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Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Summoning Ligier is sometimes the only way to get the Artifact you want. Some problems can only be solved with that kind of specific, intense power.

Of course, possibly you should use the realization that your ambitions require Ligier as a moment to reflect on where you went wrong.

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sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Yea there's like, a few demons of the 3rd who are just really specific dicks or just kinda generic evil creatures with no real desire to do world wrecking harm.

Most are, ya, just a cool way to ensure you and everyone else aren't leaving this campaign alive. Especially when you have the first and even second circle just full of useful, less genocidey, guys.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Honestly I can't think of a lot of the interesting 3CDs who are set on destruction that much? Don't get me wrong they're all huge problem but they're interesting, theoretically useful problems.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Destruction is more a side effect of them pursuing their own obsessions, really.

It's just, unless you actually want whatever they're obsessed with, you are almost certainly better off doing anything else.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Mors Rattus posted:

Destruction is more a side effect of them pursuing their own obsessions, really.

It's just, unless you actually want whatever they're obsessed with, you are almost certainly better off doing anything else.

Who doesn't want basalt roads shouted all over their empire?

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Mors Rattus posted:

It's just, unless you actually want whatever they're obsessed with, you are almost certainly better off doing anything else.

This is, in general, a good demon management axiom. Always use the right tool for a job. If you need a demon to watch a baby, don't give it to the blood ape, give it to the neomah. Worst case scenario with the neomah is that you now have more babies, while you're basically guaranteed less babies with the blood ape.

The main difference between first circle demons and third circle demons is that there is almost definitionally a perfect first circle demon for any given task, while there is almost never a perfect third circle demon for any task other than a kaiju battle or the apocalypse. It's a remarkably useless spell.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Ratoslov posted:

Worst case scenario with the neomah is that you now have more babies, while you're basically guaranteed less babies with the blood ape.
:hmmyes: The math checks out.

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011
karitamen is a mummy WHFB player, i love it

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013

Alright, so I'm a liiiiittle late with this post, but I had a lot of life poo poo come at me back at the end of last year, and it's taken some time to get everything sorted out. I'm not giving up on this review yet, though! So, without further ado...



Part Two: Character Creation

Character Creation in Infinity uses a Lifepath system, where you work through various steps of a character's history, building up their Atrributes and Skills in the process. By default, the Lifepath is random, with every thing determined by dice rolls. To keep bad rolls from giving you something you don't want, however, you have 5 Life Points, which you can spend to skip the roll and just choose an option, or to reroll some outcomes. The book also gives the option of skipping rolling altogether, and giving you 12 Life Points to build the exact character you want. Which one you use is up to the GM, natch. Something very cool that Modiphius has done for all the 2d20 games is that they have an online character generator for each one, updated as new books are released. Infinity's is here, if anyone wants to try it for themselves.

There's a couple things covered before creation actually begins. Skills acquired during character creation max out at 3 Expertise and Focus each, unless they're one of your signature skills, in which case the limit is 5. Your Focus in a skill can never be higher than your Expertise. You also have the option to spend a Life Point when offered a list of skills to choose from to instead take any skill.

Skills also have Talents, special tricks you can pick up to enhance your use of that skill. There's a Talent tree for each skill, with an example picture below. You can't pick a Talent without having all the ones above it in the tree. If a step on the Lifepath tells you to take a Talent you already have, you can pick another Talent from the same tree.



Traits are a lot like FATE's Troubles, defining a character's weaknesses that can be used by the GM to create Complications, or by the players to gain Infinity Points. You can pick up Traits several ways during the Lifepath, and at any time you can spend a Life Point to change a trait you have, or add a new one.

Assets are a measure of your character's resources, used to help with the purchase of expensive items. You gain Assets equal to your final Personality score, plus any earned from Events. You also have an Earnings rating, which represents your steady income. Earnings starts at 0, and increases according to your Social Status, Careers, and possible Events. Some options will also give you Debts, which you cannot pay off with your initial Assets.

There are a couple different options for playing non-human or more-than-human characters. Bio- and cyber-tech can be purchased like any other item during the final step of character creation. Bioengineered bodies can be represented by spending Life Points to boost your Attributes. You can even buy specialized synthetic bodies called Lhosts, and you may need to, if your character dies on the Lifepath. (No, seriously) And of course, you can choose to play a nonhuman.

Step One: Birth Host

This step is where you determine your starting Attributes. Everything starts at 7, and you can lower one Attribute down to 6 to raise another one to 8. After that, you can spent Life Points to raise Attributes, up to a maximum of 10. After this, you subtract 7 from each Attribute and note the remainder as your Birth Host modifier. This matters if you switch to a different Lhost later. (Yes, this means you can spend Life Points to beef up your birth body, have a bad roll, and lose everything as you switch to a new host. It sucks.)

This is also the step where you check to see if you're an alien. Roll 1d20, and if you get 19 or 20, congrats, you're an alien! Apply the species template and you're good to go. Well, except for the fact that aliens also have a Life Point Cost. Dogfaces are the only option available in the Core Rulebook, but additional options will be added in relevant sourcebooks.

Step Two: Faction and Heritage

At this point, it's time to determine what faction your character owes their allegiance to. Roll 1d20 and compare it to the table. In addition to Ariadna, Haqqislam, Nomads, Yu Jing, PanOceania, Aleph, and O-12, you can be from one of the Minor Nations on the edge of space. You can also roll Corporation, Submondo (criminal organizations), or Mercenary as your faction, in which case you'll need to roll again until you get one of the nations as your heritage. You can also roll Defection as an option, which means you roll once for your current faction and once for your heritage. You can roll defection multiple times, which means you're terribly disloyal, but the only two you need to know are your initial heritage and final faction. In all other cases, your faction is the same as your heritage.

If you roll or choose ALEPH as your heritage, you have the option of being an ALEPH Aspect or a Recreation. Aspects are fragments of ALEPH that have been given autonomy. If the Aspect's faction is something other than ALEPH, they're renegades, and considered outlaw AIs. There's a few minor tweaks to the process, but otherwise it's pretty much the same. Recreations, as previously mentioned, are simulations of historical figures. When you make a recreation, you roll or choose on the Faction Table to see who ALEPH made you for, and take a 50 Asset debt to that faction. Other than that, everything is treated pretty much the same, with the various results on the Lifepath representing the simulated memories used. The book does point out that the point-buy option is a good way to recreate a specific historical personality.

After you determine your faction, you check the Faction Skills table and get a point of Expertise in each of the skills for your faction. Then, you choose one of the skills to make your first Signature skill. You get a point of Focus in that skill, as well as the first talent in its tree.

Step 3: Homeworld/Homeland

Now you figure out where exactly you grew up. Roll on the table corresponding to your Heritage to determine your birthplace. This will next you +1 to two Attributes and a rank in one Skill, as well as your starting languages. The book notes that there is no common language between the various nations, with the problem mostly sidestepped by everyone's comlogs providing real-time translation services. Better hope no-one hacks your stuff, or you may have a real Tower of Babel situation to deal with.

Step 4: Status

Next we determine what social class and home environment the character comes from. There's one table for Social Class, ranging from actual poverty to ultra-billionaire, and another table for home life, with options like Violent or High Society. One Life Point buys the result of your choice on both tables. Social Class gives a bonus Attribute and determines your starting earnings, while Home Environment gives another bonus Attribute and a bonus Skill.

Step 5: Youth Event

In this step, you roll to determine what major event shaped your youth. It can be anything from witnessing a murder, to parents divorcing, to having your Cube stolen, to straight up dying. While dying isn't as permanent as, say, Traveller, it still sucks and illustrates the fact that some of these results are just plain worse than others. You can spend a Life Point to reroll your initial result, or skip the risk and just use a Life Point to select the result you want.

Step 6: Education

The next step is determining your character's schooling, and this is a pretty big one. Your education will give +2 to an Attribute, +1 to another Attribute, -1 to a third, ranks in 5 mandatory Skills and 2 out of 3 elective Skills, one of which will become your next signature skill, complete with boost and free talent, and some starting equipment. Spending a Life Point to pick your education is possible and a pretty common choice, depending on whether or not you already have a concept.

Step 7: Adolescent Event

It's Youth Event 2: Electric Boogaloo! Once again, you're rolling on a set of tables to determine what life-changing event happened to your character as a teen. This time, the event will affect your character by giving them a Character Trait of some kind, as well as an optional effect you can choose whether or not to use. Like the Youth Event table, these results can range from great to blah to flat-out terrible (-1 to all your Attributes!), although most people will just ignore negative options. Once again, a Life Point will either reroll your event, or just let you pick the one you want.

Step 8: Careers

So, at this point, you have a fresh-faced 18-year old, ready to go out and get a job. That means it's time for careers. This is what a career looks like:



Everyone gets 2 career phases, each career phase consisting of 4 steps.

Step One is selecting a career. The default option is to roll 1d20 and consult a basic career table, possibly rerolling on the table specific to your Faction. If that sounds a little boring, you can spend Life Points in various ways. You can choose your career directly off the basic table, you can skip straight to rolling on your Faction table, or you can spend an LP to switch factions. You can also choose the Unemployed career and get fewer bonuses, in exchange for receiving a Life Point. The final option is to hazard a career, and this is where real power lies. You choose any career that doesn't have a Faction prerequisite and make a D2 skill test using one of the career's mandatory skills. If you pass, you enter that career. If you fail, you go back to your previous career or become Unemployed. The trick is that you can spend Life Points to reduce the Difficulty of the roll, making it simple to get the career of your choice. Unless you're really willing to just let the dice take you where they may, this is a commonly used option.

Step Two is to actually work the career. First, if this is your very first career, you gain the Attribute improvements listed. Then you gain ranks in the mandatory skills and pick two elective skills to gain ranks in. If you have less than 3 Signature skills at this point, pick one of the skills gained to become a Signature skill and gain an additional rank of training. You also pick one of the skills gained and gain a Talent in that skill. Next, you roll the career's Earnings and increase your earnings to match if it's higher. You can also potentially increase or decrease your Social Standing. Finally, gain the equipment listed for your career.

Step Three is, once again, risking life and limb by rolling on an Event table. Results range from gaining traits to being Fired to straight up Dying! It's okay, though, because if you die, you can get a replacement body that gives -1 to all Attributes, or pay a Life Point to get one with no penalties. Have I mentioned how much I dislike these Event tables?

Step Four is to finish your career phase simply by rolling 1d6+1 and adding that to your age. After this, you go back to the beginning and do it all over again for your second career. However, you do have the option to simply stay in your current career, adding skills and talents as before. You don't, however, get duplicates of the gear. If this was your second career phase, you can go back for a third by spending a Life Point. You can do so again for a fourth career phase, too, but not a fifth. If you want to, you can extend a career phase, adding an additional 1d6+1 years and rolling another Event, to represent older characters, but I see no good reason to risk getting hosed over by the Event tables.

Some Events can end up giving your character a Criminal Record, which reduces your Social Standing and Earnings, but lets you switch to the Submondo Faction. Having a Criminal Record makes getting into some careers easier, while others will require Life Point expenditures. Also, when you receive a Criminal Record, you have to hazard your current career, or you're Fired. Being Fired means you can't do that career again without spending 2 Life Points and losing an Earnings. Finally, if you end up rolling on another Faction's career table for some reason, you run the risk of defecting to that Faction, with a 1 on a d20 signifying you flipped.

There are 39 careers, including the barely-a-carrer Unemployed, ranging from scientists to hackers to mech pilots to TV stars. The variety is both good and bad, in my opinion. It's nice to have a wide variety of character options, but all of the options being randomly chosen means it can be tricky to put together a cohesive party if you're going with something other than the base assumption of 'disparate elements thrown together'. I guess that's what spending Life Points during the career phases is for.

Step 9: Final Customization

The last step in character creation, here is where you spend any remaining Life Points if you randomly rolled, as well as round your character out a little. Your Infinity Point refresh rate is set to two, you get two points to spend on increasing Attributes, you can increase two skills you have no points in, and you get one more Talent. You also get Assets equal to your Personality, plus anything you've earned during Event rolls. You can then spend LPs on increasing your Infinity Point refresh rate, gaining more Assets or Skills, or learning more languages. After that, you determine your character's stress tracks and bonus damage from Attributes, spend your Assets to buy extra gear, and you're good to go!

Supporting Cast

The chapter talks a little about setting up relationships between players, providing a handy random table to roll on to find connecting links. It also has some advice about working with the GM to determine what your handler is like if you're playing in the default Wilderness of Mirrors campaign. Finally, there's a section devoted to your Geist. Geists are semi-intelligent programs that act as personal assistants, and everyone (who's not a backwater Ariadnan) has had one since they were little. They're basically a secondary character everyone has, and you're given a small pool of points to customize the basic Geist template. The section suggests the option of having Geists played by the player on your left, ala Wraith's Shadowguides, if you don't want people talking to themselves a lot.

The chapter winds up with quick advancement rules, and that's it!

Next up: Now to make some characters.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hey, neat! I'm glad to see this back, I'm really curious about the Infinity RPG.

Double Plus Undead
Dec 24, 2010
How stupid do you have to be to be tricked by a Khornate goddamn. Also is it actually common for Sigmar to appear in the heads of his followers and tell them what to do? From your writeups he seemed more like a god of good government and diplomacy, not so much a divine revelation sort of guy.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Double Plus Undead posted:

How stupid do you have to be to be tricked by a Khornate goddamn. Also is it actually common for Sigmar to appear in the heads of his followers and tell them what to do? From your writeups he seemed more like a god of good government and diplomacy, not so much a divine revelation sort of guy.

Very few Gods actually appear directly to followers in their dreams or anything like that. It does happen, and the people it happens to are often very favored and very powerful profits, but it's very rare. The churches are usually very nervous about it, because they know there's a chance anyone claiming direct divine intervention or appearance could be telling the truth but they also know they're usually wrong or delusional, so it's dangerous to outright deny them but dangerous to let them amass followings, too.

Signs are usually much more oblique. Even to annointed priests with Miracles. To me it's a sign of how much Haflok thinks of himself that he just takes it at face value. He's not an outright bad guy, he just thinks he's the main character of a heroic storybook and it makes him a weirdly arrogant romantic and religious fanatic.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011
Aparently the 2d20 system is good? Alright, maybe the Fallout Tabletop RPG will be good even if focuses on the dumb Bethesda stuff and not the original games/New Vegas. That would extremely easy to reskin.

Is Conan any good?

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Yeah, there's a lot of neat stuff, but it'd been better if they had written their would be Machiavelli as the actual loving moron that he comes off as.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I do like the touch that if you reveal and defeat his evil advisor, he has a genuine moment of self reflection where he realizes he got tricked by demons and almost ended up Chaos. And actually doesn't backstab you there and maybe learns better.

I can forgive a fair bit about his character just because one of his potential climaxes is actually showing him how close he got to really loving himself by being an idiot and him actually learning from it.

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013



Part Two.Five: Sample Character Creation

Alright, now let's make a party. For examples from the thread,

The Lone Badger posted:

Werewolf political activist.
and

By popular demand posted:

Go for L.L.Zamenhoff ,A personal favourite of mine and a staunch pacifist.

Are neat ideas I like, and will be useful for demonstrating some of the nonphysical conflict systems. I'll throw in a random shooty character for contrast.

* * *

Werewolf Activist:
Step One
Not going to do anything with her Attributes here, but I am going to pay 3 LP to make her a Dogface. This doesn't change her Attributes, but it does give her claws, super-smelling, and the chance to hulk out when she takes a Wound.
LP Remaining: 9

Step Two
As a Dogface, they're automatically Ariadnan, and receive ranks in Survival and Medicine. I'll choose Survival for their Signature skill, giving them a point of Focus and the Self-Sufficient talent.
LP Remaining: 9

Step Three
I decide our Dogface hails from the region of Caledonia (1 LP), giving +1s to Agility and Brawn, a point of Resistance Expertise, and after a quick roll for the secondary langauge, English(Scots) and English(American) for speaking. ('Lady, I only know two languages, English and bad English!')
LP Remaining 8

Step Four
Our poor Scottish Dogface had a rough upbringing, falling in the Underclass social status and living a Frontier Life (1 LP). This sets her base earnings at 1, gives bonuses to Willpower and Brawn, and a rank of Resistance Focus.
LP Remaining 7

Step Five
Even as a wee lass, our Dogface was politically aware, and so we choose Involved in Dog Nation protests as her youth event.
LP Remaining 6

Step Six
Rural/Colonial Education would make sense for her, but I'm going to say she managed to get a Creative Education instead, honing her powers of persusaion. This gets her +2 Per, +1 Wil, -1 Bra, Expertise 1 in Discipline, Education, Lifestyle, Observation, Persuade, Analysis, and Tech, as well as making Persuade her second Signature skill for an additional point of Expertise and the Charismatic Talent. For equipment she gets a cosmetics kit and a recorder.
LP Remaining 5

Step Seven
For the Adolescence Event, I figure her youthful Protests went too far, and she ended up doing 3 years in jail for violent action, earning herself a Criminal Record.
LP Remaining 4

Step Eight
First Career Phase
Fresh out of jail and a little wiser, our Dogface decides to attack the problem from another angle, hazarding the career of Investigative Journalist. Spending a Life Point brings the Difficulty down to 1, and she easily succeeds at a Persuade roll. She gains +2 Agi, Awa, Coo, and Per, and +1 Int and Wil. Her Persuade Focus increases to 1, her Stealth, Hacking, and Thievery Expertise increases to 1, and her Observation Expertise increases to 2. Hacking becomes her final Signature skill, with another Expertise bump, and she gains the Equivocator Talent. Her gear is a set of AR Eye Implants, an Analysis Suite, and a Breaking & Entering Kit. For the career Event, I decided to have something nice happen to her and she was lucky enough to gain 5 Assets.
LP Remaining 2

Second Career Phase
She continues as an Investigative Journalist, gathering more skill ranks and the Hacker talent. This time, however, her career Event is that she is Fired, and will have to find a new job.
LP Remaining 1

Third Career Phase
Spending her final Life Point to go for a third career phase, our Dogface decides to go big and hazard Politician. Despite the D2 skill test, she makes it handily and slides into her new office in style. More skills are had, the Professional Talent is picked up, and some extra equipment is grabbed. Now comes the tricky part, we have no more LP to spend on the career events, so it's going to be rolled randomly. We get... another Criminal Record! Luckily, she passes the skill test to remain in her career, so she weathers the scandal.
LP Remaining 0

Step Nine
We spend our Attribute points on increasing Personality and Willpower, and our Skill ranks on Acrobatics and Athletics. We grab Tricks of the Trade as one last Talent, and that's it for her!

Werewolf Activist posted:

Faction: Ariadna
Host Body: Dogface
Birth Place: Caledonia
Social Class: Middle(Starting Underclass)
Home Environment: Frontier Life
Youth Event: Involved in Dog Nation Protests
Education: Creative Education
Adolesence Event: Involved in Serious Crime
Trait: Criminal Record, 3 Years Jail
Career 1: Investigative Journalist 6 Years
Career Event: Lucky Day, 5 Assets
Career 2: Investigative Journalist 1 Year
Career Event: Fired
Career 3: Politician 7 Years
Career Event: Criminal Record
Earnings 4
Assets 17

Agility 10(Acrobatics 1, Stealth 2), Awareness 9(Analysis 1, Observation 2:1, Survival* 1:1, Thievery 1), Brawn 8(Athletics 1, Resistance 1:1), Coordination 9, Intelligence 8(Education 2, Hacking* 2:1, Medicine 1, Psychology 1, Tech 1), Personality 12(Command 1, Lifestyle 2, Persuade* 3:2), Willpower 11(Discipline 2)

Self-Sufficient, Charismatic, Equivocator, Hacker, Tricks of the Trade, Professional

Recorder, Cosmetics Kit, Analysis Suite, Breaking & Entering Kit, AR Eye Implants, Stims x3, Negotiation Suite (3 days rental)

English(Scots), English(American)

* * *

Zamenhof Recreation:
Step One
Not much to do here. No Attribute shifts, no alien body.
LP Remaining: 12

Step Two
We'll say the good doctor was recreated for O-12 (1 LP), so he gets a fat 50 Asset debt to them and the Education and Persuade skills. We'll choose to make Education his first Signature skill, giving him the Disciplined Student talent and a point of Focus.
LP Remaining: 11

Step Three
Zamenhof comes from Concilium (1 LP), so he speaks English and German, has +1 Intelligence and Personality, and another point in Persuade.
LP Remaining: 10

Step Four
We'll rate Zamenhof's Social Class as Middle, and his Home Environment as Happy Home, giving him more Willpower and Personality, as well as another point in Education.
LP Remaining: 9

Step Five
To match with his polyglot ways, Zamenhof learns a new language (Turkish) as his Youth Event.
LP Remaining 8

Step Six
Our boy had a Scientific Education, no doubt. Pluses to Int and Awa, minus to Per, points in Education, Lifestyle, Medicine, Pilot, Tech, and Science, and Medicine as the new signature skill, with the Physician Talent.
LP Remaining 7

Step Seven
Zamenhof started his Esperanto project at a young age, so we'll say our Recreation worked on something similar and gained some media attention for it, gaining 5 Assets.
LP Remaining 6

Step Eight
First Career Phase
Zamenhof, naturally, is a doctor, and goes straight for the Medical career. +2 Awa, Coo, Int, and Wil, +1 Agi and Per, ranks in Medicine, Athletics, Psychology, Discipline, and Survival. Psychology becomes his final Signature skill, and he picks up the Emergency Doctor Talent. His career Event is, what else, learning more languages, gaining 3 (Vietnamese, Spanish, and Hindi).
LP Remaining 4

Second Career Phase
Second verse, same as the first. More skills, Field Dressing Talent, 2 more languages (Russian and Portuguese).
LP Remaining 3

Third Career Phase
One more time! Skills, Counsellor Talent, Event is earning a promotion, increasing Earnings by 1.
LP Remaining 1

Step Nine
Both our Attribute Points go into Willpower, with skill ranks in Acrobatics and Extraplanetary, and the Remote Analyst Talent. This character has a Geist, so we drop a point into the Geist's Int and Wil, and ranks in Analysis and Hacking to shore up some gaps. He's all done!

Zamenhof Recreation posted:

Faction: O-12
Host Body: Human
Birth Place: Concilium
Social Class: Upper(Starting Middle)
Home Environment: Happy Home
Youth Event: Learned a New Language
Education: Scientific Education
Adolesence Event: Prodigy, Media Darling
Trait: Bitter
Career 1: Medical 2 Years
Career Event: Roving Specialist
Career 2: Medical 2 Years
Career Event: Roving Specialist
Career 3: Medical 2 Years
Career Event: Promotion
Earnings 5
Assets 14

Agility 8(Acrobatics 1), Awareness 10(Extraplanetary 1, Survival 1:1), Brawn 7(Athletics 2:1), Coordination 9(Pilot 1), Intelligence 12(Education* 2:2, Medicine* 3:3, Psychology* 3:1, Science 1, Tech 1), Personality 9(Animal Handling 1, Lifestyle 1, Persuade 2), Willpower 12(Discipline 2:1)

Disciplined Student, Physician, Emergency Doctor, Field Dressing, Counsellor, Remote Analyst

Analytical Kit (w/ 5 Reagents), Sensor Suite, Armored Clothing, MediKit (w/ 5 Serum), Basic Medical Supplies, Geist, 50 Asset Debt

English, German, Turkish, Hindi, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Portuguese

* * *

Since this is getting hella long, I'm just gonna throw in the completed stat block for our shooty guy.

Joe Q Random posted:

Faction: Haqqislam
Host Body: Human
Birth Place: Caravanserai
Social Class: Upper
Home Environment: Happy Home
Youth Event: Family Member Cube Corrupted
Education: Military Training
Adolesence Event: Friend Died in a Hull Breach
Trait: Vacuum Phobia
Career 1: Military 4 Years
Career Event: Minor Maya Star
Career 2: Military 1 Year
Career Event: Dating a Wealthy Lover
Trait: Vulnerable Lover
Career 3: Special Forces 5 Years
Career Event: Lucky Day
Career 4: Special Forces 3 Years
Career Event: They're On To You
Trait: Paranoia
Earnings 5
Assets 13

Agility 11(Acrobatics* 2:1, Close Combat 2:2), Awareness 9(Extraplanetary 1:1, Observation 1, Survival 2:1), Brawn 11(Athletics 2:1, Resistance 2), Coordination 10(Ballistics 3:3, Pilot 1, Spacecraft 1), Intelligence 8(Education 1:1, Hacking 1, Medicine* 1:1, Tech 2:1), Personality 8(Command 1), Willpower 10(Discipline 2)

Physician, Marksman, Cear Shot, Precise Shot, Sturdy, Stubborn, Graceful

Armored Clothing, Pistol, Medium Combat Armor, Rifle, AP Rifle, 9 Standard Reloads, Garrote, Combat Jump Pack, Stims x3, Geist

Arabic, Turkish

* * *

And there's our band of brave examples, all rolled up and ready to go.

Next up: What do all these Skills and Talents do, anyways?

Snorb
Nov 19, 2010

NutritiousSnack posted:

Aparently the 2d20 system is good? Alright, maybe the Fallout Tabletop RPG will be good even if focuses on the dumb Bethesda stuff and not the original games/New Vegas. That would extremely easy to reskin.

Is Conan any good?

Conan is good; just for shits and giggles one day I made a completely randomly-generated character; every single time I had the option to roll dice I did. There was almost no decision making on my part.

I still wound up making one of the best drat archers the Hyborean Age will ever see.

Star Trek Adventures strips the 2d20 System down a fair bit, but my friends and I had a blast in our ongoing campaign before it ended. Ship combat is kinda a slog, even when you have something for every character to do. (Then again, I was the ship's engineer, willingly and on-purpose, and we fought a Borg cube.) Infinitely better than Decipher Inc.'s attempt at the game, which our GM described as "Well, that was a hot mess, minus the hot."

John Carter of Mars strips the system down even further (no skills! Most weapons just do two dice worth of damage! Build your own Talents, or choose from the premade Talents all over the loving book, thanks a lot Modiphius!!) It threw me for a loop that, for once, humans are not the dominant race in a setting (not surprisingly, it's the Red Martians; humans are the expert mode race.) Hopefully I can get my friends to try the game out.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Snorb posted:

Conan is good; just for shits and giggles one day I made a completely randomly-generated character; every single time I had the option to roll dice I did. There was almost no decision making on my part.

I still wound up making one of the best drat archers the Hyborean Age will ever see.

Star Trek Adventures strips the 2d20 System down a fair bit, but my friends and I had a blast in our ongoing campaign before it ended. Ship combat is kinda a slog, even when you have something for every character to do. (Then again, I was the ship's engineer, willingly and on-purpose, and we fought a Borg cube.) Infinitely better than Decipher Inc.'s attempt at the game, which our GM described as "Well, that was a hot mess, minus the hot."

Can't stress enough how glad this makes me. Carter sounds weird, but the fact both of these games work and my IRL gaming group is going to get back together to play something that isn't DnD or Star Wars D6 or FFG soon....it's good I have something to suggest.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!


The Rifter 9½, part 5: "Exposure to the cloud for more than 10 minutes will cause hair to start falling out and skin to burn and peel."

Wacky Powers
Food Manipulation Powers
Foods as a source of power!
By Steve Sheiring and Kevin Siembieda Paulie & Percy Ferkelberger


So, now we have some superpowers related to food. Basically, Food Manipulation acts as a minor power, and you can choose any two of their listed food powers when you take it. Those that remember faerie food from Rifts Conversion Book should have a pretty good idea of what we're in for - a bunch of food puns and gags. Mind, I actually like the idea of silly food powers, but some of these... well. They're just puns rather than powers.

Take a deep breath, and let's get started. Try not to die from laughter.
  • Apple: Lets you heal yourself and cure illnesses and poisons because an apple a day... keeps the doctor... away. The healing effect is fairly ridiculous and broken; you can also throw apples further than normal but they don't do any more damage than normal so... why?
  • Banana: You can throw bananas so they come back to your hand, throw it to cause people to slip (there are no rules for that, though), or use the peel as a bola. "The character will also have many other ingenious uses for bananas and their peels." I bet they do, I bet they do.
  • Chicken Soup: Cures the empowered user's colds and flus. That's it. That's all you get.
  • Eggs: Can throw eggs in people's eyes, make eggs rotten before throwing them, or... cook them in your hand. "A great trick at parties..." Nobody's impressed, Eggscalation. Nobody.
  • Food Preparation: You get an encyclopedic knowledge of recipes and Cooking at 95% (Not 98%? Really? That's game balance, I guess...), but your memory becomes bad unless it relates to food, so you're always talking about food. Food is funny!
  • Food Preservation: You can preserve food! That's hilarious! You can be like "I really do have a banana in my pocket and I'm happy to see you! Ha ha!" Oh, everybody had a chuckle over that one.
  • Fruit Grenades: You can throw pineapples, coconuts, and melons as lovely grenades. Also pumpkins, even those are vegetables.
  • "Flat, Disc-Shaped Food:" Yes, you can throw pizzas for lovely damage at unarmored targets. But it's funny! Take that, Shred-head!
  • Ketchup: Slows a target down. Get it? GET IT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS- also you can slide around on ketchup and go fast because... I have no idea. I'm going to have to think about that part.
The list starts to get real weak. Mustard lets you throw things faster because mustered? Pickles confuse people because you're in a pickle I don't even- uh, orange juice lets you control light because Sunny D, I guess, which isn't orange juice? Oh, Spooning!... lets you fire spoonfuls of food at people for bad damage, so why do it? Because of the yuks, no doubt. Squeezeable Juicy Fruits can blind targets, Twinkies make you fast, and Wonder Bread makes you tougher because "Builds bodies 12 ways.". Sheiring Farm remembers.

Heroes & Villains with Unusual Powers
By Steve Sheiring Paulie Ferkelberger


Franz and Beanz
A dynamic food duo


So, this is a pair of superheroes that go from town helping people out. Like on Highway to Heaven, only with way, way more farting. They live out of the back of a van and off of "the goodwill of others", which seems like a stretch when one half of the pair goes around super-farting. Ironically, though we just got through this whole food power section, these guys have custom food powers anyway. As will all of the NPCs in this section. These "major" food powers are clearly too funny to be allowed in the hands of players.


I'm just glad this predated any "sausage party" "jokes".

Frank Smaczne has the power to use sausages and hot dogs as hardened batons for swinging or throwing, and gets solid bonuses for doing so, but they do piddly damage. For some reason this is a "major" power, but I guess his ability to instinctively distinguish sausages had to be balanced out somehow. Perhaps his most dangerous move is to throw flurries of four sausages at once... not real dangerous, you know, but... moreso. He has no personality other than being introverted and liking beer and wine. Funny!


I guess you might not need a costume if everybody just keeps turning away.

Elroy Beanz gets powers from eating... kidney beans. Light kidney beans make him faster, which isn't real useful; he's like an Olympic runner that way, but rarely superhuman. Dark kidney beans... let him super-fart. He's extroverted and likes whiskey! Also, for some reason he gets an entire d100 table dedicated to mishaps that can happen if he mixes his beans. Also, Frank is immune to his farts because... well, they're life partners. He has five different types of gassy expulsions:
  • The Stinker: A noisy fart that has a roughly one-third chance to make somebody lose an attack through laughter. Yep.
  • The Skunky: A super-stinky fart that causes a powerful combat debuff that can't be saved against. Instead, you just have to save against Horror Factor 15 or run.
  • The Room Clearer: Basically the Skunky, but worse. If you decide to stand your ground, you might be knocked unconscious unless you make an unspecified save (nonlethal poison, presumably?).
  • The Paint Peeler: Automatically knocks people out unless they have some form of protection, no save, and does damage!... every eight minutes, if you're interested in tracking that sort of thing. Get it this far smells worse than the last three farts, that's hilarity!
  • The Atomic Blast: This, uh, does radiation damage direct to hit points, if very slowly. Hair falls out! Skin peels away! Real-life radiation poisoning sure is a hoot and a half.


I'm not eating any food that defeated a villain, thanks.

Tony Riga, the Pasta Man can shoot laser goats. Wait, no, that might be funny. Instead, get gets power from pasta and tomato sauce because he's so Italian, mamma mia, mangia mangia, that's-a spicy meatball, it's-a-me fuuuuuuuuuck- Apparently Frank and Beanz inspired him to become a hero, and no doubt a better one, given he's unlikely to give anybody radiation burns. Anyway he gets heightened taste and smell after drinking some tomato sauce, and can use pasta to entangle people, stick them to the floor, make rope out of it, throw baseballs of pasta that have a 40% chance of knocking somebody out because you know when I said these were too funny for players? These powers are just too funny for players to handle. Also he can theoretically use pasta as lockpicks but doesn't have the skill to do so. Don't think you can use pasta weapons to turn the tides, though- "... only in the hands of Pasta Man is it more than a mere noodle." Che palle!


Wait, how is this guy not Peter Piper- or Peter Pepper?

Professor Thomas Dragonweed, aka Dragonbreath, gets powers from peppers. Unlike the others, he's a villain, a stereotypical professor who gets healing from Green Peppers (which he can transfer to other people through "mouth-to-mouth"), "restoration"-style healing from Yellow Banana Peppers, a horror factor and penalties from Red Chili Peppers, and fire breath from Jalapeno Peppers. Also, he can make a special chili sauce that gives him generic invulnerability, strength, and flight for an hour. In his supervillain identity, he wears "an oriental mask of a dragon". Other than his gimmick, he's a pretty standard thieving supervillain.

Also having a food power makes you roll for a random insanity. "This might be a good candidate for a Crazy Hero." Yep, so let's see what humorous insanity I can roll from Heroes Unlimited, just as an example. 60... 26... Manic depression! Yep, comedy gold there. :rolleyes:

Next: Just [many] wild and crazy guys.

megane
Jun 20, 2008



Maybe you just really like the Jimi Hendrix song.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Snorb posted:

humans are the expert mode race.

When you say this, do you mean playing as a human is difficult but reaps mechanical dividends, or that humans are hyper-specialized?

Also I would love to know more about how Conan works if the random chargen reliably produces muscle-bound, keen-eyed Hyrkanians or what have you.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Nessus posted:

There were a couple of Third Circle demons who didn't have particularly malicious goals. There was the the one that just loved building Manses and was some First Age Solar's big-bap demon wife, and then there was the guy who just loves to shout high quality durable roads into existence.

And... those are the only two I can think of. All the rest were pretty much calling up Azathoth
I think the road guy was explicitly called out in his writeup that you didn't even need to bother trying to bind him, just have him make roads for a little bit and then send him home to keep making roads in Malfeas and he's okay with it.

Ratoslov posted:

The main difference between first circle demons and third circle demons is that there is almost definitionally a perfect first circle demon for any given task, while there is almost never a perfect third circle demon for any task other than a kaiju battle or the apocalypse. It's a remarkably useless spell.
Or, notably, making roads.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Night10194 posted:

I do like the touch that if you reveal and defeat his evil advisor, he has a genuine moment of self reflection where he realizes he got tricked by demons and almost ended up Chaos. And actually doesn't backstab you there and maybe learns better.

I can forgive a fair bit about his character just because one of his potential climaxes is actually showing him how close he got to really loving himself by being an idiot and him actually learning from it.

Believable NPC's who have purposes other than to create problems for the PC's, and who are genuinely helpful and friendly if you do them a good turn, or just because they're nice people, tend to be refreshing in just about any setting because they're so loving rare.

Also the DEATH SCARAB adventure sounds genuinely compelling so far. Especially because, as I think I mentioned a while ago, it lines up with some of the stuff people were saying in this thread about "oh hey, that'd be a neat way to use the Tomb Kings," and if the devs creations line up with the players' expectations/theorycrafting, that's a huge mark in favour of good writing and communication of concepts.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

PurpleXVI posted:

Believable NPC's who have purposes other than to create problems for the PC's, and who are genuinely helpful and friendly if you do them a good turn, or just because they're nice people, tend to be refreshing in just about any setting because they're so loving rare.

Also the DEATH SCARAB adventure sounds genuinely compelling so far. Especially because, as I think I mentioned a while ago, it lines up with some of the stuff people were saying in this thread about "oh hey, that'd be a neat way to use the Tomb Kings," and if the devs creations line up with the players' expectations/theorycrafting, that's a huge mark in favour of good writing and communication of concepts.

There are a couple parts that really annoy me coming up (I don't think they commit enough/think big enough in their proposed endings for the adventure), and the mechanics in the campaign are a bit wonky, but overall I think this book is a great proof of concept for the 'toolkit' approach rather than the long narratives they tried with the other campaign books and that it's one of the strongest adventure books in the line. It provides a good, strong narrative foundation for a long adventure/minicampaign for higher powered PCs and most of Rosenberg's writing gets at the hook-based writing that works well in this line.

In general, all of Fantasy's writers do way better at hooks than preset, long adventures and narratives. Which is fine, because that's exactly what an RPG line needs. This was one of the later campaign books, published in 2007 (it's also Rosenberg's first WHFRP book, so I suspect some of the mechanical weirdness might be that it was his first time writing for this system) and I think it would've been a great model for more books going forward except that Black Industries was shuttered in January of 2008 and everyone was in crunch to produce Dark Heresy before that.

E: Genuinely the weirdest thing to me about WHFRP 2e is this: Look at how much goddamn material I've covered for it. This was all produced in effectively 2 years. This line was insanely prolific while it was in production.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Apr 5, 2019

Snorb
Nov 19, 2010

Joe Slowboat posted:

When you say this, do you mean playing as a human is difficult but reaps mechanical dividends, or that humans are hyper-specialized?

The former. Definitely the former.

The game takes place on Mars Barsoom, so red Martians, green Martians, the Okar (yellow Martians), and the Firstborn (black Martians) each speak a common language, which the game calls Barsoomian. By default, humans do not. They only speak their native language, probably English, in which case there are a grand total of two other people on the planet that can speak it. I'll bold and italicize this because it's kinda important: You do not know how to read, write, or speak Barsoomian. Martians do not know how to read, write, or speak any languages native to Earth. Either you need to drink some of the Milk of Barsoom (like John did in the movie) or pick it up through latent telepathy over several weeks (like he did in the books), or else get really good at charades.

The other Martian races get to start play with basic equipment: Clothing, a sword, a rifle, and basic equipment for their professions (within reason, of course.) Humans, on the other hand, are pretty much Link from Breath of the Wild in the beginning-- they start the game bare-assed naked with no equipment, just basically faceplanted in some godforsaken plateau about 225 million kilometers from Earth Jasoom. Again, bolding and italicizing the important bit: Whatever brought you to Mars didn't bring anything you were wearing or carrying along for the ride. The rules do at least throw you a bone and say that human characters know everything they did on Earth and are just as capable warriors as Martians, so if they can find something on Mars that's equivalent to something on Earth (like swords or firearms) they'll easily be able to use it. As far as the who's who and what's what of Mars, though? You're Tidus. Welcome to Spira, if Spira were a red dying desert world.

So, humans in this game don't know Common and start with the pen and paper equivalent of "three red hearts and your underhosen." What do they get for this? Talents. Essentially the 2d20 System's feats, Talents are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 points, based on their usefulness. Martian characters get five points worth of Talents (and green Martians get a free one-point Talent representing their four arms.) Humans get seven points, and a free two-point Talent that lets them leap great distances, so long as they're on Mars or any other planet with similar gravity. The only catch is that two of those seven points have to be spent on a Talent that involves their Might in some way.

It's up to you as a player to decide whether or not the extra Talents are worth basically being at GM mercy until you pick up enough of the language to get by and can (bargain for, steal, kill somebody for) some clothing and a knife. If not, well, red Martians are the most widespread and numerous race on Barsoom.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Halloween Jack posted:

Just because Vampire exhorts you to create a complex, well-rounded character doesn’t mean that said character can’t be a gritty action movie protagonist. The example of character creation introduces us to Malcolm, a bitter ex-cop in the Dirty Harry mold who is clearly set up to become a vigilante. Malcolm can’t be a cop anymore*, but he was a narcotics detective and still has scores to settle with drug dealers. So Malcolm is a violent, amoral bloodsucker...and now he’s a vampire too!

Malcolm shows up in stuff later in the line, although it's normally just as a mention. He's listed as one of the Gangrel in Chicago by Night and his name would be dropped here and there sporadically, always doing the same thing pretty much and being a 13th Generation schlub.

Halloween Jack posted:

*Vampire often ignored the fact that living a more-or-less normal life as Kindred is virtually impossible. How do you hold down a day job when daylight burns you up like an oily rag in a fireplace?

Night shift. :smugbert:

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

If you will not serve in combat, you will serve on the firing line!






Neotech 2
Part 7: I am the very model of a modern Major-General




Neotech posted:

“Coolness, I’m going go be interviewed by Max Mauser. Now I just need to practice on my replies a bit…”
“You can borrow one of my ties - that might help.”
-Jace Ryker and Sinclair MacNeal

Funny enough the opening line from that song from the Pirates of Penzance describes the N2 skills quite well. Or at least would describe an average N2 character because as we’ve seen in the career descriptions they all come loaded with a bunch of different skills. And as I said last time there are a lot of them. Some of them even come with their own tables for difficulties.
Most skills get a bunch of suggestions for specializations, some more open for further ideas than others. But once again that is more the domain of the GM rather than the player making the character that is supposed to use them. Something which is a really common thing I’m starting to notice. The GM has a surprising amount of control over the player and their characters.

Something that becomes readily apparent from the onset is that the skill list is rather granulated at places. As I mentioned last time there are 12 different combat skills because this game does the sin of splitting them up into very specific types. We have:
Crossbow, Automatic Fire, Bow, Draw Weapon, Flamethrower, Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Throwing Knife, Close Combat <Type>, Pistol, Recoilless weapons, Weapon Systems <Type>.
Then you have even further granulation as there are a number of close combat skills you can pick from.
I’m going to mainly be picking out some highlights for the more odder skills or at least explain some of them. Then at the end list the rest of them so you can see how weird they can be. If the order seems weird remember I’m going after the Swedish alphabetical order in this case.

  • Acting - Comes with its own adapted difficulty table. For example classical drama is Ob4D6 while “normal entertainment” is Ob2D6. While trying to imitate someone the target knows is an Ob5D6 check.
  • Acrobatics - If the character is falling they can use this skill to make their landing softer. If the roll succeeds they take Ob1D6 lower damage and can also pick two hit locations that gets damaged. Even if the rest are rolled. Can’t be used in conjunction with the Jump skill for the same purpose.
  • Automatic Fire - So yes, this game has a skill specifically for automatic fire with handguns.. For single shots you use the relevant weapon skill (Pistol or Rifle for instance). You can specialize into a specific weapon or specific weapon type. But I’m not sure why you’d want to go for the former when the latter is a better choice overall.
  • Cybernetics - Used to repair, modified or produce cybertech.
  • Data Technology - Computer repair skill.
  • Design - “Successful roll gives a tasteful design on the object in question, while a failed roll means that the design does not work with critics or buyers.”
  • Diplomacy - Different from Persuade but can still be used in conjunction with it. Successful Diplomacy rolls can lower the difficulty for subsequent Persuade checks.
  • Draw Weapon - How fast you can draw whatever weapon you have. Counts for both firearms and melee weapons. The difficulty of the roll is determined where its located. There’s obviously a table for that.
  • Diving - You need at least 5 ranks in this skill to be able to use it. Also needs 5 ranks in swimming. Thankfully it mentions that you only need to roll this skill at critical situations.
  • Lock picking - The difficulty of the action is determined by the type of the lock and what equipment is used. We get our first mention of difficulty rolls above Very hard as it mentions they can go between Ob5D6 and Ob10D6 in level.
  • Flamethrower - Does not include anything exotic such as chemical throwers or foam throwers.
  • Fire control - Not a skill relating at how to control fire hazard but instead it’s about directing artillery support onto targets.
  • Expert Knowledge - The character knows something extremely specific. Also the first time where the player is free to choose whatever they want instead of apparently letting the GM do it. There’s a sidebar with suggestions, some choice picks are: Characters from the Lord of the Rings, antique toasters, the age of dinosaurs, english wallpaper. The book mentions it’s not perhaps the most useful skill but mainly there to give the character some personality.

Neotech posted:

“When all is said and done there is a helluva lot more said than done…”
-Chui Mi

  • Dexterity - Used for a number of things including tying or untying knots. This skill would be used to tie someone up or untie someone. It can also be used for pickpocketing, which comes with its own table of various situations and penalties and bonuses.
  • Photo & Film - I need pictures of cyber-man!
  • Freefall - Used in Zero G environments or when parachuting.
  • Forgery - Another table showing what you can forge and at what difficulty.

Out of the blue we suddenly get a sidebar about identification papers in the setting. Long story short, the new digitalized society of 2059 requires people to have valid identification to be able to do much of anything. In particular in the more high tech places like the European Federation, FSA nad parts of the far east. No it doesn’t mention what FSA stands for in this case. Meanwhile, in the more rural parts of the world they’re less necessary. In space they’re local to the various colonies because coordination takes far too long. But any trips between nations or in space will include a thorough ID check. The same goes for money transaction or access to various places such as bankers, government buildings and such as to register any visitors.
There’s another sidebar that talks about ID checks but it’s nothing beyond that police usually does a double check with both their identification papers and a DNA sample. It’s usually enough that both of these match. Beyond that there is fingerprint or retina scanning.

  • Seduce - Surprisingly enough the skill passes the Jefdel test as there is no mention of it only working on members of the opposite sex, so points for that. The book says that the skill will however only work on people who are or can be sexually attracted to the character. It won’t work on people whose sexual orientation does not match. This feels surprisingly ahead of the times in a way, but I could be wrong in some way. Then it kind of spoils that by saying that the skill can also give an indication at how good the character is at satisfying their partner sexually. So close.
  • Interrogation techniques - The art of asking probing questions.

Neotech posted:

“The exit wound is bigger than my thigh… can I get some help here maybe!!?”
-Maria Hernandez, a regular wednesday evening.

Another sidebar talks about Lookalikes or posers. People who use biotech, this being the first mention of that I’ve been able to spot, to copy the face of famous historical personalities. Complemented by makeup, clothes and so on. It’s practically illegal to copy the face of anyone alive, but then again. How great is the risk of running into a lawsuit? Then it goes on to mention a number of common faces: Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler, Disengani (no explanation who they might be), John F. Kennedy, Madonna, Jonathan Mahler, Marilyn Monroe, Vincent Nowell (Financial Genius), Dennis O’Pen (no idea either), Maxwell Schwartz (In setting actor from 2010), Donna Pale (Schwartz’ co-star) and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
What was that about action and violence movies again? Also yes, you could have a poser gang that is all about looking like Hitler. Something which I feel conflicted about, one one part it’s kinda funny in a way but on the other hand it’s really cringey too.

  • Rifle - Used for single shot or burst fire with rifle weapons of all kinds. So thankfully it doesn’t do the Shadowrun thing with splitting up the weapon categories even further.
  • Grenade Launcher - Used for any weapon that launches grenades.
  • Jumping - Let’s you jump good. Comes with its own table for the difficulty based on the distance Which is Length times x1 up to x4, the difficulty for the last one is Ob7D6. Also listing bonuses or penalties to the difficulting roll if you’re standing still, doing a running or sprinting start.
  • Sports <Type of Sport> - Knowledge skill and not directly related to any sports.
  • Information searching - One of the specialisations listed is warez.
  • Hunting - Only gives you the knowledge how to hunt.

Neotech posted:

Either you hunt with a bow or with snares against smaller animals like rabbits while traps are used against larger animals such as bears and humans!

  • ]Law - It’s unknown of this skill lets you proclaim that you are in fact the Law.
  • Throwing - For all your throwing needs that doesn’t involve knives. Because they get their own skill for some reason. There’s a table for distance and difficulty. If an object happens to weight over one kilogram then the distance is calculated by dividing the original distance with the object's weight.

Neotech posted:

Example: Sinclair MacNeal hauls away a five kilo chair against a temporary hate object. He has STY 12 and would have had the distance limits 6-12-24-36m for a one kilo object, but the distance limits are divided by five and instead become 1-2-4-7m.

  • Throwing knife - The reasoning they give here is that knives have to be thrown with the right technique to produce maximum damage. Sounds like a poor excuse.

Next time: We tackle the issue with one of the biggest skills in the game.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
So only Vampires have a Humanity stat in Masquerade? I know it was a standard thing (with line-specific twists) in nWoD lines.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Ghost Leviathan posted:

So only Vampires have a Humanity stat in Masquerade? I know it was a standard thing (with line-specific twists) in nWoD lines.

Ghouls as well, but yeah, none of the other splats have it.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 8 hours!

Dawgstar posted:

Malcolm shows up in stuff later in the line, although it's normally just as a mention. He's listed as one of the Gangrel in Chicago by Night and his name would be dropped here and there sporadically, always doing the same thing pretty much and being a 13th Generation schlub.
Ugh! He can hang out with the Ventrue NPCs who are all turncoat labour organizers from the Pullman Strike era.

quote:

Night shift. :smugbert:
One of the better vampire comics I've read was basically Clerks, and moving up the ladder of vampire society meant going from convenience store clerk to an rear end in a top hat who owns a convenience store.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

So only Vampires have a Humanity stat in Masquerade? I know it was a standard thing (with line-specific twists) in nWoD lines.
Just Kindred, ghouls, and the original Mummy. Even Kindred of the East used "Dharma," and when Mummy was revised into a full product line, they replaced Humanity with Balance.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Exalted 3rd Edition: Working For The Weekend

Sorcerous Workings are how sorcerers permanently alter the world. These are your standing blessings and curses, your transformations, your owlbears. They can do practically anything, if you’re sufficiently powerful and have enough mojo on your side. Step 1: decide what you want to do. This is then assigned three traits – Ambition, Finesse and Means. Once these are set up, you are making extended Occult rolls, with a difficulty based on the Finesse, a goal number based on the Ambition, and a terminus based on the Means. Intervals are one week by default. Unlike normal extended actions, however, you can botch without ruining the entire thing. Each botch instead adds one complication to whatever you were working on. If you were making a sorcerous minion, maybe now it has to eat pure gold. A blessing on a field might be disrupted by steel tools. The core concept of the working is never compromised, but narratively interesting (hopefully) difficulties are introduced. If you fail the effort in total, however, each botch becomes a disaster. A failed minion creation ends up making a berserk creature focused on your destruction, say.

Most of the actual working of sorcery will be handled in downtime and off camera, but to perform the working, you must remain active, doing various rituals, experiments or whatever fits your particular method of doing a sorcery. If you can’t manage that, then that week you don’t make a roll but it doesn’t count towards your terminus, either. Ignoring a working for too long may produce problems, though – demons emerge from a half-made portal, local wildlife become aggressive due to an unfinished fertility blessing, that kind of thing. Just to keep stuff interesting. Once the rolls are completed successfully, however, there’s one step left: you have to pay XP to complete the working. Ambition 1 costs 2 XP, Ambition 2 costs 4, and Ambition 3 costs 8. If, somehow, your working is neutralized, destroyed or otherwise made irrelevant, you do get them all back, though. If you are doing a Working of a lower circle than you can cast, you get a small cost reduction.

Ambition is the power and scope of whatever it is you’re doing. It is split into both the 1-3 number and the circle of sorcery it requires – what’s easy at Solar Circle is near impossible at Terrestrial. Ambition 1 in a circle is what that circle would consider largely simple and easy to do. Ambition 2 is notable, beyond any simple spell of the circle. Ambition 3 is the pinnacle of that circle’s power. Terrestrial Workings are usually built on transforming, enhancing or weakening aspects or natural elements of the world, rather than directly creating magical poo poo whole cloth. When they do directly invoke supernatural forces, it is generally in some limited or specialized way. Their scope also tends to be limited – they might enchant a village’s fields with a minor blessing, but they won’t entirely overwrite the region’s nature. Their most powerful workings will generally be confined to an area no bigger than a single room or the transformation of a single person. Ambition 1 has goal number 5, and will do things like making or binding magical beings that are able to do mundane servant work but little more, enchant a path to keep people from getting lost on their way to a specific place, summon up a First Circle demon without binding it, pull a spring forth from the earth, ward a small town against a mundane threat (like forest fires) or similar. Ambition 2 has goal number 10 and can do stuff like combine two different types of plant or animal into a single hybrid species, like an owlbear, mutate the caster or a willing target, make a plant, animal or object have human-level intellect, or ward a chamber against scrying or teleportation. Ambition 3 has goal number 20 and can do things like bless a field to always have a good harvest or bless a river to always run clean, create an entirely new (but wholly mundane) species of plant or animal, breed an existing beast to have a minor supernatural power that augments its natural abilities, blight an area such that it would be impossible to make a living off farming it, or create a portal between realms that allows communication or possessions but not actual transportation.

Celestial Workings are your outright supernatural miracles that rewrite natural laws on a relatively large scale or bring supernatural power into the world directly. They can place potent blessings or curses on entire villages or city neighborhoods, and they are usually overtly supernatural in how they do their poo poo or at least dramatic changes in natural properties. Ambition 1 is Goal Number 25 and can do stuff like telepathically connect two people or otherwise give a useful but limited magic power, make persistent illusions that haunt an entire town, bring a Second Circle demon into the world without binding it, or turn a single room so that its interior resembles the environment of somewhere else in the world. Ambition 2 is Goal Number 30, and can do stuff like alter the weather for an entire town so that it can harvest every month for a full year or has unusually harsh winters, enchant fortifications to resist mundane damage or have some resilience against magic, give a notable supernatural power to a willing target such as blood that turns into scorpions when shed, reshape a willing supernatural being such as a demon or elemental to have a different (but related) nature, or spread mutations among the plants and animals over a wide area. Ambition 3 (Goal Number 35) can do stuff like make a loyal minion on par with a Second Circle Demon or notable deity, make an entire structure able to move in limited ways or be intelligent on the level of a human, or open a permanent portal between two different realms of existence.

Solar Workings are the height of what sorcery can do. They can rewrite the laws of reality or make new ones, can operate on a scale that covers entire cities – or much more, at the higher end, and can mess around with time, space and the workings of the soul itself. Essentially, it can do anything the GM says sorcery can do. Ambition 1 (Goal Number 40) can transform an entire region’s ecosystem utterly, enchant a small city to emulate the natural laws of another realm of existence, purify a shadowland hundreds of square miles large, extract a willing mortal’s soul and shove it in a new body, restore an old body to the peak of youth or ward an entire city against invasion with supernatural barriers. Ambition 2 (Goal Number 50) can make a city able to fly or make it bigger inside than out, enchant a city-sized region so that anyone that dies in it is turned into an elemental, curse an entire ethnic group to be unable to speak until some specific action happens, turn a demon into a god or an elemental into a specter, or so on. Ambition 3 (Goal Number 75) can alter all of Creation subtly, make a supernatural being of immense power, hurl an entire city into Malfeas or so on.

What can’t Sorcery do? It can make you immortal, but there’s always a catch. It’s never just direct, simple immortality. You might need periodic rituals to renew it, be able to die in specific conditions, or only be immortal within a certain area. It can’t resurrect the dead. You can do all kinds of stuff, like bind a ghost into a sorcerous body, implant the memories of a dead person into a clone or even make the local area allow reincarnated souls to retain their past life memories if they die in it, but you can never truly bring back someone who has died. Third, no time travel. You can’t go to the past and rewrite it, ever.

Next time: More Workings

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 8 hours!
The Expertise/Focus split in Infinity seems very hazy. The Rank/Complexity divide in Silhouette made more sense to me, though I'm not a big fan of Silhouette on the whole.

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

Ratoslov posted:

This is, in general, a good demon management axiom. Always use the right tool for a job. If you need a demon to watch a baby, don't give it to the blood ape, give it to the neomah. Worst case scenario with the neomah is that you now have more babies, while you're basically guaranteed less babies with the blood ape.

The main difference between first circle demons and third circle demons is that there is almost definitionally a perfect first circle demon for any given task, while there is almost never a perfect third circle demon for any task other than a kaiju battle or the apocalypse. It's a remarkably useless spell.

Hey, sometimes you really want Orabilis to vomit up a glass library containing every bit of wisdom in existence. Sometimes you really want Munaxes to open up and swallow all the traitorous things your disloyal subjects are saying about you, along with the disloyal subjects themselves. Sometimes you really want to cackle madly with power as Ligier annihilates your foes in nuclear fire. Sometimes a Neomah or Mara won't cut it and you want to summon Erembour to give you a literally world-shattering orgasm.

Basically there are reasons why you might want to call up any Demon of the Third Circle, but if any of those reasons apply to you then you are probably why the Usurpation happened.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

megane posted:

Maybe you just really like the Jimi Hendrix song.

My food-based character gets bonuses while in manic phase and penalties while in depressive phase. That's how Manic-Depression works!

in palladium games

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



The best reason to summon a 3CD is for dating imo

Second best is because you're bored and want to duel the Sword of the Yozis.

...true Exalted fashion would be to combine the two, and flirt in the middle of battle.

(None of this is to disagree that at this point you're definitionally a mad and decadent sorcerer-king, but you're also a rad and decadent sorcerer-king)

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Apr 5, 2019

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013

Halloween Jack posted:

The Expertise/Focus split in Infinity seems very hazy. The Rank/Complexity divide in Silhouette made more sense to me, though I'm not a big fan of Silhouette on the whole.

Mechanically it's really straightforward. Expertise adds to your attribute for the roll, so a Coo of 9 and a Ballistics Expertise of 3 hits on a 12 or less. If they have a Ballstics Focus os 2, they get an extra success for each dice showing 2 or lower.

Fluff-wise, it's a bit murkier. I get the feeling Expertise is training, while Focus is intuitive genius.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Halloween Jack posted:

One of the better vampire comics I've read was basically Clerks, and moving up the ladder of vampire society meant going from convenience store clerk to an rear end in a top hat who owns a convenience store.
Was this Life Sucks?

Snorb
Nov 19, 2010

Tsilkani posted:

Mechanically it's really straightforward. Expertise adds to your attribute for the roll, so a Coo of 9 and a Ballistics Expertise of 3 hits on a 12 or less. If they have a Ballstics Focus os 2, they get an extra success for each dice showing 2 or lower.

Fluff-wise, it's a bit murkier. I get the feeling Expertise is training, while Focus is intuitive genius.

That's my read on it, and that's how Conan handles it, too. Conan's at least polite enough to keep your Focus and Expertise equal during chargen.

For comparison, Star Trek Adventures has your character just pick six things they have a Focus in. Like, if I wanted to shoot a Klingon with a phaser pistol, I'd roll my dice and compare them to my Control (10) and Security (3). Anything less than or equal to 13 counts as one success, and if I were Focused in Hand Phasers, each die showing 3 or lower gets me an extra success.

John Carter of Mars did away with Focus entirely, saying "Add two ability scores together, that's your target number. Any dice less than or equal to the worse of those two gets you an extra success." I kinda like the simplicity of it.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord

The Tomb of The Death Scarab: Final Set Up

Despite this being the majority of the book, I'm going to be covering the whole tomb in the next update, while this one handles all the setup. This is for several reasons: One, I'm really bad with maps and I've never actually run 'dungeon crawl' games for that very reason. I'm not entirely confident I can assess the quality of the general mapmaking very well. Two, I think it's better to get a sense of the dungeon and the kinds of encounters in it, where I'll talk about some of the standout dangers and the possible boss fight with Karitamen, rather than an endless list of rooms. We'll also be comparing two versions of the PC team against this. Team 1 is the basic team provided in the back of the book. To demonstrate how loving stupid balancing them entirely by Number of Careers is, I am also preparing a Team 2. It contains versions of the characters who are all built to Woldred's level of EXP and who don't give a gently caress how many Careers that takes (but are all built on their 'canon' foundation). It also assumes Woldred actually spends his 1000 GC nest egg on outfitting his buddies instead of just having the money to fulfill the Trappings systems' demands for promotion. He's already promoted. He can spend it now!

Part of the reason for all this is that there are two combats (both optional, mind you, though one is primarily a matter of a skill check) that I can think of off the top of my head that I just don't think the canon party can win. Not without serious casualties, at least. The other is to show off that even characters who did silly, fluffy career paths like this party would actually still be useful if they just had equal EXP. The class selection hurts them some, yes, but it's the 'missing 27 advances' that hurts Goran so badly that I'd say this party doesn't have a primary Fighter. Also I just really like messing with character building.

So without further ado, let's introduce Party Prime: The guys who are built more like the 6 of them have been playing a whole campaign together.

First up, because he needed it the most, is Goran Prime. Now the party actually has a primary fighter. Going up to the 5700 EXP Woldred has (2700 over his original total) gives Goran a lot to play with: He blows through his last Advance in Bodyguard and grabs Heal. Then he goes through all of Sergeant, because he can do that for about 2400 EXP, and promotes into a Judicial Champion. He's now a 3rd tier fighter, picking up his third attack and generally better stats. With SB 5 and TB 5, 58% WS, and 3 attacks? Goran can take on at least one Ushabti (ancient egyptian stone mech) which was one of the bottleneck fights for the canon party. Also, going by the Trappings system, he's got full medium armor. DR 8 is way more respectable and will make his 16 Wounds go a long way, but he's not done yet. Woldred spends 230 of the team's 1000 GC slush fund to put their fighter in plate. Now Goran's able to really tank for the team if (and when) combat comes up. As an added bonus from Sergeant he's actually got a 51% Fel and he's pretty good with people and commanding troops.

Next comes Ehrl Prime, because he's the easiest. He's missing 15 advances compared to his leader, and he's already pretty well built, aside from hopping back and spending 1 of them back in Student to get Heal. C'mon, man. It's 100 EXP to open up a whole new way you add value to the team. He Promotes into Physician almost immediately after (buying the +5 BS he was missing from Scholar first) and proceeds to style all over medical school with his 73% Int, grabbing Heal +10, Surgery, learning to use his huge Int to prepare poisons in case a team in the Border Princes has any need of that (gee I wonder) and learning about science. He's now a deeply capable doctor as well as a perception and searching machine, and he knows a ton about history and language that was already going to be useful. He's also free to promote out of Physician any time, and his options all open up a lot: Spy, Explorer, etc can all make him more 'adventurey' as soon as he earns any more EXP. Now the team has a polymath and extremely skilled doctor. He's even a bit tougher and less sickly! Woldred also shells out 90 GC to put the poor guy in Studded Leather. No drawbacks, 2 AV? Definitely worth it. Now he can take a hit or two if it comes up.

Next is Thorgek Prime, because he's also pretty easy, too. He's got a decent base of thieving skill, hampered by his poor Agility. He'll grab his last WP advance from Tomb Robber and pick up Luck while he's there; Luck is a great talent because an extra Fortune a day is critical. He'll then promote for 100 (I'm going RAW here) into Cat Burglar. He blows through Cat Burglar extremely quickly; he basically has everything it has and mostly uses it to grab a bunch of +10s to skills he already has and amp his Agility. Funny how most of these characters end up in 3rd tier classes if they have Woldred's EXP, isn't it? He goes into Master Thief, because he is a dwarf of talent and means. By the time he's out of EXP, he has 2 Attacks and 59 WS, so he can be a 'secondary' fighter (also has Dodge), has a respectable 49% Agi and +20s in most of his thieving skills to bolster it, and is generally actually good at his job. When I was testing the crypt before, it was Thorgek that got the PCs killed a lot, because canon Thorgek isn't very good at dealing with traps. An extra +20% or so to most of his success chances, an extra +1 Fortune a day, some more Wounds...he's now a respectable Rogue and he's going to get even better fast with his next 300 EXP. Also, he gets the same Studded treatment as Ehrl for 90 GC. As a Dorf, he could use heavier armor, but he's also pretty tough and it's the 'thief' armor.

Johan Prime only needed 6 advances. He grabs Charm Animal and Sure Shot and that last WP and WS advance he needed, then Promotes into Veteran. He'll be making himself into the second actual fighter for the team. This requires him to get full Mail armor, but Woldred's wallet can handle it. He grabs Strike Mighty while he's here. Might as well; he'll now be a great shot and a great backup for Goran. If I was really min-maxing he'd go into Outlaw Chief and grab a 3rd attack, but this fits his whole loner who's good friends with his actual party story better and I'm trying to stick to the spirit of the PCs.

Therese Original wasn't much use to the team in the dungeon before. Therese Prime is a badass white witch. She needs 15 advances, and spends 8 of them on buying 4 more spells before she promoted out of Witch. She grabs Father of Thorns, which lays down an AoE that slows enemies and does damage if they try to move within, because you would not believe how bad that fucks undead. She picks up The Ox Stands, so she can cast a spell and cancel fear in her friends. She grabs Lightning Bolt because while Fireball would be better, she's going for kind of an arcane Taal/Rhya theme here and lightning is Taal's anger (also a pretty useful, cheap Damage 6 ranged attack for her. Previously, she had Mighty Missile but no actual missiles). She also grabs Leaf Fall because it's cool and will protect her from getting shot if they run into crossbow shaped trouble. She then picks up the one BS she was missing to finish Vagabond and promotes into a Career Compendium class: Rapscallion. They're a roguish, friendly social type and everything about her describes her as friendly and playful, plus the party already has 2 Scouts. She spends 3 advances on becoming a social powerhouse with +30 Fel (Giving her as 66), grabs Dodge to have it, and then buys Charm +10. She's now well set up to be a nature witch and handle social interaction for the team. Kind of a jack of all trades character and friendly white witch.

All Woldred Prime does is replace Crossbow with Longbow and actually spend his Shallya's Mercy to make his BS not suck. He's already the measuring stick. Also swaps himself to Full Studded.

This is a bit of a silly exercise on my part, I admit, but it's here for two reasons. One, I put the team through a lot of what's coming up and they had a Bad Time because three critical members of the team were underleveled and poorly built. The other reason is to show off that even with the 'poor builds', if they had the EXP Woldred had they'd still come out looking like cool heroes. In the original, if you were playing Therese, Thorgek, or Goran you were getting hosed because of the weird way they decided to balance the party. In this version, they're still built as fluffy, themed characters instead of picking up the 'best' stuff mechanically and they're still awesome. Look at Therese Prime, for instance; nature witch with a cool bag of magic tricks who is also a social power house and wanderer? That sounds like a really fun PC to play (and fills in a role they didn't really have nailed down, with the social skills). Goran can lead troops and fight hard on the front lines. Thorgek is a respectable rogue who is also a dwarf and thus kind of a badass. The issue with the original builds wasn't even their 'builds', it was the yawning gulf of EXP between them all. If you have a bunch of EXP it is really hard not to come out a cool character in 2e.

That, and it helps show why I keep using the term tier rather than career. Goran Original and Therese Original were '3rd careers'. Therese had even finished a 2nd tier career. You actually do get good things by jumping around at low tiers and multiclassing and dipping. You can turn out great from doing so! What hosed the originals was just the way they were 100% dedicated to 'everyone in this team has 3 careers'. Goran Prime and Therese Prime and Thorgek Prime are all on par with their teammates now. The only one I'd say was really badly built even is Thorgek, and it's mostly because he gets nothing from Miner really. But when you consider he's supposed to have a randomly rolled career and rolled Miner first (similar for Goran rolling Militia) you can see how you can roll with a slightly awkward 1st career and still come out useful if you live. These guys inadvertently became a good vehicle for exploring the EXP and Advancement systems a bit further.

Anyway, when we move into the tomb, I'll be talking about where Team 1 failed and how Team 2 did in their place. Spoiler: Team 2 does an awful lot better, as you'd expect from a team actually built to the same high power level as their leader and who actually spent some of their money on things like 'armor'. Team 1's big failings were Thorgek's relatively poor thievery (there are a fuckton of traps coming) and a total lack of DR that made even mook enemies really dangerous. Also the way Therese was pretty much dead weight. Team 2 has no dead weight. Team 2 is Adventurer Prime.

Next Time: The Tomb Itself

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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 8 hours!

NGDBSS posted:

Was this Life Sucks?
Yeah!

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