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90s Cringe Rock posted:Smart enough to do things but not smart enough to say gently caress no.
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Apr 20, 2021 15:17
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Nessus posted:I want to see one of these drat settings with aliens or similar give humans some weird niche thing instead of centering them. They can still have humans be prominent but have them be notorious for their environmental tolerance or ranged-weapon accuracy or something, rather than just directly reifying the author's personal beliefs about, and pessimism/optimism regarding, the Human Condition. This might be too "evil murder death psycho" for you, but in Alan Dean Foster's "The Damned" trilogy, humanity is one of the few species which is psychologically capable of fighting in combat (which makes us really useful for the galactic federation which discovers us, as they're under attack from theocratic psychic giant space squids).
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Apr 20, 2021 15:35
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Night10194 posted:I'm just not feelin' it. I'm super into having magic forest friends as a PC type and having them scampering around being people and wearing cute little hats. I'm just not into the way Rhydan are written here; it's too prescriptive. Too much of your character is being written by the species description compared to the others. And worse, it's geared towards them being a supportive buddy who picks an actual main character up and delivers helpful advice vis a vis the golden songbird and the thrum of nature. It's fine for someone to play such a PC if they wish, but having it be the default mode of behavior for Rhydan is not great in my opinion. Their being PC options should have bent the concept of the Rhydan a little more towards being more independent. Again, I recognize 'magic talking pet who's super in tune with nature and holy and good who helps the main character out' is a genre staple, I just don't think copying it makes for a good PC concept and wish the Rhydan were written with a broader range of types. And also, I'm just not that into the underlying trope to begin with since I'm not super into 'the guy who's here to tell the hero how great they are'. Similarly, their mechanics are probably the most awkward in the game. To talk about that we gotta talk about stat caps. To be a little generous, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with "This is what Rhydan are like by default. If you want to play as a Rhydan, you're an unusual one who's taking a much more active role." That introduces some nice tension for the Rhydan and their people, invites questions for the player to explore in their backstory or while playing the game, and helps answer the basic question of why you're a Hero in the first place.
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Apr 20, 2021 15:39
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quote:THE loving DOG EUTHANASIA SCENE HAS A CONTENT WARNING AND IS TREATED WITH MORE CARE THAT THE loving RAPE SCENE! "Mature roleplaying games" summarized.
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Apr 20, 2021 15:53
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Blue Rose 2e Undermining Deermocracy So, we begin the bit on the government and its structure with a sidebar I dislike. To the point that I think it damages the premise of the game and should be thrown out. Thankfully, it's already depicted as optional. I understand why it's here; a mixture of responding to bad faith criticism and a somewhat misguided desire not to be too monarchist. But the thing is, no monarchist system works anything like Aldis's system. Aldis's government is impossible to replicate in history because we've never actually had a magical deer that mostly picks (at the moment) good enough chief executives, nor a magic stick you can boop someone with to find out if they've grasped the basics of ethics and won't be a corrupt magistrate at the moment (no saying they can't become such down the line). The sidebar goes into how the Deer is secretly the manifestation of the popular will of Aldis and thus it picks the Sovereign by who the people want in their hearts and souls. Did you think I was just making a pun with Deermocracy? I was not, I was subtly referring to this bit. It also goes into how the Sorcerer Kings didn't really lose control of their monsters, that was all part of the long term ritual the Rhydan did to kick off the Great Rebellion and create the Deer. Which means the Rhydan absolutely were always an existential threat to the Sorcerer Kings and I don't like that either; I kind of prefer their paranoia about the magic forest friends being psychotic paranoia, and 'the Sorcerers lusted for great power and reached for what made them feel strong, and then lost control and cut themselves on their own warmongering' has way more punch than 'they got screwed as a side effect of the Deermocracy ritual'. The other reason I dislike the Deermocracy Is Democracy Ritual potential explanation is because it does a bad job of explaining why Jarzon and Kern got left out to handle themselves. What was so special about Aldis itself that it was the only place the magic forest friends actually conjured forth a guardian for? Does the Kernish soul simply not lust for freedom and Deermocracy hard enough? Why were the Jarzoni left with only the church of Pure Light to protect them? Couldn't you guys have put in a little bit of an appearance, especially considering that without being lent a hand they ended up with a relatively oppressive henotheistic faith taking over the country and pushing heavy social conformity. Maybe if they'd gotten a little deer help they wouldn't dislike you guys so much, forest friends. The sidebar just makes everyone look worse. Let's compare it to what it is on the surface: There are simply more stories you can tell about government and the nature of government and legitimacy with proper Deermocracy rather than the sidebar version. Because using a genuinely fantastical form of government is using fantasy to tell a hypothetical story and examine those things. What do you think these changes would do to governance, especially when people can and do still fall and redeem themselves and change and get weathered or seasoned by age and experience? What does it do to peoples' trust in government when they can be reasonably assured that the Magistrate coming to collect the taxes has an actual sense of civic duty and responsibility and isn't a tax farmer? How do those who do get corrupted find ways to use this trust and general reputation of good governance to hide? Does this create an incentive for Nobles to handle these sorts of incidents quietly? Or does the general character of the civil service lead to heavier accountability and transparency? You can make many different arguments for many different interpretations, and using the 'a magic force is mostly able to determine who will do okay in these important positions' baseline gets you more of that rather than having to pretend this is a matter of the soul of the nation displaying its wisdom by picking good kings. We don't have to explain it. It can just be a fantastical thing, this is a fantasy setting. Why did it only help Aldis? They're the ones who prayed for a magic deer. And obviously it's got limited power; it couldn't be everywhere at once. The attacks into Kern were thwarted by the mountains being full of murder yetis, not by magic spells that the Deer could render people immune to. Anyway that's a long way of getting to the actual government. And I like the government! Like I said, thinking about why people follow the Deer's chosen and the ups and downs of Deermocracy is really fun for me. The other advantage of purely fantastical Deermocracy is it leaves a lot more room to not think about the nature of government if you don't want to and your game isn't about that. I think it's a fun topic to explore. But you can also use it as a good reason you're not a bunch of oppressive assholes for having fancy clothes and being called Lady Octavia of the Eastern Reaches. Nobles are constructed to be one of the default adventurer types in Aldis. Nobles and their friends/assistants/entourage. This is because the Aldin government is constructed in a way that it doesn't make PCs jerks for being agents of the state, because most PCs are agents of the state in a default campaign. We've gone over the Sovereign, but there's more to do about Nobles. And about the fact that the Sovereign is not an absolute monarch. I mean, no monarch ever has been; the people carrying out their orders have always had agency, complex webs of sociological entanglement and state power aside. But the Aldin Sovereign doesn't try to be, either. Aldin Nobles take steps not to allow their positions to be used to entrench themselves, though I'm not sure how effective they are in practice. A Noble is never positioned to rule the provinces, counties, or towns of their birth. They are always moved to administer elsewhere. They are appointed centrally, often from people who began a career as a Traveling Noble. Traveling Nobles are PCs/wandering magistrates. Much of the country is relatively sparsely populated, so traveling nobles are appointed to go around and deliver mail and messages, try court cases, investigate crimes and corruption cases, collect taxes, distribute aid money, etc. Again, this is one of the default positions of a PC: A young traveling noble of Aldis who is scampering around the countryside doing business and righting wrongs. This is a good thing to have around! Regional nobles rule towns, cities, provinces, and counties. The Noble Council directly advises the Sovereign and votes on policy, with the Sovereign breaking any ties in the assembly. The Sovereign's personal Council is made of 3 people chosen by other Councils. Whenever the Sovereign attempts to decree something, the Sovereign's Council has a say in the matter, and if all 3 vote against them they can vote the Sovereign down. However, if the Sovereign has at least one of them behind them, they get their way. It's a 4 person body with 5 votes, 2 of them being the Sovereign. Jaellin is trying to repair her relations with the Nobility and not look like a tyrant and so currently prefers to enact policies only if she gets 2 out of the 3 Councilors to vote with her, as a conciliatory measure. The Guild Council wasn't well liked when it was created under Rikin, because its members haven't undergone the magic stick boop, but Queen Hulja coming up from a Guild Councilor did a lot to grant it more legitimacy. The Guild Council acts as a mixture of a popular assembly, an economic advisory commission, and a national labor board. They're charged with preventing overt monopolism and trusts, maintaining the kingdom's minimum wages for urban workers (Aldis has a minimum wage, why wouldn't you expect this?), and trying to represent the interests of skilled craftspeople. Aldis relies on skilled craftspeople and an apprentice-journeyman-master structure, and so the country having powerful guilds and those guilds having some real say in government is hardly unusual. Rhydan also have their own special interests lobbying group that is not part of the government officially, but is made up of magical cats and horses (primarily) who will stare at you disapprovingly if they think you're a dick, which can be politically ruinous. Despite not being officially part of the government, the 'Rhydan Council' traditionally picks one of the members of the Sovereign's 3 person council. Usually a cat. The Guild Council elects another, and the Noble Council the 3rd. Again, only the Guild and Noble Councils are actually officially part of the government, but the magic forest friends made the scepter and so people are happy enough to give them one of the seats. And so that's the basic structure. Aldis's government is very heavily focused on putting people who've been through civil service exams and training and an ethics boop in positions where they'll work their way up after a few years as a wandering lawyer and agent of the state. Not everyone does a term as a wandering noble, of course; some people are just appointed out of the box. And remember, anyone can become a noble in the 2 year choosing ceremony. And with a public education system, people from many walks of life are capable. The real limiter is you have to travel to the capital, which can be a very long walk for a poorer character. There are still older, wealthier, more powerful families who often get their children into the Nobility (And really, sending them to places other than 'the place of their birth' is not entirely going to guard against these cliques becoming powerblocs) and it's generally easier to become a Noble the closer you live to the city of Aldis, but you still have a wide variety of walks of life represented in the civil service. Plus, again, 'wandering magistrate who solves crimes and helps with problems' being your default PC group is a great move for an adventure game, so I'm fine with them structuring the government partly around the kinds of stories the game will produce. Just toss out the THE DEER IS DEMOCRACY sidebar (especially as it equates that with being 'the manifestation of the arcane potential of all people of good intent') and Aldis's government is set for you to either explore ideas of legitimacy and consent of the governed and also magic deer, or to just say 'it works fine' and get back to wearing a fancy cloak and nice boots while solving wizard crimes, the most exciting kind of crimes there are. There are naturally all kinds of courtly orders and knightly groups you can join, plus the dashing good guy secret agents of the Sovereign's Finest for people who want those sorts of adventures. It's good for providing lots for PCs to do with the game's idea that PCs are usually legitimate agents of a mostly decent state. Next Time: Culture, Gender, and Education
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Apr 20, 2021 16:32
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Epicurius posted:This might be too "evil murder death psycho" for you, but in Alan Dean Foster's "The Damned" trilogy, humanity is one of the few species which is psychologically capable of fighting in combat (which makes us really useful for the galactic federation which discovers us, as they're under attack from theocratic psychic giant space squids). John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldanata is also like that but with a lot more
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Apr 20, 2021 17:38
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldanata is also like that but with a lot more You've just described every John Ringo book ever. That's the series that has a book where the SS are the good guys, right?
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Apr 20, 2021 17:42
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Epicurius posted:You've just described every John Ringo book ever. That's the series that has a book where the SS are the good guys, right? Sadly, yes. But Tom Kratman is mainly responsible for 'Watch on the Rhine' and Kratman is a nasty piece of poo poo.
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Apr 20, 2021 18:25
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Sadly, yes. But Tom Kratman is mainly responsible for 'Watch on the Rhine' and Kratman is a nasty piece of poo poo.
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Apr 20, 2021 18:29
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As the old words of the internet have said, "Oh John Ringo No!"
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Apr 20, 2021 19:28
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Epicurius posted:This might be too "evil murder death psycho" for you, but in Alan Dean Foster's "The Damned" trilogy, humanity is one of the few species which is psychologically capable of fighting in combat (which makes us really useful for the galactic federation which discovers us, as they're under attack from theocratic psychic giant space squids).
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Apr 20, 2021 19:31
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While on this digression, I don't suppose anyone might recommend military sci-fi that is not... fascist adjacent? I absolutely adore the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. I don't suppose you know anything like that? Military sci-fi that actually likes liberalism, democracy, and/or humanism?
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Apr 20, 2021 21:50
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kommy5 posted:While on this digression, I don't suppose anyone might recommend military sci-fi that is not... fascist adjacent? I absolutely adore the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. I don't suppose you know anything like that? Military sci-fi that actually likes liberalism, democracy, and/or humanism? I've had decent luck with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books.
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Apr 20, 2021 21:59
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David Drake.
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Apr 20, 2021 22:01
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kommy5 posted:While on this digression, I don't suppose anyone might recommend military sci-fi that is not... fascist adjacent? I absolutely adore the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. I don't suppose you know anything like that? Military sci-fi that actually likes liberalism, democracy, and/or humanism? I suppose in some sense this gets at the other reason I don't like the Deer Sidebar. If they want Deermocracy to be actual Democracy just make it democracy and make a case for democratic government, don't dress it up with a magic deer and the idea that someday perhaps they'll understand they've always been a democracy and do away with the superficial trappings of calling it a Kingdom. Making a case for democracy is good! Otherwise, it's more fun to use the setup here to examine what people following the deer can say about government.
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Apr 20, 2021 22:02
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Nessus posted:I want to see one of these drat settings with aliens or similar give humans some weird niche thing instead of centering them. They can still have humans be prominent but have them be notorious for their environmental tolerance or ranged-weapon accuracy or something, rather than just directly reifying the author's personal beliefs about, and pessimism/optimism regarding, the Human Condition.
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Apr 20, 2021 23:01
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Night10194 posted:I suppose in some sense this gets at the other reason I don't like the Deer Sidebar. If they want Deermocracy to be actual Democracy just make it democracy and make a case for democratic government, don't dress it up with a magic deer and the idea that someday perhaps they'll understand they've always been a democracy and do away with the superficial trappings of calling it a Kingdom. Making a case for democracy is good! Otherwise, it's more fun to use the setup here to examine what people following the deer can say about government. I mean you can keep it a kingdom even, plenty of democratic kingdoms out there   
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Apr 20, 2021 23:08
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Zereth posted:If we compare humans to other animals on earth, IIRC we have crazy endurance and ability to recover from injury. Extreme long-term endurance, hyperactive scar tissue and recovery, precision throwing skills (even compared to other primates), great sense of balance, and a bonding instinct on overdrive. There's a few others like innate empathy beyond most animals and intelligence, but those can be safely assumed to be prerequisites for any spacefaring species
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Apr 20, 2021 23:11
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Halloween Jack posted:David Drake. Seconding this, Drake does MilSF but doesn't revel in it to an ugly degree.
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Apr 20, 2021 23:32
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Epicurius posted:This might be too "evil murder death psycho" for you, but in Alan Dean Foster's "The Damned" trilogy, humanity is one of the few species which is psychologically capable of fighting in combat (which makes us really useful for the galactic federation which discovers us, as they're under attack from theocratic psychic giant space squids).
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Apr 20, 2021 23:44
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feedmegin posted:I mean you can keep it a kingdom even, plenty of democratic kingdoms out there Yeah, a constitutional monarchy wouldn't be an awful idea. Or go the Warhammer Fantasy route of Elector Counts and an elected Emperor.
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Apr 20, 2021 23:55
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Loxbourne posted:Seconding this, Drake does MilSF but doesn't revel in it to an ugly degree. Drake, unlike most of the ghoulish warhawks that make up most Milscifi authors, actually saw war. He was drafted out of college to serve as Intelligence with the 11th ACR in Vietnam, and that deeply affected him. It shows in his work, too. Especially in the Hammer's Slammers stories, where no-one ever really benefits from hiring the Slammers, war is portrayed as ugly, and the Slammers tend to be deeply scarred men and women form the constant combat they see. To shorten that, here's a quote from Drake himself: "The use of force is always an answer to problems. Whether or not it's a satisfactory answer depends on a number of things, not least the personality of the person making the determination. Force isn't an attractive answer, though. I would not be true to myself or to the people I served with in 1970 if I did not make that realization clear." Fivemarks fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Apr 21, 2021 |
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Apr 21, 2021 00:01
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Asterite34 posted:Hm, what would be the bonuses and maluses of human beings in a space opera setting? Advantage on ranged weapons? Exceptional long-distance endurance? Decent but not spectacular agility compared to arboreal cephalopods or whatever? We're probably relatively slow compared to any quadrupeds, and likely can't lift as much raw weight. I could see a setting where humans breed, gestate and mature rapidly compared to other cultures out in the universe and can gain some reasonable intelligence and experience despite being short-lived, otherwise we're physically...acceptable with the right equipment and weapons. Like, send off a few of them in colony troop transports with a bunch of food, water, and oxygen, and we can produce entire invasion forces by the end of the journey. Loxbourne posted:Seconding this, Drake does MilSF but doesn't revel in it to an ugly degree. Drake was an intelligence enlisted personnel with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam. IIRC, he wrote "Hammer's Slammers" as a way to work out some stuff he encountered there.
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Apr 21, 2021 00:05
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Young Freud posted:I could see a setting where humans breed, gestate and mature rapidly compared to other cultures out in the universe and can gain some reasonable intelligence and experience despite being short-lived, otherwise we're physically...acceptable with the right equipment and weapons. Like, send off a few of them in colony troop transports with a bunch of food, water, and oxygen, and we can produce entire invasion forces by the end of the journey.
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Apr 21, 2021 00:12
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  Equipment & Ships is our next major section for outfitting our Hero and seeing what kinds of services they can pay for in the lands of the Whale Road. There’s no unified currency in this region, so wealth is an abstracted measure of coins, jewelry, trade goods, and other such sundries represented in Pounds, Shilling, and Pences. 1 Pound is equal to 40 Shillings, and 1 Shilling is equal to 6 Pences, so 240 Pences equal a Pound. Before going into this section further, Beowulf adds a new mini-system of Gifts and Burdens for equipment, ships, and creatures (both Followers and monsters/NPCs). Basically Gifts are positive qualities, Burdens are negative, and both Gifts and Burdens are referred to as ‘tags’ in terms of mechanical descriptors. Some are inherent aspects of a creature or object and cannot be rid of, but others can be added over the course of play from training and good fortune or from damage and other negative circumstances. Equipment and Ships with Gifts often command a fair price and/or the use of a sufficiently skilled craftsperson, while Burdens can decrease the value of an item for sale if a buyer is willing to risk their negative qualities. For weapons and armor, the fancy accoutrements of plate armor, greatswords, crossbows, and other metal-intensive and advanced pieces of gear are not available. We have new lists of era-appropriate wargear, including helmets as their own entry and two new shields who have their own special properties which are useful in combat: Cone-Boss Shields can be used to bash enemies,* while Metal-Rimmed Shields have a ring of iron which makes them Robust.** For helmets there’s a typical +1 AC that you can start out with, but there’s also a fancy Sutton Hoo style helmet with a facemask that grants +2 AC as well as the Robust Gift (but also the Noisy Burden which imposes disadvantage on Stealth checks). On that note, quite a few pieces of equipment have new Properties that can be invoked in combat: weapons with the Hooked property can disarm a foe on a critical hit in addition to their regular effects, while Splintering Weapons can destroy a shield or helmet on a critical hit. *but only with the use of the Bashing Strike feat which limits its usability for most builds. **can spend inspiration to negate a Critical Hit or Splintering Strike. For armor, most of it are varying degrees of mail, ranging from the humble Weaponshirt (basically an undergarment gambeson) to various layers of protective mail. It’s not difficult to get a decent AC with the right choice in starting gear: 16 at the bare minimum for a 10 DEX character with a mail corslet (13 + DEX AC), an iron-ribbed helm (+1 AC), and shield (+2 AC), or 14 if they choose to fight with a two-handed or dual-wielding weapons. A Hero who doesn’t mind being loud and obvious can get the heaviest armor, a knee-length mail hauberk (16 AC) and aforementioned helmet which gives them a 17 AC. A Hero who prioritizes defense first and foremost can have a 19 AC by adding a shield to these last two entries, and at 2nd level raise that to a 20 or even 21 at 2nd level with the shield-and-spear fighting style and/or the +2 AC face-mask helmet. As one can guess, helmets and shields are more important to make up for the lack of ‘heavy’ armor in the setting. Weapons tend to be mostly-wooden shafts and grips tipped with metal at the end, ranging from daggers to all manner of spears and axes. Some cultural groups are particularly renowned for certain weapons, such as the Seaxes of the Saxons (daggers and shortswords basically) or the deadly two-handed Dane Axes which are considered the province of the strongest warriors and madmen who forgo the use of shields. Swords are much like longswords and have no particularly high damage dice (d8) or special properties, but are considered mighty status symbols for their expense in material and the fact that they have no “tool” purposes like a dagger or hunting bow. This positions them as weapons solely for battle. Afterwards we have various lists of common prices for various objects, services, and fines and wergilds for improper and criminal activity. Northern Europe at this time lacks the elaborate trade networks, banks, and bazaars of more established empires, so most communities exchange goods via labor, barter, and the social trust of favors and oaths. They can still place the value of worth of an object, but in the case of smaller communities and poor villagers coins and luxury items can only go so far and are typically reserved for ring-giving. Heroes who earned the trust and goodwill of a local community and ruler will be given required tools, gifts, and repairs to their ship provided that they can return the favor with services rendered (such as killing a Monster troubling their kingdom or village).  Ships are so special they get a section of their own. Vessels common on the Whale Road are Nordic-style longships which are relatively small and exposed to the elements. In short, there are two Ship Types, the small and mobile Long-sided Ship and the slower yet sturdy Wide-beamed Ship. Long-sided ships can sail quicker to destinations as well as being better able to flee from pirates and other threats at sea (its Speed value), but Wide-beamed Ships can sail for longer periods before requiring resupply (its Range value). The size of a crew (who are not Followers but considered their own kind of hireling for the Hero) is 12 along with 6 passengers; any more can affect the Speed and Range of a ship barring the appropriate Gifts, and said ship can even suffer the Encumbered Burden as a result. Crew wages and Ship upkeep and repairs costs Pounds, with more expense in the case of damage-related Burdens to the ship. A Ship’s Burdens tend to reflect things such as Damaged impairing its functions, Encumbered slowing down its Speed and Range, and Missing Crew which also further decrease Speed and Range. Gifts include things such as a Musician who can improve a crew’s timing and morale in the form of +1 Speed, Extra Stores that increase Range, Reinforced that grants advantage on Constitution saves, and other such things. There’s a short but sweet section on Ship Combat, detailing special actions for maneuvering and and setting up Boarding actions, as well as what Burdens are placed on a ship based on the damage it sustains. Typically speaking most enemies don’t seek to directly damage ships; pirates and raiders want to kill the crew but also obtain a seaworthy vessel and its cargo, while monsters of the hungering variety would rather bite through inches of metal containing succulent manflesh than several feet of wood that may or may not be guarding edible things. Even when the Hero loses a ship, it is always a temporary setback rather than a permanent loss or ‘game over’ condition. Basic ships without many Gifts can be easily obtained narrative-wise, but higher-quality vessels require an investment of favors and gifts costing a minimum of 20-30 Pounds. As such ship loss in Beowulf is more akin to the removal of upgrades; still a punishment, but a financial setback more than anything.  Our last major section of this chapter presents us with 27 new Heroic Feats! The vast majority require some sort of prerequisite: 13 are alignment-specific, 11 require a certain ability score of 13 or higher, and 3 have no prerequisites at all! I won’t cover every feat here, instead selecting a few of the more interesting ones. Armour of Faith is Church-specific and grants +1 to a mental ability score along with advantage on INT/WIS/CHA saves vs magical effects; Cunning Movement is akin to the Rogue’s 2nd level class feature in letting the Hero take Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a bonus action along with +1 to Dexterity; Feral Brutality has a host of features, including +1 Strength, advantage on initiative rolls, can two-weapon fight with non-light weapons, and do 1d6 damage with unarmed strikes; the Church-specific Divine Strike, Old Ways-specific Words of Doom, and alignment-irrelevant Foe Mockery are similar in that they grant Prayer/Doom/Mockery Points which refresh every long rest. Prayer and Doom points can be spent to add bonus damage in proficiency and convert the total damage into radiant or force respectively, while Mockery Points subtract from a creature’s d20 roll equal to the Hero’s Charisma modifier as a reaction; Hordebreaker grants +1 to Charisma and imposes the Coward condition on nearby allies on a failed saving throw when the Hero kills an opponent 1/long rest. The Coward condition causes enemies from then on to become Defeated when the next ally of theirs is witnessed being killed; Natural Communion and Remembered Secret are both Old Ways-specific, granting a respective +1 WIS or +1 INT and grant abilities which allow the user to ascertain knowledge in a supernatural way. In Natural Communion’s case the Hero can ask local spirits about the area, while for Remembered Secret they can choose every time they select this feat whether they can sense nearby magical items and creatures, learn the tongue of a broad type of beast, or can automatically stabilize a dying creature with a touch; Skill Adept is one of the prerequisite-free ones, allowing the Hero to choose 3 skills, granting proficiency in ones in which they previously weren’t proficient and doubling the proficiency bonus for skills in which they were; Warrior’s Rest grants +1 CHA and grants a Healing Pool equal to 5 times CHA modifier: during a short rest the Hero can sing a song, restoring HP of themselves and/or an ally on a 1 for 1 basis, and 10 HP worth to remove a condition (the Healing Pool refreshes every long rest). Warrior’s Rest sounds like it’s tailor-made to help Followers, right? Well the feature is a bit limited in use in this regard. Although we’ll cover them in the next Chapter, Followers don’t really have full stat blocks; they make Death Saving Throws, but they don’t have Hit Points or Hit Die, and in the sample adventure in this book allied NPCs with full stat blocks are converted into Followers upon joining the Hero which seems to be the implied default expectation in Beowulf: Age of Heroes. Sort of like how bosses in a video game RPG don’t have their original abilities or Hit Points once they join the party. As such it limits Warrior’s Rest a bit, making it primarily a “self-healing” type of thing in terms of HP restoration. Our chapter ends with discussion on campaigns that have More Than One Player. A short list of suggestions for balance concerns is given, such as getting rid of or having fewer Followers depending on group size. There’s also talk on using the Hero class as-is, with 8 + CON modifier HP at 1st level instead, or allowing the use of ‘outsider classes.’ In regards to development and playtesting, the authors assert that a Hero with a full set of Followers has an equivalent power to a typical 4-person party in 5e, saying that using this playstyle in non-Beowulf adventures should be seamless. The only concern is at higher levels when using parties with two Heroes or less than full Followers, due to the amount of monsters with Legendary and/or Lair actions along with the typical discussion of miscellaneous factors beyond just the build of the PCs. I should note that Followers are not akin to fully-classed PCs in typical D&D games and modules, although I’ll cover that properly in the next chapter. Thoughts So Far: The new equipment and feats are flavorful and neat, and the use of Gifts and Burdens to further customize gear is an interesting one, although I don’t much care for the ‘critical hit’ only ones given how rare those kind of rolls are. Although Followers will be covered later, most Beowulf players will have no shortage of action economy choices for their Actions, Reactions, and Bonus Actions between the Hero’s various class and subclass features and the Feats. This is nice on account that for many PCs the latter two often end up an afterthought for certain builds. Join us next time as we cover Part 3: Followers!
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Apr 21, 2021 00:33
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Nessus posted:That one sounds cool. For my reasoning here: I don't mind if humans are presented as good warriors, but that reason should be a reason other than "MAN is the only animal that COMMITS MURDER" or similar. Like if it's "humans can and will climb anything and even human children will throw rocks at things - and hit them pretty well at ten body lengths - and are therefore hellish to fight" that's rooted in observable things and also changes perspective, because those things seem so natural to us - yet why should they? Why wouldn't other intelligent life forms just build on single levels, or with big ramps if they must do multi-level constructions?
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Apr 21, 2021 00:52
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It's pretty much a matter of picking one human trait and saying "ok humans are the only ones with that trait". Adrenaline is one possibility. Or the highly-sophisticated immune system. Or the way the brain rewires itself to accept any input and output. Or recreational drugs. Or eyes.
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Apr 21, 2021 00:57
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Loxbourne posted:Is that the one where the rumour is the humans can fly, but actually what we can do is climb and it's just been vastly inflated by gossip? Popping into this bit without reading the previous bits, but did this game (whatever it is) making as a point of setting lore the idea from D&D that the Thief is the only one to survive some encounters because the Thief is the only one who can climb a loving wall?
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Apr 21, 2021 01:00
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Good old Daneaxe. Never goes out of style.
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Apr 21, 2021 01:02
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So, I really like the art of BEOWULF 5e so far, but I have to point out that the quotations on the art splash pages we've seen aren't translations of Beowulf, they're just written to read like lines from Beowulf. Which is cool but not as cool as quoting Beowulf would be.
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Apr 21, 2021 01:28
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The problem is that a lot of the things that make humans unique compared to other creatures on Earth (Bipedal gait, persistence hunting, opposable thumbs, playfulness, social systems) are also the things that might be the precursor for intelligence and advance tools in aliens. So it's entirely reasonable to posit that every alien has a similar layout to us - like carcinization, intelligence selects for hominization in intelligent aliens.
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Apr 21, 2021 01:48
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Asterite34 posted:I've had decent luck with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books. Halloween Jack posted:David Drake. Seconding both. Bujold's a great author who just happens to have written MilSf while Drake's a veteran and who is quite willing to put down on paper why war sucks and write from the perspective of someone caught in the mess. The other person I'd add in is Elizabeth Moon.
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Apr 21, 2021 02:11
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Tibalt posted:The problem is that a lot of the things that make humans unique compared to other creatures on Earth (Bipedal gait, persistence hunting, opposable thumbs, playfulness, social systems) are also the things that might be the precursor for intelligence and advance tools in aliens. So it's entirely reasonable to posit that every alien has a similar layout to us - like carcinization, intelligence selects for hominization in intelligent aliens. Also, carcinization seems far more likely to be the norm. Can our soft hides, however quickly they heal, truly join the Pile?
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Apr 21, 2021 02:32
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does animorphs count as milsf
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Apr 21, 2021 03:49
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Halloween Jack posted:David Drake. nthing drake. He is legit. Leraika posted:does animorphs count as milsf I don't know, but the same guy who did the book covers has done some other art that you may have seen.
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Apr 21, 2021 03:53
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Nessus posted:Of this list, "tool use, playfulness, social systems" seems quite likely - bipedal gait and persistence hunting perhaps less so. Bipedal gait is one of the simplest ways to free up some limbs for specialization in tool use. You might possibly get it with other limb configurations but there's an argument to be made for bipedal gait and dextrous hands really being an outgrowth of brachiation, and then it comes down to whether tetrapods are just more likely than other bodyplans to win out in the briachiating big animal niche.
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Apr 21, 2021 03:56
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Tibalt posted:The problem is that a lot of the things that make humans unique compared to other creatures on Earth (Bipedal gait, persistence hunting, opposable thumbs, playfulness, social systems) are also the things that might be the precursor for intelligence and advance tools in aliens. So it's entirely reasonable to posit that every alien has a similar layout to us - like carcinization, intelligence selects for hominization in intelligent aliens. Persistence hunting and the required endurance levels don't seem necessary to Do A Civilization, though, maybe Early Primitive SpaceSpecies members concentrated on ambush and basic traps instead.
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Apr 21, 2021 03:57
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Zereth posted:The persistence hunting and bipedal gait, maybe not, but i'm pretty sure a spacefaring species which isn't an artificial uplift would need at least two dedicated manipulator limbs, advanced social systems so people can specialize in various things, etc, yeah. You'd need to concentrate on traits which aren't part of the "you must be THIS advanced-civilization-capable to ride" entry requirements. (edit: also I realize this seems kinda anthropocentric)
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Apr 21, 2021 05:28
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Leraika posted:does animorphs count as milsf So, as somebody who's doing a read along of Animorphs in the Book Barn (Stop by, we have fun), I think it does. It's a series about a guerilla war against alien invaders, and some common themes in the series are the physical and psychological cost of war on the combatants and the the question of what actions are morally permissible to stop the enemy.
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Apr 21, 2021 05:39
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Also depends on environment, I recall some article or another that octopus' knowledge base is limited by their short life spans and mostly solitary living conditions. As their environments collapse, they're forced to live closer to one another and more information exchange is taking place. And now I'm remembering select bits of the Crysis series, which i probably shouldn't, but squids piloting biped power armor was neat.
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Apr 21, 2021 05:40
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