. Normally, Karitamen would have been reasonably happy to get back up. Unfortunately for him, he was now a mummy/skeleton/liche, which annoyed him; how could he rule over his people forever and finally provide them the unworried, excellent leader they deserved if they were terrified of him? Worse, he discovered the Chaos dagger that had killed him during the uprising bound him to his tomb. So now he was stuck in a burial chamber for eternity, having the eternal existence he had sacrificed his reputation and his peoples' well being for but no ability to rule with it. He found he could send dreams outside of his tomb, and used that to at least ensure he drove all the people who had stabbed the poo poo out of him insane. Doing this took all his power, and so he collapsed, mercifully falling to his rest for a time. Karitamen has woken again, and found minor princes and orcs around his tomb and no mighty kingdom to oppose him. Still sealed by Chaos, now he plans how to get himself out (while several Chaos forces will be frantically trying to keep him locked in because they do not want to be killed by angry Egyptian skeletons) and sends his skeletons up to the world above to maneuver and manipulate until he can escape. He has what he wants (eternal life-ish), and now he wishes to take the region of the Border Princes he's trapped in and make it into a glorious Nehekaran kingdom. Into this stumble a party of professional tomb robbers, who will get involved with those seeking to free the Liche Lord, those seeking to kill him, and those who just want to rule their petty principalities. It's not a bad setup for an adventure. The game provides a party of six pre-made PCs for this high-power adventure, intended for skilled PCs entering their 3rd career. I'm going to be using them as mechanical yardsticks for the challenges of the campaign, so it's time to get to know our protagonists. They cover all 6 of the major roles for PCs: A scholar/support guy, a fighter, a rogue, a ranger, a caster, and a leader. Only 3 of them are any good. More hilariously, their advancement is only balanced against one another by how many careers they've completed; they vary wildly in how much EXP they actually have. I counted. Also, only one of them is actually in a 3rd tier career. Our leader and the most advanced PC in the group is Woldred, an Outrider to Scout to Explorer. He's a guy afflicted with constant wanderlust and curiosity who started out as a cavalry scout and ended up making a living exploring and robbing ancient ruins. He's not really interested in the money; he's more into the thrill of discovery. He's also the richest PC due to the Trappings system. He's got about 5300-5400 EXP, depending on which of his Talents are Human Random Talents (It can be hard to tell), he's actually a 3rd tier, and his careers are quite useful. Most of his stats are in the 50s, some in the 40s, and his Int is an impressive 64 which makes him awesome at finding hidden stuff. Weirdly, his rolled stats never triggered Shallya's Mercy, despite him having a base 22 BS; he left 9 points of BS on the table, and given Scout is a ranged combat class, that really hurts his fighting potential. Also, he made the idiot mistake of taking Crossbow prof instead of Longbow in Scout; King Longbow (and those 9 points of BS he left on the table) could have made him a decent ranged combat backup. Still, he's not really bad at anything and is a good jack of all trades and faceman. If everyone in the party was like Woldred they'd be solid. The Rogue is the first Bad Idea in the party. Thorgek is a dwarf, which is already a strike against being a Rogue because a lot of his skills rely on Agi, which dwarfs are not good at. He is also a Miner to Thief to Tomb Robber. All those are 1st tier. With a 39 Agi, he's not actually great at his primary stat because with only 1st tiers, there were caps on how high his stats could be. He's also nearly 2000 EXP behind Woldred; I counted, he has 3600 EXP. So that's many, many less advances than his leader. He's okay but not great at dealing with traps and locks, not great at stealth, and his highest stat is his 59% WS (But only 1 attack and no combat talents). Most of his stats are in the 30s. Also only 1 Fate point. Similarly seems not to have used Shallya's Mercy; I don't think any of the PCs do. He'd be fine if he'd taken a sane path like Tomb Robber to Fence to Master Thief. He did not. The idea is that it fits his backstory to have started a miner, gotten kicked out of his clan for stealing, become a thief, and then drifted into robbing tombs, but...There's this weird obsession in all these characters with 'they actually do the exact job their class says they do!' that really, really hobbles them mechanically. Ehrl the Scholar is actually good at his job. Really good at it. He's not good at much else, but in a mission in a mummy's tomb the guy who is super good at deciphering hieroglyphics has a real job. Ehrl (Valet to Student to Scholar) is a university drop-out who actually failed his classes because he spent too much time in the library reading whatever he could instead of bothering with homework. He just likes to learn for his own sake. He ended up a librarian, found a treasure map, and saved Woldred and Thorgek from a trap when he met them in the tomb. He joined up ever since. I do like the characters' backstories, mostly, and I like how their team gets together over the course of them. Ehrl doesn't do much but use knowledge skills, but in this kind of campaign they're really useful, and he has a huge 73% Int, a pile of +10s and +20s, some supporting talents, and useful knowledges and languages. His real flaw is not having Heal; he could have taken it in Student and a 73% Int would've made him an awesome medic for the cost of 100 EXP. Still, he's great at his actual intended role in the party, it's a useful role for the adventure, and he has a respectable (but significantly lower than Woldred) 4000 EXP. Seriously, dude rolls on 83-93% on most of the stuff he's built to do. Therese the Witch could be so cool! She is not. Witches, if you remember, are unusual Hedge mages who can spend 200 EXP each to buy individual spells from multiple lores as long as the CN is under 15. She could have a huge grab-bag of neat tricks. I've had two Witch characters in games and they're really fun and mechanically interesting. She does not have a cool grab-bag of tricks. She has one trick. It's a bad trick. She's Hedge Wizard to Witch to Vagabond, which also means she's cut off from learning more magic until she finishes her current (kind of lovely) career. She's a young woman who grew up with a loving, supportive family that never ostracized her for having weird gifts. Then there was some trouble with a suitor when she was 16, she blinded him with magic (she has no blinding magic), and he broke his neck. She had to flee ahead of the Hat Patrol and ended up falling in with the tomb robbers. She's built as a medic and social character, with most of her stats in the 30s-40s but a 50+ Fel, Heal+10, and a grab bag of useful skills. Her problem is her big claim to fame is magic, but she only took a single spell with Witchcraft, and...it's a generic Charm Animal from Lore of Beasts. Animals are not a major factor in this adventure. Also Petty Magic Hedge is almost useless. So she's spent shitloads of EXP and effort on being a caster, but can't cast any useful spells. Her skills keep her from being totally useless, she's just completely wasted her role in the party. Has 4000 EXP like Ehrl. Johann the Scout is Vagabond to Outrider to Scout. I would probably have skipped Outrider since Vagabond goes into Scout, but he's another solid character. He also has a subpar base BS (and didn't Shallya, again) despite being the party's main ranged combatant, but he ends up fine anyway because Scout is a good class. Except his 30 Fel, his stats are high 40s, low 50s. He's a fairly generic ranger type in his backstory; just loves traveling and shooting stuff, loves the forest, etc etc. Quiet, decent guy. All the PCs are described as fairly decent people who are deeply loyal to their team, which is kind of nice. Johann is actually the best overall fighter in the party, probably. He's also got 19 Wounds, which never hurts. And actually uses King Longbow. Once he grabs Sure Shot from Scout, he'll be a great ranged combatant (even Shallyaing his BS would only get him to 56 instead of 53, so no huge loss like Woldred) and he's no slouch with his axe and dagger, either. Also very good at moving quietly and doing ranger stuff. Johann is solid. Also has about 5000 EXP. Goran the Bodyguard is the worst PC in the party. Yes, worse than Therese, though she gives him a run for his money. Goran is a militiaman who discovered he liked getting into random thug fights in the city then got hired as a bodyguard for a noble. He then left that job to find something where he could hurt people, joining the tomb robbers to actually get into fights. He's Militia to Thug to Bodyguard, all of them 1st tier Fighters and none of them especially good ones. He has most of the essential talents for a fighter, he has Dodge +20, and he has 2 attacks, yes, but, like, he's just kind of terrible. His WS is 43%. His SB and TB are 4, same as most of the party. He's really kneecapped by never promoting and sticking around in classes with +10 stat caps. He doesn't even have especially useful skills from all this hopping around, and he's dumb as a brick at 26% Int. Also 23% base BS. All the PCs have below average BS rolls. All of them. He wants to use a two-handed sword, but he also has terrible armor (1 Head, 3 Body, 1 Arms, 0 Legs) that won't hold up to serious threats. Moreover, he only has 2800 EXP. If he actually had EXP parity, he could be a badass. He is not. Which sucks, because actual dedicated fighters are shitkickers once they get mid 2nd tier or early 3rd tier. He could be Vinny from the OWB Fight Club! He is not Vinny. As it is, he will struggle to keep up with any real threat. So yeah. That's the 6. They're mostly terrible! Even the good-ish ones are mostly only okay. Their backstories are fine, and I like the little narrative of their group slowly coming together and becoming friends, they just really needed more mechanical care put into them. Never using the 'set a stat roll to 31' rule, wildly unequal EXP, poor equipment...they're just not what I think of when I think 'high powered party'. Their fighter with 2800 EXP is outdone by the fighters in the group I'm running right now at 1500 because they're actually in 2nd tier careers. The Explorer has 1000 GC in 'trade goods' because Explorer's trappings have that; dude couldn't shell out for some plate for their warrior? Or other gear for him and the others? I think Woldred's been embezzling the group's loot for years and they've never noticed. Tune in next time to see what Jackassery is waiting to waylay these intrepid heroes. Next Time: The Situation
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Apr 2, 2019 15:35
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Mors Rattus posted:Sail begins with a permanent ‘you are way better because ship’ thing – free dice tricks on all Sail rolls, resistance to fear because…boats, I guess, balance boost, and memory of distance routes. None of which is contingent on being aboard a ship, just knowing how to sail. Sail also provides resistance to deprivation, resistance to social influence if you woke up on a boat, boosts to navigating around danger, penalties to any foes aboard your ship, drawing Essence from your love of your ship, speeding up your ship, preventing creatures of darkness from counting as such when crewing your ship…and a bunch of stuff to boost your rolls in the single player game that is the Sail rules. Lots of dice tricks for that, and your group is going to love you being the unstoppable sailor who gets to roll all the dice while they sit around and do nothing, I’m sure. Solar Sail makes a lot more sense from a thematic standpoint when you realize that it SHOULD be called "Hemingway".
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Apr 2, 2019 15:51
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord "But I have to be a Rog3\Clr2, my backstory is that I grew up as part of a street gang and then found religion!" is one of them there false affordances of multi-classing, and I'm sad to see it make its way into careers too.
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Apr 2, 2019 15:59
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