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Also he may use his God-King powers to attempt to beat people up despite the massive penalties for being a beetle.
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Jun 20, 2019 13:31
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So what's the point? Why does this exist? Why have an entire list of completely normal animals with descriptions and stats that contributes nothing? Why not just skip this and go onto something interesting and something that might be theoretically useful?
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Jun 20, 2019 13:40
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kommy5 posted:So what's the point? Why does this exist? Why have an entire list of completely normal animals with descriptions and stats that contributes nothing? Why not just skip this and go onto something interesting and something that might be theoretically useful? Because turning into animals is actually incredibly useful? Like, Lunars turn into animals. All the time. It's super good! The big tough combat animals are scary and actually worth considering, while the smaller ones give you variety in how you choose to sneak around and the levels of risk you want to take in terms of 'oh poo poo I got caught out in my noncombat form and need some time to shift to something bigger' versus 'okay how easy am I to notice in this area'. e: plus, you can turn other people into animals! So you might as well turn them into weak ones that are easier to beat up.
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Jun 20, 2019 13:43
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I think it's more...you can probably cut out what a badger is. It might be in the book, but it's not necessary. We know what a badger is. Going more into how lunar powers actually interact with being a badger would be interesting; as in, how many of their abilities are still usable when a badger? How much does being a badger disadvantage them in a fight? Can a lunar be strong enough to piledrive a mortal while a stag beetle, etc. E: Like stuff like that edit about 'you still have your healthbar, so suddenly fighting a cat as a beetle is a boss fight', that's the interesting part of this stuff.
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Jun 20, 2019 13:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
I played an ultucan hatchling dragon in the original siege of tolkeen campaign. I can only imagine how much it would have pissed the CS and the bizarre reports with me spamming the song of love. :p
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Jun 20, 2019 14:05
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For the actual Rifts fans, was it actually a thing that people were playing along with these books as they were released only to have the last books go 'btw, Tolkeen loses no matter what lol'?
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Jun 20, 2019 14:06
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Night10194 posted:I think it's more...you can probably cut out what a badger is. It might be in the book, but it's not necessary. We know what a badger is. Going more into how lunar powers actually interact with being a badger would be interesting; as in, how many of their abilities are still usable when a badger? How much does being a badger disadvantage them in a fight? Can a lunar be strong enough to piledrive a mortal while a stag beetle, etc. That stuff is in the book, it's covered at the start what you keep and change when you turn into another form. You need stats for badgers and beetles and it's good that they are there in the book that is all about turning into other things and having that as a super power. All of those statlines are super useful to have and give a pretty wide array of stuff so you can see what a walrus' statline is and then tweak it a bit to get a seal or whatever instead of having to invent a thing from scratch. It's not about telling you what a badger is, it's about telling you the stats for a badger because you might want to turn into one (protip, you want to turn into one). "Why are there statblocks for animals in the turning into animals book? Why don't they have something useful?" is such a bizarre take. EthanSteele fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 14:09
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Night10194 posted:For the actual Rifts fans, was it actually a thing that people were playing along with these books as they were released only to have the last books go 'btw, Tolkeen loses no matter what lol'? yup I'm afraid. and the part that is really annoying is tolkeen seems like a really cool place to have an adventure, but we find out about it as it burns. that and distinct lack of a deep 13 where doctor foresters and tvs frank are launching an evil scheme. :p
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Jun 20, 2019 14:17
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kommy5 posted:So what's the point? Why does this exist? Why have an entire list of completely normal animals with descriptions and stats that contributes nothing? Why not just skip this and go onto something interesting and something that might be theoretically useful? You may have missed the point of Lunars. If you don't think turning into a beetle to sneak somewhere you're not supposed to be is useful, probably just be a Solar.
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Jun 20, 2019 14:19
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Fangs at the Gate: My Closet Of Animal Forms Frogs and Toads are widespread. They’re small, slow and weak, but they’re pretty good at getting around by climbing or jumping or swimming, making them a good form for gaining entry into rural areas. If you get a poisonous one, you can give a weak poison to anything that bites you, which adds some survivability for a Lunar in a tiny form because…well, unlike a frog, you have a Lunar’s healthbar. A poison dart frog or arrow frog trades some stealth for bright colors and a stronger poison. You also get a sticky tongue, which is useful for grappling Minuscule foes. Frogs can breathe in water or out, and they also ignore vision penalties for being underwater, but they’re Tiny. On the other hand, they’re not bad for keeping watch if you’re already perceptive – they’re not, but their eyes see in all directions, so they get a bonus to vision rolls and especially to opposing Stealth checks. Hippopotami are terrifying. Their only saving grace is they’re tough, but not as tough as apex predator dinosaurs. They’re very strong, they deal shitloads of damage (though they are not super accurate) and they’re good at grappling. Further, their Decisive bites cause penalties to Strength and Dexterity rolls because they crack bones, and their Withering bites tear through soak like nobody’s business. They also get a bonus to attack or rush people in Crash, because they’re huge fuckin’ bullies, and their stomps can trample fallen foes. Also, they can hold their breath for five minutes, or an entire combat scene. Hippos aren’t a Legendary Size creature, and outside of Legendary Size they are one of the scariest things you can face in the animal world – or be. This is more than useful as a combat form. Great Stoats are giant weasels native to the East. They’re about the size of a dog and like to hunt and eat anything smaller. They change up their sleeping patterns depending on what prey is easiest to hunt, and they’re brave enough to attack larger animals, even wolves or great cats. Sometimes they get tamed to hunt rabbits or foxes, but they’re not fully domesticated at all. As animals go, they’re not super tough, but they’re very mobile, sneaky for an animal their size and very good at getting into places. Their attacks aren’t much to write home about, but they’re no worse than a random soldier’s. Their main weakness is poor durability, but they get good bonuses to attack from stealth and on a good Withering hit they can latch onto and grapple people, which they’re fairly good at controlling. They can also be trained to reflexively savage people they grapple that are Crashed. They’re resistant to fear, too! You could add a berserker merit to represent a honey badger, or give them Tiny to represent smaller weasels. They’re a solid balance between combat and sneaky, with the caveat that a weasel the size of a dog is going to look out of place if someone notices it. Iron-Skull Devils are bipedal dinosaurs, about fifteen feet long and weighing in around half a ton. Their name comes from the bony dome on their skull, because this is a pachycephalosaurus. They’re found in herds in the East and South, plus some Western islands. Many cultures prize their skull domes as trophies to be made into helmets, but hunting them is dangerous. They’re relatively tough for a small dinosaur, pretty strong and hit hard, though they don’t have great armor. Their real thing is that they gain Initiative when they run directly at someone for several range bands and then Decisive attack them, which means that if they have mobility they can hit like a train, and if their headbutt does enough damage it does knockback and knockdown, plus also delays the enemy’s turn or even stuns them entirely. A pack of these things – and they travel in herds, remember – can bully a lone fighter into having very little time to act. Jellyfish are extremely weak, but when it comes to aquatic forms, they’re pretty nasty in groups. They’re not super sneaky, but can deal a lot of damage to foes their own size or smaller; they range from Minuscule to Tiny to human size. Their venom isn’t usually very powerful, but it causes a pretty nasty action penalty. A battle group of jellyfish also drains Initiative of anyone nearby and gives movement penalties, so using the Lunar charm that can summon battle groups of animals at sea to call jellyfish isn’t a bad idea. Some jellyfish also glow, I guess? And they get a perception bonus while underwater and ignore a bunch of penalties to underwater perception, so turn into a jellyfish and keep watch at night! Mountain Goats are pretty tough, but more importantly they’re excellent climbers and very good at handling the cold, so they make good forms for exploring the wilderness. Their attacks are decent but not great, but they are very good at moving around the field. Their kicks can also cause knockback and knockdown, and their horns do extra damage against slower foes. They can grapple with their horns, and their savaging attacks do extra damage, so as a combat form they’re actually decent against human beings if you can handle having poor armor. Also, they get a bonus to jumping. Mice and Rats are weak but fast, good at climbing and spotting things, pretty sneaky and good at getting into places. Their attacks are absolutely awful, even against other Tiny foes. However, when they’re fleeing, they can take a bit of Bashing to drop their tail, gaining a bonus to the withdraw check. Obviously, you can only do this if you’ve got a tail, and they take a season to regrow, though any magic that can heal crippling effects can heal the tail. As a battle group, however, they give a penalty to all rolls made by nearby foes, so summon rat swarms at your leisure. They also have a strong nose and can be trained to track specific substances of your choice by scent, such as mineral veins or food. Caypbaras and beavers also use rat traits but aren’t Tiny and lose their swarm and tail abilities, which…actually makes them pretty useless. Octopi range from Minuscule all the way up to Legendary size, and the big ones are pretty dang scary. They’re not super tough or good at fighting, but when they do hit, they can deal good damage and poison people. Further, octopi have good senses, can squeeze into cracks that are far too small for them, and are sneaky. Also, they’re obviously good at grappling. They can shoot ink to get a disengage bonus underwater, they’re good at flurrying arm attacks due to many arms, and their poison’s…actually, pretty weak at anything but draining Initiative. Underwater, they make for a decent sneaky combat form, since you can use your own brawl pools in place of their attack pools, but if you want sheer terror I’d go for one of the other Legendary Size critters that can be found in the depths of the sea. Owls can fly well, have excellent senses, and are quite stealthy, but not strong or tough. They’re good grapplers, but primarily against smaller foes; they’re able to reflexively grapple Tiny or smaller foes after a good Withering talon attack. They can also divebomb people for extra Decisive damage, which isn’t too bad if you’re using Lunar dicepools instead of owl ones – their peck can do surprising damage, especially since they get a bonus to unexpected attacks when they attack from above. Their main benefit, though, is being one of the best birds for perception abilities and stealth. Next time: Shieldback Lizards, Swans, Thunder Lizards, Walrus, Wasps
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Jun 20, 2019 14:51
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Night10194 posted:For the actual Rifts fans, was it actually a thing that people were playing along with these books as they were released only to have the last books go 'btw, Tolkeen loses no matter what lol'? Here's an odd secret about people who buy Rifts books: a lot, maybe even most don't play the game. While it's admittedly anecdotal at the game store I worked at (which was during the Siege of Tolkeen's release) we could order six copies of each new Rifts book and they'd sell out in a day or two and if you think they were buying them for their group or possibly it was the same group buying them, you'd be mistaken.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:05
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A friend made a point of never, ever buying RIFTS books new. There's a used bookstore that would always, always have a new book discounted within a month of release, and he'd scoop that up instead. It probably isn't a coincidence that there's a gaming store a few doors down from the bookstore. We mostly got the books for more stats to throw into our twinkery stew.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:18
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Nail Rat posted:You may have missed the point of Lunars. If you don't think turning into a beetle to sneak somewhere you're not supposed to be is useful, probably just be a Solar. No, you and Mors Rattus are missing the point. We don't need the whole book rewritten in the thread, only a discussion of it. Actually typing up pages and pages of descriptions of totally normal animals is a waste of their time. They could just put in a couple of notes on the things that are overpowered, or weir,d or nonsensical, or broken and move on to a new chapter or something.
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Jun 20, 2019 15:38
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Spycraft 1e Enact Alpha Protocol Spycraft is a really interesting product of the OGL. It's a great example of expending a lot of energy and creativity on trying to get something to fit the standard D20 Framework that really, really doesn't, and it gets close enough that it can be really fun to play. I know most people who play Spycraft stick to the 2nd edition, but this is another of those where I've played the 1st ed and I think it's informative and interesting to look at as some vintage OGL product from the old d20 glut that absolutely wasn't shovelware. Spycraft has an assumed setting, but you only get to it in another book; the main book has little to no fluff and is all about just being superspies in a d20 framework. Spycraft ends up working okay-ish, if extremely crunchy and fiddly, partly because it has no casters. d20 without casters can be a bit dull, but it does remove one of the biggest sources of balance issues right off the bat. As you'd expect from a modern d20 game, it struggles some with balancing and implementing things like automatic weapons or tanks, but ideally you aren't actually running into that many tanks. The biggest problem I ended up having with the game is how poorly the 1-20 level system and prestige classes ended up fitting the genre; 'superspies' isn't really a genre that goes well with 'level 1 d20 character'. Spycraft makes game attempts to get around all that awkwardness and is still committed to evoking its genre, it's just held back by being a 2002 OGL game. All that aside, even with a total lack of fluff and a lot of d20 problems, I think Spycraft 1e is worth a look at a vintage OGL product. It really, really tries. It succeeds enough to be playable, and it does suddenly solve the issue of 'what does the rogue do' when 'we sneak into places and learn things without anyone knowing we were there' is suddenly a huge part of the genre. It has the usual Decker Problems all over the place, but one of my GMs solved that in a pretty fun way: We each made two PCs, one of them an action/commando character, one of them an intel/investigative team character, and played a larger cell. I think this is one of the ideal ways to play Spycraft; it worked great in all three campaigns we played, and Spycraft does present enough interesting and fun character options that no-one minded having two PCs. It was really neat to play as both a competent, professional, hard-working FBI man and a Marine convoy gunner who'd done a couple tours in Iraq. On the other hand, like all d20 games, it's very easy to build a useless character. The rules are complex, even if they aren't quite as batshit insane crunchy as Spycraft 2.0 yet. Prestige classes are everywhere. The main weight of every sourcebook beyond the core seems to be new Prestige Classes, who range from (as per usual for Prestige Classes) broken as hell to worthless. The fairly simple, broad main classes get diluted a little. And nobody has Decker Problems quite the way the Wheelman does by the normal rules; it gets even worse when you start giving them sub-classes that specialize them into single vehicle types. Sure, an ace fighter pilot is a reasonable idea for an action character, but how often are aerial dogfights going to come up in your d20 Superspy game? Since there's basically no fluff to introduce, we'll get right down to making a PC. They start out with a sidebar advising that if you want to be actual cinematic superspies off the bat, do not start at level 1. Level 1 is there for more 'grounded' agents, or for 'where James Bond was when he was on his first assignment', in their words. Spycraft is not intended to be a game about calling in predator strikes on a wedding that supposedly has one officer you want dead to maintain US hegemony; you're supposed to be facing off against SPECTRE, or Dr. Igor Tarantula, MD and his sinister Arachnid organization. More 'No-One Lives Forever' and the agents of H.A.R.M. Later books will introduce lots of real-world agencies to use as backgrounds for your PC, but the core book has a nebulous Agency and its various general 'offices' in lieu of PC races. One nice thing? Every single character gets a bonus feat at level 1. Your office just determines what sort. There's no 'human gets more feats and everything everyone else has has to compete with that'. Another nice thing: A lot of your Office bonuses will scale up as you level. They never really become irrelevant. I'm also going to be assuming some basic familiarity with d20's framework while writing all this, because...it's d20. If I'm assuming too much, let me know. The Home Office are the 'everyman' superspy, known for their flexibility and broad training. They get a +1 bonus to Action Die results per 4 levels (Effectively, this game's metacurrency) because they're lucky bastards, and can pick some skills that aren't Class Skills and make them count as Class Skills no matter what class they level (2 at level 1, 1 more per 4 levels). No stat adjusts. Get a Covert or Chase Feat. We'll get into those later. The Power Brokerage are the people who make sure they Military Ops agents are commandos and supersoldiers, though they can handle any job once they're recruited. They get +2 to a stat of their choice and -2 to another stat of their choice, which is real nice. +1 to Fortitude saves per 4 levels is less meh than you'd think; without wizards around Fort actually comes up more and Will a bit less. +1 to one skill of their choice per 4 levels, which is also nice. Finally they get a Basic Combat Feat. They can work out for any class, really. Computer Espionage is for techies and engineers, and is really, really good at it. +2 Int, -2 Wis, but they get a free magical +1 laptop that gets upgraded every 4 levels, the +1 per 4 levels skill bonus to Computers and Electronics, and a Gear feat. They will hack all the gibsons, and in a modern espionage game that is really useful. Urban Assault agents are, well, I can't really tell you much about how their fluff differs from Military Ops. They're soldiers specializing in close combat, so think SWAT/hostage rescue guys. +2 Dex, -2 Int, get the skill bonuses almost everyone gets to Hide and Spot, get a +1 per 4 levels to-hit when attacking after readying an action (they like ambushes), and get a Ranged combat feat of their choice. They like to hide behind doors with an SMG or shotgun. Black Ops characters are hard to kill. They're the veteran agents who've survived being shot in the back more than most agents get shot at from the front. +2 Con, -2 Dex, +4 HP at level 1, +1 HP per level (So slightly less lovely Toughness as a department ability), and they get bonus Wound points, too; we'll get to Wounds. They get any one Melee feat. Wetworks agents focus on killing people. With their hands. Or a pencil. Anything nearby, really. Just get them close enough. They get +2 Str, -2 Con, +1 to Init per 4 levels, +1 to Reflex saves per 4 levels, and an Unarmed feat. You want to break necks, this is the office for it; just make sure you pick a combat class. Finally, the Basement deals with strange matters. They're for cases where the Agency isn't sure the thing they're hunting for is even real, let alone a threat. In practice, if you're playing a no-wizard game, they tend to end up hunting serial killers or fighting people like the Aum Shinrikyo; people who THINK they have an occult reason for what they're doing, but who are dangerous because they're trying to kill a lot of people in a terrorist or doomsday attack. They get +2 to Wisdom, -2 to Charisma, 4 extra Skillpoints at level 1 and +1 SP per level, +1 to Will saves per 4 levels, and a Basic Skill Feat (Slightly less useless than in D&D, generally?). I mention all this in detail because it doesn't take much time and it's an interesting thing to look at: Right away, you can see that the offices are designed around a standardized core. Almost every office is designed around a stacking set of bonuses that increase every 4 character levels regardless of character class. They're meant to all be playable for any class, but...well, you're not going to play a Power Brokerage Soldier, most likely. Or an Urban Assault Snoop. Or a Basement Faceman. You could, but it's generally not really a good idea. Still, I do like the actual standardization of design for the Offices; you'll see a lot of that in Spycraft 1e. There is a real attempt to make the crunch somewhat more considered than it normally is in OGL/D20 work. It doesn't always work, and like I said, you can still gently caress yourself on system mastery, but there's a real attempt to make your options useful. Next Time: Categories of Spy
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Jun 20, 2019 15:50
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Fangs at the Gate: Final Sting Shieldback Lizards are ankylosaurs, mostly found in subtropical Eastern forests. They’re big and tough as hell, mostly solitary, and hard to kill. They can absorb an exceptional amount of punishment, and their innate armor is terrifyingly good. They’re also crazy strong, especially if they feel like knocking things over, and they deal massive amounts of damage with decently accurate attacks, and they can trample people. Their armor is also able to reduce Withering damage to 0 rather than 1 if you’re really unlucky. Oh, and they’re Legendary Size. They may not have the raw killing prowess of the apex predator dinos, but they’re one of the best tanking forms out there. Swans are…well, not much. They’re not very tough or good at fighting, they aren’t sneaky – they are good at scaring things, but that’s about it. They gain Initiative when they threaten foes or are disengaged from, though, so that’s something. Also they’re good at defending their mate and children, and have decent perception abilities, especially underwater. They do get a minor dodge and mobility bonus when in water, but generally speaking I don’t think they’re very good for much as a Lunar. Thunder Lizards are Apatosaurus and similar dinos. They’re gigantic, the biggest land animals in Creation, and they travel in small herds, mostly by the Eastern or Western coasts and wetlands. They are exceptionally tough and tanky, with terrifying strength and good senses. Their attacks aren’t very accurate, but they hit like trains. They can also crack their tail like a whip, allowing them to flurry threaten and tail slam actions freely. They’re Legendary Size, and they also have a tendency to stampede, so if you are dealing with a battle group of them, they basically get to deal automatic damage to every foe nearby. I’d prefer the shieldback for defensive combat forms, but the thunder lizard is good if you want to terrify people on top of it. Walruses are pretty tough, especially for a non-Legendary Size animal. They’re good at survival and pretty strong, fast in the water, and able to tank pretty well. Their attacks aren’t very accurate but hit very hard, especially their tusks, which deal extra damage to slower foes and bypass a good bit of soak. They also become tougher in battle groups, as their blubber forms an effective shield wall, and they can reflexively roar to call other walruses to fight with them nearby if wounded. In a walrus-rich environment, being a walrus means you can call on allies to jump your foes, which is nice. They’re way more mobile in water than on land, and very good at defending their young and at hearing noises. Good tank form for aquatic use. Wasps and Bees are…wasps and bees. They’re weak but easily ignored, though as Minuscule things go, they aren’t sneaky. Rather, their virtue is the ability to deliver venomous stings relatively safely – they’re very accurate, but their damage is awful against any non-Minuscule foe, barring that venom, which does only minor damage but causes a decent penalty. Calling on them to be a swarm for you is worthwhile, at least – a swarm battle group gives a penalty to all actions of nearby foes. While many bee species die after stinging, Lunars are noted to be able to survive it just fine, due to being Exalted, as would any other being with Exalted Healing that turned into a bee. The End.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:15
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Swans are probably a nod to Zeus and Leda.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:17
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Speleothing posted:No, you and Mors Rattus are missing the point. We don't need the whole book rewritten in the thread, only a discussion of it. Actually typing up pages and pages of descriptions of totally normal animals is a waste of their time. They could just put in a couple of notes on the things that are overpowered, or weir,d or nonsensical, or broken and move on to a new chapter or something. Night's initial questions were specifically "why is this in the book?" and not "why is in this in the review?" so surely you can see why people might think someone saying "something theoretically useful" would still be directed at the book rather than the review?
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Jun 20, 2019 16:20
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Speleothing posted:No, you and Mors Rattus are missing the point. We don't need the whole book rewritten in the thread, only a discussion of it. Actually typing up pages and pages of descriptions of totally normal animals is a waste of their time. They could just put in a couple of notes on the things that are overpowered, or weir,d or nonsensical, or broken and move on to a new chapter or something. Personally I'm liking the Zoobooks write-ups. Writing pages and pages about RIFTS and OGL offshoots are also a waste of time. Dude, people throw up their F&Fs onto the bonfire, it all burns.
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Jun 20, 2019 16:40
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Nothing means anything, we're all in the death throes of a thrashing, dying empire, post what the gently caress ever. That having been said, I would buy a book that's nothing but "here is 500 animals in the Exalted setting, where they're found in the setting, here are basic stats and relevant tags for the Totemic keyword for Charms." And also for the Totemic charm keyword to be a lot more evenly applied (a dead horse I will keep beating until it happens).
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Jun 20, 2019 18:29
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I know right! Spent like 3 hours brainstorming a whole bunch of merits and stuff that a huge sea serpent would have based off the existing things and just wanting even more inspiration.
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Jun 20, 2019 18:32
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Night10194 posted:Spycraft 1e I did a bit of work for Crafty back in the day, and I can confirm that they had a quasi-mathematical underpinning for all this sort of stuff to try and ensure every class, every office, every odd and end was balanced. It didn't quite land because this was still early d20 and people were still feeling out what was good, but they sure as hell put the effort in.
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Jun 20, 2019 19:21
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One thing I really appreciate about Ex3 is that everything feels customizable and expandable in fun ways. That's one of the fun parts of a complicated system, that you can model all sorts of things, and the sample antagonists they've been selling as microtransactions (but which are good, actually) have been really inspiring. The animals with their base stats, special merits, trainable merits, and magical potential - all of those are fun things you can mess around with. Same goes for Evocations - you can have A Daiklave or use a canon set of daiklave evocations, and that's good, but there's also carte blanche to make your magic sword actually magic and do something really unique. The best Evocation trees, like the best Martial Arts, feel like little fighting game movesets that you can attach to your character, and that's just charming. (Plus they can be less combat-oriented and still be really cool, of course). In general, the real failing of Solar Craft or the Persona Socialize charms aren't being overcomplex - they're being weirdly specific and poorly flavored complexity, so you can't really get in on customizing them. While Evocations are a huge boost to complexity for the daiklave, but not a huge increase in complexity for the game (they're just more charms, they're a drop in the bucket and from the player perspective work like their other charms) - so daiklaves start feeling much more interesting, without any particular downside. All of this is to say, I'm a wrong-funner who can really enjoy a ridiculously crunchy, over-customizable game with giant bestiary entries, as long as those bestiary entries really result in things that play differently. Unlike my Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 experience, for example, where complicated monsters still ended up playing out basically the same every time.
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Jun 20, 2019 19:34
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Mors Rattus posted:Fangs at the Gate: My Closet Of Animal Forms  these buddies saved my spaceship more times than I can remember
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Jun 20, 2019 20:18
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Oddly, though, fortune telling is banned by the King to prevent doomsaying. Uncoincidentally, a lot of psychics leave the city weeks before the new invasion. You would think this would instead lead to a radical rethink of the Tolkeen strategy. It's not as if they're exactly out of options. Just use the fact you can teleport and rift about to deploy a bunch of strike forces into areas where the Coalition are relatively weak, such as their agricultural land, and mount a series of mobile strikes that force the coalition to redeploy inordinate amounts of forces to deal with. It would also be far more effective at showing how cruel the war had made Tolkeen if they were running around coalition crop lands casting blight of ages and feeding small coalition towns to the Daemonix. If the choice is between a campaign of terror to draw the CS offensive away until the solstice, or resist the siege and fight only against the enemy army that would actually be a legitimate shades of grey moral dilemma. Of course this would also require Jericho Holmes dumb plan to not work, which we can't have.
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Jun 20, 2019 20:30
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Nail Rat posted:You may have missed the point of Lunars. If you don't think turning into a beetle to sneak somewhere you're not supposed to be is useful, probably just be a Solar. When I played a Lunar in a 2e game, turning into an animal really only mattered if it was something flying that could scout or move fast as a result. Anything that was a combat advantage was rare as gently caress(maybe they've fixed that), but unless you're in a full party of Lunars, turning into animals for stealth or whatever has the same lame weakness that being the One Stealth Guy does in any other RPG: Either you're the only one playing the game while the others are waiting for it to be their turn again, or everyone else needs to be equally good at stealth of some variety for it to matter. Usually they're not, so usually it doesn't matter. Though at the same time I don't really feel like most animals need statting. Either they explode the instant an Exalt wants them to explode, or they're a Lunar's transformed form and thus should have stats appropriate to the Lunar rather than any of their own.
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Jun 20, 2019 20:57
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 I picked this game up at Origins this year. It is…well, to me, it is what Planescape wanted to be but never quite managed. It is, however, very much not a D&D-like game. It uses the Spark RPG system, which I had never run into before but I am informed was also used for a few other games by the publisher, Genesis of Legends. The chief creator and mind behind the game, Jason Pitre, has also worked on Hillfolk and some other stuff, but mostly his own Spark stuff. The text of the game is currently Creative Commons 3.0 under the Attribution license. On February 1, 2027, the entire text will permanently enter public domain. The game is set in a multiverse, centered on Sig, the City Between. Sig is a moebius strip of city, floating in an infinite void at the nexus of the ‘verse, as the inhabitants refer to their multiverse. Around it spin the infinite prime worlds and the 15 major planes. Sig is always bound by metaphysical tether to three planes at a time, and those planes are able to freely come and go from the city, always with a large influx of settlers, refugees and visitors. The planes are also the source of the city’s Factions, the groups that make the place function while also pursuing their own political agendas. (I did mention this was havily based on Planescape, right?) They’re also home to the Powers – what you might consider gods, who draw power from the faith and worship of mortals and in exchange for their devotion and obedience offer miraculous rites. Planescape’s Sigil was run by the Lady of Pain, and similarly Sig was run by the Silent Regent – except for one thing. A generation ago, the Regent disappeared. The city’s been dealing with that ever since, but she’s…gone. She’s dead or vanished, and has been for over a decade. The city goes on. The Eternal Planes are said to have been made by the Primordials at the beginning of time. These days, there really are not that many Primordials left to corroborate this, of course, so it may or may not actually be true, but they’ve certainly been around as long as anyone can recall. The fifteen major planes get the most traffic, but there’s plenty of smaller planar shards or demiplanes out there, too, swirling around the Planar Core where Sig sits, kind of like an atom. Each plane is unique, but they each have a few traits in common. First, every plane is defined by a single, overarching Belief, which influences the society and even physical laws of existence on that plane. Each also has its own natives, with unique and proud Heritage and abilities. The planes are, in theory, ruled by the Powers, divine beings or devils who most primals worship or tell stories about. (Primals are mortal beings of the prime worlds. More on that momentarily.) Each Power has devoted servants and cultists who obey their will and tend to cause problems for those that oppose them. The Powers each tend to have some section of a plane carved out as their personal realm, and they’re nearly omnipotent within that area (at least, when dealing with the thing they are Power of). The planes also serve as powerbases and sources of goods and resources for the Factions of Sig. There are three interlocking rings in the Planar Core. The Elemental Ring, the innermost, is composed of the Planes of Flame, Waves, Wind, Stone and Ice. The outermost ring, the Ideological Ring, is made of the Planes of Justice, Tyranny, Destruction, Order and Freedom. Between them is the central Conceptual Ring, comprised of the Planes of Dreams, Shadow, Life, Lore and Death. Spread around and between the rings of the Core are the Infinite Primes, which make up most of the ‘verse in general. Primals, as the mortals native to the Primes are known, tend to be self-centered about their own worlds, but no Prime is central to the ‘verse…which is usually a good thing for them, given the chaos and problems that Sig tends to run into with its central location. Each Prime is a vibrant world with its own cultures, customs, languages and even physical laws. One might be a grand kingdom besieged by elemental forces, while another could be a world of brutal storms and tentacular monstrosities, and a third might be a sprawling planet-city struggling with language and identity clashes. There’s an infinite number of them out there, and their faith and shapes the ‘verse by powering the Powers and strengthening the Planes based on their central Beliefs and concepts. The Primes are also plundered for resources by the Factions when possible, or visited for the lore they have, or just treated as tourist destinations. The Powers and Factions get a lot of use out of them, and the more primals that end up following a Faction or Power’s philosophy, the more powerful they and their associated plane becomes. Sig itself has always been there. Some say it is where the Primordials rested after constructing the ‘verse, while others believe it is a rogue plane, possibly once the Plane of Cities, that somehow escaped the orbit of the Planar Core and came to rest in the middle. Others say that the Silent Regent, its former ruler for centuries, made it for her own ends. No matter what, it’s ancient and hides many secrets. It appears to be put together in a mishmash of styles and materials from across the ‘verse, primarily from scavenged wood or stone held together with a strange gray mortar that is strangely warm to the touch. Whenever a new group of primal immigrants shows up, they tend to settle and form their own neighborhood dedicated to their own cultural flavor, and so Sig is more cosmopolitan than any Prime city, with hundreds or even thousands of languages spoken along its streets. Every sort of being is represented there, from the largest giant to the smallest gnome – and far stranger things between.  The most notable thing to most visitors, however, is the smell. Sig has a smell all its own, a mix of roasted rat, heavily spiced soup, rotting trash and countless living bodies, all pressed together into a mélange that is practically a physical blow, able to make newcomers’ eyes water easily. That’s not the city’s real danger, of course. That’s the conflicts. Everyone believes something different, and in a city like Sig, those beliefs clash often. The Factions try to keep things running, but also see to their own power, and terrible things hide in the slums of the Hive, while mobs can be raised for nearly any cause. There’s always work for peacekeepers, diplomats and mercenaries. As the alignments of the Planes shift, they influence the City Between, particularly its language. While hundreds of tongues are spoken there daily, understanding seeps in through the planar tethers. Whatever three Planes are attached to Sig at the moment are understood. When the Plane of Flames is tied in, everyone can understand the tongues of fire and the scorched scripts, making it easy for the natives of the plane to communicate. The city is warped by the planes, its trends and nature changing to reflect it. But when the tethers shift, that all ends. The gift of understanding is only there as long as the plane is connected, after all. Entire neighborhoods may end up cut off from society as their language is no longer understood by others. The locals of Sig learn to cope. Some work hard to learn languages the old-fashioned way, allowing them to communicate more freely, while others hire professional scribes and translators. Work as a freebooter linguist is lucrative, if not always safe. The wealthy purchase extremely expensive translation artifacts, while others resort to drinking the liquor of blue devil squeezing. Oh, right, I should mention – among other influences, Kill Six Billion Demons is up there! There are several methods to travel through the ‘verse, and people tend to enjoy traveling. The main method of out of Sig is the Planar Tethers. At any given time, these major planar thoroughfares connect the City Between to three different planes, and each is a very easy, widely-used method of travel. The Brass Tether ties the city to an Elemental Plane, the Golden Tether to an Ideological Plane, and the Silver Tether to a Conceptual Plane. When they shift, which resources and immigrants can come in changes, as does the nature of the city. The city is also full of Gates, hidden portals that allow individual people or small groups to travel to a specific Prime world. Most gates can only be unlocked at specific times, with specific words or by specific people, which is why most of them are hidden and secret. Sometimes, a Vortex will form. Vortices are quasi-natural planar rifts between Sig and a random plane that usually last for only a few days. The planar navigators usually say they are made by the acts of the Powers, but most Powers deny having any responsibility for their creation. Like a Tether, a Vortex allows the nature of the plane it is connected from to seep through into the City Between, but unlike the Tethers, which influence the entire City Between, a Vortex’s influence will be sharply limited to a specific region or neighborhood around it. There are also Portals, the most versatile and dangerous method of travel. Any potent sorcerer, wizard or Power may create a portal, a shimmering pool of color that leads wherever they decide to send it. However, the price of using a portal is high, because the price of making one is high: to create a portal, one of your relationships must be sacrificed. Your best friend no longer recalls you, perhaps, or your husband moves out and leaves you, or your child decides you’re a dangerous influence to be cut from their life. Your memory of the relationship you gave up waxes and wanes over time, like a painful dream. Next time: Rules.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:03
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Plenty of animals in this edition are fun to fight afaict; especially if your Solar players aren't combat-focused, at which point any kind of thunder lizard is going to be a meaningful threat. Lunars, because of being able to turn into animals, are ironically better prepared to fight by default.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:04
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Joe Slowboat posted:Plenty of animals in this edition are fun to fight afaict; especially if your Solar players aren't combat-focused, at which point any kind of thunder lizard is going to be a meaningful threat. Lunars, because of being able to turn into animals, are ironically better prepared to fight by default. Animal stats are useful for familiars too! Gorillas are scary and will gently caress you up.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:08
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EthanSteele posted:Animal stats are useful for familiars too! Gorillas are scary and will gently caress you up. Generally bringing familiars, companions or summons to a fight is mostly only good for making the GM lose his will to live, especially in a system with as many moving parts as Exalted. Why yes I do want every fight to take an hour longer that's why I brought my familiar and my groupies.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:45
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PurpleXVI posted:When I played a Lunar in a 2e game, turning into an animal really only mattered if it was something flying that could scout or move fast as a result. Anything that was a combat advantage was rare as gently caress(maybe they've fixed that), but unless you're in a full party of Lunars, turning into animals for stealth or whatever has the same lame weakness that being the One Stealth Guy does in any other RPG: Either you're the only one playing the game while the others are waiting for it to be their turn again, or everyone else needs to be equally good at stealth of some variety for it to matter. Usually they're not, so usually it doesn't matter. In a lot of ways the shapeshifting rules in 3e are a reaction to the shapeshifting rules in 1e and 2e—in a game where the rules for your Charms matter and you probably have, like, twenty of them at least, having shapeshifting amount to “Whatever, the ST can give you a circumstantial bonus to your action based on her judgment of how the form you’re in might help you,” is unsatisfying—so much of the system is built around this or that minor mechanical doodad mattering that players are conditioned to think of things mattering in terms of their mechanics, and building a whole character type around shapeshifting into a bunch of different forms and then having the shapeshifting mechanics be vague and fiat-y leads to players not valuing what is supposed to be the primary gimmick of that character type. You can see this in e.g. Terrifying Argent Witches being built around “What things can Lunars do that are Lunar-y, aside from shapeshifting?” You can certainly argue that this is a trap, and the correct solution to this problem was not to build a mechanics-heavy exception-based game that conditions players to value things based on their mechanics, but we are where we are. So shapeshifting in 3e is fairly fine-grained, with rules for which traits of your own you use when shapeshifted and which traits of your form you can use, with specific animals having physical merits you might want to have access to that can most easily be accessed by shifting into that animal’s form, etc. All of which is to say, if you look at that animal list and go “This seems like a waste because this level of detail never mattered when we were playing Lunars in 2e,” yes, that level of detail not mattering in 2e is why it’s here and matters in 3e. We don’t want a shapeshifting character type that people look at and go “That’d be cool if not for the focus on shapeshifting.” Stephenls fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 21:47
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Sig: Manual of the Primes HOW AM CONFLICT FORMED Overall, this is an extremely narrative, loose system that is designed mostly to resolve conflicts. The core of it is Beliefs, and we’ll get into that. Generally speaking, most gameplay will consist of everyone talking about what’s going on and declaring what they want to be true or what their character is doing and what happens as a result of that. If everyone agrees that something is the right outcome, that’s what occurs. Dice are only rolled when players disagree – including the GM, who is still a player. Conflicts are generally simple – each side’s going to end up rolling one die, and whoever gets the highest number wins. There are some details that result from this and ways to manipulate your die size or result, but overall, that’s the system. The game has three different scales: Session, Scene and Conflict. Each Session is made of multiple dramatic Scenes, and each Scene may contain a number of Conflicts. Between sessions, the GM keeps track of the changing history and relationships of the various Factions, Powers and notable NPCs, as well as if any Beliefs have changed (and therefore shifted Tethers). The game expects a Session to last between 2 and 5 hours, and each Session begins with an inciting problem of some variety; by default, the first session begins with the death or disappearance of an NPC everyone is connected to, and later sessions will typically start with one Faction or Power accomplishing a goal and another failing at one. At the end of each Session, characters may end up triggering Reflections, special scenes in which they grow and change their Beliefs. Scenes focus on individual events. A Scene begins with a Platform (“someone declares where this is happening”), a Tilt (“someone explains why the characters have to act right now”) and a Question (“someone defines what the scene is about and when it will end”). To determine what these are, everyone rolls their Smoke die, and the three highest people get to frame the scene between them. We’ll get more details on that in a bit, as well as on the stats. (There’s only two – Smoke and Spark.) The scene then continues, with everyone roleplaying freely, until the Question is answered. At that point, the scene ends and Influence is handed out to anyone whose Beliefs got confronted in the scene, whether confirmed or rejected. Conflicts happen when people at the table disagree over what should happen and propose different outcomes. Each side rolls their appropriate stat, adding in any relevant bonuses from Talents, assistance or other benefits. Whoever gets the highest result wins the Conflict, getting the outcome they desire but taking 1 Harm as the price of victory. While many Scenes will have a Conflict or even multiple Conflicts, you can go entire scenes without actually having one, if everyone agrees on what should end up happening in the fiction. That’s totally fine. The game requires at least three people, given how scene-setting rules work and also because you need someone to be the GM and at least two characters to bounce off each other regularly. They suggest capping it at six, one GM and five characters, but the game can easily adapt to adding or removing one or two players in any given session. It’s not a heavy system – you just don’t want people talking over each other and stuff. You are going to need a full set of normal gaming dice, though, from a d4 up to a d20. While you will only ever be rolling one die at a time, dice sizes vary wildly depending on stats and some bonuses. The GM, given their special role, gets special attention from the book. Their job is to play director and producer for the story, and they control the setting for the most part, shaping how most NPCs will react and act. They arbitrate between players and make judgments where needed, and should understand the rules because they’re likely to be the one that has to explain them. Their job is also to keep things moving and to remind people that they should either agree that a thing can happen or roll the dice to oppose it. They are going to end up playing the Faces (major NPCs with connections to the PCs), the locals of Sig, the planes and the primes, the Powers and the Factions. Everyone else plays a PC. Their job is to pursue their Beliefs and define what their PCs say and do. They may also control minor, non-Face NPCs when appropriate, especially if those NPCs share some trait with their PC, such as a heritage, faction or religious belief. They collaborate together and with the GM to narrate scenes and the world, and they work to support or refute Beliefs, their own and those of others. Players are advised to be decisive and hold firm to their Beliefs, daring others to accept their perspective. Good or bad decisions don’t matter – just that you make them. It also advises you to be vulnerable and push your boundaries, though only as much as you’re comfortable with, as the next page helpfully talks about the X-Card and safety mechanisms for if gameplay goes into potentially sensitive or traumatic areas. This is definitely possible, even beyond the fact that it’s really not possible to know what someone else’s triggers will be sometimes, with the fact that xenophobia, racism and punishment are things that may well end up coming up. The game advises players also to be transparent with each other. While character can and will keep secrets from each other, players should not. That way, you can arrange for interesting scenes in which secrets are nearly discovered or risk being revealed, and can help each other make the plots you want to see happen. Players, lastly, should be daring. You are in firm control of the long-term consequences to your character. Risks can earn you Influence, but they can’t get rid of you. It is not possible to die unless you want your character to die. Otherwise, you can bounce back from anything. Push your limits and go big. There are two primary game currencies to track – Influence and Harm. Influence can be spent to direct the story, either in narrative ways (by doing things beyond your normal fictional capabilities by tapping into, say, a Faction’s power or a Power’s gifts) or to help you in Conflicts by giving dice bonuses. It can also let you ask questions about other characters in Interludes, learning more about them, or even change Beliefs by triggering Reflections. Harm is gained by winning Conflicts, and it’s not good to have. The other main way to get Harm is to willingly take it in order to get a dice bonus in a Conflict. Influence is gained by confronting your Beliefs. Everyone begins each session with 3 Influence, plus every Belief has 1 Influence associated with it. When one of your character’s Beliefs (or, for the GM, the Beliefs currently assigned to them by circumstance) in a scene, when the scene ends you gain the Influence associated with it. Once someone takes all 3 Influence from their Beliefs, everyone else gains 1 Influence and their Beliefs get a new set of Influence associated. There’s a Belief sheet to help track this – you put a token representing Influence next to each Belief, taking them and giving them to a player when earned. Once they’ve earned all three, you replace them and give everyone else 1 from the main token bank. Influence can be spent after you roll a die in a Conflict to raise your result by +1, 1 for 1. You can spend as much as you want that way. You can spend 3 Influence to trigger an Interlude, and if a session ends with you at 15 Influence or more, you trigger a Reflection. Interludes are short, quiet moments between Scenes. You pick another player and ask them a question about their character or their character’s history (or, for the GM, about the setting or NPCs). You and they both lose 1 Harm. Reflections are the moments when you sit down and realize your life has changed. You pick another player and have an intimate discussion with them about one of your Beliefs, ultimately deciding whether it is confirmed and you no longer ever doubt it or rejected and you no longer believe it. Then you both either gain a new Talent or increase one of your stats by one step, and come up with a new Belief to replace it. This also causes one of the Tethers of Sig to shift planes. Harm is…well, any form of harm or suffering. When you have Harm, your pain makes you less able to act in future Conflicts. Harm can be physical, like a wound, emotional, like a bruised ego or hurt feelings, mental, like exhaustion or taxed magical ability, or simply bad luck, like a curse or karmic retribution. No matter what, it’s all Harm and is tracked the same way. You can have up to 6 Harm, and each point limits you. If you have no Harm, you can roll any die. If you have 1 Harm, you can’t roll higher than a d12 in most circumstances. If you have 2, your cap is a d10. 3, a d8. This continues on down to 5, where you can only roll a d4. When you take your 6th point of Harm, however, you must choose either to be taken out of the scene or to retire your character from play after the scene. Harm is only gained from winning Conflicts (which can sometimes do more than 1 Harm, if they got escalated) or by choosing to take Harm for dice bonuses. After rolling your dice, you can get +3 to your roll per point of Harm taken. 1 Harm is removed when you take part in an Interlude, when you choose to sit out of a scene altogether from the start or when your character leaves play in a scene. At the end of the session, all Harm is removed. Next time: More detailed explanation of scene framing
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Jun 20, 2019 22:19
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I like what I'm reading about Sig so far, surely I'm not the only one who felt that a setting as rich in possibilities as Planescape was hobbled by being tied to DnD.
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Jun 20, 2019 22:47
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I'm going to be the one person who was disappointed that Spycraft didn't have more from the card game, which I quite liked. (I think there was a supplement for it later, but I never saw it.)
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Jun 20, 2019 22:55
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By popular demand posted:I like what I'm reading about Sig so far, surely I'm not the only one who felt that a setting as rich in possibilities as Planescape was hobbled by being tied to DnD. I think I'd like Sig more if it had kept the thematics of Planescape, i.e. philosophical conflict, but without so brashly ganking what feels like some of the aesthetics and content as well. From the opening couple of paragraphs of the review it already feels a lot like someone's fanfic.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:02
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Everything is fan-fiction in this inbred bulldog of an industry, sometimes poo poo just sticks the landing better than others and it's always good to see the stuff that isn't just a forgettable heartbreaker wearing someone else's freshly skinned face.
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Jun 20, 2019 23:11
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 You guys know how Forte’s work now, so we’re whipping through the 2nd half faster, no pics, just shits. Listens to the Whispers You can see and talk to ghosts and spirits. Wait, doesn’t the Aether one let you do this too? No wait this is… ok. This is not ghost stuff this is more like… you have voices in your head that tell you things? All the abilities are mostly around information. Whispers tell you stuff for X bonus. So it’s stuff like just knowing what’s behind a wall, what someone is thinking, information about a creature or object, etc. Mostly though it’s, as always, numbers go up. 6/10 are Numbers Going Up. Provides a Vessel for Spirits You’re possessed by incorporeal beings that you let live in your meat-form. You’re a member of the Cathedral of Illuminism, which teaches you how to be a spirit-vessel. No idea why, yet because that’s in another book. Baseline ability is to let a spirit control you however it wants for a minute, but you get healing in exchange. Flavorful but it’s either no problem or a gently caress you, this game loves giving agency totally over to the GM I notice. You also become auto-friendly to Spirits you meet, and that’s it for interesting stuff. 8/10 abilities? Numbers going up. Just more benes or +1’s or enhancements to abilities. Revels in Beauty quote:As one who revels in beauty, I see beauty in Shepherds Minds Ugh, OK so it’s really obvious Cook was running out of ideas consistently. This is Telepathy. Like it’s just… you have telepathy. Noosphere also had telepathy, but this is more better telepathy. Read minds, talk to people in their heads, shoot mind bullets, mind control, memory edit, yadda yadda. It does what you want for Telepathy Powers, no Numbers Go Up, so that’s nice. Sings the Earthsong You sing to dirt to do dirt-magic. This says there’s something called the Primal Earth Singers, but gives no detail about what they are, so. It’s your Earth Magic stuf. Control stone, get natural armor, walk through stone walls, cause earthquakes. Of note is the capstone ability, Drinking the Earth’s Blood, which is straight up from the Thomas Covenant novels but worse. Instead of giving you essentially a once-in-a-lifetime Wish it just… gives you a vision pertaining to any topic you chose and a +1 enhancement to act on that information. Speaks with the Moon quote:Moon is mother. Mistress. Lover. Friend. She is What is with this sexual tone of conversation about natural forces all throughout this book? Anyway, it’s Moon Magic, you’re called a Moonchild and were made when someone did a magic ritual over you as a newborn. This Forte is poorly thought out, because… well they assume that Being Night and Being an Action are equivalent trade-offs. Most of the abilities just work when it’s night, you don’t have to spend an action activating them and they cost no Sorcery bene to use. Just because the sun is down you can get: +1 to ANY action, +2 Perception Bene, +3 Movement Bene, +2 Armor, and +1die to all defensive rolls for free. THis is both broken and garbage, because piddling bonuses that are too easy to get and so players are just going to be pointless pains in the rear end about what time of day it is. Other abilities are OK. You can fly in moonlight, Locate people or objects that are touched by moonlight, teleport to anywhere touched by moonlight, and summon a moon-spirit. Splinters Into Fragments Ok this one is loving weird as hell. You can shatter into… glass like shards, and then reassemble. In weird ways. It’s a bloodline thing. It’s loving weird. OK so some of the abilities are… reasonable. Shatter when attacked to get a bonus to Dodge, explode into fragments that cut and hurt people, splinter and reform to heal wounds, weird but makes sense. The rest are… I really need to go over all of these. I have to assume Monte Cook stole this from somewhere else because it’s too weird and creative for him. There is no way he thought this up himself. Two lets you clone yourself into two people. Both of you get your own turns and actions, but are at -3 to everything as long as you’re doubled, and you can’t do any magic. Reduction… shrinks you down to 4 inches tall? You’re just tiny now, and have less health and move really slow. But you’re tiny. Many clones you into multiple forms, exactly like Two, but you can make a lot of you. It costs more mana, but is strictly better. Growth is the opposite of reduction, where you become 12 foot tall, and get more HP. Reassemble Elsewhere is straight up perfect teleportation: You don’t need to know where you’re going, it has a 10 mile range, and passes through solid objects perfectly. You can’t even gently caress up and teleport into a solid object, it just doesn’t work if that happens. Shattered Mind lets you, for one round, possess another entity somewhere in the multiverse and hear and see everything they can for a few seconds, and say up to 6 words. You can do this to multiple beings at once. The last one Shattered Soul is straight up just Horcruxes. Split your soul into nine fragments, hide them around the Actuality. When you die you reincarnate from one of those fragments. If you use it, you can’t do anything with your Secret Soul (Wizard Zodiac). loving bizarre. Travels as a Spirit Astral Projection, NEXT. Turns Tales Into Reality Called Talespinners, twee annoying assholes, you’re a loving bard, with weird narrative magic. It isn’t cool. Call Object From Metaphor means you say a metaphor and the metaphor literally becomes real. “Slow as molasses” and you get a pool of molasses on the floor. Summon an inanimate object from a story you know, teleport yourself and others around as “scene changes”, summon creatures from stories you know, create illusions, call weather from a story, bring some fictional location, object, or creature into reality somewhere but you don’t know where it is. Understands the Words Word magic. I actually kinda like this one, it’s thematically strong and useful. There’s a few Numbers Go Up, but mostly the abilities are pretty cool. Words Become Truth lets you cast illusions by writing a description onto an object, and it now is that thing to anyone perceiving it. Change the Name lets you transform an object by changing, adding, or removing one letter from its name, Transform From Words lets you summon a generic version of something by describing it in detail, Transform Into Words lets you basically destroy or kill anything by converting it into the description of itself. Use the Name lets you basically get total reality-warping control over any being who’s Secret Name you know. Walks the Path of Suns Woof. OK so the Path of Suns is basically the structure of the Actuality/Multiverse/Planes in Invisible Sun. This is a fancy way of saying, you’re someone who really digs going around dimension hopping. You get abilities based on each of the Suns/Planes. The abilities have no coherence within the Forte because they’re based on the Suns gimmicks. So it’s sort of a mishmash of stuff, mostly lame. Travel the Path is the only cool one, the capstone ability that lets you jump between Suns at will and arrive anywhere you have been before when you arrive. That’s neat. Wanders In Delirium Malkavians. They’re Malks. quote:Life is nothing but a dream. Cause and effect are  This is the single worst magical ability I’ve ever seen. How does this work? I have no idea. I guess that this lets you… rewrite reality at a whim? Like, if anyone poses a question you can just… use this and make the answer whatever you want. This seems custom tooled to start fights with your GM, because it’s the only ability like this in the entire game, nothing else gives you narrative control like this. Warps Time and Space This one breaks the game. Both in the Overpowered way, and in the “Oh god, why would you do that” way. The inoffensive abilities are: No Space, which lets you treat any container as if it was a 5 foot cube inside, Long Step which is just a really fast move, Frozen in Time which just makes something both unable to act but also unable to be acted on, Diverted Angle which can change the path of a moving object, Dismissal which is just a targeted Teleport to somewhere you’ve been before, and Spatial Warp which lets you make a portal to anywhere in the Actuality you want (It’s a level 10 spell, so that’s fair for that late in the campaign and that high a power-level). The rest are complete bullshit of various flavors. I’m going to include the full text so you can follow along.  So, as anybody knows: More actions are better. Even this limited, you still have to deal with the fact that this Forte gets to have more actions which is insane. If this was all they had, it would be understandable, but this is just the start.  Qualia is, remember, the stats of Sorcery and Sortilege. Sorcery controls all magic, including Fortes and such, while Sortilege can add dice to any action. They are the God Stats and you will make them as high as you can if you have a functioning brain. You get four rests a day, then you need to take a Long Rest. What this does is let you just recover your most important stat pools whenever you want. Just stop an action scene and refill all your magic, just say Hold On A Moment and get back all your Bonus Dice. Whenever you want. This means that the GM cannot pace you out of having a rest, you can have one whenever. Like if a Wizard in D&D could just re-memorize their spells whenever they wanted.  Level 10, so somewhat forgivable but that “We don’t know how much time we have” thing is just… awful. It turns it into a GM Decision how useful you get to be when you cast this. It’s hilariously broken, but only if the GM lets it be: They could give you one free action or a hundred. Ask Your GM!  Do I have to explain this one? Just read it and start screaming at how terrible an idea it is to have this as an option in any RPG. Weaves Stealth and Sorcery OK so back on basics. Mostly you get Numbers Go Up When Doing A Sneak. You can see through walls, erase 5 minutes of someones memories, WALK through walls, turn invisible, teleport to your house in a puff of smoke, create mass perfect illusions in an entire area. Honestly I’m fine with this. It gives you some pretty cool stealth tools, some fun gimmicks, it’s Be Great At Sneak the Forte, does what it says, good job. Writhes and Squirms You make a pact with the “Forgotten Mother” and become an Eldritch Abomination. You get tentacle limbs, to grab, crush, throw poo poo, you can squeeze through tiny spaces, read minds by touching people with your tentacles, turn into a giant tentacle monster, spawn tentacle baby monster servants, and so on. Next Time: We’re Finally Free of Fortes! It’s time for Wizard Horoscopes!
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Jun 20, 2019 23:59
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By popular demand posted:I like what I'm reading about Sig so far, surely I'm not the only one who felt that a setting as rich in possibilities as Planescape was hobbled by being tied to DnD.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:16
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Hostile V posted:Everything is fan-fiction in this inbred bulldog of an industry, sometimes poo poo just sticks the landing better than others and it's always good to see the stuff that isn't just a forgettable heartbreaker wearing someone else's freshly skinned face. But I already liked Planescape, is all. It feels very derivative, like they wanted to make Planescape but couldn't get the rights. And it's probably (near certainty) true that d&d 5e wouldn't fit planescape very well, so it's probably for the best. Edit: it hems too close to the source in way that's gauche, basically.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:22
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Well, if I ever need an example to explain to someone what Invisible Sun is, I'll just point out that "gets some minor bonuses to unarmed damage" is considered exactly the same power-level as "can time-travel into the past and change things anytime they feel like it." Move over, Angel Summoner, BMX Bandit is teaming up with Doctor Who now.
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Jun 21, 2019 00:57
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megane posted:Well, if I ever need an example to explain to someone what Invisible Sun is, I'll just point out that "gets some minor bonuses to unarmed damage" is considered exactly the same power-level as "can time-travel into the past and change things anytime they feel like it." Move over, Angel Summoner, BMX Bandit is teaming up with Doctor Who now. One of the really refreshing things about Spycraft, despite any d20 teething troubles it has? All 6 base classes are useful to Being Spies and it really doesn't have an Angel Summoner. E: Basically I want to write it up partly to compare this 2002 OGL game and its seeming understanding of d20 to Monte Cook's general...whatever he does with game design. I maintain the people working on Spycraft generally understood the d20 system better than some of its original designers.
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Jun 21, 2019 01:02
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