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ChaseSP posted:The werewolf beat reminds me of a lovely suggestion for interaction that a Beast should threaten to reveal a Demon not realizing this is an utterly stupid and horrible idea. This is perhaps the strongest evidence for the fact that Beast is just White Wolf fanfiction. The original-character-do-not-steal is always allowed to tug on Voldemort's tail and get away with it, or flaunt basic established social rules and be liked anyway, because the setting conventions that prevent "real" characters from doing these things don't apply when the writer of the story you're in is on your side.
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Aug 21, 2019 18:58
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personally i think more beasts should be encouraged to try and reveal demons because it'll be the last thing they ever do and you can whittle their numbers down to zero via attrition
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Aug 21, 2019 19:05
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God, Beast was already trash when it was "reminding people of REAL WORLD HORROR for reasons" and now it's just cruelty for cruelty's sake? Just make your char kil themselves, they're pointless. What's Contagion?
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Aug 21, 2019 19:10
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Beasts need weird setting omniscience because otherwise their 'kinship' gimmick collapses in on itself pathetically. This shows up in their 'kinship powers' as well- a lot of them are really uninteresting but they build on the themes of the splat from an OOC perspective. Their whole 'I am a meta-monster that knows the kind of fear you inspire' is ludicrous because the horror themes aren't an in-universe construct; Beasts are running around treating the world like the horror setting it is but that won't make sense to others. It's like how they encourage Prometheans to abandon humanity for cool monster powers; Beasts embody a certain OOC perspective IC that the point is to play a horror game so you should get out there and do some horror... but also they don't have any sense of personal horror, just inflicting horror on others. Which is to say, the most boring take on the horror fantasy milieu of the Chronicles. E: also, this points to why they'd just get murdered by every other major splat: the horror other splats inspire is generally an undesirable byproduct of attempting to pursue their own goals. A Beast is offering to make your car produce more exhaust and noise with their kinship powers.
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Aug 21, 2019 19:10
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JcDent posted:God, Beast was already trash when it was "reminding people of REAL WORLD HORROR for reasons" and now it's just cruelty for cruelty's sake? Just make your char kil themselves, they're pointless. A book full of crossover chronicle ideas that wasn't very well received by anyone.
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Aug 21, 2019 19:15
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Kurieg posted:A book full of crossover chronicle ideas that wasn't very well received by anyone. - It has a framework of cute power additions that only really make sense in the context of the chronicle's throughline of weird supernatural plagues or working with other supernaturals, and honestly the best ones IIRC just made me want to play Demon some more instead - Said throughline is inconsistently written across chapters and half the time the settings seem less like "here's the status and here are plot hooks" and more "witness my clockwork setting, all pieces accounted for. just kinda hang around for awhile" depending on who handled it - And the antagonists aren't even that cool! I was sold on Abyssal John Carpenter's The Thing With More Weirdness and got vampire ghosts that make you sad - Also the PC factions don't really make a lot of sense half the time, or have any hooks for any of the settings beyond "ok we're playing here for this chronicle go"
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Aug 21, 2019 19:24
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Night10194 posted:Say, do these guys also automatically know all this, too? I've never really thought about that part, but isn't that meant to be a huge part of NWoD? That nobody really easily recognizes one another on sight because every line is wrapped up in its own problems and really only deals with the others when they intersect? Do Beasts just know what a Promethean is and immediately start thinking about how they can ruin someone else's spiritual journey to grasp the essence of humanity? Generally speaking? No, all this relies on someone sitting down and explaining to them all the lore of Promethean. At base, all a Beast is going to know is 'wow, that weirdo corpse-man sure seems to be hated by everyone for no reason.'
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Aug 21, 2019 19:56
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:As someone who backed it at physical book tier and then tumbled all the way down to a dollar by the end: You forgot the part where despite the actual effects being highly detailed and specific, the causes, basic nature and so on of the crossover throughline were deliberately obscured. Like not 'here's a few examples of what might be causing this' but instead 'there is a cause for this, and the cause is <insert goose honk noises> so your ST can make it up entirely, without guidance beyond "it hates the God-Machine"'
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Aug 21, 2019 19:58
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Joe Slowboat posted:Beasts need weird setting omniscience because otherwise their 'kinship' gimmick collapses in on itself pathetically. This shows up in their 'kinship powers' as well- a lot of them are really uninteresting but they build on the themes of the splat from an OOC perspective. Their whole 'I am a meta-monster that knows the kind of fear you inspire' is ludicrous because the horror themes aren't an in-universe construct; Beasts are running around treating the world like the horror setting it is but that won't make sense to others. A beast managing to avoid being killed by antagonizing so many different gribblies they're constantly getting in each others way.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:10
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Mors Rattus posted:Generally speaking? No, all this relies on someone sitting down and explaining to them all the lore of Promethean. At base, all a Beast is going to know is 'wow, that weirdo corpse-man sure seems to be hated by everyone for no reason.' It's basically assumed that whoever brought you into the whole Beast thing sat you down and explained all the supernatural groups to you, as Beasts have a vested interest in being at least casually aware of what everyone's deal is.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:12
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Mors Rattus posted:You forgot the part where despite the actual effects being highly detailed and specific, the causes, basic nature and so on of the crossover throughline were deliberately obscured. Like not 'here's a few examples of what might be causing this' but instead 'there is a cause for this, and the cause is <insert goose honk noises> so your ST can make it up entirely, without guidance beyond "it hates the God-Machine"'
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Aug 21, 2019 20:14
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Kurieg posted:It's basically assumed that whoever brought you into the whole Beast thing sat you down and explained all the supernatural groups to you, as Beasts have a vested interest in being at least casually aware of what everyone's deal is. It is important to remember: the total number of Prometheans in the world is pretty drat small. Beasts are just absurdly well-informed for not very good reasons.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:16
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Beast was, iirc, originally intended to be a crossover splat--so the beloved-but-less-popular lines like Promethean could attach a Promethean PC into a Beast game, letting you play the character you want, but could never get a group for. So it wouldn't necessarily be that Beasts automatically know everything about all supernaturals, but that your group would have a backstory that included "and that's how Frankenstein met Smaug while hanging out in a decaying steel town." Beast is... really bad about actually facilitating that, but I think that was the reasoning. Beasts would make good Promethean antagonists, though--they're inhumanity cheerleaders who fundamentally don't understand why a Promethean would voluntarily give up their powerful inhumanity to become a weak, easily victimized human.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:18
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And that's the thing - everything written about Beasts makes them horrible PC splats, but they would make for decent villains but WoD doesn't really need any more antagonist splats. But the fact the writer of the line is a rapist himself would explain why he doesn't understand why the fact Beasts paling around with True Fae, see no issue in turning Changelings over to true fay, or forcing Prometheans to abandon their journey, or exposing demons are horrible, violating things.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:05
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Beast is worse than every WW fan game I've ever seen, including Genius and Princess and Dolls: Children of the Dollhouse. And all of the Highlander ones, too.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:05
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Terrible Opinions posted:It's still baffling that Beast just has nothing for the players to do besides feed on innocent people. It just has no major hooks. I wasn't joking when I compared Beast to Postal 2.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:17
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Inhuman beasts that parasize off of supernatural beings is a fantastic concept for an antagonistic force, that it's a player playbook is a waste of a cool concept
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Aug 21, 2019 21:20
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ChaseSP posted:Inhuman beasts that parasize off of supernatural beings is a fantastic concept for an antagonistic force, that it's a player playbook is a waste of a cool concept Now I want to write up the latest Werewolf monster manual book so we can see some real body horror parasite gribblies. (And also the Geryo, who are, uh...well, I mean, they're body horror monsters, but less cool than the other body horror monsters.)
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Aug 21, 2019 22:10
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Mors Rattus posted:It is important to remember: the total number of Prometheans in the world is pretty drat small. Beasts are just absurdly well-informed for not very good reasons. Yeah, in 2E it says there's maybe a hundred at a given time. All of them frequently on the move and many of them socially awkward to say the least.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:21
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Robindaybird posted:And that's the thing - everything written about Beasts makes them horrible PC splats, but they would make for decent villains but WoD doesn't really need any more antagonist splats. I was going to say that Beast is a splat of author inserts, but I've been beaten.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:32
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Bieeanshee posted:I was going to say that Beast is a splat of author inserts, but I've been beaten. remember one of the beast short stories is a beast mad that their Promethean friend actually succeeded in becoming human and tried to drag them back with all the overtones of someone trying to force a gay or trans person back into the closet
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Aug 22, 2019 02:13
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Man, Prometheans are my favorite WoD people and trying to destroy their Pilgrimages makes someone the worst. They just want to discover humanity in all its good and ill and go on a spiritual journey fraught with peril, dangit.
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Aug 22, 2019 02:18
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In a sick, twisted way, Beasts really are a true cross-gameline splat. As in, every other supernatural has a drat good reason to form a compact to erase them utterly from the World of Darkness.
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Aug 22, 2019 02:29
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Seatox posted:In a sick, twisted way, Beasts really are a true cross-gameline splat. Splat by Splat - Beasts disrupt the Herd, so vampires would at the least be irritated by them. -Beasts just doing their thing would cause huge problems in the Shadow so Uratha would probably exterminate them. -Mages... I dunno, I mean are Beasts supposed to be some sort of repositories of Super Secret Lore? I'm not even sure how what the hook is for Beasts interacting with Changelings, Geists and Prometheans.
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Aug 22, 2019 03:29
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Okua posted:Just wanted to pop in and say that I'm intrigued by ^PM AGEStOrm Age Master® and looking forward to more of... whatever it is. Beers have been acquired. Nap has been had. The show must go on! ^PM AGEStOrm Age Master®: We're talking about content now! Skipping the foreword, I thought we would start off with the "analogue" or introductory fiction. Again, edited for your reading pleasure. Analogue posted:You roll through the realizations of your plans being ready means you are going to have to make them for the first quest that comes to you. Standing up from your sleep, you grab at the day in denial; and the new area you think you are going to end up in. You'll have to get something for your change of plans re-bracing your old paraphernalia and strategies to be complacements for adapting and altering for "Filling" for the quest pot (or cooking pot/area pot) but it's equipment that shows your new direction. It almost makes sense, as if I'm reading an RPG from the height of the late '90s/early '00s. Something about that is appealing to me but I can't quite put my finger on it. But enough about the fiction. You're here for the game. I'm most definitely not stalling to keep from getting there. Character Grasp Scar I'll be honest. I'm not going to provide an itemized list of game terms because most of them are word-salad-ish. I'll provide some highlights, though. There are three attributes called "peaks" - Heart Peak, Attack Peak, and Defense Peak. These appear to be pools of some type as each has a corresponding "Current *" attribute. Maybe the version without "Current" prepended is your base value. I assumed that Heart Peak represented some sort of HP-type thing as it's described as "life points" but a later attribute, Heart Flow, is actually described as "health". There are a few attributes I'll have to steal for later use as well - Happenstance Avoidance, Musclenary (strength), Re Mind (personality), Movement Height (dexterity), and Spiritual Axis Revolationater (willpower). There are a few more but, fun terminology aside, they're what you're probably used to. Spontaneous Attack/Defense (whose descriptions lead me to believe they're basically "magic attack/defense"), Remember (memory), Reflexes. The parens in this paragraph weren't added by me. I never would have guessed that Spiritual Axis Revolationater meant willpower unless the game included a set of parens after it delineating that. There are skill levels, skill points, and maximum skill levels for both adventure and non-adventure skills but no concrete numbers for any of them. There's also at least four categories of something called "life climb challenges", which seems like it's the game's level up mechanic. Character Peaks, or attributes for you normies Following the list of attributes ("character peaks" in ^PM AGEStOrm parlance) is a more in-depth description of each. Most are fairly straightforward (he says, as if anything in this book can be) so I'll only be talking about things that catch my eye. Your carry weight is equal to your Musclenary in pounds. This may be an issue as we're soon going to see that all of the races start with a Musclenary of 5. Musclenary is also the attribute used when attacking with axes. Movement Height dictates your walking speed in feet per two seconds and is used when attacking with a sword. Likewise, all races start with a 5. Remember, in addition to denoting the number of 1/7 spell faucets added to your spell pool (roundabout way of saying Remember/7 spell faucets?), is the bow attribute. Every race starts with, you guessed it, 5. Reflexes seems to denote a percentage chance to trigger parries, counterattacks, and a few other things. It's also the attribute for improvised weapons (or, in ^PM AGEStOrm parlance, "random/random-use-of-something"). Another 5. Heart Flow adds directly to Heart Peak. I'm assuming Heart Flow + Heart Peak is your Current Heart Peak. Sort of makes sense in the context of the game thus far if you squint a bit. It's also used for spears. 5 is your starting value. Re Mind's only use is for blunt weapons. Another 5. The final attribute, Spiritual Axis Revolationater, is very  . It's an A-K lettered list describing everything from maximum spell levels to spell resistance, Conscious Facet recovery per hour of sleep, number of spells per day, and a few other aspects. It's also the dagger attribute. These are all described in the form of 'Thing is Every "X" Spiritual Axis Revolationator= Y'. That's a confusing sentence that bears two examples and my attempt at interpretation. Are you sensing a theme in the starting attribute values yet? If not, I'll give you a hint. This one's a 5.^PM AGEStOrm posted:A.} Current Maximum Level of Spells Allowed for Adventure Height-related Spells is Every "10" Spiritual Axis Revolationater= 1 Flail Snail posted:A. Maximum Spell Level for Adventure Height spells is one tenth of your SAR value. Combat, I guess When using a weapon, your weapon skill is half of your character peak attack guider. CPAG is a fancy way of saying "that attribute I said you use for this weapon type". Those attributes give additional bonuses to the use of their associated weapons as well. When using an axe, for instance, you get a (Musclenary/5) * 3% chance of getting a +10 bonus on a given attack roll and the same chance of 20 additional points of damage. There's a maximum of 60% for each, mathing out to a Musclenary score of 100. So I guess you have to roll before rolling your attack to see if you get the attack bonus and then roll before rolling your damage to see if you get the damage bonus. After a list of bonuses per weapon are the actual combat rules. These consist of about four paragraphs stretching across two and a half pages so I hope you'll forgive me for not bothering too much. In summary, you can do something called a "Call". "Craxl", "Craxls", "Craxlr", and "Craxlty" are all things that exist. You get five actions per round. Attacking takes two of them. I believe that various things like moving quickly reduce that number. One of the rules results in "a lot of muffling around" and "I don't wanna hear all you little nerds out there that wanna use this rule" so whatever rule that was is optional. How about we just skip the rest and say we reviewed it? There's an entire series of nested lists with internal references that the Age Master gets to consult when enemies attack while unseen. Again, let's not and say we did. It's two and a half full pages. And with that... Rowm Scar The beginning of this chapter defines things common to all humanoids, I guess. You're all size M. Coincidentally that happens to be in the middle of the alphabet. Other size options include everything from A to Z. There's an entire series of nested lists denoting what bonuses a size M character gets versus every single size category. Ten full pages. It includes stuff like this, abbreviated because I'm not typing out the full thing. quote:M.} Size M vs. Size M Skipping all of that brings us to the rowm list. The six races are Human, Eclipse Dwarf, Skymirror Elf, Halfling, Barbarian, and Vampire. They're all statistically identical but each has special abilities in their description. Skymirror elves, amongst other things, can heal all of the party's wounds three times a day while humans seem to be able to call NPC allies in the area for assistance. You know how last time I mentioned the character sheet could be longer than it is? This bears a picture. Enjoy?  Guilds Scar Skipping. These exist. Fiat the characters into one. Adventure Height Scar Classes. There are six of them - Fighter, Wizard, Ranger, Healer, Thief, and Assassin. Each has a list of favors and non-favors. Fighters, for instance, favor attacking, defending, general skills, and fighter skills while they non-favor magic. Classes don't give you much besides the ability to ask or answer questions, metaphorically or otherwise. This bears an edited example because I really don't know how to describe this. quote:Fighter So these are definitely a thing. I think if someone with a better grasp of game design and/or reality created a system based around this whole question/answer thing, it could be neat. But this is inscrutable. Up next: Equipment, I guess? I'll be skipping about 50 pages of miscellaneous nonsense to get there, though. Flail Snail fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 03:37
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Flail Snail posted:Beers have been acquired. Nap has been had. The show must go on! They should have sent a poet. This is... beautiful. It's a love leter to not-quite-language. A prayer to the gods of not playtesting. This is why I read F&F every day. Thank you, Flail Snail. Thank you.
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Aug 22, 2019 03:56
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Robindaybird posted:And that's the thing - everything written about Beasts makes them horrible PC splats, but they would make for decent villains but WoD doesn't really need any more antagonist splats. The more I see about Beasts, the more I wonder how a Heroes game would go. You're some rando that suddenly starts having the cravings to act like a hero at all time, no matter what it does to your life. Holy poo poo. Reverse Beast is just Hitmen For Destiny and I am here for it
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Aug 22, 2019 03:58
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Yeah this isn't fun anymore and just makes me worried about the author's mental state. Not gonna armchair psychologist or whatever, but that reads a lot like what my friend with sever bi-polar disorder writes sometimes. Also tracking number of stomachs????????????????????????????????
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Aug 22, 2019 04:03
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Kurieg posted:Or if you have a hunger for transgression you c- Funny, I was just idly musing on the number of successes and contracts required to plausibly pull off a series of chain german suplexes ending in one of Zangief's spinning piledrivers on my red-raging summer courtier. FUNNY. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUNNNNNNNNNNNY.
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Aug 22, 2019 04:08
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Dawgstar posted:-Beasts just doing their thing would cause huge problems in the Shadow so Uratha would probably exterminate them. IIRC Beasts are humans who got hollowed out by an Ancient Evil devouring their soul who is now driving their spiritual husk around like a tonka truck. For Uratha, dealing with that is just another Tuesday. This Ridden seems slightly less disturbing than the one I killed yesterday, nothing else memorable about it.
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Aug 22, 2019 04:11
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The Lone Badger posted:IIRC Beasts are humans who got hollowed out by an Ancient Evil devouring their soul who is now driving their spiritual husk around like a tonka truck. True. "At least THIS one didn't explode into a horde of spiders."
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Aug 22, 2019 04:19
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The Lone Badger posted:IIRC Beasts are humans who got hollowed out by an Ancient Evil devouring their soul who is now driving their spiritual husk around like a tonka truck. see when you say it like that Beasts sound cool, instead of being the school shooter version of sailor moon
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Aug 22, 2019 04:44
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Dawgstar posted:Splat by Splat A Beast who does Beast Things will ping a nearby Mage's Mage Sight, and Mages are addicted to unraveling mysteries - and there's a lot of Mage factions who would look on beasts with severe antipathy once they grasped exactly what a Beast does. Even the Seers would be dubious about letting a bunch of uncontrolled mutant goetia run around freely making GBS threads up the Exarchs' property. That's not even getting into the type of beast who feeds on "Humbling the Proud", aka attacking Mages (and probably getting whacked by the Mage + their cabal).
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Aug 22, 2019 04:51
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Dawgstar posted:-Mages... I dunno, I mean are Beasts supposed to be some sort of repositories of Super Secret Lore? Seers of the Throne (antagonist Mage organization) would love Beasts, in the sense that immiserating the human soul is their day job, and Beasts are basically fire-and-forget weapons for reducing human potential without actually having any chance of actually causing people to reach for enlightenment to oppose them. Seers would never want to actually treat a Beast like a person, but Seers barely treat other Seers like people so they can probably get along. Diamond Alliance Mages (most of the protagonist-y organization, Platonic occult revolutionaries in theory) would see Beasts as obvious flaws in the world who should be dissected for magical knowledge but also, and more importantly, they want to see human knowledge and power scale the cosmos and the attitudes of a Beast would be a slap in the face. The behavior of a Beast would be double that. The only reason they wouldn't be hunting down Beasts on the regular would be because they probably wouldn't consider Beasts a meaningful front in the Ascension War (same goes for vampires) but the minute a Beast starts infecting a large area of the Astral I can't imagine many Silver Ladder or Adamantine Arrow members who wouldn't at least consider hunting the Beast down and ejecting them from reality with extreme prejudice. Guardians of the Veil might try to use a Beast for their own purposes to encourage or discourage Awakenings but frankly, Guardians are much scarier than Beasts and 100% would treat them as assets, not friends. The Free Council (an allied protagonist type to the Diamond mages), are extremely varied but include the kind of people who use an AK-47 as a magical tool. Their three tenets are democracy, violent revolution, and the sanctity of humanity as a whole. While not every Free Council mage would literally respond to Beasts with 'summon shotgun' the basic Free Council response to Beasts would be something one measures in force per square inch. The aggressive occult revolutionary humanism of the protagonist Mages is not, shall we say, a path to virtue... but it's certainly a path to throwing lightning at the rear end in a top hat abuse dragon that moved onto your turf. Oh and also Beasts have a whole thing about not letting Mysteries-with-the-capital-M be unraveled because yadda yadda metahorror which would piss off any neutral Mage, because the one thing Mages like more than high-minded excuses for throwing lightning is digging into Mysteries, especially the capital M kind. (The Tremere, the soul-eating horrifying vampire mage organization, would probably pursue Beasts on the basis that they can eat souls and anyone who touches a soul is touching Tremere property, but Tremere probably have worse things to do with their time.) E: oh yeah, any Beast who decided to humble the hubris of a Mage basically has two options: Kill them, or become an object lesson in why hubris is a coward's word, eventually. Mages take in mystery and exhale hubris as their basic mode of existence, plus they have extremely powerful freeform magic. EE: A werewolf will still smoke a mage under most circumstances, to be clear, and a Beast with the claws powers could probably kill a mage by ambushing them, but when Mages get to set the terms of an encounter they can be terrifying. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 04:57
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 Beast the Primordial Player's Guide: Chapter 3 Part 1-Unleashing the Horror Hey kids, did you want new rules and mechanics? Well too bad, like a disappointing Santa Claus this is more about what I have extras of than what you actually want to sit down while I open up this disgusting fleshy bag of gifts. Atavisms The Inguma have a few interesting Atavisms, mostly revolving around their ability to infiltrate socially. Alien Mindset makes it nearly impossible for people to follow your thought process, either through social maneuvering or skills. At low satiety you can give people false information about your Legend and Life, and with a Satiety expenditure you can just gain a new hunger trait for a scene if a particularly juicy target arrived and you want to get in on that action. Doppleganger lets you grow and/or craft a duplicate of a person that lasts as long as they remain in your possession and unconscious. The doppleganger has all the skills/traits/memories of the person but is unswervingly loyal to you. With a satiety expenditure you can put your horror into the Dopple to control it directly(but you don't have the ganger's skills or traits), alternately if you're in your lair you can instead teleport to and viscerally explode out of said doppleganger. Enemy Within lets you transform into a copy of someone, if you expend satiety your copy is so good it has your target's DNA and can even fool them. Talassii have... uhh, one very very very good power, and some other ones. Caught in the Webs is ridiculous. With a thrown or touch attack you gradually ensnare someone in something that varies from Beast to Beast thematically. This reduces their dexterity by your lair/2(rounding up and stacking), if it hits zero they are now immobilized. This is a ludicrous combat power, particularly if you can do this while remaining unseen. At low satiety they inflict bashing damage for even trying to do anything while ensnared, and with an expenditure you just spray webs out everywhere around you. Crushing Coils gives you an iron grip. So long as nothing opposes you you can hold onto anything forever. At low satiety you can hold onto anything even if doing so would violate the laws of physics and/or the structural integrity of your fleshy body. Grab onto a speeding car? Doable. Replicate the helipad scene from Winter Soldier? Doable. Keep two train cars coupled with your butt cheeks? Why the hell aren't you doing it already? Illusion of Safety lets you supernaturally case a joint just by looking at it for a few seconds, and gives you a bonus to infiltrate it. Low satiety allows you to make it more difficult for other people to escape once you're inside an area, and an expenditure lets you turn an exit into a portal to your Lair. The rest of the families get two each. Anakim gets a power that lets them attack people by punching the ground or make rock arms out of the ground to punch people for them. They also get a weird combo platter power that lets them automatically intimidate people by beating them in any opposed contest, scare his allies into doing better(and also giving them an integrity break if they do TOO well), or just scare everyone in the room. Ugallu basically get 3.5's spring attack feat. And ability that allows them to strip away armor/natural armor in combat, as well as excel in social maneuvering. Makara get a power that lets them eat basically anything, including people if they're at low satiety. The wording is really weird such that if they actually manage to swallow a person at low satiety they're just... swallowed. Proably dead. With a satiety expenditure they split themselves vertically into a giant mouth with arms and legs that actually does have an escape condition if you get swallowed (but it's easier to swallow someone) so I have no idea. Their second power gives them a lot of defensive power, because somehow you're manipulating the currents or something? Eshmaki can either snuff out all light around them(and at low satiety redirect the light directly into the targets eyes?) or eat someone's shadow to become it. If they're aware of this happening they can try and disrupt the beast but the only thing that can harm a shadow beast is fire. Otherwise you're just.. their shadow. You can use nightmares on the person who's shadow you are without eye contact(because you don't have eyes) and at low satiety you can use atavisms? Somehow? Namtaru however won the loving Atavism lottery. Skin Deep lets you shapeshift out things like claws, gliding wings, armor, etc. This is explicitly an action of the primordial dream and will just straight up inflict a breaking point on mortals(and thus will trigger Heroes who can track you) but it's pretty ridiculous. That's their least powerful addition this time around. Plague Bearer Atavism posted:Plague Bearer Motherfucking Satiety Expenditure Baby posted:Satiety Expenditure: The Beast unleashes plagues of potentially biblical proportions. Everyone within (Lair dots x 10) yards of the Beast must succeed in a Stamina + Resolve – Lair dots roll or gain the Pestilence (Asymptomatic) Condition. The infectious zone moves with the Beast for the remainder of the scene. Supernatural creatures are immune to infection. quote:CONDITION: PESTILENCE Nightmares To be fair, I'm not really a fan of nightmares. They roughly fall into one of a few groups, either "This is something you use in combat", "this is something you use to make social maneuvering a joke", or "This is just an incredibly dickish thing to do to somebody." Though several of their exceptional successes have "This fulfills your feeding condition" you usually don't want to feed at high satiety, unless you spend down to starving after you invoke it i guess? For instance.  quote:This Is Due Tomorrow I'm really struggling to figure out how to use this in a way that isn't just "loving with the normies." quote:We’re Going Down! Compare these with quote:Family is Forever (Vampire) And then.. quote:Your Struggle Won’t Matter Birthrights There are some alternate birthrights! Remember? Beasts have birthrights? It's super fiddly, I don't feel like describing them. Merits Because these are WAY more interesting. Direct Dial(*) You can do the horror movie villain thing of being able to call any person you've ever directly sensed in some way. You can even call dead phones, broken phones, or completely non-functional children's toys. It costs a point of willpower to use unless you're calling a member of your brood (and also has 3 dots in other merits as prerequisites). Horrorspawn(*-*****)You've created a horrorspawn! I'll describe them later. Infernal Machine(**) You have a car that's been specialized for pursuit, it's more durable, faster, and safer than any other car so long as you're driving it. Legendary Horror(*-*****) Your horror is so powerful it gains an essence pool and numina. Also if you ever undergo the Retreat your horror is probably going to be "particularly troublesome". Obascus Initiate(**) You've experienced Guidance and can now perform Obascus Rites! I'll describe them later. Primordial Cult(**+) You have a cult that worships you! They can do a whole bunch of things and are amazingly helpful but if you abuse them you risk turning them into a circle of Heroes that know all your darkest secrets. Lair Merits These are REALLY interesting Connected Lair(**) SOMEHOW your lair is connected to the information systems of the mundane world. You have phone, television, and internet access. One of the suggested uses of this merit is running a pirate radio station out of your lair which is goddamn amazing and deserves to be in a better game than this. Trap Room(*) You can connect your lair to a room for a long period of time, and so long as it's connected anyone who tries to leave said room will be transported to your lair. This is dangerous because, well, ANYONE, heroes included. Vast Lair(*-***) Your lair chambers are huge and take longer to traverse and collapse. Well-Stocked Lair(*-****) Each dot in this represents 2 dots in some other merit that exists within a chamber of your lair. Alternately you can use one dot to turn a chamber of your lair into mordenkainen's magnificent mansion. Kinship merits Know Their Falseness(**)-Changeling You can make binding oaths with people and know immediately if they break it. Gaining +2 on the first 3 rolls to punish them for it.(doesn't work on Demons, obviously) Feign Death(*)-Vampire You can halt your biological functions and walk around like a corpse, or lie around like a corpse. You appear dead to any casual observation but an autopsy will probably make you actually dead. Look Between Worlds(**)-Ghost ..how do you get family ties with a ghost? uhh... well.. now you can see ghosts? And ghosts can see you? Sanguivore(**)-Vampire You gain fangs that you can use to bite people and drain blood. You don't have the whole "inflict your victim with ecstatic lust" thing and you don't have a blood pool, but a point of blood will sate your need for food and water for a day and it's definitely one hell of a way for a Predator to feed. Scent Your Prey(*-**)-Werewolf You have werewolf senses, one(or both) of enhanced hearing or smell. Scour your Body(**)-Mage You can reduce one of your physical attributes by 1 and take a point of lethal damage to use an atavism or nightmare as if you had spent a point of Satiety. Why on earth would you do this. Step Sideways(***)-Werewolf If you're looking at a mirror while opening a primordial pathway you get +1 die and can just.. go to your lair rather merging a physical location with a chamber. doesn't seem worth 3 dots to me. Walk Lightly(**)-Ghost You leave no forensic trace of your presence. People with eyes and Cameras can still see you. "This merit is quite useful to Beasts who leave a trail of crime scenes in their wake." Next Time: This fantastic sidebar (amongst other things) 
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Aug 22, 2019 05:09
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why don't they just have the beasts explicitly be bad guys? theyd be way more tolerable if they werent trying to market them as somehow being good guys. Black Crusade has lots of gross poo poo in but its fine because the characters are explicitly the most bad guys in a universe already full of bad guys. at this point it would be subversive for them to have a gameline where the monsters are actually evil, and it would make a lot more lore sense for the other splats to be hostile to them than the weird kinship thing they have going on. dial down the rapiness, dial up the baby-eating, and you could have a whole squad of scooby-doo villains and it might actually be fun
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Aug 22, 2019 06:04
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Despite the relatively mainstream blasé attitude about them nowadays, they already make a good game where the protagonists no matter how sympathetic are fundamentally gross parasites on humanity. Vampire. It's Vampire.
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Aug 22, 2019 06:18
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Kurieg posted:Primordial Cult(**+) You have a cult that worships you! They can do a whole bunch of things and are amazingly helpful but if you abuse them you risk turning them into a circle of Heroes that know all your darkest secrets. This seems like another 'really fun idea if you weren't playing the Beast' - I'd be down for a game where you're all cultists who've realized the thing you're worshiping is actually just a colossal rear end in a top hat and have decided to take him down.
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Aug 22, 2019 06:47
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ChaseSP posted:The werewolf beat reminds me of a lovely suggestion for interaction that a Beast should threaten to reveal a Demon not realizing this is an utterly stupid and horrible idea. It is a legitimately brilliant idea if you want to make an enemy who will do exactly what you want for exactly as long as they need to set up a fallback cover and dedicate their life to setting you on fire.
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Aug 22, 2019 07:24
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The other issue is that if you do rip away a demon's Cover then they get a brief period in which they are a) incredibly powerful b) incredibly angry and c) have nothing left to lose
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Aug 22, 2019 07:28
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