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JcDent posted:Zahakeryon seems cool, though him knowing The Way of The Gun is less impressive since most Shunned by the Moon are probably immune to gun, and I've been told that woofs don't care about them that much either. Guns can hold silver bullets, which makes them go from "threatening until you turbocharge your regeneration or shift into warform" to "will stone cold kill you in two shots tops."
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Sep 5, 2019 05:19
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So to answer you both Chainsword and Silvered APFSDS? What about Hosts and idigham? Can you apply Gun to them? Can you craft a chainrifle or some other fuckoff shotun for warform woofs to use for launching table silver at primeval horrors?
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Sep 5, 2019 05:23
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I think warforms aren't really smart enough to use weapons. It's all rip-and-tear.
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Sep 5, 2019 05:32
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Crazy unconventional and experimental weapons for exploiting supernatural critter banes is more a Hunter: The Vigil thing, with Task Force VALKYRIE and the Cheiron group. And any super-horrible gribbly CEO had better hope it's cover corporation is up to date on their taxes and/or congressional bribes, because goodness knows what horrible ancient spirits of taxation IRS agents have hanging around them.
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Sep 5, 2019 05:36
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Seatox posted:Crazy unconventional and experimental weapons for exploiting supernatural critter banes is more a Hunter: The Vigil thing, with Task Force VALKYRIE and the Cheiron group. Valkyrie does overengineered military-contractor stuff thst costs $23m per shot, Union does homebrewed made-it-in-my-workshop osha nightmares, and Cheiron does extremely ill-advised biotech.
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Sep 5, 2019 05:42
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Hunter the Vigil suddenly hops onto my list of stuff to play if the chance presents itself.
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Sep 5, 2019 05:46
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The Lone Badger posted:Valkyrie does overengineered military-contractor stuff thst costs $23m per shot, Union does homebrewed made-it-in-my-workshop osha nightmares, and Cheiron does extremely ill-advised biotech. The Cheiron Group's researchers would just love to get their manipulator appendages on some of these samples, Mr. Zahakeryon , perhaps we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement?
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Sep 5, 2019 05:49
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The Wolf reviews are reminding me why it's my favorite nWOD line but it's awfully absurd to imagine blood covered wolf snake-heads walking around on the street holding conversations with politicians and shaking their hands with forked tongues.
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Sep 5, 2019 05:58
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Mr. Prokosch posted:The Wolf reviews are reminding me why it's my favorite nWOD line but it's awfully absurd to imagine blood covered wolf snake-heads walking around on the street holding conversations with politicians and shaking their hands with forked tongues. Yeah, I mean, imagine noticing that against the types already there.
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Sep 5, 2019 07:12
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I mean thats just too politicians meeting I don't see the issue  . But yeah it kinda does stretch believability.
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Sep 5, 2019 07:17
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It is a bit weird that "other supernaturals" can flat out see right through the wolf-head-illusion-person thing without any kind of power struggle, if you're using Orocheiros in a non-woof game it kind of kills the standard "weird person covered in illusions hobnobbing with our bought and paid for politicians, find out who/what/why and do we have to kill it?" chronicle that Vamps and Mages would do, and right into the "poo poo it's a worse monster than we are, kill it!" phase that Werewoofs operate on by default. You'd think it'd at least require Auspex or Active Mage Sight to see what it really is, instead of just getting a free pass.
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Sep 5, 2019 07:42
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JcDent posted:What about Hosts and idigham? Can you apply Gun to them? I think you need bullets made from their ban. So every single Host and Idigham requires a Buffy episode where you figure out its weakness before killing it with this week's special bullet.
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Sep 5, 2019 14:16
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Guns still work on hosts and spirits (including idigam) in the sense that they do damage. They just aren't generally going to do a lot of damage (as long as the target is corporeal, anyway), and if the monster can regenerate you're going to want their bane, yes.
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Sep 5, 2019 14:33
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golden bubble posted:I think you need bullets made from their ban. So every single Host and Idigham requires a Buffy episode where you figure out its weakness before killing it with this week's special bullet. Half of their banes seem to be somebody's bones, so if you need another session you can throw a little graverobbing in there too
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Sep 5, 2019 14:36
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Just Dan Again posted:Half of their banes seem to be somebody's bones, so if you need another session you can throw a little graverobbing in there too Or (arguably and) a museum heist!
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Sep 5, 2019 15:15
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The one idigam who can't disobey an order from anyone wearing a mission patch for the moon landing it hopped a ride on is my favorite ban. It's just so bizarrely specific that there's no way you'd ever know that (I guess there are spirits who would have some kind of ineffable knowledge? Maybe Luna would know?), but the image of a pack of werewolves furiously bidding on a NASA patch and trying to expedite shipping before the crazy gribbly monster devours Western Pennsylvania is just aces.
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Sep 5, 2019 15:28
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Precambrian posted:The one idigam who can't disobey an order from anyone wearing a mission patch for the moon landing it hopped a ride on is my favorite ban. It's just so bizarrely specific that there's no way you'd ever know that (I guess there are spirits who would have some kind of ineffable knowledge? Maybe Luna would know?), but the image of a pack of werewolves furiously bidding on a NASA patch and trying to expedite shipping before the crazy gribbly monster devours Western Pennsylvania is just aces.
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Sep 5, 2019 15:30
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There's some rites you can do that reveal Bans and Banes, so basically the pack probably did some ineffable mystic rituals, invoked the ancient shamanic rites, and then immediately went to ebay.
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Sep 5, 2019 15:31
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I really had no interest in Werewolf before this review, because all I knew about woofs was that they are terrifying combat monsters and that Apocalypse was full of weird eco-terrorism. Learning that the thrust of the modern game is that said terrifying combat monsters mostly have to solve problems that can't be solved through combat makes it seem like tons of fun.
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Sep 5, 2019 15:32
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Career Compendium Do Crimes Let's be real: Most adventurers are criminals to one degree or another. Your adventures are probably going to lead to situations where you break the law. At the very least you're going to be shadowing people, potentially breaking into their houses to search for evidence, possibly dealing in illegal goods, etc etc. As a result having a Crime Guy on your team, for whom crimes are a profession rather than an incidental occupational hazard, is very useful. As an added bonus, Imperial popular culture loves the romantic version of the thief or master criminal. This is partly the influence of the Cult of Ranald, but I'd imagine some of it comes from the time a thief saved the Empire by stealing a magic ring from Vlad. Imperials will still throw you in a dungeon or have you hung if you're caught, sure, but if you can get away with your business they'll be really impressed with you. Criminal characters split time evenly between charlatan types and actual breaking-and-entering types, and many of the former can do some of the latter and vice-versa. The headline Criminal basic Career is Thief. Thief can do a little of everything; it has the distinction of being one of those Careers with a ton of 'take this OR this' skills and talents. I really wish Thief got Dodge, but what can you do. They get a massive +15 Agility in their first Career, but they can also pick between being charming or good at climbing, disguising themselves or judging the value of goods, running con gambling games or picking locks, picking pockets or being literate, and are generally set up so that depending on your choices, this one Career can either be great at running scams and tricks or great at breaking and entering. Another of those Careers where it's not a bad idea to stick around for a couple hundred extra EXP and pick up some of those either-ors. Still, whichever type of crime they want to be good at, Thief is competent at it from the beginning. Much like the Hunter and Woodsman, or the Soldier among fighters, Thief can also go into pretty much everything you'd want as an Exit. They can switch out to become Entertainers, Rogues (We'll cover them) or Tomb Robbers (The latter being kind of redundant but at least it'll be fast, and it does open some unique other options), or they can advance up to Charlatan (Extremely good at social crime), Cat Burglar (The same, but for breaking and entering), or Fence (Crime and mercantile skills, very quick, goes right into Master Thief or Crime Lord if you wish). You've got a solid Career track ahead of you if you started as a Thief. This is also one reason you might consider Servant to Thief; Servant's special Talent that got added in this book is useful to a Thief, as is having Dodge, and there's enough overlap that you won't be stuck in Thief for ages. Then slam into Fence and then Master Thief and you're an awesome super-criminal without taking forever. Thief's fluff centers on everyone's favorite fantasy cliche: Thieves' Guilds. The Empire is rife with organized crime. Imperial Thieves' Guilds are as much of a mess as the rest of the Empire; every Guild insists every thief in their territory be a member. Junior thieves who are just starting their careers are pretty easy for veterans to catch by watching their fences or offering training, so most 1st tier Thieves end up attached to one of these. The issue is that many towns or territories have more than one Guild. The Guilds still insist everyone join them. They avoid gang warfare by pretending not to know the other Guild in their area exists, sometimes to the point of farce. This means that anyone operating in an area with multiple Guilds has to be members of both and has to pretend to one Guild they don't know about the other one. This is how Thief PCs end up leaving town to go on an adventure, because the patriarch of the von Drachen family gave them one job and the subsidiary family of Karpfen told them to do something opposite it, so...best to just skip town and join a new Guild. Otherwise that's how you start losing fingers and/or end up having to punch an entire crime syndicate. Usually ends with people shirtless and having a fistfight on top of the Cathedral of Sigmar. Actually, that sounds rad. That would be a good campaign. Still, most Thieves aren't quite up to a life of furious punching and the bicycle hasn't been invented yet, which might make it a bit tougher. The Rogue is the other major intro to crime class, kind of similar to how Woodsman and Hunter were two different approaches to the archetypal Ranger. Rogues are con-artists. Where the Thief is deft and physically quick, the Rogue is lucky, good at telling when they're in trouble, and great with people. These are bawds, 'guides', and scammers. While you get more specialized Careers for stuff like Raconteur or Gambler, Rogue works fine for either of those professions as is. They know a lot about talking fast, picking up on the true value of things (so as better to lie to people about it), making deals, and they're lucky as hell. Starting with the Luck Talent is really, really good; +1 Fortune a day is +1 Rerolls a day! Sixth Sense is another option, and it's a general 'any time you'd be ambushed, or you're walking into a trap, you get an extra WP test to sense if you just realize something's off' Talent. Note that works in addition to any sort of Per test to notice someone's about to ambush you, or Int tests to realize you're getting scammed; it's purely a bonus chance to realize you're in danger. Add in FLEE! and a Rogue is much better at picking up on and escaping trouble than the Thief. Which is a pretty drat good thing to be good at as a starting WHFRP character! They also come with a (probably stolen) really nice outfit so they can try to pass themselves off as wealthier than they are. They're a little more limited in where they go from Rogue, going into mostly Demagogue (an amazing social/political class that isn't bad in a fight, either) or Charlatan; their 1st tier Exits are mostly a wide variety of 'I got caught, now I'm an Outlaw or an Ex-Con or something'. The other notable thing about Rogue is a huge number of other classes can enter a Criminal track by entering Rogue. The fluff they get is a pair of example Rogues to show off the styles you can play. One is a high Tilean official from the wealthy city of Luccini. Salvatore Fiorenzo Bellarmini di Rosselino e Luccini is in Altdorf to make an exclusive contract for a state monopoly with Emperor Karl Franz himself, and is simply exploring Imperial high society while he waits for the Emperor to see him, what with Karl being so busy with the wars and all. In the meantime, he is looking for reasonable business partners, someone worthy of making a huge amount of money by monopolizing trade between Altdorf and Luccini. His real name is Diego and he is an Estalian; he speaks Tilean well enough not to have a detectable accent around Imperials. He knows he only has so much time before someone notices who he really is, so he's selling as many 'confidential' agreements and guarantees among the less savvy Imperial nobles before he's caught. He plans to 'report back to his prince' with his stolen cash soon. The other is a down on his luck playwright. Dominick Guildenstern (lol) is a genuinely talented playwright, but his real problem is he's A: A terrible businessman and B: Really good at talking his way into more loans. He's a Rogue by ability, luck, and nature, not so much by malice. So he has increasingly impossible to pay off debts, but he's talented enough to keep finding new sources of loans, from increasingly dangerous people. At the same time, his plays really are fantastic; if he was better at business, he'd be a rich and famous man. His latest plan for funding to pay off the crime lord he got funding from last time is to find Adventurers who have money from finding a pile of treasure and convincing them to invest next. He'd make a great PC, I think; a campaign where the players are constantly trying to fix their theater business, find the money to put on another performance, and survive the inevitable fallout of their investors until they make it could be great. And really, the play has everything! It's got love, murder, revenge, even a good bit with a dog. This can't possibly go wrong this time. Let's also take a quick look at what an actual 3rd Tier criminal looks like with their archetypal 3rd Tier, the Master Thief. Master Thief is one of relatively few Careers to get a +40 to a stat (+40 Agility). They're competent in a fight (+20 to BS and WS both, +1 Attacks, pick up Dodge), amazingly graceful, excellent at pretty much every thieving skill, highly intelligent, decent with people, and generally just competent criminals in all forms of direct, personal criminal endeavor. By the time you're a Master Thief, you're as good at stealing as the Champion is at fighting. They don't really have anywhere to go from Master Thief professionally; you can go into stuff like Crime Lord but you're mostly at the top of your game vis a vis thieving and it might be time to consider another track if you somehow finish Master Thief during your campaign. You're a bit unlikely to do so because you need something like a total of 6000 EXP over your career as an Adventurer to have finished this Career. Master Thieves are the kind of people who are so good at their job that they don't actually need Guilds any longer. Most of them have their own small support networks. These are the sorts of romantic, adventurey thieves who do the job as much to prove they can do the job as to get anything out of it. They stay quiet most of the time, waiting for something worth stealing to come up; a solid gold tablet brought back from Lustria, some ancient relic of Nehekara, a genuine magical treasure or a jewel the size of someone's fist. They have enough money from their prior work (and make so much from their current jobs when they carry one off) that they can afford to lead a fairly normal life while they study and plan for their big capers. These are the sorts of people the Empire wants to catch not because it can punish them, but because it's sort of traditional to make an offer to a captured Master Thief of 'hey, do this super dangerous and exciting quest/adventure for the good of the Empire and we'll let you go and pay you'. Imperial popular culture is full of daring adventure stories about this caliber of criminal, something that probably pleases them very much. Crime is fairly self-explanatory, but the fact that most criminals are good at stealth and social skills at the same time makes them especially useful in WHFRP. Both those skill sets are very good for avoiding needless confrontations, though you can still run into the classic Thief problem where the Thief PC has all the skills necessary for a scene where they break in somewhere and the rest of the party doesn't need to get involved. The game could use a little more support for the rest of the party running interference or making it easier on their buddy; one of the things I really appreciated in the design on Myriad Song (and why I keep going back to referencing it when this comes up) was how it abstracted 'aid another' rolls to make it much easier to do just that. It's not hard to do the same here to solve this problem; say the rest of the party does stuff like start a staged fight to draw attention, or gets involved studying the floorplan of the mansion the Thief's breaking into to make their rolls easier inside. Thieves and criminals are useful, but it's important to keep everyone else involved if they get up to particularly big capers. Next Time: Fish
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Sep 5, 2019 16:01
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Big Mad Drongo posted:I really had no interest in Werewolf before this review, because all I knew about woofs was that they are terrifying combat monsters and that Apocalypse was full of weird eco-terrorism. Learning that the thrust of the modern game is that said terrifying combat monsters mostly have to solve problems that can't be solved through combat makes it seem like tons of fun. 2e Forsaken really opened the game up, I think. The Sacred Hunt mechanic is particularly good since it gets you into combat, but only after following other interesting steps and doing your magical homework (which may well be another adventure or a series of adventures). Finally getting to flip out and kill people is generally a reward for doing the rest of your job well. nWoD mechanics are still a bit weird for combat, but the werewolf bonuses make sure that your pools will be good enough to contribute
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Sep 5, 2019 16:39
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon Curious Bugdog  This beautiful boy is probably my favorite Geryo. Quattuor spends most of his time in the Arctic at this point. When not destroying the world, he is utterly fascinated by it, and he's one of the few Geryo who legitimately liked Wolf and was sad when he learned Wolf died. He loved the mysteries of the world that he was sent to find by Wolf's missions. He's certain that the nature of reality is impermanence, and the destruction he caused while hunting was his philosophical argument to that effect. Wolf's death was the first time he ever felt sad to be right. He believes strongly in a harmony of life and death, that the world survives by the continuous transition of living to dead. All creatures, he is sure, depend on the deaths of other creatures to survive. He has a part in this, though he thinks of himself as standing largely outside the cycle. He hopes that one day, he will have done enough that the world will allow him, too, to die. This will be, he knows, when he is no longer needed and his use to the cycle is over. Until then, he brings death, relying on his instincts or a master to know when and where to do so. At heart, Quattuor is a philosopher that loves to debate and talk to others. His appearance makes that difficult in the modern world, though. He considers no topic forbidden, but is especially interested in discussions about life and death. Indeed, he will often delay the end of his hunts so that he can kidnap his prey, talk to them and get to know them, learning more about their views and life lessons. He cannot keep them safe for long, however, as the skies rage when he is so close to his prey. When the time comes and he has learned all he's able, he kills his prey with neither hesitation nor regret. He believes individual humans are mostly ignorant, and he misses the days of stalking prey with the vast awareness that the Pangaeans had. On the other hand, while he knows a hell of a lot about prehistory, he is often confused and startled by modern things. He doesn't get the concept of celebrity or fame, finds modern society irritating and absolutely hates the constant blinky lights and noises of modern technology. He believes that the modern world has no respect for the natural cycle, trying to subvert or challenge what should be constant and unchanging. Anyone talking to him has to be careful, because Quattuor is bad at context clues and modern mannerisms, and when he gets irritated and offended he sometimes becomes lethally angry. Quattuor was created for the purpose of witnessing and causing the end of things that needed ending. His nature drives him to hunt those fated to die but who have knowledge that will be lost to the world, whether that is a great vault of research or a single secret that must be passed on before death. Once, he worked to destroy these lorekeepers but retain their knowledge to be passed on to Wolf. Now, he just keeps it. Few can say what changes their deaths will cause, but he is always there to listen to their confessions and remembrances and to witness their deaths. Not, mind you, that this means dignified confessions. Quattuor brings chaos and change as he hunts, disrupting lives and bringing violent and messy death. He views death as a peaceful darkness at the end, but he knows that his prey will have a brief period of terrifying violence before that peace. He can't question it - that's just how things are, that's just his nature. Besides, few victims will deliver their secrets peacefully if just asked. The violence and terror Quattuor creates shake loose the lore he needs regardless of their desires. While he's a talkative intellectual, Quattuor looks like a monster. He has four heads arranged in a square, which is where his current and First Tongue names come from. Damaging his heads doesn't really hurt him, and his back is coated in an armored carapace with a bony, whip-thin tail. He can stand on his hind legs if he wants to walk upright, but prefers to walk on all fours. He looks kind of like a weird, vaguely insectile, overdesigned Gauru-form werewolf. On top of the normal Geryo abilities, his mouths drip with poison saliva that kills humans and causes werewolves intense pain and paralysis. This is his only form. He enjoyed his work for Wolf and felt lost without his parent, taking on his new name largely because he felt it resonated with the name Wolf gave him. He doesn't mind using his old name, but philosophically he felt that his beliefs about impermanence were not helped by clinging to it, and the mood of his siblings made it easier to just change his name rather than reveal his fondness for their hated creator. When not hunting, Quattuor is still drawn to events that may cause death, and sometimes he accidentally causes them by, say, being a giant animal-thing standing in the highway. He finds it fascinating to examine the boundaries of deaths that resonate with his nature and those that don't. Those that don't, he has a tendency to walk over to the person in danger and tell them the world would not lose anything if they died. He's pretty sure he can tell - after all, why else would he not be drawn to hunt them? He sometimes even hypothesizes that the deaths he's fated to inflict would not happen if he didn't act, or if the knowledge he must preserve was not at risk of being lost. He would absolutely adore having someone to debate this with, but he can't stop his hunts. That's his nature, and he neither can nor wants to change it. Quattuor does not understand technology, and recently he made the mistake of visiting a local zoo to see how humans had subjugated their former predators. An onlooker managed to get video of him on a cell phone as he wandered into the wolf enclosure, posted it, and it went viral. The video shows a blurry image of him emerging from the wooded part of the enclosure, apparently oblivious to the terror he causes among the humans watching. The sudden rainstorm that follows him hosed up the video's clarity, so many think it's fake, especially because he returned to the Gauntlet a few seconds later. Despite this, the "four-headed wolf" (which looks very little like a wolf) has drawn a ton of attention, even though the zoo claims it's a fake video. The wolf enclosure has been closed to the public, but Hunters, thrill seekers and others have converged on the zoo's town, making life very hard for the local werewolves, who would also really like to know what the gently caress is going on. Quattuor is a rank 5 geryo, with Implacable Blood and Philosophical Bone. He's very fast and pretty strong, though by Geryo standards his healthbar's pretty small. His realityquakes take the form of harsh storms that follow him everywhere. His Gifts are Death, Dominance, Knowledge, Nature and Weather. He drinks the souls of his prey, learning all their secrets, as long as he has enough time to stand over them and do it - which typically is several rounds, giving you time to hit him. Once he's done, he learns every secret they knew, though not anything that was common knowledge or not somehow secret. If he is disturbed, he gets only partial knowledge and has to spend a bunch of Essence depending on the time he's been delayed to complete the consumption. He only has a few days to complete it in, too. Oh, and his bite is venomous. Quattuor's Ban is that he must engage in a game of skill if challenged. Any given creature can only challenge him once, ever. Winning or losing doesn't matter - he's just delayed for as long as the game takes. His Bane is his own bite - if a foe can convince one head to bite another, he falls into a mindless frenzy until one of his heads gets cut off. Next time: The Many-Faced Conspirator
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Sep 5, 2019 16:44
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What, he doesn't have his own Distorted?
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Sep 5, 2019 17:20
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Not specifically. He can still make them but his just kind of mutate however the GM feels like. Zahakeryon is really the only one that kind of specifically shapes them.
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Sep 5, 2019 17:22
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Career Compendium Fish This is just going to be a random collection of things that didn't fit in neat categories and a conclusion. First, let's talk fish and what they mean. So the Fisherman includes a bunch of Imperial fish. I'd like you to remember these are not fish considered tainted by Chaos. These are just fish. People in the Empire think these fish are normal. They include the Augas, a fish with a third eye on top of its head to spot predators. There is also the Sea Scorpion, which is an actual fish with a scorpion tail and venom, which it uses to stun larger predators to escape or to poison and eat smaller fish. The Taurus is a horned fish that has headbutting fights after it spawns. The Polypus is a buff fish. As in, a fish with two buff, clawed, grasping arms and hands attached to it. Bastards can potentially grab a fisherman and wrestle them to escape. These are normal for Imperials. These are not considered weird fish. This is another example of how the world of WHFRP is a really fantastical and odd place. But the odd can be surprisingly commonplace. This is just a world that has scorpionfish. No-one thinks that's weird. Weird is what happens with the big Chaos Whales up in Norsca, who are almost all highly individual mutants and genetic aberrations that can be large enough to feed a settlement for months. As you might imagine, the Norse Whaler is a somewhat more hard-core fisherman, and is also a completely playable class that focuses on throwing harpoons. Selling whale oil to the Empire is one of the most profitable exports the Norse have. You gotta wonder if there are any weird side-effects to burning a bunch of highly magic-infused whale oil in a city like Altdorf, since it goes into the street lamps. After all, Altdorf is already magic as heck thanks to the fanciful wizard colleges. Another little Career that doesn't really fit anywhere else that I enjoy is the Rapscallion. This is meant to be the adventuring upgrade to the Dilettante and was added in this very book. They do a little of everything, like Dilettante, but much more on the mold of being adventurous and active; their main stats are Agi and Fellowship (+25 and +30, respectively, which is very high for a 2nd tier). They're okay at fighting (+10 WS, +1 Attacks, get Dodge and Swashbuckler and Fleet of Foot) but fighting isn't really their main thing; the theme of the class is knowing just enough about a bunch of things to get yourself in trouble. This is because they are people who look for trouble, everywhere. These are meant to be Dilettantes (or other sorts) who fancy themselves dashing rogues and heroes. They spend their lives partying and socializing, looking for frightened or out of place people who might cause An Adventure. Considering Warhammer, this is an extremely dangerous hobby to have. I like them because they're not out to rob or pick on people who are out of place; they earnestly offer to help them. They just find that helping out people lost in the big city is one of the best ways to get involved in exciting, daring action. They're very willing to put themselves in real danger, and to keep doing so; they might be kind of foolish but they're committed to playing at being a hero and I find that fluff endearing. Plus, the class's actual abilities are fun in play because you can never go wrong with someone who is okay at fighting, good at running away, and great at talking in this setting. They also get a cute little detail that when they can't find excuses to stay up all night, they tend to go to bed early and act more responsibly; it helps them maintain their appearance. A night without a party is a good time to fix your clothes, pick out a new hat, and rest up so that you can go two days straight when you find some exciting intrigue and bumble your way into the middle of it next week. Another cute bit is one of their potential trappings is a pistol they don't actually learn to use, carried entirely for the sake of bluffing. Another Career I find interesting fluff-wise (and got an entire plot arc out of) is the Friar. Friar isn't a great class mechanically; they're an option in place of going into Priest, but they're also an option for classes like the Vagabond. They're great at traveling and learn a wide variety of languages, theology, and some medical skills, and they're fairly short, but they don't have a huge amount to recommend them over just going Priest or something. What's interesting about them is their fluff, both their original write-up and the stuff they get in this book. Friars come from the Imperial tradition of Mendicant Orders, started by St. Berndt of Wurtbad. Berndt was a Witch Hunter, and someone who saw so much violence and horror fighting against Slaaneshi cults that he stopped being able to be a man of action. He also came to the conclusion it was simply impossible to kill your way to defeating Chaos. Cults might have to be stopped, but you can't prevent them springing up just by killing everyone. He gave away his sword and possessions and took to the roads as a mendicant wanderer. He believed that providing an example of a simple life of travel and service would turn people away from Slaanesh. Naturally, many Imperial Mendicant Orders are not so devoted to this ideal. After all, a Friar is on the road with very little supervision. Sometimes this is just a theological disagreement over what it means to bring word of a 'simple life', and sometimes it's the normal corruption that can come with religious authority in the Empire. One example given is the Order of St. Olga, a Mendicant Order that focuses on brewing the best ale they can as an act of devotion to Sigmar. Their founder was the daughter of a brewer who claimed she saw Sigmar in the foam on a freshly poured ale and took it as a sign that the Lord wanted people to remember simple and humble pleasures; she thought that was the way to fight Slaanesh, rather than total abstinence. The Friars of St. Olga are certainly popular (and relatively wealthy), because plenty of people agree with the idea that Sigmar would be happy with you having a few simple, nice things in your life. It's not what St. Brendt wanted, but it's still in the same vein. They're fun people, even if the class can be a little meh. And it's not exactly bad, just a little awkward; some classes feel more intended for NPCs than PCs and I think Friar's one of them. The addition of the Prelate 3rd tier social/political priest does give them more of a reason to exist, though; Prelate is great at enhancing what a Friar character was good at to the point that it's worth specializing in, and they're one of the faster ways to get to that Career. Prelate was a class added in this book to represent high church officials and church politicians. There are tons, tons more classes I could talk about mechanically and flavor-wise, but I think this is enough to give a sample of why the Career Compendium is really worth getting if you want to run WHFRP 2e. It also introduces an actual huge table using a d1000 to roll for starting career (bringing in all the new Basics from all the supplement books), as well as 'regional' Career tables and Careers-by-general-role rolling tables. So say you want to play an Academic of some kind but still want to roll randomly, there's an Academic table for you. It's a really great resource for getting a little more out of the best part of WHFRP2e. The added fluff and flavor is usually pretty good, and I haven't even been properly going into how many explicit adventure seeds the book has. Having everything in one place is also a boon as a reference book, and at heart, Career Compendium is a reference book. It's a very hard book to cover in this format, though, because...220 Careers. The best I could do is talk about some of what they mean mechanically and why the Career system itself is such a core part of WHFRP. Really, if you're interested in 2e and pick up the huge bundle Cubicle 7 released in PDF to go along with 4e, spare some time to flip through the Compendium. It's helped me a ton in writing adventures or coming up with characters I want to play, and it'll do the same for anyone interested in that edition; Compendium, Old World Bestiary, and Core Book are what I'd recommend as the 'core' books you want to play 2e. The End
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Sep 5, 2019 17:44
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon For We Are Many  Some kind of wolfsel? Legion is unusual even for a Geryo - it is subtle, tricky and multiple. Many that see it in action believe it to be a pack of hunters that work together, but in truth it is a single creature that operates through many bodies not its own. It can simultaneously control multiple bodies to create the illusion of a team or to fake arguments and division in order to invite foes to try to persuade it. It understands well the advantages of keeping its prey ignorant and unsuspecting, and where other Geryo rampage, it prefers to avoid attention until the moment of the kill. Its old name was Eshana, and it learned that Wolf died when it awoke in its prison feeling a strange mix of emotions. Failure, as it had been made to prevent Wolf's death, but also satisfaction that Wolf suffered for abandoning it. It hated the werewolves for killing Wolf, but it loved them for slaying the monster that locked it away forever. This conflict has shaped its entire mindset, as it despaired that it would never see its creator again, but delighted that it was free of slavery. When Legion, as it now styled itself, met its first werewolves, it was shocked at how easy they were to possess, feeling a mix of satisfaction and guilt. It was as if Wolf had intended for Legion to protect from the werewolves themselves, had it not been locked away. Since discovering this, Legion has developed a taste for moving in the disguise of a werewolf to hide among packs. It has no remorse for trickery, especially enjoying tricking werewolves into welcoming it as a friend. Currently, it wears four bodies - Henrica van Dijk, a pair of twins named Axel and Luka, and newly taken Rebecca Smith. They play the role of a pack, with Henrica as their apparent leader. She was a patrol officer before her First Change and retains a strong awareness and aura of authority. Axel and Luka were raised in an abusive and broken home, and were infamous at school for their cruelty to animals, getting expelled for murdering the principal's dog. They prefer to decapitate people with a machete or axe, a pointlessly vindictive measure given their power. This is what attracted Legion to them as donors. It took Rebecca after a werewolf prophet it met told it about portents they had dreamed of a fire-haired master of kin causing the death of the hive of many-and-one. Rebecca was a redhead working as a caretaker at the local zoo specializing in wolves and other pack predators. Legion has no real proof that she's what the prophesy was about, it decided to better err on the side of caution and seize her for its "pack." Legion was created to protect. Others of the First were made to hunt those Wolf identified as lawbreakers, but he made Eshana to hunt out those threats Wolf was not aware of and destroy them preemptively. Legion is now compelled to hunt conspiracies and plots, destroying those that perpetrate them. Rare for a Geryo, it prefers to offer its services to masters. After all, with no master, who is it hunting hidden threats to? It remains cautious when making these service pacts, often approaching prospective masters in stolen bodies and misrepresenting its own nature and abilities. It always ensures any agreement has an exit clause and that it has a good idea of how to become free once more. It has no compunctions about killing innocents if that is the most efficient method to its goal, though it rarely kills needlessly. This is mostly because any set of eyes is a potential tool for later, and it views any life but its own as ultimately expendable. Legion focuses heavily on learning about those its prey values, finding chances to use them for leverage or bait. It often kills and mutilates pets or domestic animals, as it takes their existence as a sort of personal insult. When not serving a master, Legion looks for chances to hunt werewolves that might investigate or harm other Geryo. This is not due to any sibling love or bond, but rather a compulsion built into its core nature via Wolf's original purpose for it. Wolf intended Legion to protect against the violence and plots of powerful Pangaeans, and more than one of those plots sought to target Wolf through his children. Legion's possession of others makes it appearance wildly variable. In its favored hosts, it appears to be exactly like the people it has stolen. If forced into its natural form, it appears as a huge, elongated wolf-like beast with two faces on its head and a very large third eye where they meet. This eye has two irises and no lid, so it never blinks. It has six legs, the front two of which end in vicious, clawed hands and the other four end of which end in paws. Its back is very flexible, allowing it to coil around prey like a snake or raise the front third of its body upright to seem like a wolf-centaur. Inside a werewolf, Legion may use its host's shapeshifting freely, without any behavioral or time restrictions on any form. However, it is bound by its own limitations no matter what body it is in, and it does not benefit from things like Gauru regeneration or other inherent form benefits. Shapeshifting, for Legion, is essentially cosmetic. Henrica is a no-nonsense woman with short dark hair and dark eyes. Her gaze is sharp and penetrating, as though she can sense guilt, though she can't. Axel and Luka are identical twins, tall, thin and with long blonde hair and pale faces. Both have a tendency to stare disconcertingly, striking others as predatory. Before being taken by Legion, they disliked being seperated and spent as much time around each other as possible. While Legion feels no need to do likewise, it finds a strange and unfamiliar comfort in keeping them near each other. Rebecca is lightly freckled and has blue eyes and red hair. She's also very muscular, having grown up on a farm. Unless required, Legion keeps its bodies scattered apart to prevent ambush or bad luck from taking them all at once and to make the most of its ability to be in many places at once. When it does need to bring them together, its bodies work in perfect unison, better than any military unit. Unless it needs to maintain a deception, Legion's bodies rarely talk to each other, as it doesn't really need to talk to itself. One hook offered is the idea that, recently, a pack of Blood Talons just...vanished. Some are glad the hotheads are gone, but others wonder what could take them all out without any trace and worry it might still be around. A few body parts are discovered, but nothing that'd kill a werewolf necessarily. After a few weeks, the pack returns, down one or two members and uninterested in discussing why or where they went. Instead, they're more interested in what everyone's been up to, having been subverted and added to Legion's collective of bodies. Meanwhile, a serial killer called the Head Splitter is on the prowl. They always kill by decapitation, then split the head in two. The media believe this is some sick message, and it's all over the news. Investigation reveals that all victims are connected to werewolves somehow. Several pack members across the area, mostly human and Wolf-Blood, are very interested in finding out who the Head Splitter is before they become the next victims. The truth is that the Head Splitter is Zi'ir, a Broken wolf, that has discovered the existence of Legion and is trying in her own insane way to warn about its coming. She's too maddened by Bans, compulsions and her own incoherent thoughts to express herself normally...but she is also entirely immune to Legion's powers. For some reason, the Geryo cannot possess Zi'ir. Legion is a rank 3 Geryo, weak by the standards of its kind and reliant on its infiltration abilities to survive. Its Blood is Deceptive, its Bone Vigilant. It is extremely quick, but in a stand-up fight on its own, it'd be kinda hosed. Its realityquakes chill the world, cooling it enough to threaten frostbite even in the hottest areas. Legion can suppress this effect at will freely, to better allow for infiltration, as long as it is not using its own natural form. Its Gifts are Evasion, Insight and Stealth. It is able to possess people with a touch, seizing control of their bodies. Supernatural creatures get a bonus to resist, except werewolves and Beasts. Firstborn, in theory, would also lack supernatural protection, being children of Wolf. While possessed, victims remain comatose but can spend Willpower to try to resist again each week. Damage dealt to the body is not dealt to the Geryo controlling it, and if the host is out of Willpower when the Geryo leaves, they are left a mindless husk. While possessing at least one victim, the Geryo's own body vanishes, but it can't drag the bodies with it to cross realms of existence when using its innate ability to chase prey across realms unless one of its hosts is native to that realm. In that case, that host (and only that host) relocates. Legion has the power to tap into the memories of its possessed victims, using their knowledge to better impersonate them, if it chooses to spend Essence to do so. However, doing so restores Willpower to the victim, allowing them more chances to reclaim control of their body. Legion's Ban is that it cannot face any domestic animal that has been ordered to attack it, which is one more reason it kills pets whenever possible. Its Bane is any attack aimed specifically and deliberately at its third eye. Next time: The Distorted
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Sep 5, 2019 18:06
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Mors Rattus posted:Quattuor spends most of his time in the Arctic at this point. When not destroying the world, he is utterly fascinated by it. What's this? What's this? There's werewolves everywhere. What's this? And naked apes with hair. What's this? I can't believe my eyes (I have four pairs) Now wake up dad this isn't fair! Oh poo poo.....
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Sep 5, 2019 18:24
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Precambrian posted:The one idigam who can't disobey an order from anyone wearing a mission patch for the moon landing it hopped a ride on is my favorite ban. It's just so bizarrely specific that there's no way you'd ever know that (I guess there are spirits who would have some kind of ineffable knowledge? Maybe Luna would know?), but the image of a pack of werewolves furiously bidding on a NASA patch and trying to expedite shipping before the crazy gribbly monster devours Western Pennsylvania is just aces. Which one is this? Was it already written up?
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Sep 5, 2019 18:27
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It's from a past book, not this one. 2e Core, I think?
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Sep 5, 2019 18:34
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Kaza42 posted:Which one is this? Was it already written up? Yeah, it's the deceiver lune in the 2e core.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:48
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Huh, Legion question: How would werewolves fight it, if it can possess them instantly with a touch? Are we given suggestions on how to prevent combat with Legion from turning into 'now we have to kill our buddy?'
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Sep 5, 2019 18:49
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Joe Slowboat posted:Huh, Legion question: How would werewolves fight it, if it can possess them instantly with a touch? Are we given suggestions on how to prevent combat with Legion from turning into 'now we have to kill our buddy?' You do get a roll to resist possession, though against a 17 die pool, an average of 5-6 dice is not a great pool. The book seems to think you'll wear it down with the repeated resistance rolls over time, especially if it keeps tapping into your memories - any time it attempts that, if you're full up on willpower, you get a roll to resist. That said, it is still a 17-die pool against 5-6 dice with +3 or so from Willpower. It's not great. So...no, that particular power is not well thought out. e: It does, however, have a limit on how many things it can possess at once, and the limit on its realm-shifting is notable. You could possibly hunt it by getting it to hunt you and leading it on a chase through Shadow or the Underworld, forcing it to abandon its Flesh bodies to face you down.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:55
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That seems like very poor odds. That's just comparing successes on 5-6 dice against successes on 17, right?
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Sep 5, 2019 18:56
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Yeah. Just on the odds, you are looking at very unlikely resistance. I think your best strat if the GM runs it straight is, legit, find a way into the Underworld or the Gauntlet while it is Sacred Hunting you, forcing it to confront you without being able to bring its bodies along.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:57
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Mors Rattus posted:Quattuor's Ban is that he must engage in a game of skill if challenged. Any given creature can only challenge him once, ever. Winning or losing doesn't matter - he's just delayed for as long as the game takes. So, what defines a "game of skill"? It feels like the pro-tier way of defeating Quattuor is to challenge him to a game where he goes first and the first turn takes an infinite amount of time, or close enough to it that Quattuor won't be anyone's problem for the next few millennia.
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Sep 5, 2019 19:56
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Someone's going to have to keep playing with him. He's not about to play solitaire - if you challenge him, you have to play too.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:04
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Mors Rattus posted:Someone's going to have to keep playing with him. He's not about to play solitaire - if you challenge him, you have to play too. A secret cult of humans and werewolves whose lives are dedicated to keeping one eternal game going with the Geryo. The ones not locked into eternal play or taking care of the biological needs of the players are sweating hard as they research and test new games to keep him from breaking loose. ...actually if 3.x requires system mastery, does it count as a "game of skill"? I mean, mastering something would imply that you're skilled at it...
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Sep 5, 2019 20:08
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Yeah, but Quattuor is a really killer GM and doesn't do "plot." He plays to win.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:21
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Joe Slowboat posted:Huh, Legion question: How would werewolves fight it, if it can possess them instantly with a touch? Are we given suggestions on how to prevent combat with Legion from turning into 'now we have to kill our buddy?' I find it funny that just when 'X-Risks' are described, it turned out that Werewolf came up with its own exsurgent virus.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:22
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Mors Rattus posted:Someone's going to have to keep playing with him. He's not about to play solitaire - if you challenge him, you have to play too. What about a Gawain and the Green Knight scenario? Challenge him to a test of Being Impaled With Sharp Objects By Turns (note: Names needs work) then just werewolf regenerate as hard as you can and as long as you can. To be clear this would rule, that's not a complaint.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:24
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