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Zereth posted:Is there any reason an actual player would ever want to do this instead of going up tiers as soon as possible? Oh, yes, sometimes it's very worthwhile to do a second quick 1st tier or one that puts you on a new track. Not to the extent that character did, but look at Katarine going from Barber-Surgeon to Initiate to become a Priestess who was still an exceptional doctor since she got Surgery from Barber-Surgeon. Or Elena taking Protagonist to pick up some essential skills like Dodge (and get better at punching people for her Strike to Stun move) before she'll go into Enforcer. Vendrick went into Hunter because it's very short and gets him to Targeteer very quickly while still making him a bit better with his bow right now. Going Militia to Mercenary is a classic way to make having started as Militia better. Just the guy in Liche Lord is Militia to Thug (which is also a fairly meh 1st tier fighter unless you go to Racketeer to be Crime Man) to Bodyguard and it's like WHY. It's not only 3 1st tiers, it's 3 kinda meh ones. I showed off how he could have gone Militia to Sergeant to goddamn Judicial Champion if he had equal EXP to the Explorer. He would be much better that way. E: Basically Goran in Liche Lord is a function of the writer coming up with a perfectly reasonable progression of odd jobs a rough fighter type had worked at, making those his careers, and then creating a character who is weaker at his primary function at 2800 EXP than Ulrike or Gilbert are at 1200. Also note the rest of his party has like up to 5300 EXP. Look back at the Thousand Crowns and how insanely awesome they were at that experience level. And he was 2500 EXP behind them. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 13:35 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 13:26
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Gonna agree with everyone that running by RAW characters through the adventures really helps with pointing out narrative and mechanical flaws that might otherwise be skimmed over.
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May 1, 2020 14:42
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Defenders of the Forest Dare You Enter The Magical Realm Look, it's a magical realm. I had to. Thank God it's not THAT kind of magical realm. The Otherworld is very important to this book. It's a magical alternate realm beyond the real world that totally isn't the Realm of Chaos/Magic. It's also where the elfs stash all the stolen children. They use it to I really need to take a moment to ask why the elfs think this is going to work long-term. In the 2500s, yes, Bretonnia is strong enough to resist an Imperial invasion. That's not necessarily going to be true in the 2600s, or the 2700s, as the Empire continues to grow and recovers from matters like the Storm of Chaos. When we wrote the Bret Revolution, it partly happened because the Empire upgraded their firearms to percussion cap rifles in the 2600s, and all the old military surplus had a logical place to go: It ended up in the hands of Bretonnian merchants and peasants who could 'technically' buy them because only crossbows were actually illegal (see Knights of the Grail), which led to some knights getting shot, which led to Quenelles overthrowing its Duke, L'Anguilles declaring a Republic, an unprecedented contested succession crisis for the King, and then things got crazy. This is not an unthinkable course of events; the elf plan only works permanently if Bretonnia is a perfectly spherical state with few competing interests and exists in an international vacuum. The pressure of states like the Empire, let alone Tilea and Estalia, are unlikely to make this work forever. And when it stops working, oh man is it gonna be bad for the Asrai, because they've been stealing children with impunity, murdering Bretonnians for sport in their crazy wild hunt purges, and intentionally keeping their system of government manipulated and used as an enslaved buffer state. It's gonna be a pretty fun time. But it's funny that the elf plan is actually specifically a failure of being short-sighted. I digress, just the elf relationship with Bretonnia is really cool and a great spot to write in. This book instead mostly treats what the elfs do as a magical enlightenment to help their allies (murderhunts aside) because humans are too stupid to defend themselves from Chaos and need protection from corruption. Especially boys, who need to be kept in neverland stasis forever and made to be children eternally so their magic doesn't get out of control. Anyway, if you go into the Otherworld via having a magic elf or pleasing a forest spirit, you turn into an Avatar. There's a big table to roll on for what kind of animal or furry you appear to be while you're in the Otherworld; humans turn into 'urban or domesticated' animals because they don't have wild spirits. Elfs just get antennae or cat ears or something. This will alter your stats, but entirely according to GM whim. Only a few magic lores actually work in there, so if you aren't a Heavens, Life, or Beasts wizard, have fun during your Otherworld adventure. You can also be temporarily given Magical Sense with 'elven wine' to make sure you change less if the GM is expecting a major adventure in the Otherworld. You might go there to rescue a Bretonnian child, or find some lost artifact, or interact with magic spirits. It says something that the magical otherworld is mostly represented by charts to roll on; later on that will also be the main way you navigate the Loren. But with that out of the way, let's continue into the magical realm of elfs with Elf Magic. Elfs use magic a lot. They're amused by how humans prohibit spellcasting in case of dangerous miscasts, because as you might imagine elfs get their own miscast table (but only in their forests) that is much more forgiving. They also get their own Lores, but this part is actually kind of cool. They still only get 10 spells for their chosen Lore, and the Lores are made up of a mixture of Shadow, Life, Beasts, and Heavens. The Guardian gets all kinds of spells of tracking and illusion and the ability to help people conceive children (with Spring's Bloom being a common spell, I'm not sure how elfs have a fertility problem like they say earlier). Prophets get Heavens magic mixed in, so they can do divination and 'holy' Life magic and teleportation. Treefriends have healing and lots of plant magic. What's interesting is none of the three are really directly combat mages; I'm a little surprised none of them Curse of Thorns or Father of Thorns, as those are both really fluffy and neat combat plant spells. Elf magic is way more about support, trickery, and mysticism, and that's actually kind of cool. Melding Lores a little to get that flavor is actually totally acceptable and let it not be said I'm not fair when this does something that isn't dumb. Elfs use Spellsingers (which is TT accurate) and have to roll a Performer (Singer) check before each spell (as a free action) which if successful, makes one die in the roll not count towards miscasts. If failed, it adds a Chaos Die. This is kind of fiddly and will slow down magic use unnecessarily. It's an unnecessary rule I'd just drop, because lots of extra rolls will slow the game down. Elfs also get -2 to CN (making their spells harder) in winter, +1 in spring, +2 in summer, and +0 in Fall. Eh. The Elf Miscast table isn't particularly brutal, and at worst just makes an angry Dryad or debuffs you and everyone around you (enemies included). It can also accidentally cast Father of Thorns, but Father of Thorns only damages people if they try to move through it, so if you hold still you actually just Miscast a big barrier around yourself that makes it harder to move up to you and does Damage 4 when people try. It's a very, very gentle table that will encourage Elf PCs using it to use a lot of magic, often. Until they're outside the forest, where they miscast like anyone else and probably end up having a Bad Time due to their habits. Third tier Elfs get a second Lore, as well as a talent called Spellcraft. Spellcraft is like Witchcraft, except it costs 100 EXP per spell and can take spells from any Lore of up to CN 20 and teach them to the wizard. I'm...kind of okay with this. I wrote up a High Magic talent that works similarly to represent High Mages, and while it's extremely powerful, this is like the one place elfs are legit that powerful in setting. And it's still an advance a spell, so it's still costly to assemble your hodgepodge lore, and you can't just take the capstone spells from everything. Elfs also advance in Mag faster; their third tier gets 4 Mag, and they have a 4th tier with 5. Plus Familiar, and if you get the one Corruption effect that gives +1 Mag, you could have a Mag 7 Elf. Which is a bit crazy; I'd have liked an explicit 5 cap on Mag. They also pay 100 for an extra Lore full of Ariel's favorite new spells if she likes them, which I'm less okay with. This lore includes an actual rez spell. Ariel's Blessing gives an ally d10 HP regen per round for Mag Rounds. If they died within 1 minute (6 rounds), this will bring them back to life with a successful Tough test. That's kinda nuts. Other Ariel spells are '+1 Attacks to all allies' (not that crazy, but very powerful; Priests have similar magic in human Divine magic), 'Trees attack everyone at a poor WS for as long as you wish', and 'ghosts give your party fear immunity and cause fear'. Outside the Rez spell they aren't really individually broken, just getting 10 extra spells and a full extra Lore for one advance is a little off. Then there's the Lore of Mirth and Mayhem and this poo poo gets crazy. This is Wardancer 'magic'. Wardances are somehow represented by using the Mag stat and casting numbers. Which also means they can miscast. Which means you can (rarely) accidentally dance so badly you summon a demon to attack your aunt 600 miles away. Which is hilarious. They are also busted as gently caress. You remember how Blood Dragons had a whole thing where they could reduce one foe's Attacks by 1, and it's one of the best martial abilities in the game and one of the things that makes them such total shitkickers? Wood Elf Wardancers have a CN7 Dance (no info is given on how long it takes to cast a dance. They last for Mag minutes, but there's also no word on if you can have more than one active) that reduces every enemy fighting you by 1 Attack. Hell, if you take the wording literally, it reduces every enemy on the field (it just says 'all opponents'). You can grant yourself extra Parries at the cost of your Attacks (and buff Parries), you can make Parries reflect chip damage onto enemies, you can make yourself unable to Dodge but make yourself Fury on 8+ (no word if the Fury chains further on 8+ or if that's just to start it, but as it says 'trigger' I'd rule it's 8+ at the start only), and you can give yourself +1 Attacks per turn, but in the form of being able to take an extra half-action to Standard Attack every turn. So that isn't linked to Swift Attacking, you could run, charge, maneuver, whatever, and then take the attack after. The really bullshit one is the -1 Attacks thing and the 8+ Fury. A Wardancer getting things that go beyond the 'made to be a party boss' warrior vampire handily is a little nuts. Especially considering I've seen what Blademaster does in play. Being able to Blademaster every enemy on the field is insanely powerful, especially because it makes any 1 attack mook completely unable to fight. A Wardancer could render themselves completely immune to an entire unit of RAW Chaos Warriors and just go to town. They get a few other abilities, but they are probably one of the most overpowered martial archetypes I've seen presented for this system outside of Heroism Knights. So yeah. Elf magic is mostly utility magic (until you can bring in spells from other Lores fairly cheaply with Spellcraft at 3rd tier) and then bullshit crazy powerful super martial arts that can dance so hard you gently caress up reality, but like not in the cool Disco Elysium sense. If the elfs ever invent anodic dance music we are doomed. Elf magic is on the overpowered side, but in a way that is actually fairly reasonable to what elfs can do with magic. I'd prefer if Spellcraft cost more, or had a limit on how many extra spells you can learn, but in my experience with Witches their abilities tend to end up more flavorful and interesting rather than shattering the game, since they can only afford to buy so many extra spells, so with a little revamping to limit it slightly a more powerful form of Witchcraft would be fine to represent what elfs can do at the upper end. For reference, we've used Wardancers extensively and we just gave them a variant of the Dryad rules where they have to swap their dance bonus every turn but can only wear light armor while doing it. That was a lot simpler than making them faux-wizards. Next, are you ready to calculate your trade matrices!? Next Time: Elf Only Economy
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May 1, 2020 15:31
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Robindaybird posted:Gonna agree with everyone that running by RAW characters through the adventures really helps with pointing out narrative and mechanical flaws that might otherwise be skimmed over. It also occasionally surprises me; I really didn't realize how well balanced Plundered Vaults' adventures are from a purely mechanical perspective until this team hit them, outsized rewards aside. Even the ones with glaring narrative flaws are actually fair challenges for the level of PC they suggest them for. All of Plundered Vaults is pretty tight on the 'game' side.
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May 1, 2020 15:32
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The Brettonian Peasants Revolutionary Army marching on the Loren with fire, zeal, and muskets to get their children back would be an amazing setting, let alone the thought of how the human pantheons etc might react (I wonder if a surprising number of knights might say "gently caress this poo poo" and sign on with the revolution - a knightly order of revolutions could be amazing, like Ranauldian paladins). You could do a whole "apres moi la deluge" thing with King Leonceur being a decent king who held the realm together but who ultimately is mortal. When he dies, the nastier aristos get nasty but push it too far. Bonus points if the "Bastille moment" is linked to the stolen children, since I recall the nobility harshly punish any interference in the abductions for fear of reprisals from the elves. All it takes is some organised militia to drive the reprisal squads off, and you've got a chain of escalating violence that ends in burning castles and barrel-organs playing Ca Ira in the streets. You could even keep the End Times explanation for where the children were going, since it's not terribly grimdark but their parents are still going to be enraged. Alas we got the pauldrons instead.
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May 1, 2020 16:22
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Depending on who the Lady is in your game, she might decide that it was a good run but it's time to kick Ariel to the curb because she doesn't need her to train wizards anymore.
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May 1, 2020 16:26
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What they were doing with the kids was pretty grim in our games, but the Bretonnian Civil War/Revolution was a complete and wonderful mess. It was touched off partly by the Fae Enchantress picking a guy on the basis that he'd do whatever he was told in 2621; they had been running a long balancing act between picking people like Louen who would be genuinely supported and who would actually run the realm to the best of their ability, and picking people who would make sure the Fae got what they wanted. When they picked King Gaston, they made a mistake. He was the exact kind of man who would willingly sell out his country like that, and he was too obvious about what sort of person he was. He pissed off the extremely popular Duc d'Carcassone, who declared himself a contender for King (despite not being a Grail Knight; he'd spent his entire career fighting for his people and ruling his realm and never had time to go on Quest) and a surprising number of people backed him, weakening the King. Then the influx of guns and some regional misrule led to successful uprisings in several places that split the country further. Also at one point the King tried to marry off his daughter Gabrielle to a Von Carstein for support, and some rear end in a top hat Blood Dragon war tourist accidentally helped her run away from home and ended up backing her as Queen. Oh, and the Red Duke took his shot at destroying all Bretonnian knighthood forever and turned out to be the one former Companion of Giles who had said 'I don't trust the pond lady' so she'd had his wife killed and his daughter made into the Fae Enchantress as the first Damsel. The Bretonnian Civil War campaigns were awesome. It eventually ended with the national fiction of Bretonnia switching from 'we are a noble and chivalrous land where all know their place' to 'we totally swear we're one country, and that L'Anguille isn't a separate Republic, nor is Quenelles, and we just kind of don't ask them to do anything we know their local assemblies won't do, and also we pretend we still have a Queen so the surviving knights don't go completely insane but she's completely subordinate to the National Assembly, but we also pretend that isn't influenced by her or the old nobility in any way'. Also, no more Lady. E: This was a campaign that featured a pretty grounded, musket-and-bayonet French Revolutionary army fighting a two-front multi-day battle against Wood Elfs and tree spirits and Arthurian magic knights. To me that is the kind of stuff Hams enables best. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 16:48 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 16:38
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 In YKRPG general abilities work like typical Gumshoe skills: each has a numerical rating that is used to roll tests, and a pool of points equal to the ability's initial rating, which can be spent during gameplay. Ability pools refresh at the end of each scenario. The general abilities for Paris include Athletics, Composure (the ability to keep your poo poo together in the face of the weird and terrifying), Fighting, First Aid, Health, Mechanics, Preparedness (the ability to have useful items on hand), Riding, Sense Trouble, and Sneaking. Preparedness, it should be noted, only covers items that aren't already suggested by other Abilities you may have. For instance, if you have Sculpture, you are assumed to have access to sculptor's tools, sketching supplies, etc.; Photography means you have a camera and film, and so on. For tests, the GM assigns a difficulty between 2 and 8 (4 being average), and the player rolls a d6. Before rolling, the player can spend points from the appropriate general ability pool to earn a bonus on the roll. The GM may also choose to skip the roll and just have the player spend a certain number of points, for situations where the result shouldn't be in doubt but the PC still has to expend a certain amount of effort to get there. In other situations where the GM can't think of a way to make failure interesting, a test can be used to determine whether the PCs have to pay a price for success or not. This section also includes rules for cooperative skill use, as well as competitions between PCs. Note that there are no negative consequences for letting a general ability pool drop to zero, even Health or Composure – other than not having any further points to spend on tests. Next comes a discussion of how to use investigative abilities to collect clues; as with other Gumshoe games, the GM is expected to provide clues to the PCs who have investigative abilities appropriate to the current scene. The book describes various methods of revealing clues to the players – sometimes it's more entertaining to wait and allow them to decide which abilities to use to analyze the situation, but other times, if they're feeling bored, confused, or unmotivated, the GM may need to just drop the clue on them directly. The book also discusses how to run searches and how to handle things if no one has the ability needed to find a clue. Here, the book also discusses the various types of clue: core clues, which are absolutely necessary to solving the mystery; leveraged and prerequisite clues, which only make sense when combined with another clue; and pipe clues, which seem meaningless at first but which may gain significance as the PCs get deeper into the mystery. Time in the game is measured in intervals (the time between the discovery of each core clue), sessions, and scenarios (1-2 sessions, usually). Pushes and general ability points refresh at the end of a scenario, although the GM can give partial refreshes where it seems reasonable. One particular partial refresh, the “whew,” can be given out in situations where the PCs seem frightened of something that turns out to be harmless – it allows the recovery of 2 points of Composure. Combat is handled a bit differently from other Gumshoe games -- at least, the ones I'm familiar with. When a fight breaks out, each side starts by defining its goal: escape, kill the opposition, steal something, etc. Based on this, the GM assigns a Difficulty using this table (for Paris -- other YKRPG campaigns have different tables, as we'll see).  As you'll note, this table makes it relatively easy for the PCs to run away from a fight, but killing anything other than weak opponents will take effort and expense of Fighting points -- these are art students, not hardened killers, after all. Players declare how much they're spending from their Fighting pool for the upcoming test; high spenders go first. Each player then declares their action and rolls a Fighting test against the enemy's difficulty. If you beat the difficulty, you succeed at the action you described and then pay a number of Fighting, Health, or Athletics points equal to the enemy's Toll – if you can't or won't pay the Toll, you take the enemy's Minor Injury card. On the other hand, if you fail the roll, you describe how your action fails. If you failed by only 1, you take the enemy's Minor Injury card, and if you fail by higher, you take the Major Injury card. The GM then notes down the margin by which the player failed or succeeded the Fighting roll; anything more than 3 becomes a 3 and the player gets a special benefit (see below). The GM keeps a running total of the margins. If the PCs are piling up a positive margin total, the GM can describe how they're beating up on their opponents, but if the margin total is negative, the GM describes how the opponents are getting closer to victory. If, once all the PCs have acted, the margin total is higher than 0, the PCs win the fight and achieve their stated goal. Players with high margins get to narrate how they contributed to the victory, then lower-margin players can add their own bits. Any player who got a margin higher than 3 can either gain an extra Push or refresh a general ability that's not Fighting, Health, or Athletics. On the other hand, if the margin total is negative, the PCs lose and their opponent gets their declared goal. The PCs can't be injured any more than they've already been through the Toll and whatever injury cards they've received, but they can find themselves in a bad situation as a result of losing, depending on what their opponents' goal was. Laws points out that this system is suited for handling dramatic situations that are sometimes difficult to play out under more typical RPG combat rules – for example, if the players just want to steal something from the opposition and escape, or where a stronger opponent might want to beat up or capture the PCs but not necessarily kill them. (And related to the Night's Black Agents discussion, there's nothing stopping the PCs from setting their goal as "Get captured but make it look good"!) While true, this is also a system where fights are resolved by going around the table and everyone rolling once; it does require that the players and GM take an active hand in coming up with dramatic narration to keep it interesting. Simple fights (such as knocking out a watchman) can just be resolved by a single Fighting test if the GM feels it's appropriate. I don't want to drag this post on too long ("too late!"), so I'll save the discussion of the shock/injury system for the next post.
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May 1, 2020 16:38
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Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing 4th Edition Starter Set Section 4: Troubled Town - A Secure Deal Quality: 4 Guidance: A Secure Deal is the second full scenario in the section, and I enjoy it a lot. It doesn't directly introduce any new rules, but it is the first player-driven adventure in the book. By 'player-driven,' I mean that the events are going to be incited by the players' actions and the NPCs will be reacting to those actions. This is where we really see the limitations of my hypothetical new GM - I can't really judge how comfortable I would have been running this adventure when I first started. I feel like I would have had enough to work with, but the adventure book doesn't really offer advice on improvising or reacting to your players. I waffled between a Guidance rating of 3 and 4 for a bit, before deciding that a manageable cast with recognizable goals and clear plots to uncover made this a good introduction to this kind of game. At some point, a GM needs to learn how to improvise and react as a skill, and this adventure is just as good a place as any. It's also one of the better versions of the "Everyone is lying to you for their own reasons" adventure. The group is approached by Kurlass Meingot, a glib merchant whose investment schemes keep collapsing in unlucky turns of fate. Obviously, he's actually a con man, but beyond that he's one of the worshipers of Ranald, the light-hearted God of Thieves and Trickery. Kurlass is running a scheme with a dwarf merchant named Barlin Silverbeard, who is actually the disreputable leader of a criminal throng who hates humans. The scam is centered around a fairly contrived dwarven bank vault that is air-tight and opens only once a day on a timer. Silverbeard has upgraded the plan from fraud to "murder the marks by 'accidentally' locking them into the vault where they'll suffocate", and Kurlass isn't really on board with this. Ranald is the Robin Hood God of Ocean's 11 capers, not greed-motivated murder, and Kurlass is a good Ranaldian. Kurlass' plan is get the Watch involved so that they'll blunder in, muck up the carefully set scheme, and scare Silverbeard into ending things before the dwarf murders someone. Unfortunately for Kurlass, Silverbeard is really committed to his murder plan. Like I mentioned above, the cast of characters is kept small and easily manageable - Kurlass, Silverbeard (and his throng), and the four merchants who are given a recognizable gimmick. The crime is outside their normal patrol in the dwarven neighborhood of Dawihafen, so the adventure has a little bit of a China Town/Little Italy feel to it and it gives any dwarf (or dwarf-adjacent Sigmarite) PCs a chance to shine. Everyone has a reason to lie to the PCs, including the greedy merchants they're trying to save, but everyone also has a reason to reveal the truth about the other characters. Between this and the ability to uncover facts about everyone from investigating, it's entirely possible for the PCs to actually figure out what's really going on - a HUGE plus in any mystery-type adventure. The other thing I like about a mystery-type adventure is that figuring out everything isn't necessary to save the day or even understand what happened. Here are the stat blocks for Silverbeard and his throng: pre:M WS BS S T I Agi Dex Int WP Fel W 3 55 30 48 51 30 20 30 30 65 35 30 Traits: Night Vision, Weapon +8 pre:M WS BS S T I Agi Dex Int WP Fel W 3 45 30 40 45 30 20 30 30 50 20 16 Traits: Night Vision, Weapon +8 Editor's Note: In fact, after re-reading this post before posting, I've decided I will run combat with Silverbeard and his thug, and potentially revise my Guidance score if I'm right and it becomes a slaughter for the PCs. My only complaints, besides the lack of GM advice, is that the connection from "Kurlass tells you that Silverbeard might be scamming people" to "Murder Vault" scene is pretty thin. I suspect most players will recognize that the time-lock on the vault is somehow important when Kurlass describes it, but I'm not sure how many of them would make the jump to the murder plot. I would have added a contigency plan where Kurlass tells them where and when the merchants are visiting the vault so that they're more likely to interfere, instead of making them shadow one of the merchants to the meeting. The murder vault plot also feels a bit too contrived, and neither the rule book nor the adventure offer any advice on safe breaking. The implication to me seems to be that the party can't do anything if they get there a too late and the merchants are locked in, which I feel is a really sour note to end on for the adventure. This concludes this section, and Part 5: The Prisoner & The Warden is the conclusion to the introductory adventure. Next Time: 16 Blocks (2006) is an American Crime Drama starring Bruce Willis, Mos Def, and David Morse Tibalt fucked around with this message at 03:40 on May 3, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 17:03
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Defenders of the Forest I do not create joinder You can tell a lot about someone's potential utopia from their economic system for it. In the case of the Asrai according to this book, all Wood Elfs are endowed with a perfect ability to sense supply and demand within their own communities. A hungry elf gets food cheaply, an elf with lots of food must pay more for more, hoarding is a huge crime as is theft, but it's never done anyway because of this perfect system of currency-less valuation and barter that every elf just understands instinctively. Also because elfs are perfectly rational being capable of perfectly assessing value and never once try to cheat or trick others within their own economic system, they use Perception instead of Evaluation for determining value and bartering. Also despite being perfect judges of all value wood elfs who don't live around and work around humans will get taken for everything they have as soon as they encounter human economics, because the idea of greed or cheating is alien to them and they need time to observe humans to understand the value of money. Effectively until they have Evaluate they'll get taken for all they've got. Also, their bark and hide clothes are actually finer than silk when worn, because you know. Standard fantasy elfs. What's weird is that this is at once a purely communal system and at the same time sets off my Libertarian alarms, much like the rest of 'all people know their place in society and know exactly what to do, without ambition, under the glorious Highborn who are superior beings' set off my 'crazy authoritarian dystopia' one. It's the 'all elfs are a perfect judge of value and their society is organized entirely along rational self interest that allows the perfect distribution of goods without property crime, also property crimes when committed are the WORST CRIMES' bit. Elfs do no animal husbandry (despite having lots of finely bred horses) because it's 'slavery', and despite every Wood Elf being a hunter or something they 'hunt very little' because as per usual for this kind of thing they perfectly use every element of anything they kill. Every elf maintains their own garden and forages, and the magic forest provides whatever they need. Oh, and all their weapons and armor are better than anything anyone else makes (naturally) because it's all perfectly crafted, but they hate heavy armor because they want to remain 'nimble'. Which hilariously means they're going to get hosed up in WHFRP. Actually, come to think of it, this is probably why they did Wardancing as magic: To make it suffer casting penalties for armor. Anything but light armor is going to gently caress up a Wardancer since they normally only get to Mag 2 at 3rd tier. They don't have the dice to overcome, say, -3 to final CN from medium armor (let alone -5 for plate). But your average elf running around in expert light armor trying to be graceful and swift without having magic super martial arts is going to get punched in the face and have a bad time. Elfs get two new weapons: The Searth (It's like a kayak paddle, with with blades on the end) which is only useful if you have the Eternal Guard talent, and the Hunting Knife. The Searth is Fast and Defensive, two-handed, and if you have Eternal Guard, counts as 2 hand weapons so you can free parry or use additional elf bullshit for extra attacks, while having Fast like a rapier, full SB+0 damage, and Defensive like a shield. The Hunting Knife is effectively just a Rapier that's much smaller and easier to conceal (SB-1, Fast) and requires no specialist prof, completely obsoleting all fencing weapons because cunning elven knife. While Asrai can't make Ithmilar, they can make 'Quicksteel', which is somehow better steel than anything dwarfs forge. C'mon, elfs. I know 'elfen bullshit weapons and armor' is a classic standard fantasy trope, but why you gotta do dwarfs dirty like this? It makes armor have less penalties and makes weapons light and better crafted. Yay. There is also a super fruit that is so tasty and wonderful it makes humans see magic like elfs do, but also it's so delicious NO ELF CAN RESIST, which is mechanically enforced by a WP save or the elf stops whatever they're doing and double-fists every bit of fruit they can get into their maw. Evil forest spirits use the fact that elfs are so attracted to delicious fruit they must eat to lure them into the woods and twat them with sticks, which is hilarious. It's like a goddamn glue trap with some peanut butter on it, but for mystic forest elfs. Oh, and when they make that stuff into super wine, look out. To elfs, it is delicious but only mildly alcoholic. To anyone else, it's so delicious and magically enlightening it POPS YOUR SPIRIT OUT OF YOUR BODY and if you don't come back from your trip your soul never comes home and you loving die. Also an elf who gets too loaded on this stuff causes miscasts even if they weren't a wizard as they rend the veil in their dreams. So yeah. Elf wine will gently caress you up. Don't drink elf wine, it causes crazy magic Chaos poo poo. They still can't resist it. We also get magic items: Starfire Arrows will turn off an enemy's Demonic Aura for the rest of a fight and cause it -10 to Instability tests. They're made out of 100% organic free range freely given unicorn horn. There's a magic harp that lets you calm down pissed off dryads and racist trees (sorry, Treemen) with a Perform Test. There's a magic moonstone that lets you get lost between worlds and die (okay, maybe you teleport properly, but reasonable chance of the former). There's a homing bow that gains Impact and Precise, but if you miss the magic fairy guiding the arrow gets mad at you for loving up and you have to make a WP test or it makes a circular run on your rear end like a defective magnetic torpedo. Which is hilarious. See, Ayendil Trueflight, the proud elf who made it, forgot to thank the tree for the wood and now the bow is pissed off. There's a magic crystal that heals Wounds equal to DoS on a WP test after being damaged, or shatters to prevent a mortal blow like it was a Fate Point. There's an SB+1 Spear with Fast that's always in Parry Stance (so can free parry) at +10 to Parry, which is reasonable enough awesome magic treasure. There's a Talisman that lets you spend its charge per day to make an enemy reroll successful hits. And finally there's a magic macguffin sword linked to Ulric and King Artur of the Teutogen in weird ways that doesn't actually do anything aside from cutting open unstable portals that will make you lost in Time and Space without a WP test and can 'turn your spirit into a spirit dragon and let it fly 10 miles a minute for several hours' but you can't actually do much but deliver messages. This is a huge super macguffin throughout the book and inexplicably not very useful or interesting. Elf Economics, man. They're implausible, they're boring (more everyone is perfect and perfectly knows their perfect place that they're perfectly happy with until they deal with FILTHY HUMANS who throw everything off), and the magic items are meh. I do like the circular run bow, that's a fun one. Shoulda thanked the tree when you live in the magical forest of racist trees who use elven honey-fruit to lure you guys into dark basements and beat you to death for sport, elf! Shoulda thanked the tree. Still, the whole 'everyone knows their place perfectly, everything works perfectly, all elfs are like this' isn't just boring. I harp on it because it greatly limits the characters you can play. No elf having ambitions, or plans to rise above their station, or trouble fitting in, or anything cuts off how many kinds of elf you can make. And when all your behavior is thoroughly dictated by the 'roleplaying tips' and 'deep lore', it's less like someone trying to help you get into playing someone who fits into a society and more about someone trying to play your PC for you. It makes elfs limited. It makes elfs instantly typecast. It makes elfs bad. Next Time: Elven Punch Lord, the one unquestionably rad idea
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May 1, 2020 17:57
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Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops Part Six: From Transylvania With Lone The GMing chapter kicks off with a brief bit of high-level GMing advice, most of which we've already talked about to some degree or another: the core of GUMSHOE (One-2-One or otherwise) is that the player never gets stuck with no direction to continue the investigation, and it's the Director's job to make sure they remember that, and, in the absence of other players to spitball with, gently suggest avenues they might have overlooked. There's also a nice bit of advice on paranoia management--after all, the mechanics of the game (hell, its very premise) emphasize that the player is up against enemies that are stronger, tougher, and better-funded than they can ever hope to be, and that if they make too much noise, they'll also bring down the wrath of human counterterrorism forces on their heads. That can tempt players into turtling up and trying to avoid all risk--but as we've already established, danger -> information -> more danger is the core loop of the game. The advice in this section is pretty good and mostly centered around player empowerment: construct your challenges to show off how cool the PC is (once players realize that taking down a whole roomful of goons is just a single challenge--or sometimes even a quick test--they'll start to feel less daunted by the odds), making sure that clues also reveal weaknesses (it's fine if the decrypted thumb drive suggests that the regional governor is in the conspiracy's pocket--it's better if the data also reveals that he has a predilection for fine imported cigars or that a young up-and-coming political rival is running against him in the upcoming election, because now the player has both a lead to follow and a potential avenue of attack), and knowing when to cut scenes and not play out every minute of an operation. If the player succeeded on an Infiltration test to plant bugs in her target's office, you probably don't need to run another challenge for her to get out. Likewise, if the player rolls a Setback and is forced to retreat, don't try to actually play out the city-wide manhunt that follows, just quickly describe how the player disappears. In other words, Leyla Khan can absolutely do that spy movie trick where a bus passes between her and the camera and when it passes by she's gone, and the book encourages you to lean into that. There's also a short section on why cards are a useful tool in Solo Ops, which I've kind of already talked about, so let's get on to the bit you're all really here for: Vampires Much like the original Night's Black Agents, Solo Ops has a really great section on building your own vampires for your specific campaign. It's a bit condensed compared to the original, but I can't fault Solo Ops for that: it's already a shorter book than Night's Black Agents, and that's before you take into account that over half of this book is adventures. Still, it hits a broad range of options and lets you go as traditional or outlandish as you want with your game's vampires. But just like the game has a default PC in Leyla Khan, it also has default vampires in the Linea Dracula.These guys also appeared in the original game, and are also the assumption for how vampires work in The Dracula Dossier, so they've been around. The Linea Dracula began when Vlad III Tepes, aka the Impaler, sold his soul to Satan while in captivity in Hungary around 1466. Vampires "retain human hungers and sins" (which is not further elaborated on, thankfully), but don't need to eat, drink, or breathe. They age normally, but drinking blood restores their youth and prolongs their life, with more blood letting them stay younger and more vital. They have considerable mental control over anyone whose blood they've tasted, or who has tasted theirs, less mind-controlling ability over anyone without that blood connection, and of course they're faster, stronger, tougher, and drat hard to kill. Bare minimum we're talking impalement and beheading, and even that won't permanently stop the more powerful ones. They can also have any (or if you're feeling really vicious, all) of the classic "Dracula powers:" weather control, shapeshifting, turning to mist, controlling animals, etc. As far as weaknesses go, they can be repelled with garlic, rosewood, or running water, and may be vulnerable to holy objects. They also cast no reflections or shadows, and don't show up in photographs or video and must sleep in either their native soil or other "unhallowed" ground--the grave of a suicide is traditional. They can have children... kind of... maybe. It's sort of confusing, as the book says that after a century or so, the Linea Dracula "got out of the habit of having children" because, when you're immortal, children aren't so much "the continuation of your legacy" as "inevitable rivals for power." But the very next sentence says that "a few vampires" retain the ability to have children "with the aid of blasphemous sorceries or advanced medical procedures," so I dunno. I guess vampire reproduction is like the ice machine in your fridge, if you don't use it for a while it just gets blocked up with a giant hunk of solid ice and stops working and oh God this metaphor ended up way more upsetting than I intended I am so sorry. Anyway, the important bit is that the population of "true" vampires has stayed pretty stable at around 250 or so since the late Middle Ages. True vampires can also create "assigns," or lesser vampires, by doing the classic "drain someone to the point of death and then give them some blood" routine. There are maybe 1,000 assigns out there, and they're both less powerful and more restricted than "true" vampires. The TL;DR is that the true vampires are modeled more explicitly on Stoker's Dracula, while assigns are closer to the modern pop-culture depiction of vampires. One touch I really like is thatassigns do have reflections--but their reflections show the agony and torment their soul is suffering, so they still hate mirrors. The Linea Dracula is split into two lines: the Transylvanian Line (who call themselves the "true heirs of the Dragon," so you know they're fun at parties) follow the recently-returned-from-the-dead Dracula himself--yeah, turns out the whole "multiple beheadings" thing didn't take. The book doesn't really clarify whether Vlad is the Count Dracula of Stoker's novel--though the historical pedant in me is compelled to point out that the Count has a long rant about being descended from the Szekelys, which Tepes definitely was not--but it does helpfully point out that Vlad Tepes' skull disappeared in 1918 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and his body was lost in 1940. These guys follow in their founder's footsteps--which means still acting like 15th-century necromancer-warlords. They tend to have weird magic, commune with the dead and the powers of hell, and the like. (As a reminder, and a point in favor for the Vlad = Count Dracula theory, according to van Helsing many of Dracula's powers aren't just down to him being a vampire, but come from the fact that he studied sorcery under the literal Devil at his school beneath a lake in Transylvania.) They don't really get the modern world and still see themselves as feudal lords--they're the vampires most likely to live in a mouldering castle in some desolate valley where the locals still live like it's 1850 and everyone answers to "the master on the hill." The Hungarian Line, meanwhile, follow Count John Dracula (yes, that is really his name), Vlad's son from his second marriage. They've integrated more into the modern world and thus tend to have a lot more temporal influence than the Transylvanians. They're the vampires in $5,000 suits haunting boardrooms and penthouse apartments, pulling the levers of power to ensure a steady supply of victims and anonymity. They generally operate in a cell structure--one vampire with controlling interest in, say, the French heroin trade or the biotech industry, with their assorted assigns, servitors, and patsies around them. So far, the two lines are operating in an uneasy truce--direct violence against other true vampires is verboten, but striking at a rival's proxies and servants is very much allowed. Exactly what effect the lit match of an amnesiac super-spy might have when thrown into this powder keg is anybody's guess. Building Vampires Whether you're using the Linea Dracula or building your own flaor of bloodsucker, we move on now to a big menu of vampire powers and weaknesses. Since Solo Ops' rules are entirely player-facing, this section is mainly a springboard for ideas in different categories like preturnatural awareness, invisibility, and just plain unnatural poo poo that goes on around them. Each section has a few example Problems to represent these powers, which range from penalties on challenges to straight up "until you find a way to counter this problem, you cannot killthe vampire." Players can figure these out either with the Vampirology Investigative ability or discover them the hard way. Weaknesses, meanwhile, are Edges that the player can use to counter those aforementioned Problems. They come in three flavors: Banes counter Problems related to vampiric invincibility. Blocks can prevent the vampire from passing or attacking, so they can Counter movement or escape-related Problems and the like. They're also the things that suppress the player's Shadow score. Finally, Dreads are things vampires really don't like. They might repel the vampire altogether, or force it to do nothing but destroy or dispose of the Dread before it takes any other action. This can also model weird vampire compulsions, like the folkloric "vampires have to stop and count all the seeds you spill in front of them." We also get two sidebars in this section: one about vampiric "tells" that boils down to "the number of ways a vampire is detectably different than a human is directly proportional to how quickly the player will develop a vampire detector." If you want to ramp up the paranoia and uncertainty around who is or is not a vampire, eschew things like no reflections or room-temperature bodies. The second is about sunlight, and serves to remind us that "sunlight kills vampires" as a concept is less than a century old (it originated with the film Nosferatu), so if you want vampires active during the day there are plenty of options. The Linea Dracula default is that they simply can't use most of their powers during daylight hours. Rounding the section out is a brief bit about things you should consider if you're inventing your own vampires. Things like how long they've been around, how many there are, and how far they've spread across the world will significantly shape the size and nature of their conspiracy, while things like "how much humanity do they retain?" and "is there a cure?" will impact the tone of your game. One incredibly useful piece of advice that really has nothing to do with vampires specifically sneaks in here: a player can, generally, keep track of about five "factors" in a given setting, and generally only three of those at once. So it's probably a good idea to keep your number of rival factions small. Monsters The opposition section closes out with a very brief look at a few other supernatural gribblies you might throw into your game: demons should generally be more about possession and weird, creepy atmospherics--the vampires are the stars of the show, don't upstage them with a Daemon Prince in the third act. Ghouls are the obligatory corpse-eating subterranean monsters, because Pelgrane Press is contractually obligated to put some kind of Lovecraftiana into every one of their goddamn books. Ghosts get a rather nice, poetic description: "If vampires are a metaphor for a spy’s fear of subversion and infiltration by the enemy, ghosts are regrets, the memories of dead friends, of relationships destroyed and lives half-lived in the shadow." I really like that. Finally, Renfields are... well, they're what Vampire: The Masquerade calls ghouls, humans who have tasted vampire blood and gained a hint of unnatural power. They're very useful servants because they have none of the vampire's weaknesses, are stronger and tougher than most humans, and are far easier to create and maintain than assigns. To put it in video game parlance, they're going to be your elite "named"enemies for most of the game, with assigns showing up as mini-bosses and true vamps as the big climax, either of an individual operation or a campaign arc. Naturally, vampires don't generally refer to their trusted servants as a homicidal maniac from a 19th-century potboiler, that's more an opposition term for them. Hungarian Line vampires usually just use euphemisms like "she has my blessing" or call them agents or something. The Transylvanian Line, though, calls them slugeri (singular sluger), which we're told is an old Slavic term for a noble who provides meat for the prince's table. I have no idea if that's accurate or not, but it is loving awesome. Next Time: Conspiracy Theories
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May 1, 2020 18:19
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I would note, Wood Elf cavalry in the wargame, IIRC, rides bareback because they've talked the horses into helping them out. So maybe the elven horse supply is less "animal husbandry" and more that the elves run Horse Tinder
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May 1, 2020 18:22
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It feels like being unable to be recorded on video would be both a tremendous boon and an amazing curse in a modern espionage setting. On one hand, you can evade security cameras and surveillance. On the other, all your hunter has to do is confirm some footage of you not showing up on their phone camera (or your image screaming in immortal agony) to spot you. Not to mention being completely unable to teleconference would grow increasingly eccentric. And you can't project your image on a giant rear end screen in your volcano lair as you tell your jumpsuited minions about how the world will soon be ours, we have captured the troublesome spy and no-one stands in our way!
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May 1, 2020 18:26
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Night10194 posted:It feels like being unable to be recorded on video would be both a tremendous boon and an amazing curse in a modern espionage setting. On one hand, you can evade security cameras and surveillance. On the other, all your hunter has to do is confirm some footage of you not showing up on their phone camera (or your image screaming in immortal agony) to spot you. Not to mention being completely unable to teleconference would grow increasingly eccentric. And you can't project your image on a giant rear end screen in your volcano lair as you tell your jumpsuited minions about how the world will soon be ours, we have captured the troublesome spy and no-one stands in our way! Hell, in the British TV series Ultraviolet, vampires voice couldn't even be transmitted by phone! Talk about a logistical nightmare. As for projecting your image onto the giant screen in your volcano lair, clearly the solution is human body doubles, like that poor bastard who was forced to be Uday Hussein's stand-in. Now I'm just picturing Dracula browsing Tinder, going "poo poo, is this one close? I haven't seen myself in 600 goddamn years. IGOR! Which one of these men posing shirtless in a gymnasium looks like me?"
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May 1, 2020 18:36
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John Dracula who was Vlad Draculas brother was one day in an office typing on a computer. (sorry, that's the first thing I thought of) Leraika fucked around with this message at 18:43 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 18:38
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GimpInBlack posted:Hell, in the British TV series Ultraviolet, vampires voice couldn't even be transmitted by phone! Talk about a logistical nightmare. And now you can find Dracula through his kidnapping body doubles that look like him, because you know he can't appear on TV, but you've seen people who look exactly like him, trained to mimic his dashing accent, appear on TV. So you put two and two together, and a rash of kidnapped male models leads you directly to the scary mansion full of native soil and auditioning rooms.
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May 1, 2020 18:45
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Night10194 posted:And now you can find Dracula through his kidnapping body doubles that look like him, because you know he can't appear on TV, but you've seen people who look exactly like him, trained to mimic his dashing accent, appear on TV. So you put two and two together, and a rash of kidnapped male models leads you directly to the scary mansion full of native soil and auditioning rooms. And this is what the game means when it says "there's always a way forward."
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May 1, 2020 19:07
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Night10194 posted:It feels like being unable to be recorded on video would be both a tremendous boon and an amazing curse in a modern espionage setting. On one hand, you can evade security cameras and surveillance. On the other, all your hunter has to do is confirm some footage of you not showing up on their phone camera (or your image screaming in immortal agony) to spot you. Not to mention being completely unable to teleconference would grow increasingly eccentric. And you can't project your image on a giant rear end screen in your volcano lair as you tell your jumpsuited minions about how the world will soon be ours, we have captured the troublesome spy and no-one stands in our way! Of course a vampire would invest in deepfake research just to overcome this.
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May 1, 2020 19:31
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Defenders of the Forest My Class Is Elf So the Elf Classes are actually not terribly designed. They are heavily based on existing classes and follow the general guidelines, caps, etc of class design in WHFRP 2e. 2nd tiers mostly cap their best stats at 20 or 25, few classes except the hyper-wizard have +40s (the best wizard had a +40 Int and WP, which is unusual, as relatively few classes have more than one +40, but considering Champion has +40 BS and WS I think you can make the case that the best possible elf wizard having +40 Int and WP when most other superwizards are +35 Int, +40 WP or vice-versa is hardly a problem). Talents are reasonably controlled, number of skills are fairly normal. This is mostly because most elf classes are primarily a copy of an existing class, but with a little elf thrown in. Take the Warhawk Rider. They're the Kislevite Horse Archer, almost precisely. Just they ride a flying birb and don't learn to use lances and instead have even more stuff related to shooting. The Wardancers are very, very close to Veterans staline wise, but trade 1 BS advance for +1 Mag and can't learn to shoot like Veterans can, instead having their magic martial arts. This is the case for all of the elf classes. They hew so closely to existing classes that to some degree, I wonder why they're there. When I work with Ulthuani elfs in my games, for instance, I didn't really feel a need to make Sea Guard of Lothern (the professional elf Marines, a step above the common militia spearmen and archers who do both) into their own class. I just added Veteran as an Exit for Militiaman for elfs, because otherwise Veteran does everything you need for a Sea Guard in fluff. The skills and stuff are changed up a little around the edges for the elfs, but not by a lot. The only really unique elf class is the Wildling. These are elfs who get really super into cosplaying animals, and then decide to become masters of kung-fu justice and running through the trees to flying kick people. They're very physically strong for 2nd tiers, and very good at melee in return for having no ranged ability. +20 WS, +15 S and T, +20 Agi. +6 Wounds. +1 Attacks. +15% Fel. Their skills are all related to being beastmasters, working in the woods, and being mobile as hell. I wish they got Fleet of Foot to complete the package, and if I was making them instead of giving them an item that lets them fight as if they had Natural Weapons, I'd just straight give them Natural Weapons as a Talent, considering you can get it from being an ex Skaven Slave. (Yes, the Slave class does have Natural Weapons in its advances. People who survive slavery among the Skaven learn how to snap a Skaven's neck bare-handed, take their keys, and punch their way out of rat nazi hell. This is fantastic). They also get pretty much every talent related to unarmed combat. This means when using Natural Weapons, they're good at stunning people, or they do +1 damage and get +10 WS at the cost of not being able to Free Parry. This is an acceptable tradeoff. And being an elven punch master is both interesting and cool, while not being out of balance with anything else in the line. In fact, with all the urban adventures and adventures in civil society that happen in WHFRP, sometimes it's really valuable to be able to kick the poo poo out of someone bare-handed. These guys are just good enough at it to do it on the regular rather than 'I'm good at it in case of an emergency' being a useful talent like other warriors. This is one of the few bits of this book I plan to actually use in my games. Plus, the core of elf martial arts being 'I am a character action protagonist' is about right, and something I support. The only elf Third Tier Fighter presented (and actually one of the only elf third tiers) is the Bladesinger, and they're basically a Champion with worse fighting stats to make up for having Mag 2 and the Wardancing stuff. Also notable: Elf Apprentice Mages (Handmaidens/Stewards) can choose to go into the 'normal' Wizard track if they want a standard Lore rather than the new Elf Lores from this book. Also, Entertainers can go right into Wardancer, which is hilarious if you rolled a bard to start with. There's also an interesting idea where they take a bunch of common, shared human careers and add in some minor modifications to make them fit elfs. This isn't a bad idea on its own, but the fluff attached to it can be hilariously terrible. This is where we get 'elfs like to pit-fight so they can thrill-kill humans, since they don't care about money' (most fighting professions seem to be the elfs enjoying killing and not caring about pay). Elfs also get literacy much less, as they say woodsy elfs pass down knowledge perfectly in oral tradition and thus don't need a written language, with elfs who do learn to read being regarded as weirdos who like human stuff (or Ulthuani stuff) too much. Elf Thugs are told 'they are given the worst jobs because of the undeserved reputation of Asrai for being cruel by nature' after pages of elven thrill-killing. Which is, uh. A thing. Exits also get shuffled, which can be a little unbalancing. For instance, the Elf Noble can only be rolled (you must be BORN a Highborn, you cannot ascend to the title) and goes right into Noble Lord, a 3rd tier, after their Basic career. There isn't much consideration of the effects that can have, which can allow an elf who skips steps to windmill slam one of their stats to very high levels past caps and to generally be a very effective character in ways that probably shouldn't be permitted to blithely. The basic idea of a few modifications to existing careers rather than creating tons of careers is fine, the execution is just a little lackluster. Overall, the Career section is one of the sections that isn't so bad. A few stumbles aside, it's fairly good, and c'mon. Buff Elf Punch Lord. Next Time: Completely Removing All Mystery From Athel Loren
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May 1, 2020 20:27
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I'm going to be laughing for quite a while at the bow spirit whose arrows circle back around like a malfunctioning torpedo if you miss DAMMIT ELF-STEVE THAT'S IT I AM COMING FOR YOUR TENDER EYEBALLS.
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May 1, 2020 20:37
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Loxbourne posted:I'm going to be laughing for quite a while at the bow spirit whose arrows circle back around like a malfunctioning torpedo if you miss The fun thing is it's actually an extremely powerful weapon...if you're as good as Vendrick will eventually be. Otherwise it will kill you. Which is actually kind of a cool and thematic idea for a dangerous weapon. Something you only give to a marksman who can handle the risk, because he isn't going to outright miss often. It's something I might actually consider putting in in a campaign. Impact really is that worth it. The problem is the Impact gets turned on you if you gently caress up.
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May 1, 2020 20:41
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Shouldn't welf steel be significantly inferior to imperial steel? Well crafted and balanced perhaps because the smith is centuries old, but they just don't have the industry to match the foundries of Nuln for actual metallurgy.
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May 1, 2020 21:17
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When has that ever stopped elfs in badly done fantasy fiction? Which is kind of the core of Defenders of the Forest. This version of the Asrai is missing almost all of their interesting flavor in normal Hams, in favor of them being pretty standard and generic forest elfs who are perfect and pretty (but also massive assholes). It takes every interesting hook and does nothing with them, while writing in a way that closes off stories and ambiguity. Compare to something like Knights of the Grail, or Renegade Crowns, or Old World Bestiary. One reason I say David Chart and T. S. Luikart are very good sourcebook writers is that they seem to get that the purpose of a sourcebook is to enable other people to write. Much of the crazy poo poo that's happened in our home games has its roots in little suggestions and theories and possibilities in the books. Our entire Old One plotline comes in part from some suggestions in Realms of Sorcery. Their work opens up possibilities, suggests ways things could go, and still gives enough body and detail to ground it. This book is much more of 'And this is how this is, and this is how that is' without trying to leave room for people to write or interpret, and the Deep Lore in Chapter 7 of TTT was the same. The Campaign Extensions by the same author are similarly terrible about that. E: I wanted to cover this mess both because it's funny and I like making fun of bad elf writing, but also because I find bad sourcebook writing really instructive in and of itself. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 22:03 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 21:40
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The Lone Badger posted:Shouldn't welf steel be significantly inferior to imperial steel? Well crafted and balanced perhaps because the smith is centuries old, but they just don't have the industry to match the foundries of Nuln for actual metallurgy. Any elf steel not from Ulthuan should be garbage, especially compared to dwarf work. The elves lost the war of vengeance because an armored dwarf is completely arrow-proof.
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May 1, 2020 22:46
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GimpInBlack posted:Count John Dracula (yes, that is really his name), Vlad's son from his second marriage. Names are always kind of difficult for old, non-English people. For example, looking for John Dracula I found his sister-in-law "Anna Vas de Crege", which only gives hits quoting In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires, whereas "Anna Wass de Czege" gives a ton of hits on an actual Hungarian noble family from the same period. This allowed me to find a Swedish-language book on Dracula, which gives the name of John Dracula as "Johannes Drakulya" who had a nephew by the same name, though the first names may be modernized somewhat. (Conveniently John Dracula as used in NBA is one who has a strong connection to Hunedoara castle - and his granddaughter/great granddaughter Anna Draculya marries Paulus Geczy-Papp-Drakulya, was was the trustee keeper of Szentgothárd castle) LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 22:55 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 22:47
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Is John Dracula Mina's boy?
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May 1, 2020 22:54
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wiegieman posted:Any elf steel not from Ulthuan should be garbage, especially compared to dwarf work. The elves lost the war of vengeance because an armored dwarf is completely arrow-proof. Welves probably shouldn't even have steel. Where are their mines, their smelters and their powered tools (probably waterwheels or windmills) and their blast furnaces? It takes industry to make steel, even if it's primitive.
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May 1, 2020 23:42
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Cythereal posted:Welves probably shouldn't even have steel. Where are their mines, their smelters and their powered tools (probably waterwheels or windmills) and their blast furnaces? It takes industry to make steel, even if it's primitive. They'd do it with magic or vulcanism. For laughs, each of the elf factions has a place they call the real Vaul's Anvil, because they're definitely the ones he likes the most.
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May 1, 2020 23:48
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Cythereal posted:Welves probably shouldn't even have steel. Where are their mines, their smelters and their powered tools (probably waterwheels or windmills) and their blast furnaces? It takes industry to make steel, even if it's primitive. They buy it from humans, add a gaudy hilt and insist that it's 1000-year-old superior elf steel and how dare you insult their heritage by suggesting that it looks a lot like what Nuln is churning out right now, then sell it at a 300% markup to tourists and idiot adventurers who buy into the elf hype. They also offer to tattoo you with the real cool elf word of the choice, oh, you want "sagacious wisdom? yeah, yeah, we can do that" says the elven tattoo artist while trying not to giggle as he tattoos the elven for "rutabaga person, idiot smellbeast" on your abs.
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May 1, 2020 23:49
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For our own stuff, the Welves have to make due with found iron, wood, etc. They're skilled at spellcraft, and bend a lot of it towards making the inferior material work well enough. And of course, their actual bows are amazingly well made and their woodworking is tremendous. Having to actually struggle and make due with what you have actually makes someone seem cooler! 'We had to put immense effort into this simple iron blade, but now it can stand up somewhat to stuff made in a blast furnace' is characterful. 'We just have better steel that weighs half as much, doesn't rust, and has less armor penalty because we're great' is not.
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May 2, 2020 00:06
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Cythereal posted:Welves probably shouldn't even have steel. Where are their mines, their smelters and their powered tools (probably waterwheels or windmills) and their blast furnaces? It takes industry to make steel, even if it's primitive. You can make steel with a bloomery and a shitload of work. The quality tends to be pretty variable but small-scale production is possible. I think I'd rank steel in this order: Dwarven Ulthuan Imperial Kislevite/Tilean Bretonnian / Border-Princes Wood Elf Orcish With Skaven as a big ???? The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 00:22 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 00:08
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Night10194 posted:Having to actually struggle and make due with what you have actually makes someone seem cooler! 'We had to put immense effort into this simple iron blade, but now it can stand up somewhat to stuff made in a blast furnace' is characterful. 'We just have better steel that weighs half as much, doesn't rust, and has less armor penalty because we're great' is not. Yeah. There's also something to be said for 'I am super awesome with these daggers I made from the antlers of a stag and I hae learned to fight so I don't need to literally cross blades because steel will break them.'
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May 2, 2020 00:13
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Skaven steel is simultaneously top of the list and bottom of the list depending on who it's pointed at.
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May 2, 2020 01:41
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 Say what you will about 4th Edition, the warlord was one of the cooler concepts it brought to the table as a core class. When 5th Edition came around it was jettisoned like so many other concepts from that era. Barring the Commander’s Strike maneuver of the Battlemaster Fighter, a spell-less martial leader type of character wasn’t really a thing you can do in terms of raw class features of immediate combat use. Enter Robert J. Schwalb. Already an old hand at writing D&D content for Green Ronin, he decided to self-publish 5th Edition content under Max Press. One of the line’s first products was a spiritual successor to the 4th Edition Warlord. As I am not well-read enough on the original class, I cannot tell you how faithful it is in the transition but will instead judge the class on its own merits. The Warlord is a spell-less martial class which follows most of what you expect: d10 hit die with proficiency in all armor/weapons/shields, although in terms of skills and saving throws it’s a bit closer to the Paladin in being proficient in Wisdom and Charisma and has more cerebral choices such as History, Medicine, and Persuasion. The class is a bit MAD* in that most features are keyed off of Charisma, but for more physical pursuits a good Constitution and Strength/Dexterity is required to mix things up physically with enemies. The Warlord gets an Extra Attack like other martial classes, but interestingly gets a third one at 11th level. *Multi-Ability Dependency, when a class needs at least three high ability scores in order to be effective in its ideal role. Counterpoint is SAD: Compare the Monk to the Wizard, the latter of whom is SAD. Most of the Warlord’s core class features and those of its subclasses do not require an action to activate: most of them use a bonus action, reaction, or trigger automatically in response to specific conditions and attacks. Battlefield Commands are their first and perhaps most important class feature: they can give allies a number of d4s which they can apply in addition to a d20 roll before or after the die is rolled but before success/failure is known. The die’s size increases by one as the Warlord levels up, and can be applied to other things depending on their subclass. The other major feature is Commanding Presence, where characters within 10 to 60 feet (level-based) of the Warlord gain access to special perks. Beyond this the Warlord has other means of aiding teammates, such as adding the Commanding Presence die (but not spending any actual die) as a bonus to allies’ initiative rolls, foregoing any number of their own attacks to grant allies the ability to make bonus attacks as reactions,* grant temporary hit points and even allow others to spend hit dice to deal without a short rest via inspiring speeches, and being able to use the Help action at range as a bonus action which can also end fright/stabilize a dying creature/grant temporary hit points. The Warlord’s 20th level capstone ability makes all allied creatures add the Warlord’s Charisma modifier to their saving throws within range of Commanding Presence, and allies can roll a Battlefield Command die twice and use either result. *A callback to the Lazylord build. Military Stratagems are the Warlord’s archetypes/subclasses, and we can choose from a generous six in this book. The Daring Gambler is all about getting greater risk vs greater reward, and includes such choices as granting allies a pseudo-Power Attack where they take -5 to attack but add 2d6/3d6 bonus damage, or roll a saving throw vs a damaging effect with disadvantage to take no damage instead of full. The Golden General* focuses more on the Warlord themselves doing things to grant boons by leading by example, such as granting advantage on a future attack made against an enemy they successfully hit, or doing a noble sacrifice where they grant advantage on a saving throw to an ally while suffering disadvantage themselves vs an effect hitting both of them. Stratagem of the Hordemaster is about mobility, where the Warlord grants themselves bonus movement if they don’t equip medium/heavy armor or a shield** while also gaining boons and imposing disadvantage on enemies who attempt to opportunity attack them and their allies when they move. Resourceful Leader allows the Warlord to shift Battlefield Command dice among allies as a bonus action, as well as limited-use abilities to add proficiency bonus or command dice to certain d20 rolls. Shrewd Commander’s features are a mixture of offense and defense, the former allowing the warlord to mark a target to grant attack rolls and damage and the latter expending Battlefield Command dice to impose disadvantage when said marked target attacks. The Supreme Tactician gets a unique d4 Tactics Die which can be stored round by round to increase it one die type, all the way up to d12 until the Warlord or an ally chooses to roll it, at which point it resets to a d4. Later features of Supreme Tactician include adding half a Battlefield Command die result to AC for one turn, and another being able to reroll said die until it’s a 3rd or higher. *That’s a Dragonlance reference: Laurana the Golden General was Tanis’ love interest who would later go on to lead the forces of good in battle against the wicked Dragonarmies. **a big weakness considering the warlord gets no “add DEX + other ability score to AC” to make up for this as a martial. In terms of overall appeal and usefulness, the Hordemaster is focused on a more specific party make-up, but the others are quite broad in being useful for various types of classes and roles. The Supreme Tactician’s core feature reminds me of 13th Age’s escalation die, in that while it is optimal for boss-style and longer fights it may not shine as much in volume-based dungeon crawls composed of many smaller fights. Daring Gambler is more optimal for players who have a better sense of their own and their enemy’s capabilities, as many of their features are risky to use if you don’t initially know the opposition’s save DCs/AC right off the bat. The rest of the Stratagems are broad in appeal, and I can see the Golden General being a favorite as it seems the most quintessentially “leader of men” type while also having an initial 3rd level ability (attack foe, next ally attack has advantage) as an appealing option. Existing Class Comparisons: Valor Bards and Paladins are perhaps two of the closest leader types in the Core 5th Edition rules. The Bardic Inspiration die mimics several of the Warlord’s damage and AC boosting tactics. However, the Bardic Inspiration is more limited in that it refreshes every long rest, while a Warlord’s Command Die refreshes every short rest but activatse in more specific circumstances. The Battle Commands die starts out smaller at a d4 and reaches its max value later, but is more or less near-equivalent: the Warlord’s progression is d4 and grows in size every 4 levels, whereas the Bard starts at d6 and increases every 5 levels. The Warlord can also use defensive measures which allow their allies to resist damage once they’re hit or retaliate, whereas Bardic Inspiration with a Valor Bard only increases the initial roll/AC value but does nothing upon a failure or enemy hit. For a Paladin comparison, much of the paladin’s teamwork-based abilities center around their spells and Channel Divinity. They have constantly-active auras, but they are limited in the types of resistances and immunities said can grant. As said abilities eat up the Paladin’s actions in most circumstances, they’d be less ‘active’ in combat than a Warlord who are more likely to have a proper Action of their own. In terms of weak points, the core classes have a large advantage due to their spellcasting. While not as supplement-heavy as prior books, bards and paladins gain access to more things with the release of every new sourcebook containing spells. There’s also the fact that the bard has more general out of combat utility, and in terms of healing their allies’ wounds the Warlord is inferior. Final Thoughts: In spite of the above, I’d allow the Warlord as a Dungeon Master. They do a good job in making the rest of the party do their iconic features better. As initiative is highly important, adding anywhere from 1d4 to 1d12 can make a large difference in the initial tide of battle. Join us next time as we get all Council of Wyrms up in here and review In the Company of Dragons!
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May 2, 2020 02:48
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Hostile V posted:Skaven steel is simultaneously top of the list and bottom of the list depending on who it's pointed at. And who made it this week. And how much effort they felt like putting into it. And how close the overseer was while that batch was being poured or hammered out. And if the overseer threw anyone into the blast furnace. And which parts of the Warpfire Forgeinator 5000 blew up this week. And assuming someone didn't sabotage the batch to embarrass a rival or upstage an enemy or prove how inferior your materials are... It's hard to get stuff done in the Under-Empire. Must piss off the Engineers no end.
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May 2, 2020 02:58
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How would you say this warlord works as the party's primary source of healing?
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May 2, 2020 02:59
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Zereth posted:How would you say this warlord works as the party's primary source of healing? Good, but not as good as a true spellcaster with Cure Wounds and the like. It can allow allies to spend Hit Dice to heal Edit: Clarification. The spending hit dice to heal is done at the end of a 1 minute long speech and thus not really usable in combat. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 05:47 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 03:13
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Loxbourne posted:And who made it this week. And how much effort they felt like putting into it. And how close the overseer was while that batch was being poured or hammered out. And if the overseer threw anyone into the blast furnace. And which parts of the Warpfire Forgeinator 5000 blew up this week. And assuming someone didn't sabotage the batch to embarrass a rival or upstage an enemy or prove how inferior your materials are... Skaven are the kind of people who would invent a coating for their tank to stop the magnetic mines they just invented because clearly if they have them all their enemies do but none of their enemies do and also now the tank doesn't work.
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May 2, 2020 03:34
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I admit I winced at the description of the Daring Gambler, but then I hate putting myself in situations where I have to hope for a lucky roll. This seems like an attempt to implement 4E's bravura warlord, who got benefits to hand out to their allies by putting themselves in personal danger, rather than having their allies try to make risky rolls. And I don't think I'd like the Supreme Tactician, either -- I don't like playing "do I use my benefit now or save it for next round even though it might end up being wasted?" (See also: the 4E shadow-based Assassin.)  As mentioned in the last post, getting in a fight usually requires you to pay a Toll in general ability points if you win. If you lose, however, you'll be taking injury cards. Each enemy has a major and minor injury card listed in its description. There is also an extensive list of Hazards, which require the player to roll a test, usually Athletics or Health for physical Hazards, or Composure for mental hazards, to avoid having to take an Injury (physical) or shock (mental/emotional) card. Failing a Hazard test by 1 gives you a minor injury/shock card, and failing by 2 or more gives you a major card. Laws warns against setting up situations where the player gets a minor injury on success and a major injury on failure -- even having one card can be a big deal. Here's an example of a couple of injury cards. Say you've gotten into a punch-up with some gendarmes who don't understand why you need to get into the Louvre before midnight, and it doesn't go your way. The entry for gendarmes in the list of enemies gives their minor injury as "Black and Blue" and their major as "Badly Beaten."  There are no actual cards included in the set, which seems a bit cheap for a $100 game, but there are over 100 each of shock and injury cards printed in the book, and you can always print your own from a PDF. The cards cover a wide variety of situations. The list of Hazards includes such things as Cobra Strike, Angry Mob Sets Upon You, Falling Chandelier, An Alluring Entity Tugs At Your Heartstrings, You Gaze Willingly at the Yellow Sign, and You Witness Man's Inhumanity to Man, each with its own possible minor and major consequences. Have your PCs stopped in at a dubious restaurant and eaten bad oysters? That's a Difficulty 4 Health test....  Or, more seriously, has a PC just received the news that a close friend has been brutally murdered? Difficulty 5 Composure test:  As you can see, most cards include instructions as to how they can be cleared. All cards are discarded at the end of each scenario, except those that, like "Waves of Grief" above, have the Continuity keyword -- those stick around until you act to get rid of them. If you ever have 3 Injury cards (4 if you're playing at the Occult Adventures level) your character dies in a way that you and the GM agree is appropriate for the situation. Cards with the nonlethal keyword, such as the food poisoning cards listed above, cannot be the final card that takes you out, but they still count toward the limit, so you'd better be careful not to get another one! Similarly, if you have 3 (or 4) Shock cards, your character goes insane and is removed from play -- steps out the nearest high window, runs off screaming into the night, or is carted off to the asylum, as you and the GM decide.
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May 2, 2020 03:37
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Night10194 posted:Skaven are the kind of people who would invent a coating for their tank to stop the magnetic mines they just invented because clearly if they have them all their enemies do but none of their enemies do and also now the tank doesn't work. That's not true. Skaven are their own worst enemies, so at least one of their enemies also have magnetic mines.
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May 2, 2020 04:49
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