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I love me a good ol' fantasy map, but I do wish the Solasta team hired an artist to work one up. A Side Quest: The Victorian Quickstart ‘Séance on St. James Street’ So, as most of you have probably picked up on, I’m running a Victorian-era Mage game. In the lull between wrapping A Morbid Initiation and my contract expiring, we’ve had a new Victorian Mage drop:  Who doesn’t love a good quickstart? They clarify confusing rules, give a good sample as to flavour, and they’re short enough to digest in a couple of hours. To that end, I thought we might take a look at it before I resume the Masquerade of the Red Death, then kick off Book 2 of the Victorian Age Vampire trilogy. I may also just move right in to reviewing the Victorian Mage core book, which, spoilers: I actually quite strongly dislike. Its definitely on the agenda, the main question is just when. Part of why I dislike it is relevant here, so I’ll repeat it. The Victorian period is long – 1837 to 1901 or ~1820 to ~1914 depending on how you count – and diverse. It’s a time period that saw the 1848 Revolutions, the perfect backdrop to a Mage game; the American Civil War, extreme expansion of the colonial frontier, and the Wild West; the New Zealand wars and the expansion of colonization of Australia; more mass colonial expansion just like, everywhere; immense upheavals in China; and multiple cultural and political revolutions in England alone. But unfortunately, almost everything ‘Victorian’ is set squarely instead in a kind of genericized 1888-as-eternal-pastiche period, and this quickstart falls into the same trap. It takes us to London, without a year, but as we’ll see: this is late Victorian - quite intrinsically so. But now, on with the show! Cheesy Fiction and Introductions Every good White Wolf book starts with badly executed fiction, and this one is no different. Before we dive into the actual fiction, let’s take a look at the fonts.  I hate this. Its nice to have actually readable body of text fonts, but Algerian in fake gold is an intensely tacky look – and not a period one. Its giving ‘year six student project’ vibes. The actual body text font is fine but nothing more. This is something of a trend with Victorian Mage – the actual aesthetic is confused about how to look Victorian (witness the front cover art for instance.) I may be being overly harsh – does this scream ‘Victorian period’ to you lot reading this? Have I just burned out after spending days on end reading period periodicals? In any case, the actual fiction is workmanlike but it gets the job done. Our mysterious instigator is dying, and has one final task to perform – inviting a cabal of Traditionalists to his house to set things right. His work in supporting colonial enterprises did the Order of Reason’s job for them, and he is, appropriately, filled with regrets. He carks it, and his invitations magically appear in the pockets of the pregen PCs, each of whom get a brief paragraph-and-a-half of intro text that is… painfully generic. Like so:  Please, no guv’nors… Naturally, he has to go to Whitechapel. We won’t know it until later but this is Mr. Sakharam, an Indian gentleman educated in England and, of course, a homosexual. So, what is it he wants in Whitechapel? Unclear, because establishments that will take on a foreign gentleman are to be found in the West End as well, as are more than a few notorious gay brothels and houses, to say nothing of the rather infamous possibilities afforded by the Clubland scene. There are similar little snippets for the others – an Ottoman mystic who loves to feed cats and leads a simple life; a furious Chinese pirate who leads a holy crusade against Opium smugglers (and nevermind the mass domestication by the late 1880s…); a Swedish shaman who isn’t sure what’s real and isn’t; a Black Tongva cowboy gunslinger in California whose existence is immediately threatened by being in a sundown town; and an aristocratic lady who ties to work closely with her tenant farmers. Then a final cut to tell us the date of the events to come – Halloween, of course, - courtesy of the exhausted widow. Two pages of prose that say very little. Its not the worst offender in White Wolf history by far, but the decision to give each PC their own microsection means there isn’t enough space to focus on anything truly interesting. The art we then get, though, is killer. Totally unrelated to anything we just read, but awesome.  Love it. Don’t necessarily like the style, but it has The Vibe. It’d have an even stronger vibe if it were for, say, an 1848 scenario and was tied to the actual story! The intro of a quickstart is more important than it seems, since a lot of players never actually read the corebook but might be persuaded to glance at a free quickstart pdf. Unfortunately, White Wolf and OPP don’t do free quickstarts any more, so you’re shelling out 5 bucks for this one. So, we hand them our money and get some bad fiction we skip. What’s our actual hook in the intro? What’s the first real thing we see?  Not great, not terrible – goes with the art they’ve picked fine, but not with the cover art or the Séance angle. From here, it goes on to explain the war is between the Order of Reason, firmly painted as being dastardly imperialists, and the Traditions as the heroic, scruffy resistance. Not a terrible hook in 2024, but maybe a little on the nose with sentences like these:  None of the pregens are white men, so we’re clearly going for a theme here. I bang on about it a bit in my Victorian trilogy review, but as always, it’s a fine balance to strike and this feels a little too clumsy for me. Fortunately, the text acknowledges that the Traditions are also responsible for imperialism and that this is a big part of why they’re tearing themselves apart, so we aren’t simplifying it to plain good v evil dynamics just yet.  More art follows, and I don’t care for this piece. There’s nothing distinctly Victorian about it, and there really needs to be because this is our header for the section on the Victorian Age as an era of wonder and iniquity. The rundown is brief at half a page, and boils down to one sentiment: ‘What if there was more than foggy Victorian London? What if empire was fuelled by expanding machines of cruelty?’ Love it. Love that sentiment. Love the idea of looking at all the other places. Really wish this loving chronicle did that! After a brief tease of ‘maybe there’s more than drawing rooms and fog-soaked alleyways’, we move away from the tiny section on the Victorian era and to an introduction to the Traditions in the chronicle, an overview of the structure of the book (with the obligatory ‘Storyteller’s eyes only!’ notice for the Chronicle details), and a final reiteration of the invitation sent out by Mrs. Rebecca Wright, the widow of the dead Hermetic Adept. The snapshots for the Traditions are worth sharing:  These are all… perfectly fine, but flat. And that’s fine, for a quickstart document. That said, the choice not to include a Hermetic or a Chorister is a let-down, as we were pointedly informed that those two traditions are all aboard the colonialism train and it would have created a great source of tension. Having two characters whose political views should drive them apart be forced to rely on each other for survival is a classic device for a reason, and one that could have been used to great effect in the chronicle to come. At this point, we have the usual quickstart section on simplified rules. For Mage, that still spans out to 16 of the 88 pages, though a couple of those are just art panels. I won’t go into in them in detail since Mage is well known enough there’s nothing esoteric here, and only minor variation in Victorian Mage from regular M20. There are a few rules that are stated much more clearly than in the core book – how Quintessence works, being a big one – but mostly, we get the same charts and examples from either the M20 core or the Victorian Mage book. Other people have already covered M20, but I have the Victorian era book on the list for later and when I do that, I’ll give my read on the mechanics. The key exception to be aware of is that there is no Coincidental or Vulgar Magic. Instead, there are Elegant, Uncanny, and Catastrophic Magic. None of these relate to whether there are mortal witnesses, but rather whether the local paradigm can support a given act – an approach that’s been building since M20. That comes into play later in events. There’s also a little list that’s legitimately great to have:  This is perhaps the most elegant summary you could hope for in a quickstart, though it has some obvious flaws – Technology as Forces and not shared with Matter, Necromancy under Entropy and not Spirit, leaving Infernalism as just Infernal... Still: This is a great little feature, except that its buried halfway in the drat section on magic, which itself is listed after all the standard dice mechanics (good, appropriate), combat (why), and damage and healing (double why!) This is a quickstart, which is half ‘play our game! Buy all the books!’, so frontloading ‘here is the cool poo poo you can do’ is a good idea! In any case, it then flows into a quick overview of common effects and what you need to pull them off, including 5 dot effects no one is working in the sample Chronicle as they all max out at 3 dots. To my editorial mind, that’s a mistake – you can use those extra lines on something else and mention off-handedly that you can find the full deets on that in the corebook for that ‘you’ve played the demo, now play the whole game’ vibe. And speaking of leaving things out… You’ll have to come back next time for the actual story, ‘Séance on St. James Street’, complete with diagrams and a casual jaunt into the Shadowlands.
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Jun 9, 2024 11:42
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Loomer posted:
More 1920s Circus imo, although I find a lot of lazy American fiction will kinda conflate the two.
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Jun 9, 2024 15:07
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Opsikion Themed posted:7th Sea (Second Edition): Land of 1000 Nations King Philip's War is a fascinating and oft-overlooked event in Early American history. There's a very good YouTube series on it by Atun-Shei Films (the Checkmate Lincolnites channel). There are also a number of videos on the development of the Puritan philosophy and life in the early colonies in general, so if this period is of interest, absolutely check them out. I will link the King Philip's War playlist, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwCiRao53J1zC_zUgjuB7hIVreGthh9nF And specifically, this video on the indigenous weapons (e. not just the guns) and tactics of the war for two reasons. First, that's the kind of stuff directly relevant to an RPG in this setting, and secondly because the guest expert is awesome and should be in many more videos of all kinds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMXKXoA1_gQ mllaneza fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jun 9, 2024 |
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Jun 9, 2024 17:37
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My main takeway from Victorian Age Mage was that by focusing on such a long historical period and broadening its vision to look at the entire planet, it kind of stopped being a Victorian Age supplement in any meaningful sense and was more of an "Entire Nineteenth Century Mage".
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Jun 9, 2024 19:19
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I've always been in weird position on Solasta. I appreciate all the work and effort that went into making the game and it's custom content but it's dedication to 5e rules made actually playing the game tedious and boring as hell.
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Jun 9, 2024 22:45
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  Chapter 3: Caer Cyflen Now that we covered the big picture of Solasta, we’re going to zoom in on the locations of pertinent interest to PCs for the next two chapters. The first is Caer Cyflen, capital city of the Principality of Masgarth. The book even notes that it was designed to be the starting area/central hub for campaigns, given its prominence to the adventuring economy. Caer Cyflen has its origins as a meager fishing and trading settlement at the meeting point of the Soiltafyn and Galisca Rivers. During the days of the Manacalon Empire it was turned into a fortified way station to shepherd troops and goods around, which explains its teleportation network. Like many other settlements it suffered greatly during the Cataclysm, and its ruler instituted martial law in order to maintain control of what territory they had. But humans and other refugees were allowed to settle in pre-designated sections of the land, and helped in reconstruction efforts. In particular, horses aided in establishing trade and contact at greater distances, while various clerics of Einar and Arun helped reduce casualties. Various duchies came into contact with and then under control of Caer Cyflen, turning the land into the Principality of Masgarth as it’s known today. The land’s standard of living gradually improved over the centuries, especially from reactivating the teleportation gate. It has also sponsored multiple expeditions into the former imperial heartland, helping grow the local adventuring subculture. The monarchy is a high elven family known as the Silverflowers, and the current ruler is Princess* Ceiwad Silverflower. During her tenure, she managed to re-establish contact with various isolated civilizations in the Marches, most notably Copparan. Realizing they had a lot to lose from invasion due to their favored economic status and position near the Badlands, the Princess established the Legacy Council to pacify the Eastern Kingdoms’ desire to profit off their findings. *As to why not Queen, it’s a more popular term by the general populace and it since stuck as official designation. Caer Cyflen’s major districts are separated by walls, with three bridges spanning the rivers giving primary access to the city itself. The Palace Complex is where the Princess and those in close contact with her live and do business, and is protected by heavy security in the form of well-trained guards and multiple magical effects along with invitation-only authorization. The Inner City is right outside the walls of the Palace Complex, originally a neighborhood built for human priests and is home to many temples of the various deities. It is also a hub for adventurers, being home to the popular inn known as the Gravekeep’s Cask as well as as shops specializing in gear and magical items. Three of the major factions of the Legacy Council have offices here: the Scavengers’ Guild, the Circle of Danantar, and the Tower of Knowledge. The Noble Quarter is where the nobility unconnected to the Princess and various wealthy merchants live. Several Ducal Palaces are located here, serving as temporary residences for the rulers of Masgarth’s duchies for when business takes them to the capital. The Garrison is a neighborhood that was originally dedicated to the Manacalon Empire’s soldiers, and it still has a similar function today along with having the city’s major navy that regulates and taxes river-bound trade. The Merchants’ Quarters are a series of business-focused neighborhoods dedicated to all manner of trade and industries, while the Harbor and Fish Town are Caer Cyflen’s poor districts where people can find all manner of illicit goods and services.  The Legacy Council is a multinational alliance of five organizations representing different political groups, plus a sixth one with honorary observer status. In addition to acting as a goodwill gesture on Masgarth’s part, it allows Princess Silverflower the opportunity to have better access to the various representatives of foreign governments. Each organization sponsors and makes deals with adventurers operating out of the Badlands, offering rewards and favors in exchange for their discoveries. The Council is capable of prosecuting adventurers who act independently and without the blessing of said organizations for the crime of smuggling. In practice, such smugglers most often take the form of adventurers hired by factions paying for exclusive access to knowledge or artifacts, as all findings purchased from expeditions must be reported to the Council. Sometimes the Council as a whole hires adventurers rather than specific groups, usually when multiple factions have something to gain. Each organization has its own preference for adventuring types, the types of treasure they’re interested in, and the kinds of quests and services they offer to PCs. In the video game, this took the form of granting access to exclusive vendors once you earned enough favor with them, which took the form of a points system based on treasures donated to them. Sadly there is no such robust system in the sourcebook, instead being guidelines for the DM. We also have brief write-ups on important NPCs and their relations with specific factions, but I won’t be covering those and instead focus on the organizations in broad terms. The Church of Einar serves as the neutral party on the Council, for it is popular across the continent (save for the New Empire) and thus doesn’t owe allegiance to any one government. They are your typical “good-aligned church” and like PCs who conduct themselves honorably and fight the forces of evil. Their goods and services specialize in healing, divine magic, and martial weapons and armor. The Arcanaeum is the representative of the New Empire. Members of the Silent Whisper are present among them in disguise as various academic occupations. They are most interested in archeological findings of the Manacalon Empire, even more so if they’re given to agents without the rest of the Council knowing about it, and give preferential treatment to high elves over other races. Their primary goods and services center around arcane magic, particularly scrolls. The Circle of Danantar is the representative of the Principality of Masgarth that originated as a military institution training spellblades (OGL equivalent to Eldritch Knights) in the Manacalon Empire. They are tasked with securing discovered routes into the Marches and Badlands as well as watching over dungeons recently cleared by adventurers. Favor can be earned with them by undertaking tasks ensuring the safety of Masgarth’s citizens and are interested in items and research that are helpful to gish types. Their goods and services are the jack-of-all-trades of the factions, being a broad variety but with gear of interest to aforementioned warrior-mages. The Guild of Antiquarians are representatives of the Snow Alliance, a broad network of scholarly adventurers that act as a decentralized university. They are primarily interested in powerful magic items from the Badlands, and actual knowledge takes a secondary priority. Their goods and services specialize in academic resources, divination magic, and translating texts. The Tower of Knowledge are representatives of Gallivan, and are similar to the Antiquarians in being primarily an academic institution albeit they have a serious rivalry with the Arcaneum. Engaging in skullduggery against that faction is another way to gain their favor along with engaging in covert smuggling for their exclusive use. They also give favors to those who can make scientific and artistic breakthroughs regarding the Manacalon Empire, although the book notes that this is something adventurers don’t typically do since it’s not their area of expertise. The Scavengers’ Guild is an observer member on the Council and maintains neutral relations with everyone else. This is due to the fact that their services are of use to everyone and they don’t discriminate when it comes to patrons. Given that ruins in the Badlands are sprawling places, your typical 3-6 adventuring party cannot hope to even scratch the surface of archeological findings as well as treasure in general. Whenever a group of adventurers clears out a place of dangers, they can report the area to the Scavengers who will undertake extensive clean-up operations to find and transport everything of value back to civilization. In exchange, the Scavengers take 20% of the proceeds from such treasures sold, and have access to spells and equipment that can transport particularly large and cumbersome items like furniture and broken pieces of architecture. PCs can still gain favor with Scavengers by making sure that cleared-out dungeons are safe of hazards, and leave enough sellable items for them to profit off of as opposed to virtually empty ruins with hardly anything of value remaining. Favor can provide better share of proceeds, being given first dibs on items they sell at auctions, and new information pertaining to otherwise cleared-out dungeons. Thoughts: I like the concept of having various factions for PCs to do business with, and can turn overwise bland “we just sell everything for X amount of gold” shopping trips into more involved cases of political intrigue. Exclusive goods and services for treating one or a few groups as favored clients gives more substantial rewards than mere gold pieces, which tend to be a flavor thing in 5th Edition past a certain level. Barring the Antiquarians and Tower, the factions have little overlap in this regard, so most players should immediately be able to figure out the trade-offs: “okay the Arcaneum are racist jerks, but they may be our best shot at getting more spells for the party wizard.”  Chapter 4: the Badlands The shortest chapter in the book, the Badlands stands in stark contrast to Caer Cyflen in that it doesn't have specific named locations so much as general trends. This is mostly to preserve the feel of danger and mystery, of how the Cataclysm turned this region into a place full of eldritch horrors where reality itself is no longer following a consistent set of rules. The region is the stuff of nightmares, full of monsters unseen anywhere else in Solasta along with entire cities’ worth of ruins still home to high elven treasures and magical wards. Being encircled by treacherous mountains, the Badlands remained largely cut off from most of the world before the discovery of the Copperhead Road as a reliable mountain pass. In broad terms, the terrain of the Badlands should be just as much a threat as random encounters with monsters, and magical weirdness should let the DM run their imagination as to what can be found: valleys filled with mist made from foul vapors, old Manacalon or Timarian ruins that have been literally turned upside down and whose structures are jutting into the earth, entire graveyards’ worth of dragon skeletons, and mobile forests whose plants are able and willing to attack travelers. The disruption of mana still persists in places, so arcane magic can be harder to cast such as requiring higher level spell slots for normal effects, or in some cases easier when it comes to concentrated pockets. There are no explicit rules modifications for this last part, but there is a small worldwide setting house rule buried in this section: post-Cataclysm, arcane spells of 9th level are impossible to cast, for the world’s mana supply hasn’t recovered to the point that such magic can be used. There is one sort of consistency when it comes to Badlands terrain in the form of Manacalon Ruins. Manacalon cities tend to have a lot of towers and other tall vertical buildings. Given that much of their economy and architecture was reliant on arcane magic working properly, most of their facilities are unable to be practically repurposed or used save as crude shelters by monsters and wildlife. Forts were rectangular institutions with practical grid layouts, and often served as equivalent to small towns in having a sizable civilian population providing goods and services so that the soldiers could focus first and foremost on warfare and defense. Each fort was also home to a teleportation circle, allowing for rapid transport of troops across the Empire. The vast majority of such circles are inactive or may end up leading into more dangerous places, and research is still being done on how to get them up and running. That being said, in the video game such circles served as a convenient “fast travel” system for moving quickly between locations, so I can see a DM using this as a method of convenience and reward for PCs. As the Empire was a slave society, the feudal style of small rural villages with town councils and commoners who may only occasionally see their barons was unknown. Instead, most rural Imperial population centers were sprawling slave plantations where a ruling high elf family was tasked with managing large groups of slaves growing crops. The slaves lived in squalid quarters that differed little from barns for animals, while overseers and armed guards lived in barracks and houses. The ruins of such plantations in modern times vary widely: sometimes all that remains are dilapidated buildings with parched soil, while others may have now-wild crops and cattle transformed by magical energies into their own alien ecosystems. Last but not least, centers of magical learning often took place in towers, and the high elves spared no expense in making architecturally impossible designs so as to show off their arcane skills. Stairs were the most rudimentary method of transportation, with levitation and teleportation magic being preferred means of vertical transport. Summoned extraplanar beings, constructs, and undead were favored methods of security, as their immortal natures allowed for them to serve as guardians far beyond their original summoner’s lifespan. Many such creatures still stand guard today. We get one more “buried in the text” change to setting assumptions mentioned here: in addition to cutting off 9th level arcane spells, the Cataclysm also cut off contact to the outer planes, so extraplanar beings cannot be summoned to the world. Any in Solasta have since existed before the Cataclysm, and as such are one of the “virtually extinct/nonexistent” monsters of the setting in the same vein as lycanthropes are in Eberron or orcs are in Dark Sun. The chapter wraps up with discussion on volcanoes and lava fields, but sadly there’s not much interesting to say about them that you can’t already imagine: hot, dangerous places where it’s hard to find potable water and food. The most interesting feature is that lava tubes are expansive networks home to orcs and other monsters, and are the most reliable method of safe travel and food sources in such regions. Thoughts: Personally speaking this chapter is a bit too brief for my liking. While it does a good job in setting up a broad-picture view of the Badlands, I would’ve liked to have more specific examples of terrain and dungeons. Thoughts So Far: I don’t really have any strong feelings on these two chapters as a whole. I do understand their specific regional focus, but Caer Cyflen feels rather skeletal as a described population center. Much of the meatier parts of the text focus on the Legacy Council’s factions instead, which is my favorite part. Due to this, the city feels more of a springboard to having exciting adventures elsewhere rather than a location in which to have adventures. Which then makes the section on the Badlands feel all the more odd, as it’s shorter than the city chapter. Join us next time as we cover new options for PCs in Chapter 5: the Peoples of Solasta and Chapter 6: Classes!
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Jun 10, 2024 01:19
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Rand Brittain posted:My main takeway from Victorian Age Mage was that by focusing on such a long historical period and broadening its vision to look at the entire planet, it kind of stopped being a Victorian Age supplement in any meaningful sense and was more of an "Entire Nineteenth Century Mage". This is a fair read on it. Throw in that despite its attempt to broaden out further, its still fundamentally centred on the 1880s and the Late Victorian, and you've got the real mess of the Order of Reason chapter, which is all but useless for anything prior to the 1851 reorganization. That's the real object of my annoyance - Victorian Mage doesn't want to commit to either position, so it assumes the default should be c. 1880s/generic 1880s Vibed London, but then provides little useful to actually running the game in that subperiod or any of the more interesting ones it introduces in passing then immediately fucks off from. Victorian Vampire does the same thing of going 'Victorian defaults to the 1880s', but by not splitting its focus and by being unafraid to commit it sells it much better. Plus, to be honest, a Vampire (and Promethean, for that matter) game screams for the year of Leather Apron in a way Mage doesn't so the 'Victorian = 1888' fits it like a glove, complete with the reality of a hidden rot having taken hold on the structures of power that will doom this entire grand empire to collapse within a mortal lifetime that you don't so much have in an 1830s game. This makes me think that the ideal approach might have been a Dark Eras style compilation - a little shared section on rules and bridging subperiods, followed by narrowly focused subperiods - La Belle Époque of the Hollow Ones, 1848 and the Birth of the Future (and the shocking return of the Craftmasons), Euthanatos: Opium War Edition, etc.
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Jun 10, 2024 02:25
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Loomer posted:A Side Quest: The Victorian Quickstart ‘Séance on St. James Street’ Part Two: The Séance And we’re back – and right away, launching into another tedious aesthetic critique.  This is a perfect example of what I mean about aesthetic confusion. The colour combo of Victorian Mage is gold and purple, which in and of itself rules – purple is a hot colour in the Victorian, especially once they invent mauveine in the 1850s. The problem is that we have three elements that create visual discord: the textile background being so rumpled, the disconnect in stylization between the text and its frame, and the poor attempt at gold work. The first of these is an M20 thing generally, and we can compare it to one of the regular M20 pieces:  Two big differences leap out: One, the M20 version has a more coherent vibe because it isn’t fancy pattern on fancy pattern, which creates a lot of extra visual noise in the VM20 approach. The second is that the M20 one keeps the gold to mostly the same tonal range, while the VM20 one doesn’t – and that’s a problem, because it produces disharmony. We have two gold tones, neither of which stylistically match either in colour and shine, or in the amount of curling ironwork. The font itself is King Edward Basic Inline, a distinctly neo-Victorian one (but one I don’t mind – it isn’t quite period correct, but its got a whole Vibe that you can look at and go ‘oh, cool, Victoriana’ with in a way Algerian doesn’t (honestly, all the Burntilldead fonts are really nicely executed, even if I wouldn’t use half of them for anything.) Since I’m harping on about fonts, I thought I’d grab my collection of Victoriana and pull a few at random.    So – its maybe a tiny touch ornate, but well within what we might expect, particularly later in the period. The big offender really is the gold not matching – nor having a suitably textured feel to match the fabric. It just looks slack in a way that at least matching the ornateness and tone would fix. And sure, there are budget and time constraints, but in that case: just do the text. Just leave it there. Don’t add more visual clutter! The Actual Content Starts Here Ahem. My frustrated graphic designer having been allowed out long enough, let’s move to the content. We’re launched into the backstory of Mr. Ezekiel Wright, our dead man. Solidly English, a mid-ranking aristocrat who used those ties to support the Order of Hermes’s political goals, climbed the ranks, and decided to try and prove the existence of a ‘Grand Unified Theory’ of magic, presumably after talking to some ahl-I-Batin. He then proceeds to spend decades associating with Masters of different traditions and collecting artifacts, including the daughter of one of those masters, his widow, Rebecca Wright. He did the standard Gross Victorian Man thing of educating her then marrying her, and she becomes his chief consor, or assistant. Cue him settling down to finish his work by stripping away all the cruft of the many Paradigms he’s studied. So far, except for the whole ‘marrying his quasi-daughter’ aspect, this is a pretty standard Mage character from earlier editions, where ‘discover and create the unified theory of magic’ was a default progression arc as characters shed their foci and converge on the near inevitable Purple Paradigm. In this story, though, it’s a mark of sneering imperial bigotry, which he’s repeatedly warned off of it by dozens of magi, eventually only realizing his horrible mistake when one Lord William de Vere invited him to join the newly reorganized Technocratic Union, as his work had done so much to destroy ‘baseless superstition’. Cue the face turn as he gets to work destroying his life’s work before it can do more harm, only to die before he can finish it. Enter the PCs, invited by his widow, to finish the job. On its own, its not a bad hook for a starter chronicle, and it could go a lot of places and tackle a lot of things. Unfortunately, the actual execution of it is… A little all over the shop, honestly. At this point, we get our first storyteller’s note:  Okay, so we’re going to be looking at morality quite a bit here – and boy, we really are. The tricky thing here is that its not quite right, as the mistake wasn’t a lack of listening, but a lack of respect. To accumulate the lore he did, he had to do a very great deal of the former and not a lot of the latter. So in that sense, we’re already not off to a great start in how this chronicle is going to handle some rather tricky questions. The book suggests two preliminary steps before proceeding. ‘Scene 0’ is to read about the characters before you let people pick, with a list of resources provided at the end of the adventure for each one. The idea is that because everyone will probably be playing someone quite different to them, they might need help to avoid playing to stereotypes. Okay, fair enough, though a quickstart that needs homework is a harder sell. Big problem, though: there aren’t any resources provided. Not one. This goes beyond a bare editing issue since we’re explicitly warning players and STs that hey, this is going to be complicated and you don’t want to be problematic in how you tackle the gay Indian man or the angry Chinese drug crusader or the clueless German aristocrat, so do your homework, while expressly and deliberately avoiding any ‘safe’ options and then providing absolutely zero pointers on what to look for and how to assess it. Scene 0.5 is distributing the characters, and advice on if you’re missing a player for a character (likely, since you’ll need a table of 7 to fill them all out and have a separate ST), which are the standard ‘pull those scenes’, ‘roll with it and make the players sort it out’, and ‘have fun running two characters yourself, ST!’ options. However its distributed, Scene 1 is them all getting their letters and a magic token to help them get to London. The letter is what you’d expect – ‘we’ve never met, you’re mages and I’m not, come help, drat it, on the appointed day the token will teleport you to me.’ We know Ezekiel personally picked out the five and created their tokens before he carked it, so they must have some connection, right? Nah, not really, and that brings us to another of those missed opportunities. This is an introductory story about putting old wrongs to rights as an old man raced to do the right thing while he could, but failed. At least a couple of the PCs should have a connection to this complex and poisonous legacy – a grandfather killed helping Ezekiel, a family treasure stolen, even a positive debt or a social connection for the German aristocrat. We’re already saying to the players ‘here, pick one of these characters’, so we aren’t that worried about agency in backstory creation, and we want to explore the complex intersections of colonialism, patriarchy, sexuality, and the experience of subalterns, so our dead white man who stirs it up should have more to recommend him than being… Dead. But alas, not as such. Before we move on, lets meet our six starter PCs: Nur  A gender fluid Ahl-i-Batin and Alevi mystic from the Ottoman Empire, trained from birth in anticipation of awakening. Nur’s young, leads a simple ascetic life, and wants harmony – but not at the cost of injustice. Nur will also never engage in violence under any circumstances, and has a Blessing background that makes sure they always have food and shelter. Nur’s also our first clue as to dates, and in a way that gives us some of their backstory:  Sympathetic! The horrors of war changed them forever. But we start to run into some stumbling blocks again. Date-wise, this lets us get a sense of when the story is set – after Crimea by some way, and subsequent conflicts in Algeria and Egypt. Crimea was 1853, so the Algerian conflict is presumably the Kabyle revolt, and the Egyptian the Urabi. This implies Nur awoke in the 1850s, but its still only been ‘a handful of years’ and Nur is just 19 – incompatible with the Egyptian angle. There’s a lot of these issues in this book, but we also get the slightly inconvenient angle of not engaging with the Imperialism of the Ottomans, despite Nur being Alevi. Nur has 3 dots in Correspondence and Prime, and speaks English, Arabic, and Turkish. Jingyi  I do like the character art they’ve gone with. Jingyi is the Akashayana of the group. Born the daughter of fishers and expected to marry and birth more fishers, she instead ran off to join a pirate queen who sailed into the harbour one day at the head of a vast fleet – we can assume this is based on Zheng Yi Sao, but can’t actually be Zheng Yi Sao as she stopped working in 1810 and Jingyi is just 24 years old. Jingyi proceeds to become a vicious pirate, Awakens, gets to be captain of her own ship, and decides she hates the West for pouring Opium into China and turning medicine into poison. She was there during the First Opium War (we know this contextually, as the focus is on the British in the treaty ports), disgusted by the loss of the war, and has since continued killing opium traders without trial. Conceptually, I quite like this angle, but we again hit some timeline issues. Assuming Jingyi was a prodigy who had her own ship by 16, she’d have been born about 1823 – so she’d be well past 24. If we bump it to the 2nd Opium War, she’d have been born c. 1840-1842, but then for Nur to be 19 and have experienced Crimea as anything other than a literal child, she can’t be 24 even if we discount the subsequent events that broke Nur’s heart. Even if Jingyi didn’t awaken until, say, 21 or 22 – same problem. She’s also just… Chinese, and this is a book that takes pains to distinguish between different ethnic groups in China, so its doubly odd that she’s not Cantonese or Tanka or even Manchu. She also only speaks Mandarin, English, and Spanish, which seems like a serious disadvantage in her line of work – and we won’t even touch on the issue of which Mandarin. Jingyi seeks harmony, but secretly lusts to punish Britain for its crimes against China. She has no dots in Do (but we can take that as a Quickstart issue), 2 dots in Entropy, 3 dots in Life, and 1 dot in Time. Generally built to be a combat monster. But her Focus is a great example of the, uh… Problems with the M20 approach to focus and paradigm:  This is a mess, and you can see how forced it feels. Nur’s was comparatively cohesive and boiled down to ‘folk mysticism plus Islam with the name removed’, but Jingyi has Chinese medicine and not guns as proof that tech is the solution – even those swords, which she explicitly took as a trophy, would fit neatly under Might makes Right: but crucially, neither tells us how the gently caress she does magic. She’s also armed with a cavalry sabre (??) and a Collier flintlock revolver, which were very, very rare but which is an artifact of it being included in the Victorian sourcebook. They were a work of art, and again: a much better fit for ‘tech has all the answers’! Sakharam  Seriously, I really love these portraits. They aren’t perfect but they Vibe. Sakharam is the Chakravanti/Euthanatos of the PCs. He’s an Indian man who moved to England as a boy and was educated at a classic boarding school, where he promptly fell in love with another boy who ignored him. There’s a lot of pathos to mine there – see The Poisoned Bowl by Hickson. The reason he was in England and getting that expensive education is that his father was a beloved servant of one Colonel Edgar Hawthorn, and his mother of Edgar’s wife, Agatha. When Edgar and Sakharam’s father were mysteriously assassinated (gosh, I wonder who by), they all moved back to England, where Agatha treated him as her son. Cue the education and the gay longing, which turns to drug and alcohol abuse to numb the pain and a number of gay affairs. When she carked it, Sakharam and his mother inherited the lot, but oh dear: it turns out Colonel Hawthorne was systematically looting antiquities, aided by Sakharam’s father, and selling them in Europe. Eventually, the Chakravanti in London discover and train him, and bingo bango, you got yourself a ‘Gentleman Assassin’ who is restoring the stolen artifacts one kill at a time. He’s already got at least two – one, Baron Denham, who orchestrated his father’s death. Two, Douglas Abbington, his school bully, who he… seduced and killed in bed. Jesus christ, Sak, you’re the one gay and brown character in this and you’re murdering men via sex – though kudos for the rizz to get there. Those two dots of Seduction on his sheet are a little alarming in this context. His next target is one James Clifford, a smuggler associated with the Hawthorne ring. Problems immediately appear, though I don’t mind Sakharam conceptually.  Quite what it means to end the ‘cycle’ of Imperialism is unclear to me, but let’s drill down for a second: the problem isn’t that the Order is responsible for the paradigm, which it very much isn’t in many areas. The problem is that imperialism in itself causes cruelty and exploitation. This isn’t something Sakharam gets pulled up on in the story either, and its part of my unease with what seems to be quite a simplistic approach to some very difficult material. Sakharam is also 24, though his backstory could work over quite a broad period, and unlike Jingyi isn’t a total combat monster. He has 2 dots in Entropy, Life, and Prime, and speaks Hindi, English, and Persian for some reason – which is a shame, because his backstory notes he was a keen student of languages at school, so we should also expect Latin and Ancient Greek in there. Birgit  Birgit was raised by her grandparents during the post-Napoleonic slump in Sweden. This could mean anything from 1816 to the late 1830s. When she was ten, she started having weird dreams and her grandmother, Helga, initiated her as a shaman. A few years later, that turned into full initiation as a novice Dreamspeaker, and the shocking reveal that Birgit is actually Sami, a descendant of a tribe scattered by Magi centuries ago who raided their shamans for knowledge, and as a result, she feels a deep antipathy to the Order for their attacks on tribal peoples everywhere. Her goals are to discover what became of her Sami relations and to forge a network against the Order of Reason. So – pretty typical ‘wait, I’m Indigenous? And a wizard?’ stuff. Birgit has one dot of Correspondence, 2 of Life, and 3 of Spirit, and a shedload of dreaming related backgrounds and skills. She’s 22 and speaks only English and Swedish. Mendoza  Mendoza’s bringing that smoulder, good lord. He’s the Ecstatic of the bunch, and the son of a Tongva woman and a Black man from the South, though whether he was emancipated or autoliberated is unclear – but since he taught Mendoza songs he sang ‘working in the fields down South’, he was presumably enslaved at one point. Born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Mendoza grew up to be a Black Native cowboy, gunslinger, hustler, and general son of a gun, haunted by the spectre of racism everywhere he goes. When he awoke, he joined the Sahajiya because it seemed to make the most sense (which is odd, as I’d say your classic gunslinger has more in common with the Chakravanti), and then things take a… turn.  Sigh. I love Mendoza as a character and might even lift him wholesale with some period adjustments, but gently caress me. At the bottom there, we’re getting a whole paragraph about this tragic mixed-race kid who doesn’t know what he is (gently caress off, goddamn), and above… The ‘crazy wisdom’ nonsense that has sweet gently caress all to do with ‘crazy wisdom’, as shittily considered as it was in the first place. Anyway. He’s a tough bastard with a heart of gold, a rugged pragmatist who just wants a good home and people he likes around him, and with 4 dots in charisma and 3 dots in appearance, is clearly a romance novel character. He has two dots of Matter, three dots of Mind, and one dot of Spirit (a rather odd set up for an Ecstatic!) and speaks English, Spanish, Gullah (presumably his father’s influence) and Tongva. He’s 30 years old and packs a Stetson and a Heavy Revolver, which plunge us right into timeline woes. First, the hat: Iconic, recognizable piece of Western apparel… that only exists after ’65. Ditto that revolver, which in the rules exists only from the 1870s onwards – so we’re presumably not looking at a nearly 1860s set-up for the Séance, unless Mendoza is a time traveller. These could also all be mistakes, but are part of my thinking that the overall tendency here is to two things: first, to forget how long the Victorian period actually is, and second, to slip back into the assumption that Victorian = Late Victorian. Lady Hildegarde Clifton  I don’t know what the gently caress is going on with her neckwear. Hildegarde is a German Verbena aristocrat, and the oldest of the bunch at 58. She grew up as the daughter of wealthy but middle class German investors, met Lord Clifton in Berlin, and got hitched and moved to England. She was a wild child who wanted to spend her time in nature, not learning to be a lady, so they were glad to be rid of her. In Merry Old England, she met a cabal of Verbena who used the lands of the estate, Awoke, and was initiated, at which point things take a dark turn. They used her influence to arrange for ‘hunting accidents’ on the Clifton Estate of some agents of the Order of Reason, including Lord Clifton. Cue a schism in the coven, with Hildegarde wanting to take a more moderate tack until she went home and saw ‘the devastation brought on by… Imperialistic war machines’ and was fully radicalized and now leads a cult dedicated to fighting against ‘the very concept of Imperialism’, with her two sons Richard and Sean as her smokescreen, both old enough to be expected to run the family. So: A militant German witch in her old age. Two dots of Forces, one of Life, two of Mind, and one of Prime, and she speaks English and German. Blessedly, her backstory is loose timeline wise and poses no great issues, though the deforestation of the Black Forest puts that bit somewhere in the mid-century. So, those are our six, all carefully crafted. They’re pretty good, to be honest – but all of them could easily have had a connection to the Wrights to make it personal. Sakharam’s father could have sold him some of the artifacts that are now a problem – or worse, Wright could have been the mastermind of the entire ring. Hildegarde could have been a social peer – indeed, almost certainly was – with all the complexities that creates. Swap Mendoza to be Mohave or Rebecca to be Tongva, and he can be a cousin called on for aid, and acutely feel Rebecca’s complex identity in his bones. Birgit can be tracing an artifact stolen in the raid that destroyed her family’s ties to their people - in fact, she is, but it's never talked about in the text! Nur may have saved – or failed to save – the Wright’s son when he was wounded in Crimea or Egypt. Wright may have gotten his money from the opium trade, giving Jingyi a reason to want to burn his entire house down and gently caress his unfinished business. All of their backstories suggest a natural connection – but for some reason, there aren’t any to give them a burning reason to answer that letter. They’re just a bunch the Wrights arbitrarily threw at the problem, who said 'yeah sure I got nothing better to do this Halloween. It's not like I'm waging a war against opium dealers and every day's delay is another cargo landed for the wicked devils to poison my people with, or stalking an artifact smuggler, or actively leading a cult of the poor and needy to find food and shelter each day.' In any case, we can now move on to Scene 2, where everyone arrives just before Dusk on All Hallow’s Eve. Its quite light on description of the place, which is unfortunate as a stately townhouse is quite large and could play a pivotal role in events to come – even a quick ‘Storyteller, watch an episode or two of Upstairs Downstairs to get the vibe’ would be helpful. The focus is instead on the PCs meeting the Widow Wright, a proper Victorian woman in widow’s weeds, though she’s dark skinned and has faded facial tattoos that Mendoza, our cowboy, can identify as a sign she’s Mohave. She was brought to Wright’s house as a child by her father, a ‘powerful Disparate healer’, who left her there. Ezekiel ‘saw to it she was given a top tier education, in both the mystical and the mundane’, then married her when she became an adult. She won’t tell anyone her Mohave name. Cue our second storyteller’s note:  You may notice something here: where the gently caress is her father in this picture. This whole note has a Weird Vibe to it in how it interacts with the ‘kick imperialism in the teeth’ angle of the book. In any case, the Widow Wright fills the PCs in about Ezekiel and explains she’s only a diviner and can’t solve the issue stopping her from finishing her husband’s work: the house is haunted by ghosts who all have ideas about what should be done. Ergo, she needs real mages to do a Séance (let’s hope at least one has a couple of dots in Spirit, eh?) but we also hit another point of inconsistency. Ezekiel, in our intro fiction, was picking these magi out. Now, its Rebecca who’s chosen them all after his death. It can be reconciled, but the text should specify in the event of a new storyteller. Scene 3 is divided into 6 subscenes. The core of it is the Séance, which involves them all gathering at Midnight for Rebecca to host and lead the affair via a scrying orb, inviting the spirits to make themselves known and manifest, which they all do, politely, more-or-less one at a time. So… She didn’t need them to communicate with the Dead, then. The PCs don’t have to do anything Mage-y to activate the séance. In fact, there’s nothing in this story that requires the PCs to actually solve: No need for their magic, which is a shortcut for two scenes, but not a necessary solve. The first of the 6 is Aldhild, the wraith of a woman executed for witchcraft. This is the Verbena module.  Aldhild was burned at the stake in the mid-1600s as a witch, because we have to get our Burning Times in, don’t we? She was no mystic, just a midwife and local leader who resisted conscription and was punished. Wright captured her, somehow, for some purpose – the book doesn’t bother to specify, nor is she tied to any particular artifact unless he was hanging on to her medicine bag. Her task is for Lady Clifton, who has to do a bunch of fetch quests for three communities in the living world, none of whom are connected to anyone including Aldhild. The first is in a brothel ‘just across the Thames’, which is not a helpful description for a home in St. James, where the ‘small yet busty blonde’ proprietress is a hedge witch who leads them as a coven and needs them to get her medicine to induce abortions and treat the pox. There’s also a girl too pregnant for an abortion who needs an adoption for her baby. (No, Brucato didn’t write this quickstart. You can tell because none of these women are sexually precocious fifteen year old barefoot runaways wise beyond their years.) Buying the medicine will cost a dot of Resources, though that seems like it might give new players a wonky idea of how the background works. The next coven is in… Algeria! A coven of wise old crones need help because a young member, head over heels, has told a travelling playwright all their secrets, which he’ll use to write an epic opera, forever tainting their craft with cheap exploitative commercialism. They need to silence the playwright. The suggestions are that Hildegarde could frame him for a scandal, ruining his life, or Sakharam could ‘get personally involved’ and kill the poor bastard. Buried at the end: the Ghosts will accept a promise from the playwright as good satisfaction. The third is a solitary woman who, after being raised in the Old Ways in upstate New York, has accidentally become a Mormon and moved to Utah and is now desperate to flee, and will go anywhere. You may note that Algeria and Utah are both quite a way, but don’t worry: the book says to just use correspondence or a telegram. The last is a coven of three old African women in an unknown place, the last of their craft. We don’t get told where they are, but the solution to their problem of a dying knowledge is to send them the baby from the brothel or Helen the Ex-Mormon, or for the characters to either come themselves or find Correspondence to find lost descendants of the three and send them ‘home’. So – a mixed bag, none of them especially strong, and several of them seriously straining what a character with three dots in correspondence can pull off in a single night. The main reward is Aldhilde not interfering with Rebecca’s work, though how she was doing so is unclear. The second is a combination of a fetter – Aldhilde’s medical tools – with practical knowledge that counts as a 2-dot Wonder, giving +2 Arete to Life magic spells, which is, uh… Pretty enormous for a Verbena, actually! This intro story is very big on some pretty hectic rewards, as we’ll see. The second subscene is the ghost of Cleonise, an Acadian musician who needs help finding what happened to her children after the great Acadian deportation. This one is for Mendoza, who should ‘have much in common’ with her due to the mixed heritage they both share. Mendoza – or at least one of the others – has to cure her of her obsession with her own pain through a show of empathy, then play her fiddle (a fetter that Wright acquired to give her joy (requiring them to restore crumbling sheet music first), and then trace her descendants down, which it suggests is a Correspondence 2, Life 1 effect – but one that’ll need quite a few successes, which it doesn’t say. They’re all in New Orleans, and she wants them to have the violin, with a suggestion Mendoza can bugger off there and find a community if the cabal isn’t cutting it. His reward for all this: a dot of Spirit. See what I mean about heavy rewards? It isn’t really clear how or why Cleonise was interfering in undoing Wright’s hoard, and this also isn’t something you could only pull off with magic. Third we have the Dreamspeakers, with the wraith of an old Sami shaman, Cuivi. He’s Birgit’s great-great-grandfather, and needs her to undergo a dream quest so she can connect to her ancestry. Given the, uh, fraughtness of claiming, you can imagine my face: its not a bad bit of narrative, but gently caress me if we wouldn’t seriously benefit from those resources they forgot to include. Cue the drums and hallucinogens, and they all warp into a dream space Cuivi is holding open for them, where they’re met by Helga’s astral projection as the dream guide, who’s there to give ‘em the subquests. First, fight a stallo – a cannibal giant of Sami myth, which is too tough to actually fight and needs instead to be outsmarted by manipulating the dream. Then there’s a shift to a starving village haunted by a horseman of pestilence, and the party has to find a sun goddess and her daughter and bring back the butter of the sun, which requires Past Life and Dream from Birgit. Get some butter, conduct an unspecified ritual, the sungoddess awakens and hunger is defeated. Yay! The final scene is real dark after this whimsy, though. Remember how Birgit’s family was torn apart by violent intervention? Well, Helga makes her relieve the memory of it. Swedish soldiers attack her ancestral village, kill all the men, steal all the children, and we aren’t told what happens to the women but I'm going to guess it probably isn't great. Birgit and the party aren’t allowed to save anyone, just to make a single symbolic choice: Save the reindeer, which says she loves life and gives her a dot of Resources (sure okay); save the Noiadi’s tent, saying she values tradition above all else and giving her a dot of Mentor; save the Children, which says she preserves culture above all else and gives a dot of Past Lives. Done, with a shock reveal: Helga’s died while Birgit is away, which was obvious the second she turned up as a dream guide. The reward is the ritual drum they used to enter the space, a 1-dot wonder that makes her good at drumming. Up to subscene four: The Akashayana. This time we get to deal with two wraiths, in a feud over a library of texts. Spirit One is Zhang ‘Frankie’ Fen, a Han Chinese gentleman of the Qing period (with his queue intact) who died of fever and was a minor bureaucrat in Guangzhou. He worked closely with a British aristocrat, Sir Roger Ferwick, who named him Frankie and was an early weeb and proto-anthropologist. Together they travelled and collected things, eventually documenting a bunch of Mosuo – a very small minority with a unique culture - practices via interviews. Fen is rather proud of his life’s work. Spirit Two is Du Zhi, a long dead Mosuo matriarch who died of old age and would like the Mosuo books in the library destroyed, and this is the central conflict. Du Zhi was one of the interviewees and now wants the things destroyed because she’s seen what comes of foreigners in China and distrusts the dark art of writing because it lacks context, leading to Zheng and Ferwick’s work being quite mistaken on numerous points. She also wants everyone who deals with her to be drunk, which is Daba custom for rituals like this apparently. Jingyi has sworn off all intoxicants, so we get a nice tension point between her personal beliefs and respect for her elders. Nur is an Alevi and should be fine, but since most people probably aren’t across which strains of Islam are down with a ceremonial shot of the hard stuff, this would be a great note to have in the book, and sadly, its absent. This is your pretty standard debate about the preservation of culture and who has the right to stories. The book gives a few arguments for each side, but they’re really what you’d expect so we won’t cover them. One of the suggested solutions is to have Du Zhi puppet someone so they can use the new phonograph (1877, so another mark on the ‘late Victorian’ side of the ledger) to record her speaking with the full context, but anyone who’s spent five seconds on language and culture preservation knows how that goes, though its paired with the suggestion her wraith could hang around to guard the resulting records. Once the debate is settled via Jingyi having a realization that justice serves harmony and vengeance at once (a statement that, as a legal philosopher, I have questions about…), Rebecca gives Jingyi all the other books in the Chinese library – a 2-Dot Library background. To be blunt – I don’t really care for this subscene. I’m down with the content, but to set it up nearly unsupported is a huge mistake, and its not entirely clear how Jingyi’s epiphany is meant to solve the dilemma. Our fifth subscene is for the Ahl-i-Batin, and comes with a clear relic this time: a bunch of brass plaques stolen from a tomb… ‘but only if the bearer proves worthy’. What follows is an insufferably basic philosophical dialogue. The ghost attached to them is Aydin Sayin, a wise old Sufi who, when he died, had his tomb inscribed with his wisest sayings in the form of magick squares of brass. These were promptly stolen by thieves and sold at market, where Wright bought them. I’ll let the text speak for itself:  What a prick – to too much of a degree, I think. Buying the drat things in the first place was immoral enough. In any case, Sayin would like the squares returned, but he first wants to teach Nur – and this takes the form of a bunch of questions. Are material possessions good? Can we ever be selfless? What even are morals? Is killing okay? Gosh, folks, I hope you’re ready for a thrilling game of Mage where we break out loving Kant to argue with a dead Sufi for four goddamn hours! Once he’s satisfied she’s a serious thinker he gives her the okay to return the squares, and she gets a point of Avatar. I would not run this at my table, for two reasons: One, it is focused almost solely on a single player, and two, asking even one of these questions seriously – and the direction is to roleplay it out, not roll Int + Academics – is enough to write entire libraries on. You aren’t getting away with asking five of them quickly and in a way that doesn’t slow your intro story to an absolute halt. Now, that may be because I’m a philosopher by trade and play with another, a hobbyist occultist with the requisite interest in philosophy, and a law professor, but I honestly can’t imagine any group not getting bogged down here. Our last, and biggest, is for the Chakravanti – and for a confrontation with Wright. Wright’s ghost is in the Shadowlands, which is weird, and the messenger of this is the wraith of an Indian woman from Sivagangai named Nisha. She fought with Nachiyar’s all-female army in the 1780s and died heroically in battle, and has been seething ever since because Wright bought a small painting that belonged to her (a cameo of her lover, Ezhil) and put it on his wall because it was pretty and exotic. Nisha is furious because she’s a spirit as worthy of respect as Aldhild or Zheng Fen, but its not clear Wright even knew she existed, which is blackly comic. She’d like them to come and fight him with her, so she pops open a portal to the Shadowlands, everyone jumps in, meets their lost loved ones (this is a serious suggestion from the book:  It’s not a terrible idea, but it does feel like it might royally gently caress your pacing. Remember, this is all happening in a single night!) They wander along, with Nisha talking to Sakharam about the two things she loves most: sex and death. If you guessed this is an excuse to bring up the hijra, you are correct, which annoys the poo poo out of me because I do not trust the average group to handle third genders with no prep, and rather notably, neither Sakharam nor Nisha are trans or hijra! She also wants to know how he knows who to kill, but doesn’t really call him out on his concept of imperialism.At this point, things take a swerve. Sakharam’s specific encounter is with two people he’s killed, with the suggestion being one he murdered, and one he killed by accident, perhaps during sex – so, the two outlined in his description, except he actively killed both of them. I don’t love the suggestion that Sakharam has a multiple-man body count in his bedroom. In any case, both want to know why they had to die, and if he doesn’t appease them, he gets a Haunted or Enemy flaw in the bargain. Or, you know (and the book doesn’t seem to consider this), they could just goddamn rip the ghosts apart with Entropy and Prime, but hey: its not like giving your PCs combat builds means they’re gonna use them, right? Whatever the outcome, the story moves on to the finale. Wright, the big ending. He’s been taken to the Tower of London for protection from his many enemies, as he is now utterly defenceless without magic. The suggestion is he’ll be extremely easy to destroy with Prime and Forces, and the characters are free to do so. If Rebecca’s there, they share an awkward goodbye. Wright is generally ready to apologize for his crimes, but urges them to still seek unity – a unity of diversity, because ‘true power lies in community, cooperation, and collaboration.’ Jesus loving christ. Then you get to kill him, or leave him to make his way (no suggestions for ‘hey, does anyone want a super-experienced Hermetic mage as a buddy?’, which would be the immediate response of every group I’ve played with), snd go home. For whatever reason, we have no details on what Nisha wants at this crucial junction, on if she changes her mind on seeing him reduced, or even if he apologizes to her for his callousness (or even if just says ‘well what do you expect of a very nice picture, to not hang it on a wall to liven up a drawing room?’) Don’t worry though, we do get told that Nisha rewards Sakharam with two dots of Arcane so he can hide from his victims, and that’s the end of that. Finally, we have the expected suggestion of ‘where nexts’: The cabal can go globetrotting to solve their backgrounds together, or become roving spiritualists, fight a war with the Order of Reason, or go completely mad from the horror and become the villains of a new game. Concluding Remarks So. That was a ride and a half, but not a great one. I think its safe to say that this whole thing is a mess. Running it as intended, for six, is going to take at least four sessions, and the amount of debates and discussions needed to resolve half these issues IC will take you well past dawn and out of your window. Two of the scenarios are almost completely mono-focused, and would be better done as one-on-one scenes. None of them feel particularly consistent, and without the promised references on not falling into stereotypes, half of them are a goddamn minefield. The timeline is inscrutable, the ages don’t add up, and there’s a lot of crucial info missing. But the plus side: Some great character portraits, the pregens are all a good starting place, and it’s the simplest summary of the M20 rules going. I mentioned in post one how I wish this book had actually gone to other places, and there’s no scenario quite like Hildegarde’s that emphasizes why. You need to solve problems for some Algerians about to have some Victor Dumas wannabe gently caress their existence up, African women in either Europe or the Americas who are trying to handle the death of their culture, and a runaway ex-Mormon in Utah… but you have to do it from a drawing room at the heart of London, because the time constraints don’t let you go anywhere or do anything. You have a Black Tongva cowboy who could so easily be the focus of two of these as adventures, but the focal point is instead a white woman - and sure, she's German and now firmly in the marginalized category of an elderly woman, but she's also a goddamn aristocrat, so even from the tack of 'look, we want to look at the marginalized here' it's an... interesting... choice. The bottom line is that there’s a lot of good here, but not enough to outweigh the mistakes (like not putting those drat references in!), the contrivedness, and the general lack of oomf this has as an introduction to the world and the setting. Sure, a given session of Mage might well involve a four hour debate on whether you’re allowed to kill someone – but you don’t need two, and you definitely don’t need that debate to be purely abstract with the ghost of a long-dead philosopher when it’s the first time someone’s played. Let them debate it over the sudden arrival of Lord William de Vere, an incarnation of the Imperialism we’re all here to kick to death instead! Let the Sufi appear midway through to offer some wisdom on it. I also promised a graph, and here it is: Who’s tied to who, and how. There’s also one for the Victorian Age trilogy for when I resume that, with considerably more art.  edit: lmao so many typos and errors Loomer fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jun 10, 2024 |
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Jun 10, 2024 16:17
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I was wondering what they were going to do with all the globetrotting, and unfortunately it just looks like "not give it nearly enough consideration".
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Jun 10, 2024 16:48
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Honestly, the bit I find most annoying is how much time it spends on buzzwords reminding you that the author has the correct politics instead of just making it implicit in the text.
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Jun 10, 2024 16:57
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Rand Brittain posted:Honestly, the bit I find most annoying is how much time it spends on buzzwords reminding you that the author has the correct politics instead of just making it implicit in the text. So very, very much. Reading it I kept gritting my teeth and going 'oh my god' because there was such an easy way to just... do it! Just do the loving politics in the material! Actually do it! Instead we get poo poo like 'I am raising a cult to kill the very concept of Imperialism'. Okay! How! What the gently caress does that even mean - are you going to battle the Umbral Spider of Colonial Exploitation? (If so, awesome, I'm down for that!) Kill Lord Palmerston in a hunting accident? Eat the Queen alive in a blood ritual to the old gods? It felt like marking a first year undergrad paper.
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Jun 10, 2024 17:06
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Frankly a lot of stuff these days (and not just from Onyx Path, but it applies to pretty much everything Onyx Path does lately) is written by people who think subtext is for cowards.
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Jun 10, 2024 17:13
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Also: if any of you are thinking of playing Solasta. Your enjoyment of said game will be entirely reliant on your tolerance of monsters with 60 speed, flight, and the rogue's ability to become immune to opportunity attacks. Because there sure are a lot of them.
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Jun 10, 2024 17:18
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I don't even mind loud, bold text so long as it's not 'in this essay, we will [x]' and then you don't actually do [x]. If this story ended with Wright transforming into the Pale Horseman of Colonialism so Mendoza and Jingyi could shoot him in the face with a cool one liner while Nur, Sakharam and Hildegard are all busy breaking the chains of a bunch of wraiths because liberation extends to the dead, I'd be down. Just give me something, you know?
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Jun 10, 2024 17:18
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Loomer posted:So very, very much. Reading it I kept gritting my teeth and going 'oh my god' because there was such an easy way to just... do it! Just do the loving politics in the material! Actually do it! Instead we get poo poo like 'I am raising a cult to kill the very concept of Imperialism'. Okay! How! What the gently caress does that even mean - are you going to battle the Umbral Spider of Colonial Exploitation? (If so, awesome, I'm down for that!) Kill Lord Palmerston in a hunting accident? Eat the Queen alive in a blood ritual to the old gods? It felt like marking a first year undergrad paper. PITT THE ELDER! Although seriously this feels like how a lot of M20 feels in that they know how much cultural appropriation is going on - arguably to a larger extent than Werewolf and maybe not even that arguably - but can't get rid of it and have it remain recognizably Mage so they try to couch it in social justice terms to soften the sting.
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Jun 10, 2024 17:47
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Dawgstar posted:Although seriously this feels like how a lot of M20 feels in that they know how much cultural appropriation is going on - arguably to a larger extent than Werewolf and maybe not even that arguably - but can't get rid of it and have it remain recognizably Mage so they try to couch it in social justice terms to soften the sting. Somehow it feels even more wretched. Borrowing from a culture because you think it’s cool is at least an authentic emotion. Covering yourself in the signifiers of communities you aren’t a part of and religions you don’t believe in to win arguments that will never matter is like staring into an abyss.
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Jun 10, 2024 19:01
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The beneficiaries of imperialism have no idea how to square it with being a good person, news at 11.
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Jun 10, 2024 20:19
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Regalingualius posted:And how could you forget to include this documentary about piloting a Nelson? I deeply apologize. God, Redline is so good. I need to rewatch it again soon.  Oh no, I'm back. And with another healthy round of MECHS. Today, we're finishing off ISP-N and going into SSC, beginning with the Tortuga!  One could understand where the Caliban came from when they look at the Tortuga. The main difference is that the Tortuga is too big to be focused on killing soft targets. With its bulk, its main focus is instead protecting soft targets from things LIKE the Caliban, which is a real juxtaposition, if you think about it. Either way, the Tortuga is a defensive monster like the Drake, but unlike the Drake, it's focused slightly less on catching bullets for allies, and more on forcing bullets into enemies so that they can't harm allies. Though described as a mid-range frame in its lore blurb, the Tortuga very much is not. It's a CQB mech through and through, gaining bonuses on Reaction attacks. It can be used as Hard Cover like the Drake can, as well. The Tortuga and Drake exist in a venn-diagram. There's a lot of overlap between the two. They're both well armored (though the Drake has more), slow, and not very good at dodging. But the Tortuga has the odd distinction of having a pretty decent Tech Attack Bonus and base Heat Cap, in exchange for having less armor. One could consider it a compromise between absolute defense and attack, though with its 3 speed, the Tortuga has issues getting in to actually attack things, or keeping up with the melee/CQB focused mechs it's supposed to be protecting in the first place.   License I Siege Ram: *stares at Caliban* Mm, yes, this looks like it fits. As mentioned, I had a GMPC who was focused entirely on Ram actions in my campaign, but it was on a different mech from the Caliban. Either way, this is a must have if you want to make a Ramming build, since it lets you add damage beyond that offered by the Juggernaut talent. That 2 Kinetic really adds up when you can Ram as a Free Action several times a turn. Deck-Sweeper Automatic Shotgun: A lot of damage, but Inaccurate. As early as you get it, it can be hard to make it viable. Get ways to gain ACC and you'll be fine. Note that on the Tortuga Frame, one LL away, you can negate the DFF as long as you only use it for Overwatch or other Reactions. License II Daisy Cutter: It's like a Blunderbuss if the blunderbuss had a standard loadout, I guess? It's pretty terrifying to have all that flying out at once, and it's a pretty effective weapon for it. Sadly, you can't load it with random junk like with a blunderbuss, so the two shots are all you get without putting Mech Skills in Engineering or taking other abilities to gain more uses of it. But it makes sense, considering how BEEFY this is. A cone that does 3d6 damage could be absolutely devastating on a group of enemy mechs packed too closely together... or not that closely, given it's Cone 7. Catalytic Hammer: It's a big-rear end hammer with an explosive propelled spike, and that's rad as gently caress! 1d3+5 damage basically guarantees you'll be putting some hurt on an enemy as long as you hit them, and it has a chance to Stun on crits. Not a bad choice, just remember you have to reload your hammer (and think about sharpening its handle while you're at it). Note that as a melee weapon, the Tortuga's Core Power does not actually increase its threat. License III Throughbolt Rounds: An interesting system, but it also lowers damage significantly for a rather minor effect. While it depends on the weapon you're firing it from, it's hard to think of many situations where it wouldn't be better just to fire the weapon normally. I could see this mod being pretty useful on Thermal Pistols, since they already only do 2 damage, and you're only losing 2 range in exchange for AP. HyperDense Armor: NOW we're talking. While this system does slow you down and limit your damage against enemies outside of 3 hexes away, the benefits are amazing. This system basically forces enemies to get close to the mech it's on in order to really do anything at all to it. The sad thing is, though, this is a system that really would be better on the Drake than the Tortuga, and yet it's 3 licenses deep in another mech that you might not want if you're piloting a Drake. It also doesn't really play well with the Tortuga's Core Power. But if you're playing a Defender of any sort, and you're willing to get 3 licenses in Tortuga, this is an excellent choice. Put it on a SSC White Witch to troll your GM or Players, in whatever way the White Witch isn't already trolling incarnate. Next up, a mech you would THINK is entirely made out of war crimes, but really isn't: The Vlad!  That's a lot of armor for a medium-speed mech with middle-of-the-road Evasion and HP. So the Vlad does exactly what you might think it does. It impales things. The Vlad is also incredibly spiky, and attacking it hurts enemies that are within 3 hexes of it. The Vlad is mostly a melee mech, though it has some ranged options, and it's surprisingly hard to deal with. The armor is a big feature, as is the fact that one can't really attack the Vlad effectively when the Frame is in its preferred range. At least not without pricking themselves. But that damage is a small thing compared to what the Vlad can really do to enemies. Shredding any enemy that's Immobilized is like marking an enemy for execution... They better just hope it's a lot more swift than the executions of the Frame's namesake. Interestingly, the Vlad uses a lot of industrial equipment as weapons, which is actually kind of Grimm & Son's thing too. If you're using G&S in your campaign, maybe consider the Vlad having some connection to the "family business". The Core Power is pretty simple. It ups the Vlad's defense against close-range attacks while punishing even further enemies that try to hit it in melee. While 1 Kinetic AP damage isn't that big a deal, 3 is. 3 is a very big deal. While Player Mechs can handle this punishment, NPCs really can't, and attacking the Vlad quickly becomes not an exercise in frustration, but an exercise in self-destruction.  there's just something about the Vlad that's kind of visually disturbing too. it's unnerving and I can't place why exactly  License I Impact Lance: An excellent melee weapon that does what a lot of melee weapons don't: attack multiple targets. While taking heat for it might feel steep with the Vlad's relatively low base Heat Cap, it's well worth hitting multiple enemies with 1d6 Energy. Otherwise, it's a solid Main melee. Webjaw Snare: It's an Immobilizing mine! A nice choice for the Vlad, but also for the Iksander. Unlike some other useful mines, this one is only one License into another mech, too. Of course, if a Vlad uses this, the victim is also Shredded... License II Caltrop Launcher: Difficult Terrain that also does damage? Yes, please. Explosive damage is rarely resisted, too. Even if enemies are too smart to actually move through it, it still makes for good area denial. Throw this out to the Vlad's side when they run in to attack, and it'll be handy for avoiding flanking maneuvers. Impaler Nailgun: One player used this on an SSC Monarch to surprisingly great effect. While its primary purpose is to keep enemies from running away from the Vlad (and removing all their defenses in the bargain), it's also pretty handy for keeping enemies from coming closer to you. A lot of mechs could use that kind of defensive weapon, and the fact that it does 1d6+1 isn't exactly a problem for the weapon. License III Combat Drill: I feel like there's some kind of joke to be made about this weapon. But it's escaping me at the moment. Oh well! The Vlad has enough mounts to comfortably fit a Superheavy, and it's definitely an option to be considered. AP and Overkill all but guarantee big damage by themselves, but when attacking an enemy that can't get away from it in any way quickly turn this from a really good weapon into a completely loving absurd one. If you can avoid overheating every time you use the thing, you can stack a bunch of extra d6s onto something that's already doing 4d6 on every attack. Of course, it does rely pretty heavily on rolling 1s, which is a ~15% chance on each die you're rolling, but even if you don't trigger Overkill you're doing 4d6 AP. That's not nothing. Oh! I recalled that joke from before. Hehe. Ensure penetration. Charged Stake: This is a great system for the Vlad, or any melee mech, that offers the affected enemy a hard choice: Be Immobilized next to a melee mech for a whole round, or possibly taking double the damage dice the system initially inflicts. Neither option is very appealing, but even worse is choosing the latter, failing, and still being Immobilized next to a melee mech. On a Vlad, though, this is especially dangerous, and a must-take. The Combat Drill is great for direct damage, but this is better for playing over-all aggressively. And we're going to finish off ISP-N with the Zheng! The Zheng is from the sourcebook The Long Rim. Like most non-core mechs, it has a pretty huge lore blurb. The Long Rim posted:Zheng: Size 1, Striker  The Zheng does a wide variety of things, but basically all of them are in melee. It can ram, it can grapple, but most importantly, it can punch. The Zheng punches real good. With a high HP, slightly higher than normal Evasion, and 2 Armor, this thing feels less like a modified Raleigh and more like a Nelson that decided it would rather punch things instead of spearing things, and also doesn't feel like stopping at any point. The Zheng's sheer tenacity, ferocity, and appetite for pure destruction can be matched by only one other mech I can think of, and it is just as much a terror. And as if the Zheng's survivability wasn't already impressive, it makes its own hard cover whenever it attacks! A Zheng's lack of base speed, however, is a lie. It's actually a VERY fast mech. How? The Core System, Xiong-Type CQB Suite. Using this baby, the Zheng can, once a turn and as a free action, move an extra 3 hexes. That puts its ACTUAL "base" speed at the Nelson's level, though it can't keep that speed up over Boosting or other movement options. Further more, just moving the Zheng is enough to hurt enemies or objects, smashing into (or through) them with enough force to damage them AND force them into Engagement! Not to mention that any objects the Zheng strikes becomes shrapnel. And yes, that includes the hard cover the Zheng creates when it attacks. The Core Power turns this up to 11, and allows it to rival the Nelson in pure speed: 6 charges of Xiaoli's Tenacity, which you CAN very much spend all in one turn to give the Zheng a total of 30 hexes of movement (3 base, 21 from Xiaoli's Tenacity and all six charges of Xiaoli's Ingenuity, +a Boost, +an Overcharged Boost) all of which are probably interspersed with the Zheng charging from enemy to enemy, grabbing, punching and body-slamming them all over the place like some kind of enraged pinball. Of course, spending all the charges at once is probably not the most tactically sound idea in all situations, but it's food for thought. This puppy scoots. Then punches. Then punches some more, until the enemy falls over. Actually, just don't stop punching even when that happens just to be sure.  License I Tiger-Hunter Combat Sheathe: They're brass knuckles. For a mech. You punch things with them. They're nothing fancy, of course, which is why you can use them even when Jammed. I said not to stop punching, didn't I?! Total Strength Suite I: Can't get close to an enemy? No problem! Just throw your cover at them! No cover nearby? Throw the GROUND. No ground nearby? Well... Can't win 'em all. Either way, this is a good way for a Zheng to set up cover for itself before it charges in, and then rams the cover to turn it into a frag grenade. You can also deliver cover to an ally being menaced by some jerk, too, before you run in another direction to punch things. License II Molten Wreathe: Are you having the problem of there being too many enemies to punch? Tired of watching those jerks hover just out of your range, taunting you? Do you want to look really cool? Then try punching, but with EXPLOSIONS. Your enemies will hate it! Your friends will love it! But everyone will be very, very impressed that you somehow turned your punch into a CONE. Or any other melee weapon, really. It's not picky. Definitely take this on a Zheng, consider taking this on any melee-focused mech. It's a free 2 Explosive to all enemies in a small area, including the one you initially hit, which is ALSO taking the brunt of your original attack's damage too. Total Strength Suite II: Probably worth it on most mechs focused on Grappling. A Blackbeard would love this, as would an Empakaai. For the Zheng, it's really just a bonus, but you can certainly make use out of it by grabbing a dude you intend to punch a lot. License III D/D 288: This is one of the most infamous and deadly weapons in the entire game of Lancer. There are builds centered completely around just this weapon. It is a monster. And the Zheng can equip it and still use the Tiger-Hunters. Put simply, this is like the fist of god. Which is appropriate, because it's technically still a punching weapon. On its own, it's a deadly melee weapon that you can still attack with as a quick action, and does 1d6 with Reliable 3, so it's really powerful even used just like that. But when you charge it as a Quick Action, the Zheng's next blow does an absolutely ABSURD amount of damage that sends its target FLYING. 8 Knockback is incredible, and with Juggernaut, pretty much guaranteed to cause even more damage once the target hits a wall or something. That's not all: Punch an object or terrain when the D/D 288 is charged, and it's... Just gone. Not there anymore. It has been erased. Almost no object or terrain in the game can stand up to this thing, and the sheer amount of damage it does to enemies probably will make them vanish in a puff of vapor too. By the way, it is 100% RAI that you can Overcharge before you take any actions or before you take all your actions, so you can totally just do this instantly without your target being able to do jack poo poo about it. See also: the Executioner talent. If you want to see an actual D/D 288 in action, here you are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SlPbbX8RSo Total Strength Suite III: Feels kind of weird closing the Zheng with this instead of the D/D 288, but when it comes to the essence of hitting a motherfucker with another motherfucker, you can hardly do better than hitting SEVERAL motherfuckers with just one motherfucker. Again, combining this with the Juggernaut talent makes you even more deadly, as you're just stacking damage on top of damage. Now that we're done with that, it's time for our next corpro state:  Only GMS can top Smith Shimano Corpro (SSC) in age. It's the second oldest of the corpro states, and it has a long and storied history. Its founders, Cartwright Smith and Shimano Hideyoshi, had a shared love of the stars, and the desire to move among them. Because of that passion, and a WHOLE lot of money, they managed to get a head start on that. While all they had at first were sublight drives and a WHOLE LOT OF MONEY, being the industry leader counted for a lot. While they wanted at first to solve the issue of humans in space via symbiotic AI systems to help fragile squishy fleshbags operate their complex hardsuits in extremely unforgiving environments, MONIST-1 RA kind of hosed all that up by stealing the entire moon of Deimos. Yep. The entire moon. RA does things like that sometimes, it's not really a big deal. But SSC sure thought it was, and figured maybe AI wasn't the way to go. So they focused on a more perfect, harmonious machine: The human body. Nowadays, when it comes to space travel, SSC is still the biggest name. Even other Corpro-states sometimes borrow (or "borrow") their ship designs, and their crafts' speeds are second to none. But that's not what you're here for, is it? No, SSC, like any other Corpro-state, makes their own weapons. Their own MECHS. And when it comes to those, their mech designs focus on that human form most of all. Sure, not all of their mechs are humanoid, but they are sleek, quick, and generally pretty fragile. Even so, you have to HIT them first. SSC mechs generally focus on evasion over armor, and precision strikes over hails of bullets or cannon-fire. Unlike ISP-N, they also have a high focus on speed and aesthetics, where form is just as important, if not moreso, than function. They're also long-lasting and respond well to constant repairs and maintenance, and SSC is not a Corpro-state that enjoys wasting parts or making more parts when you can just fix what's already there. When you want speed, when you want grace, when you want beauty, and when you want someone dead from miles away, you buy SSC. SSC Core Bonuses tend to focus on agility and speed above all else. All-Theater Movement Suite A popular modification, ATMS adds powerful pulse jets that dramatically improve mech mobility in all theaters. You can fly when you Boost or make a standard move, however, you take 1 Heat at the end of each of your turns in which you fly this way. Basically THE option if you want a flying mech. You don't have to land to Stabilize and rid yourself of that heat, so there's no reason a mech with this Core Bonus can't just stay up in the sky for entire Encounters. Just don't get shot down, and invest in some Engineering for that Heat Cap bonus. Full Subjectivity Sync By creating a stable, two-way ontologic bridge, SSC has removed the need for pilots to rely on physical controls alone to pilot their mech. Using a full subjectivity sync, pilots perceive their mech as their own body and control it via neural impulse; somatosensory feedback is translated to the pilot as well, so caution is advised despite nociception-dampening defaults built-in to the system. You gain +2 Evasion. You gain +2 Evasion. This is excellent on any mech that already has a decent Evasion, but there is one mech in particular, the Orchis, which is basically a dodge-tank. If you're planning on using an Orchis, this is an auto-take. Ghostweave An upscaled version of the same systems found in SSC’s Mythimna Panoply, Ghostweave is a proprietary appliqué used to enhance mech camouflage in all environments. During your turn, you are Invisible. If you take no actions on your turn other than your standard move, Hide, and Boost, you remain Invisible until the start of your next turn. You immediately cease to be Invisible when you take a Reaction. Some Frames love being Invisible as much as possible. This is actually a good Core Bonus choice for a stealth-Raleigh, in particular, since it uses up your off-turn with a perfect combination of Hide, Invisible, and movement. Integrated Nerveweave Integrated nerveweave combines several technologies to grant total battlefield alacrity, assuring pilots are never left behind. You may move an additional 2 spaces when you Boost. *Nelson and Dusk Wing intensify* In all seriousness, there's a lot of Frames that are really speedy, and will love this Core Bonus. It's just that of them, the Nelson and Dusk Wing are the most speedy. Kai Bioplating Adapted from fauna local to SSC’s home system, Kai Bioplating adds a lamellar layer of insulated, anchored, and chitinous plating over key brush-points on a mech. Essentially a cheaper, more feasible alternative to living metal, bioplating allows for faster movement through hard-to-navigate terrain. You gain +1ACC on all Agility checks and saves; additionally, you climb and swim at normal speed, ignore difficult terrain, and when making a standard move, can jump horizontally up to your full speed and upwards up to half your speed (in any combination). Mobility has never looked more fine. Not only do you get ACC on Agility checks and saves, you get to basically ignore all movement penalties ever. It doesn't stop Slow, but it does stop everything else from stopping you. Neurolink Targetting To further reduce the information gap between pilot and machine and complement its full subjectivity sync technology, SSC developed neurolinking, a stable, noninvasive, and limited-transfer ontologic bridge. Neurolink targeting is a simple enhancement that helps pilots feel – as opposed to thinking – when engaged in ranged combat, allowing for a more natural expression of pilot ability. Your ranged weapons gain +3 Range. While probably the weakest of the SSC Core Bonuses, it's by no means weak. +3 Range can be very helpful, especially for a mid-range mech. Generally, long-range weapons don't really need this, but if you need that little bit of extra reach to surprise someone who thinks they're out of your kill-zone, you'll be glad you had it. Note that this ONLY works for the Range attribute. It does not work on any AoEs or Threat.  Speaking of Imperialism, we're starting with the strange tale of the Atlas, which somehow manages to involve cultural appropriation by an imperialist power with a product not originally meant for the culture it was appropriated from. The Atlas is from the sourcebook The Long Rim. quote:Atlas: Size 1/2, Striker  The Atlas is both a very weird choice to start SSC with, and yet a perfect example of what SSC is known for. A quick, nimble Frame that has 12 base Evasion and 6 speed. Both of which are the most any mech has in those categories, and in particular sharing that Evasion with only two other mechs (3 with Intercorp). And both of them are SSC. That said, the Atlas is built for melee combat, and while there are SSC Frames that do melee combat they tend to double up with ranged, which the Atlas doesn't, really. It's a hyper-specialized mech that is really good at getting up close to enemies and tearing them apart in melee, and it's not a bad design, though its reliance on Prone does make it a little tricky to use against enemies with high Hull or Agility saves. Either way, the Atlas is what I like to refer to as "Monster Hunter: the Mechoning". It's built to fight things that are much larger than it, gets a really cool sword, and lots of mobility options that make sure that even enemies beyond the reach of its prodigious speed aren't safe. That said, it's particularly vulnerable to Heat and anything else to do with Engineering, so a Lancer in this Frame needs to be wary of Tech-happy enemies. The Core System of the Atlas is rad as gently caress. Exactly what SSC wanted to do, blending man and machine, the Atlas goes a step further by also blending the memories of anyone who has ever worn the suit. It makes the user faster, gaining Soft Cover no matter what, and letting them Hide in plain sight. And if that's not enough, it lets their attacks threaten Prone when Hidden, which of course allows the Atlas to follow up with its Finishing Blow trait for more damage. Backing all this up is an arsenal of tools that make the Atlas the perfect hunter, impossible to escape. I can't help but start humming Proof of a Hero when I imagine an Atlas pilot hitting that Core Power.   License I Multi-Gear Maneuver System: Zip lines that your Size 1/2 buddies can use! If you have any around. Otherwise, it's just for you, and acts as a trip-wire for larger enemies. It's pretty useful just for the user to zip around quickly. Eight hexes is a lot of movement! And if anyone wants to shut that down, they have to use a Quick Action to do so. Not a bad thing. Kraul Rifle: Less a ranged weapon, and more a method of conveyance, the Kraul Rifle is for letting a user zip up into melee from 8 hexes away and knocking them over. The damage on it is really just a bonus on top of setting up the target for pain from Finishing Blow. It makes sure anyone who tries to run from an Atlas is just going to die tired. License II Jäger Kunst I: Mech Parkour, because everyone loves Parkour. If you can several pieces of terrain or objects lined up, you can use this to move much further than the Atlas can already. That's not nothing. 1 Heat is a steep price to pay on an Atlas, though, so make sure it's worth using before you use it. Ricochet Blades: The only "real" ranged weapon the Atlas has, and I'm pretty sure they're inspired both by Predator and the Huntress from Risk of Rain. These blades are a tool for some AoE action, and they function like the latter inspiration: While the initial throw isn't very strong, the ricochet is quite powerful! While it needs some set up, you can do some real damage with these! Are they worth 3 SP? Well, that depends on the build. Systems isn't really the Atlas's strong suite, so maybe these would be better on a different mech. License III Jäger Kunst II: Fatal Clash is another ability that functions as a difficult choice. The consequences for failing are pretty terrible, but moreso for the non-Atlas participant since being Prone is not great when you're facing one. But if you lose, you can take 2 damage to force a reroll. Whether doing so is worth it depends on how much HP the target has over the Atlas, which in general terms is probably not as much, since the majority of enemies a wing faces are NPC mechs rather than player ones. That said, this can ALSO be triggered when the Atlas is attacked in melee, which makes that a dangerous prospect! Terashima Blade: What form does your Atlas's Terashima Blade take? A claymore? A nodachi? Maybe a big-rear end axe? Well, that's up to you, but what's not up for debate is that this is an excellent melee weapon. It might not do the most damage or have the most threat, and it's a weapon that costs SP to equip, which is weird, but it has incredible flexibility. Get more damage, do an AoE hit, deflect ranged attacks, or increase its range, give it reliable, and gain more mobility. While you have to pick what Stance you're in at the beginning of your turn, before doing anything else, you can still react to the everchanging situation of a battle and make sure you're in the most advantageous position possible. Also note that Lord's Stance does not actually require you to attack with this weapon while in that stance, so you could very well use a different melee weapon and punish every missed attack that comes your way. A skilled Atlas pilot always uses their Terashima Blade to assist in what they do best: Chasing down an opponent and tearing them to shreds without mercy. I can't imagine an Atlas without this weapon, so it's a shame it takes until License III to get it. Last for this post, we're doing the Black Witch, from the core rulebook!  The Black Witch feels like a Defender masquerading as a Controller/Support, and it performs this odd trifecta niche admirably. With 10 base Evasion, 1 Armor, Resistance to all Kinetic damage, and a 33% chance to negate attacks that would do Kinetic damage, the Frame is pretty hard to actually damage... Which is good, as its low base HP and pathetic base Repair Cap make it hard for the Black Witch to take any damage it does receive. Having only one mount is also a bit of a bane, but all this really just feels like it's balancing out a mech that would otherwise be incredibly frustrating to fight. The Black Witch uses loving magnets, and yes, we DO know how they work, to turn the battlefield into its plaything. And while its lack of durability prevents it from being a true tank, this Frame excels at making sure all the pieces are where its pilot wants them on the chessboard, whether those pieces want to be there or not. And while most Controllers or Supports would like to be outside the thick of things, the fact that almost all melee weapons are kinetic actually makes the Black Witch safer next to the very bruisers it wants to be supporting than out on the edge of the battlefield... And if that bruiser has Guardian or similar Traits, all the better. The Black Witch's Core power can only be defined as stopping power, pun intended. Blast 3 is an enormous area, and everything that's in that area is about to get utterly trashed. Not only is it a shield that basically only lets Energy damage through, being inside it is a very, very bad idea. The Mag Field makes the inside Difficult Terrain, but that's a bit laughable next to the fact that anything that is or goes inside becomes immobilized, and any character, ally or enemy, that attempts to fire in or out of it is just making things worse when all those Kinetic and Explosive attacks just end up going right back into the center and hitting everything that's there. Which is everything that is or goes inside. This effect is so vicious that even against opponents savvy to this ability are at least entirely denied a Blast 3 area, given that going into that area is basically instant loving death... And given the Black Witch's many tools for involuntary movement, they might not have a CHOICE.   License I Ferrous Lash: Move your enemies! Move your friends! Smash them into walls! It's great fun for the whole family! You can get allies away from dangerous AoEs or out of Engagement, and you can put enemies INTO those situations. It's an excellent tool for setting up enemies for your wing to exploit, and there are plenty of weapons great for taking advantage of that. Got an Emperor in your wing? Its pilot will love you forever if you take this system, and isn't making an Emperor pilot happy enough of a reward in itself? Magnetic Cannon: Moving characters against their will is sort of the entire thing the Black Witch does, aside from negating way more damage than is reasonable, and this tool is great for the former. While there could be better choices for the Black Witch's single mount, this isn't a bad one by any means, especially if you use it strategically along with Mag Field. The damage isn't that bad, either, especially for a Line 8 weapon. License II ICEOUT Drone: Hey, remember how fun making someone immune to Tech attacks could be? How about having that in a Burst 1 area? Not enough for you? Okay, how about the fact that it can be moved anywhere within the Black Witch's Sensors? Which is a radius of 15? That means this drone can be moved up to 30 hexes away, making almost nowhere out of its reach. Because of that, this is perhaps best used offensively rather than defensively: Plop it down near an enemy tech-mech to deny it its main avenue of attack! Such mechs tend to be highly resistant to tech attacks anyway, so what does it matter that they're now immune if they aren't able to do anything useful? Sure, they can move... But clever placement can force them to move out of this drone's field in a direction they really do not want to move in, like the instant death radius of a Zheng or Enkidu. Mag Deployer: It's a bounce pad! Or it's a sticky trap. Whichever it is, it's more area denial. And it's not Limited, either! Just keep printing these things! Throw them everywhere! And given the Black Witch's specialty, just make your enemies move onto it whether they want to or not. While they can be destroyed, 20 damage is a lot to waste on destroying a deployable that doesn't cost anything but a Quick Action to deploy. How many actions did the enemy waste to negate the result of just one Quick Action? That's a victory, right there. No, it's better to grin, bear it, and fail the Hull save a bunch of times. License III Black ICE Module: Another way of shutting down Techs, the Black Ice Module makes it progressively harder to land one on the Black Witch or anyone they're next to, which is probably an ally particularly vulnerable to Tech. Note that you do not have to activate this in any way: It's always on. Whoever is next to the mech that possesses this system is just going to resist Techs until the Black Witch decides otherwise... Still, discerning GMs and/or Players can exploit the Black Witch's charge moving out of adjacency. Usually. Magnetic Shield: It doesn't really say what happens if you create this with characters in the way, which is a weird oversight. I couldn't find any information on this, so I guess it's up to GM fiat if the character is lifted up four hexes high or if they're pushed to the side. Either way, this shield is excellent, and there's really no way to destroy this cover. It's just there. And again, it's not Limited, though you can't have more than one up at a time. Energy weapons aren't affected by this thing, like Mag Field, so they can still go hogwild... But hindering half of the available damage types isn't anything to sneeze at. That'll do it for this post. Next time, we'll continue through SSC, and one of the mechs in my next post will be my all time favorite Frame in the game! Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jun 12, 2024 |
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Jun 11, 2024 23:37
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quote:Got an Emperor in your wing? Its pilot will love you forever if you take this system, and isn't making an Emperor pilot happy enough of a reward in itself? it's me, I'm emperor player, and yes
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Jun 12, 2024 00:10
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Mecha_Face posted:Most CQB weapons have 3 Threat, so this basically just doubles their range The core increases threat to 3, not by 3. You're not getting double anything for most CQB weapons.
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Jun 12, 2024 00:16
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Jager Kunst has to be a reference to Gunnm's Panzer Kunst.
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Jun 12, 2024 02:02
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 Chapter 5: the Peoples of Solasta Another short chapter, this section details the major groups of humanoids that call Solasta home. Despite being much less humanocentric than other settings, the vast majority of the population hews to the Tolkien classics in being humans, dwarves, elves, or halflings along with the subraces specifically listed here. Other races and subraces can be found but tend to be very rare. Which is unfortunate as the DLC for the game expanded options for dragonborn, gnomes, and tieflings, but they get no mention here. Dwarves, elves, and halflings are all native to Solasta, with humans being the exception in having Tirmar as their ancestral homeland. It’s often believed that these four major races are strongly associated with one of the four elements: elves are associated with air, dwarves earth, and water for halflings given their predisposition for living on islands and in marshes. Humans are a matter of scholarly debate, as while sometimes placed alongside fire, their foreign origin speculates that their method of creation sits outside the evolution of Solasta. Sylvan elves maintain that there’s a fifth element known as wood. None of this has actual game effects or objective fact; elves aren’t better with air or wind magic, nor are halflings adept with water spells. For existing OGL PHB options, we have humans, hill dwarves, high elves, half-elves, and half-orcs. In spite of its brevity this chapter has a lot of padding, repeating the game stats from the aforementioned base races and subraces and more or less going down the list of checkboxes for fantasy cliches: half-orcs are viewed as part-monster and treated badly by both human and orc society, hill dwarves are obsessed with family and tradition and innovators in mining, etc. In terms of flavor text, there’s honestly not much to say which would really make these new and existing races stand out that hasn’t already been covered in earlier chapters. The new subraces include Sylvan Elves (like wood elves, but instead of increased speed and camouflage their gain proficiency in Athletics, Survival, and roll advantage on Survival for hunting and foraging), Snow Dwarves (+1 Dexterity, proficient in all crossbows, take less damage and auto-succeed vs cold damage and cold hazards and can cast Protection From Energy once per long rest vs cold), Marsh Halflings (+1 Constitution, darkvision 60 feet), and Island Halflings (+1 Charisma, proficient and expertise in Acrobatics). Thoughts: The Sylvan Elf feels like a downgrade from the base Wood Elf, as that persistent 5 foot speed can make a lot of difference in combat. Snow Dwarf abilities are just too situational given that cold isn’t one of the most common damage types. As for the halflings, darkvision is boring yet practical, as halfling abilities strongly hew towards roguish pursuits but the base race’s lack of darkvision hinders them in this. Double proficiency with Acrobatics is a bit of an acquired taste, as besides broad feats of agility its most explicit use in the base rules is as an Athletics alternative for resisting grapples. Chapter 6: Classes Now we get to the most thorough chapter of the book, and what makes this version Revised given it incorporates subclasses from the video game DLC that wasn’t present in the original sourcebook. With each class gaining 3 new subclasses (save the Cleric which gets 6 and the Wizard getting 4), we have an awful lot of options here.  Barbarians are common among hunter-gatherer and subsistence cultures, and the most well-known races who count them among their ranks are humans, snow dwarves, and marsh halflings. The Path of the Claw are descendants of dragons who draw upon their heritage’s powers in battle, such as gaining a 30-foot breath weapon cone that can be used once per rage, adding bonus damage in line with their dragon element on melee attacks, and while raging gaining resistance to that damage type as well as adding their Rage Damage bonus to AC when not using a shield. Path of the Magebane are those who passed down memories of the horrors of the Cataclysm and taught people that magic is a vile force that can destroy the world. Their features are explicitly designed to counter spellcasters, such as letting out an AoE battlecry as a reaction once per rage to grant advantage on saves vs spells to allies and deal psychic damage to enemies, impose disadvantage on concentration saves on a target they damage in melee, and as their capstone ability can dispel magic effects on a target like Dispel Magic by hitting them in melee. Including things that can’t otherwise be damaged, such as Cloudkill! The Path of Stone is all about pushing one’s body to be able to survive anything and turns the Barbarian into a tank, such as gaining temporary hit points equal to their class level each turn when raging, can choose to add their Constitution modifier to saving throws instead of the normal ability score when they’d make a save, and gain cumulative +1 AC (maximium +4) for each enemy they’re adjacent to while raging. Thoughts: Of the three subclasses, I think that the Claw is most appealing. Being able to deal elemental damage is useful for getting around damage resistances (and possibly exploit vulnerabilities), the AoE cone is a good multi-target option, and the AC bonus certainly doesn’t hurt either. Magebane is a bit too situational, as it’s explicitly against enemies that use spells vs anything vaguely magical, so its usefulness hinges greatly on what enemies the DM throws at you. Stone’s refreshing temporary hit points are good, but the problem is that it doesn’t really punish foes who can outmaneuver the Barbarian and go for their allies instead, which Path of the Ancestral Guardian is built to handle.  Bards are common to all cultures, as everyone has one or more musical traditions. Various races and cultures prefer certain instruments, such as snow dwarves using throat-singing and mountain horns or high elves using operas and stringed instruments. The College of Heroism lives to help others achieve their dreams rather than themselves, and the subclass makes heavy use of Bardic Inspiration. For example, allies can roll BI twice and choose which roll to use, they can still grant BI when they run out by opting to take psychic damage, can once per long rest give a nearby ally advantage on saves and immunity to frightened for 1 hour, and their capstone ability lets them once per long rest sing a concentration-based song where for the next minute they can spend their bonus action to grant nearby allies advantage on saves and resistance to all damage. The College of Hope focuses on healing, such as letting those they grant BI to the ability to immediately spend Hit Dice to heal themselves or gain temporary hit points, gain bonus spells such as Prayer of Healing and Revivify, an effect similar to the Aid spell at the end of a short or long rest based on the roll of their BI, and as a capstone ability can restore a target reduced to 0 hit points up to half their hit point maximum as a reaction once per long rest. Finally, the College of Tradition treats music as a scholarly field. Their initial abilities let them treat any Insight or Intimidation check of 9 or lower as a 10, and every time they have the opportunity to learn or replace a bard spell they can also choose from the wizard spell list. At 6th level once per rest as an action they can verbally castigate a target, and if they fail an Intelligence save they subtract a BI roll from any attack, ability check, save, or damage roll until the start of the bard’s next turn.* And their capstone ability lets them once per rest gain a free BI as a bonus action they can give to themselves and an ally and have the maximum result for the die. *The Bard doesn’t have to spend BI in order to use this ability. Thoughts: The College of Heroism is a welcome addition to any party. BI is a very useful thing given its broad applications, and being able to not only make it better but gain more uses in favor of taking damage can see a steady increase in higher rolls for when they matter. Hope isn’t as impressive, as healing in 5e is suboptimal to do except when outside combat, and as it mostly focuses on healing damage and doesn’t grant things like Raise Dead or Remove Curse they’re still shown up by Clerics, Paladins, and other dedicated healer types. Tradition’s focus on Insight and Intimidation generally aren’t as useful as Eloquence’s broader Deception and Persuasion. While Insight can be useful, Wisdom isn’t really a score the Bard class emphasizes. Gaining access to the Wizard spell list is really good, and the 6th level debuff is like a more powerful version of Eloquence’s Unsettling Words in that it can apply to multiple rolls, but it can be resisted by a save and comes in at higher level.  Clerics originated among humans, but like bards can be found among all peoples now. Not everyone who works at a temple is even a cleric or spellcaster, such as guards, clerks, and the like. The Battle Domain is associated with Einar and Misaye, reflecting those who know that arms must be taken up in order to live by their principles. Their domain spells focus heavily on buffs such as Haste and Stoneskin, but also includes the ever-useful Shield and Phantom Steed. They’re a front-loaded subclass, gaining proficiency with martial weapons and can use somatic and material components even when their hands are occupied by shields or weapons. Once per long rest they can also gain temporary hit points equal to 3 times their class level as a bonus action. Their other abilities include a smite that deals bonus force damage and can incapacitate a target on a failed Constitution save, Extra Attack at 8th level, granting a +1 to attack and damage rolls to themselves and allies within 10 feet, and can give their Channel Divinity a secondary AoE damaging effect. The Elemental Domain is associated with Arun, representing the many facets of nature. Its bonus spells center around damage and battlefield control, such as Scorching Ray, Sleet Storm, and Control Water. At 1st level they can learn a bonus cantrip that deals fire/cold/lightning damage from any class’ spell list, and whenever they cast a spell that deals any kind of damage they can opt to change the type to one of the 3 aforementioned types. Their Channel Divinity is selected from one of three weather-based abilities, dealing 2d8 + Cleric level of an appropriate damage type along with a secondary effect on a failed save such as buffeting winds that can shove and knock prone targets. At higher levels they add their Wisdom modifier to cleric cantrip damage and gain improved uses of Channel Divinity, such as making a shield to grant immunity to an incoming elemental damage type and gaining temporary hit points equal to the damage they would’ve otherwise taken. The Insight Domain is associated with Pakri, representing clerics who prioritize truth and the pursuit of knowledge. Their bonus spells are invariably divination in nature, such as Identify, Tongues, and Arcane Eye. At 1st level they gain proficiency in Insight and two Charisma skills, and have double proficiency in Insight. Their other initial ability lets them add their Wisdom modifier to Charisma checks provided that they spoke with the target they’re influencing for at least 1 minute. Their Channel Divinity lets them predict an opponent’s future attacks for 1 minute, imposing disadvantage on attack rolls against the Cleric and they can switch to a new target as a bonus action. At 6th level they become partial scouts, gaining permanent Detect Magic and Insivibility along with adding double proficiency to all checks for finding traps and hidden stuff. At 8th level they add Wisdom to cantrip damage and at 17th their Channel Divinity grants the Foresight spell for 1 minute instead. The Law Domain is favored by Einar and Pakri, representing those who use the law to punish evil and exalt good. Their bonus spells are a broad variety with a few debuffs, such as See Invisibility, Counterspell, Hypnotic Pattern, Faithful Hound, and Geas. At 1st level they gain proficiency with martial weapons and double proficiency with Intimidation, and advantage on checks and saves vs forced movement and the prone condition. Their Channel Divinity lets them infuse a melee attack with bonus psychic damage that can frighten a target if they fail a Wisdom save. At 6th level they can force a creature concentrating on a spell to lose that concentration if they fail an Intelligence save a number of times per long rest equal to their Wisdom modifier, and at 8th and 14th level they add bonus force damage to weapon attacks. Their 17th level capstone lets them deal psychic damage and restrain a target for 1 minute, where the target takes damage each turn but has the ability to end it early if they succeed on a Wisdom save. The Mischief Domain is Misaye’s purview, and its bonus spells focus heavily on illusion and deception such as Invisibility, Grease, Nondetection, and Confusion. At 1st level they can reroll a failed d20 result they don’t have disadvantage on a number of times per long rest equal to their Wisdom modifier, and can opt to go over this limit in exchange for suffering bad luck where the DM can give them disadvantage on one future roll per additional use until the next long rest. They also gain Vicious Mockery and proficiency in Deception or another roguish skill if they’re already proficient. Their Channel Divinity turns them invisible and imposes a random debuff on foes within 10 feet for 1 turn. At 6th level they can spend a reaction to gain a free use of Dodge and Disengage if they’re hit by a melee attack, add Wisdom to cantrip damage at 8th level, and at 17th level can spend a bonus action once per long rest to gain advantage on all d20 checks for 1 minute. The Oblivion Domain is a reflection of Maraika’s darker aspects. Its bonus spells focus on necrotic damage and the quietness of death such as Cam Emotions, Sleep, and Banishment. At 1st level they learn Chill Touch, gain advantage on death saves and grant advantage to allies within 30 feet provided the Cleric remains conscious, and their Channel Divinity is an AoE attack dealing necrotic damage and causes foes to have disadvantage on attacks and ability checks for 1 minute (can make a new save each round to end it early). They also become immune to all forms of magical sleep, can remain awake during long rests, and magically awaken allies automatically when combat begins. At 6th level, a number of times per long rest equal to their Wisdom modifier, they can mark targets with curses that deal bonus damage equal to half their Cleric level whenever the target would take damage for the first time on their turn. At 8th level they add Wisdom to cantrip damage, and at 17th marked targets also have disadvantage on rolls relevant to one chosen ability score. The Sun domain is associated with Arun, favored for its ability to make crops grow and being the bane of many sunlight-hating monsters. The bonus spells heavily focus on fire and radiant damage but also include related things such as Color Spray and Plant Growth. They learn the Sacred Flame and Light cantrips, and foes suffer disadvantage when saving against the former spell. Their Channel Divinity creates a 10 foot aura of fire that damages foes within, granting temporary hit points to friendly targets. At 6th level they can touch an ally as a bonus action and remove the Charmed, Frightened, or Incapacitated condition a number of times per long rest equal to their Wisdom modifier. At 8th level they add their Wisdom modifier to cantrip damage, and at 17th level they gain resistance to fire and radiant damage and can have spells dealing these types of damage to overflow and damage nearby targets for 2d8 beyond the originally affected. Thoughts: When it comes to the subclasses, the Battle Cleric is extremely powerful. They can gain an awful lot of temporary hit points, and since they last until they’re gone or a long rest it effectively puts them on par with a Barbarian in terms of staying power. The ability to cast spells with their hands full is really good, and getting the Shield spell is helpful. The Elemental domain is focused around being blasty, and being able to change damage types of spells is nice. However, the three damage types they focus on have more enemies resistant to them than radiant (one of the common damage types for cleric spells), and in terms of being an offensive mage they’re still upshone by the Warlock with their nifty Eldritch Blast and short rest refresh on spell slots. Insight is nice for face builds in that 1 minute of conversation before rolling a check is a pretty generous window. As for being the party scout, the constant spells and double proficiency for searching is good, but as Clerics by default don’t get stuff like Invisibility or prioritize a high Dexterity they’re still not as good as Bards or Chain Warlocks with familiars for being sneaky casters. The Law domain is kind of a paladin-lite in using martial weapons and focusing on melee weapons, and making a caster lose concentration via a rather rare save of Intelligence is pretty good. However, the Battle cleric and paladins with smite are still overall better, and their 17th level capstone feels a bit underwhelming as single-target restrain is something far lower level spells can replicate. Mischief is front-loaded in that being able to reroll failed rolls is useful at all levels, but their Channel Divinity and Dodge-Disengage are more situational in when they’re optimal to trigger. Oblivion isn’t very impressive given that necrotic is a commonly-resisted damage type in comparison to Light’s similar AoE, and while advantage on death saves is pretty good, a cleric with Healing Word is still easily able to have PCs avoid certain death. The immunity to magical sleep and awakening asleep allies is another situational use. As for the Sun domain, it’s inevitably going to be compared with the existing Light domain, and sadly it doesn’t measure up. Warding Flare and its improved version are a better option than being able to remove a limited number of conditions by touch, and their Channel Divinity is much shorter range and more or less requires the Cleric to be up close and personal with enemies in order to get the most out of its damage potential. Additionally, Light’s 17th level capstone imposing disadvantage on saves vs fire and radiant damage can deal a lot more potential damage than the 2d8 to secondary targets.  The tradition of Druids originated among sylvan elves and marsh halflings, coming upon shared truths about the world in parallel development. Over time druidism spread to the rest of Solasta, for everyone could use an edge in surviving in nature. The Circle of Balance are those who uphold the loving, harmonious side of nature and the cruel, violent side in equal measure. They can heal and uplift, or ravage and slay, when the situation demands it. Their bonus spells are a mixture of healing and necrotic damage, and whenever they use a spell to restore hit points they also heal an additional amount equal to half their druid level at the start of their next turn. At 6th level, targets who fail a save against their spells take necrotic damage equal to the druid’s proficiency bonus and can’t regain hit points for one round. At 10th level a number of times per long rest equal to their Proficiency Bonus, whenever another creature takes damage within 30 feet, the druid can spend a reaction to heal a different creature within 30 feet an amount equal to half the damage taken. At 14th level once per long rest they deal an AoE necrotic damaging attack to all hostile targets within 60 feet when they drop to 0 hit points, and regain health equal to the total damage dealt. The Circle of the Kindred Spirit represents a druid who can summon a portion of their spirit into the world, taking the form of a mundane animal. At 2nd level they can spend uses of Wild Shape to summon a Kindred Spirit which has a stat block that improves with level on relevant aspects (hit points, proficiency bonus, attack and damage). In addition to halving telepathy with the druid as well as Pack Tactics, it more or less uses the rules for companion-based class features but takes actions independently of the druid’s. The druid takes 1d4 force damage per level if the Kindred Spirit is reduced to 0 hit points, so it can be risky to have it used as a meat shield even though that’s its primary purpose. At 6th level the Kindred Spirit’s attacks are magical, and whenever the druid casts a leveled spell the Kindred Spirit gains Temporary Hit points equal to half the druid level. At 10th level the Kindred Spirit can also attack twice per turn, and whenever it takes damage the Druid can spend a reaction to split the damage between themself and the spirit. At 14th level anyone the spirit attacks grants the druid advantage on attack rolls vs the target and the target takes disadvantage on saves, while in turn the spirit deals 2d8 bonus force damage on attacks on any target the druid cast a spell on. Finally, the spirit auto-succeeds vs any spells the druid casts unless the PC desires otherwise. Circle of Winds represents druids who use air currents to reshape the flow of mana to heal the world after the Cataclysm. They are a mobility-based subclass, and their bonus spells are all wind and air related such as Feather Fall, Fly, Freedom of Movement, and Conjure (Minor) Elementals. At 2nd level they gain the benefits of short-term +10 feet to movement speed and Disengage whenever they cast a leveled spell. At 6th level they can use a bonus action a number of times per long rest equal to their Wisdom modifier to shelter allies within 30 feet via a nice breeze, granting themselves and allies advantage on all saves until the start of their next turn. At 10th level they can grant increased mobility to an ally after they cast a spell or cantrip, giving them +20 feet speed and they can also Disengage as a bonus action until the end of their turn. At 14th level the druid’s speed increases by 5 feet permanently, they gain +3 on initiative checks, and once per short or long rest they can choose to gain the immediate benefits of Freedom of Movement whenever they’d be grappled, paralyzed, or restrained against their will. Is there any other kind, really? Thoughts: As I mentioned before, it’s hard to do a healer-focused subclass in 5e, but I think that the Circle of Balance manages to succeed on this for several reasons. The main reason is that it takes advantage of the action economy in a way that doesn’t interfere with most of the druid’s existing options and is tracked separately from spell slots. There’s not a lot of class features or spells that a druid can use with a reaction, and as the 10th level feature is congruent on a very common trigger in combat (anyone taking damage nearby), there’s hardly any penalty for using it vs something like spending an action and spell slot to cast Cure Wounds. The 14th level capstone is also nifty in that it grants the druid a nice AoE burst that avoids allies and immediately puts them back in the fight without any aid from their allies. As for Kindred Spirit, it is competing with two other minion-focused subclasses: Spores and Wildfire. Wildfire’s minion has more going for it, with a fly speed immediately whereas Kindred needs to be at least 8th level, a variety of condition immunities, and it doesn’t punish the summoning druid with damage should it be slain. What Kindred Spirit has going for it are better AC and more hit points (10 + half your hit points vs Wildfire’s 5 + [5 x druid level]) along with damage. Which brings us to Circle of Spores, which wins out over Spirit in terms of action economy and being meat shields. While the minions Spores can raise are individually not very powerful, they do a better job at putting themselves between the Druid and enemies in that there’s more of them on the battlefield rather than one minion. Additionally, the subclass grants the spell Animate Dead, which lets them create even more minions on top of what their subclass features normally give them. Circle of Winds doesn’t really do it for me. A lot of their mobility-based bonus spells require concentration, forcing them to compete with other druid spells. And things like Fly and Expeditious Retreat are also competing with Wild Shape forms that are also speedy or can fly once the druid gains access to winged animals. As for its subclass features, only the group advantage on saves really stands out, as the uses of Disengage and bonus movement speed don’t last very long and are mostly best for kiting archer and sniper types who need to move away so that they don’t suffer disadvantage on ranged attacks. The 14th level capstone feature also feels unimpressive even if a bonus to initiative isn’t something to sneeze at; the prime features are reactive rather than active, and replicates the use of a spell they already got at lower level.  Fighters can be found the world over, for there has always been a need for people able to injure and kill others, be it for mere survival or a greater cause. The Commander represents those who lead the charge in battle, from military officers to charismatic partisans. Initially they gain proficiency in Intimidation and Persuasion (or from a small list of skills if they’re already proficient in one or both) and can choose to add their Strength modifier on top of Charisma when using such skills. They can also a number of times per long rest equal to their Constitution modifier give a Rousing Shout as a bonus action, granting nearby allies advantage on their next attack roll until the start of the Fighter’s next turn. At 7th level they can give up one attack from the Attack action to grant themselves or a nearby ally a free use of Dodge. At 10th level their Rousing Shout increases to 60 feet rather than 30 and also grants temporary hit points. At 15th level they can mark a target (no action required) whenever they hit one with a weapon attack, and until the start of their next turn the creature takes 1d6 additional damage whenever they’re hit with an attack. Their 18th level capstone lets them perform a Last Stand as a reaction once per long rest when they or an ally within 60 feet has fewer than 50% hit points remaining. This is a broad buff, granting them and allies +2 to attack, AC, saves, and don’t fall unconscious at 0 hit points. The Fighter risks exhaustion every turn they maintain this buff, with a progressively higher Constitution save, and it ends if they fall unconscious or die. The Mountaineer is a post-Cataclysm martial tradition that arose out of people fighting monsters in the Badlands, Marches, and other dark corners of the world. Initially they can use shields as a 1d4 bludgeoning martial weapon, can shove or make an attack against opponents with shields as a bonus action, add a shield’s AC bonus to Dexterity saves vs single-target spells and harmful effects, and can spend reaction to take no damage vs such effects if they’d take half damage instead. They also can move through the space of creatures one size larger, and whenever they’d impose forced movement on a creature no more than one size larger they can swap places instead. At 7th level they gain additional +2 AC when in total cover (+7 AC total) or when next to a wall or other obstacle that can grant such cover. At 10th level a number of times per short or long rest equal to their Proficiency Bonus, anyone they hit with a shield suffers from mechanics identical to the Slow spell for one turn if they fail a Constitution save. At 15th level they can swap places with an adjacent target about to be hit by an attack and take the attack instead, and at 18th level their AC bonus for total cover/walls also grants +2 to attack rolls and applies when they’re adjacent to allies no more than one size smaller than them. The Spellblade is an “I Can’t Believe It’s Not An Eldritch Knight” subclass, originating from the Manacalon Empire but now the Circle of Danantar are the most well known practitioners. It even has almost-identical spell slot and level progression. But unlike the Eldritch Knight, the wizard spells it can learn are broader, including the Conjuration, Enchantment, Evocation, and Transmutation schools. But no Abjuration, so bye-bye Shield! Initially they can treat any melee weapon as a spellcasting focus and perform somatic components with the weapon instead of a hand, and they ignore disadvantage on ranged spell attack rolls due to adjacent opponents. At 7th level they can imbue their weapon with energy whenever they cast a spell or cantrip with a casting time of 1 action, giving their weapon +1d10 bonus force damage on attacks until their next turn. At 10th level they automatically gain a number of temporary hit points equal to five times the level of a spell they cast. At 15th level they can change a spell with a casting time of 1 action to 1 bonus action once per short or long rest, and at 18th level they can spend a bonus action once per short or long rest to enter a dance-like stance for 1 minute, granting them a bonus equal on attacks, AC, and saves equal to the level of a spell they cast for 1 round. Thoughts: More than the other subclasses, the Fighter subclasses are inevitably going to be compared to existing official options. The Commander to the “leader-like” Battlemaster maneuvers, and Spellblade to Eldritch Knight. First off, the Battlemaster maneuvers that do similar or equivalent effects (Distracting Strike for advantage on attack rolls, Rally for temporary hit points) are single-target, whereas the Commander’s features affect multiple allies. And like Maneuver Dice, the Commander’s non-capstone features also refresh on a short rest. So the Commander has the upper hand in being multi-target, but the Battlemaster has the advantage in that allies don’t have to stay close until the double-digit levels, as buff-based maneuvers have much more generous ranges like Rally’s “friendly creature who can see or hear you.” As for trading in attacks for Dodge, I can’t see this being as useful save for the Fighter using it on themself, and even then. The best defense in 5e is a good offense, and given that Fighters are great at mowing down enemies via damage, there’s not many times when I can see them giving up one or more attacks to make them and their allies harder to hit. As for Mountaineer, it is good for sword and boarders via a shield shove or bonus attack, albeit that is partially replicating something an existing feat already does. As for the +2 AC from cover-based structures, by my reading it sounds like it can apply even when they’re not in total cover but merely adjacent to such a thing, meaning they can get this bonus when they are next to a wall but targets otherwise have unobstructed line of sight. I believe that’s how it worked in the video game. Otherwise, a lot of the abilities focus on situational things, like only being useful against foes within a certain size category. Finally, the Spellbade. First off, being able to cast a spell with an occupied hand is great, for it makes sword and board gishes viable. Whereas the Eldritch Knight gains bonus action weapon attacks with a cantrip and eventually leveled spells, the Spellbade cannot typically attack and cast during the same turn. But +1d10 force damage can make up for this next turn, particularly when combined with Action Surge. They can attack-cast with leveled spells earlier than the Eldritch Knight (15 vs 18), but that is refreshed by rest rather than at-will. Gaining temporary hit points with leveled spells helps their staying power, and having a wider array of spell schools to choose from is also good. I’d rate them higher than the Eldritch Knight, but losing out on Abjuration hurts them. This post is getting lengthy, so I’ll cover the rest of the subclasses in the next one. Thoughts So Far: The chapter on races and subraces left me rather cold, particularly because they didn’t include discussions on the races added in the DLC, and also because the new subraces felt rather bland. As for the new subclasses covered so far, there’s a mixture that are both cool and practical, but also some that fall short of existing official options. Only the Battle Domain for Clerics feels overpowered to the point I’d take some heavy convincing to permit them in a campaign. It’s clear that a few of them were made to fill in the gaps for subclasses not OGL-friendly like the Sun Domain or Spellblade, but otherwise most feel original enough to have a unique place in the world. Join us next time as we finish up character creation with the rest of Chapter 6 as well as Chapter 7: Backgrounds
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Jun 12, 2024 02:27
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I like how Black Witch is just "yeah it's a mech-sized Mag from Warframe, roll with it" Waiting warmly for Monarch my beloved.
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Jun 12, 2024 18:08
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Itano circus the mech
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Jun 12, 2024 18:44
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Traveller posted:I like how Black Witch is just "yeah it's a mech-sized Mag from Warframe, roll with it" There was an earlier artwork done for the Atlas that in hindsight was pretty close to Excalibur, too: 
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Jun 12, 2024 21:21
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Tsilkani posted:The core increases threat to 3, not by 3. You're not getting double anything for most CQB weapons. Fixed! Devalues the Tortuga a great deal, IMO. Leraika posted:it's me, I'm emperor player, and yes  Keep your Emperor pilot happy, ladies and gentlemen, because you'll be happy you did when you've taken no structure damage at the end of a hard encounter.Traveller posted:I like how Black Witch is just "yeah it's a mech-sized Mag from Warframe, roll with it" I could be convinced to put it in the next post, considering the first Frame we're talking about in that post is a Variant-Frame, and thus less work. It's a really good Variant-Frame, though... The Monarch ALSO has a really good Variant-Frame, so it'd be a hard sell to start two separate posts with one...
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Jun 12, 2024 22:19
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The Tortuga is probably pound-for-pound the single best line mech in the entire game.
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Jun 12, 2024 23:32
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Lemon-Lime posted:The Tortuga is probably pound-for-pound the single best line mech in the entire game. Hell yeah, I love my chonky boy. The one weapon in the core book that really benefits from their core power is the Manticore's Arc Projector. It's already CQB, so it'll work with the talents you probably already grabbed, and suddenly your reactions are hitting 4 guys! (And you're catching fire.)
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Jun 13, 2024 00:58
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Lemon-Lime posted:The Tortuga is probably pound-for-pound the single best line mech in the entire game. Can you explain why? From my perspective as a dirty Drake lover, it has nothing really going for it except that it can Overwatch twice, which is excellent but doesn't really stand up to most other Frames or Core Powers. Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Jun 13, 2024 |
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Jun 13, 2024 12:13
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Mecha_Face posted:Can you explain why? From my perspective as a dirty Drake lover, it has nothing really going for it except that it's slightly better at doing Overwatch than other mechs are. 8/2 with 6 rep cap gives you some of the best EHP in the game in most scenarios and it has very good e-def on top of that; Heavy Gunner is a very good talent; the HMG is borderline busted and Sentinel negates its single downside (and once you hit LL3 you take Autostab to make it even dumber); alternatively, overwatching with CQB weapons is powerful and Sentinel makes that better if you wanted to go Vanguard (and you often just do both - HMG + Decksweeper with HGunner + Vanguard is the cookie cutter Tortuga build); it has sensors 15 and +1 TA which happens to also make it one of the better frontline hacking platforms in the game and means it can do a lot with minimal investment in Horus licenses (Goblin 1 for Hor_OS I is a very common pick because Puppet System lets you force enemies closer and/or make them trigger your overwatch). The license as a whole is also stupid good (Decksweeper and Daisy Cutter are two of the best CQB weapons in the games; Hyperdense Armour is one of the best HP-tanking systems; Catalytic Hammer enables some very interesting melee builds, though not generally for the Tort). The Drake can turn itself into a bunker, which is nice. The Tortuga can go somewhere and immediately make life within 8 spaces of itself a living hell, drawing fire while surviving most of anything any enemy in the game throws at it, doing significant damage in the process. There is very little in the game that's better than a Tort at Standing On The Point. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jun 13, 2024 |
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Jun 13, 2024 13:06
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The guns being good doesn't do much for me considering any mech (with the proper mounts) can have them, but the rest of that seems like very solid logic. Thanks! Gotta say, though, "The Drake can turn itself into a bunker" is a little reductive considering what that bunker does for a party. I've always preferred support roles in TTRPG, which is half from actually liking them and half being a forever GM and support-focused DMPCs generally make the players look good rather than taking the spotlight for themselves, crucial for a GMPC. But even with that I don't think I'm overvaluing the Drake. Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jun 13, 2024 |
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Jun 13, 2024 17:06
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Classes, Part II  The concept of the Monk originated among Tirmarian warrior societies, ranging from those who combined their training with religious principles to those who sought to find ways to fight without weapons for necessity and other reasons. Like so many other traditions it spread to the other races post-Cataclysm, and in modern times they include secular as well as religious philosophies. The Way of Freedom originally developed among Manacalon slaves who were forbidden from owning weapons. The Cataclysm gave them the perfect opportunity to conduct slave revolts across the Empire, freeing their people. This text kind of contradicts Monks having a human origin. But going on with mechanics, at 3rd level they can use Flurry of Blows without having to Attack first, and they gain a free use of Dash and advantage on their next attack roll when doing so. At 6th level they can spend a reaction to make a melee counterattack against an adjacent enemy who misses them. At 11th level they can make 1 additional attack with Flurry of Blows and regain 1 ki point if 3 of their flurries hit, and at 17th level they can remove one mobility-based Condition (like grappled) for free at the start of their turn, and gain a flying speed and free use of Dash and Disengage for 1 turn whenever they use Step of the Wind. The Way of Light was founded after the Cataclysm to fight the many monsters that became commonplace in the world. At 3rd level they learn the Light cantrip, and they can cause targets to radiate bright light when they’re hit with a Flurry of Blows and also automatically take radiant damage while so lit. At 6th level they can spend 2 Ki points to do a blinding AoE burst of light that also deals radiant damage, and at 11th level they deal bonus radiant damage when using unarmed strikes against opponents lit up from their Flurry. Their 17th level capstone lets them automatically light up nearby opponents without needing to Flurry them, and while in bright light they can change their unarmed damage type to radiant and once per turn spend a Ki point to force a foe who strikes them to reroll their attack. The Way of Survival reflects monks who focus on pushing their bodies to their limits, hoping to outlive and outlast their opponents. It turns the Monk into more of a tank role, initially giving them +2 AC when they’re not wearing armor or using a shield, and gain advantage on attacks for 1 round when using Patient Defense. At 6th level they can heal damage at the start of their turn equal to half their Monk level or the total amount of damage taken whichever is lower, provided they took damage since the start of their last turn. They also gain resistance to all damage at 6th level when they use Patient Defense. At 11th level they add their Constitution modifier to the damage of unarmed strike and monk weapon attacks, and at 17th level once per long rest they regain half their maximum hit points and Ki points when they drop to 0 hit points, and become immune to any instant-death effect that doesn’t deal damage. Thoughts: The Way of Freedom freeing up Flurry of Blows from the Attack action opens the Monk up to some nice combos and also guarantees them a way to still do damage in a round when they’d otherwise be doing something else. The use of a reaction-based counterattack is nice too, given it’s going to be a very common trigger. As a combat-heavy subclass it still lags behind other options as it primarily involves dealing damage, while something like Open Hand can impose various debuffs and Astral Self can substitute force damage and grant reach. Way of Light is better than Sun Soul (the other radiant damage light-based subclass) in that its damage-dealing effects add onto unarmed strikes rather than being a weak substitute, and their 6th level ability is less damaging than an attack/flurry but makes up for that with a good multi-target debuff. Way of Survival is pretty good in that the Monk is pretty fragile for a melee-focused class with its d8 Hit Dice, and the subclass explicitly minimizes this weakness. Its initial +2 AC effectively gives them a shield for a circumstance that should more or less always apply, and its buff to Patient Defense makes it good for offensive purposes (advantage on attack rolls) in addition to effectively halving all damage. The Constitution bonus to damage rolls is nice but probably isn’t going to be all that high given it’s a MAD class, and the 17th level feature really ups their staying power but at that point in a campaign PCs in general get really hard to kill.  Paladins are holy warriors who are “sworn to fight against evil using the divine might of their patron deity,” which implies an alignment restriction on paladins and also ties their oath to a god, something that is no longer the case in 5th Edition traditionally. The Oath of Judgment are those paladins who swear to punish evildoers and lawbreakers, acting as wandering judges without bias or preference to institutional power. Their bonus spells are a grab-bag of rather unrelated options such as Heat Metal, Blight, Silence, and Scrying. Their Channel Divinity options are both bonus actions, either granting the option to restrain a struck target in melee or end a wide variety of Conditions on a nearby friendly target. Their aura lets allies add the Paladin’s proficiency bonus to their damage rolls, at 15th level they can perform a reaction-based attack dealing psychic damage to someone who hurts them or an ally affected by their aura, and their 20th level powered-up buff lets them mark targets and can teleport to them, ignore damage resistance, gain resistance to their attacks, and force the marked target to make a Charisma save to attack anyone besides the Paladin. The Oath of the Motherland are those who wish to heal the land wounded during the Cataclysm, and focus on the Badlands which they call the Motherland. Their Oath implies a hostility to the adventuring economy arising from expeditions into this region, such as returning things taken by monsters and thieves to the “rightful inhabitants of the Motherland” and that “mortal activities must be destroyed if they unbalance the natural way.” Their overall theme is fire and stone-based, such as bonus spells like Fireball, Flame Strike, and Stoneskin, and their Channel Divinity options can deal short-range fire damage or blind a target. Their aura grants resistance to fire damage and +1 AC, and at 15th level they become immune to fire damage, ignore resistance to fire damage with their attacks, and reduce physical damage dealt to them by 5. At 20th level their transformed buff causes their melee attacks to deal bonus fire damage, turn a foe’s fire immunity into resistance, and can engulf targets in flames when they attack them in melee. Paladins of the Oath of Tirmar were members of the Inquisition, dedicated to rooting out the Sorr-Akkath and their agents. In modern times they are viewed as obsessive weirdos given that such monsters are believed extinct. Their bonus spells revolve around truth and light-based stuff such as Moonbeam, Dispel Magic, and Daylight. Their Channel Divinity options either grant advantage on Persuasion and Intimidation checks for the next 10 minutes or cause melee attack to gain the benefit of Dispel Magic on a struck target as well as forcing them to revert to their original form on a failed save if they’re shapechanged. Also at 3rd level their bonus Smite damage applies to shapechangers in addition to fiends and undead. Their aura grants short-range blindsight, at 15th level their melee attacks reduce a target’s movement speed (which can stack with each attack) and their Divine Sense also grants Truesight for 1 round. Their 20th level buff state effectively applies the restraining/true form melee attack from their Channel Divinity to every attack, they have advantage against creatures not in their true forms and such enemies have disadvantage on attack rolls against the paladin, and enemies with 20 or less hit points within 30 feet fall unconscious (no save) and remain that way until they get more hit points or the paladin moves out of range. Thoughts: The Oath of Judgment’s bonus spells feel rather unfocused, and the offensive ones such as Inflict Wounds and Heat Metal are being heavily weighed against the bonus damage from smite. Their Channel Divinity option that can end all sorts of Conditions as a bonus action is quite nifty, but their aura is rather underwhelming in comparison to other subclasses as damage roll bonuses have a lot less oomph than stuff that helps bounded accuracy. Motherland is also kind of weak in that fire is one of the most commonly-resisted damage types, and the ability to ignore that with their abilities kicks in way too late at 15th level. The +1 to AC from their armor may be good for some tank builds, but that alone doesn’t save the rest of the subclass. Finally, the Oath of Tirmar is the kind of thing where its overall usefulness depends on what enemies the DM throws at you. In a “classic Solasta” campaign where the Sorr-Akkath are the main enemies they can really shine, but otherwise shapechangers aren’t a common enough enemy type to justify taking the subclass.  Rangers are pretty much the same in Solasta as they are in virtually every other setting: warriors who specialize in using nature’s magic and terrain. The Marksman is our first subclass, originating among the soldiers of the Manacalon Empire. At 3rd level they gain proficiency with fletcher's tools and can automatically craft arrows during short and long rests provided they have access to wood, and they can make a ranged attack as a reaction against non-adjacent opponents who cast a spell or make a ranged attack. The text specifies that it’s a target the Marksman sees making such an attack and not against them in particular, so they can do this counter for foes who are attacking their allies and other people. At 7th level any targets they hit with a ranged weapon cannot make opportunity attacks against them for 1 turn, and they ignore disadvantage on ranged attack rolls when within 5 feet of a hostile creature. At 11th level once per turn they gain a free extra attack against a creature they successfully hit twice with a ranged weapon, and at 15th level their Extra Attack can let them attack three times with the Attack action. Shadow Tamer is basically an OGL-ified Gloom Stalker. Their bonus spells involve stealth and scouting such as Invisibility, Meld Into Stone, and Faithful Hound. At 3rd level they gain darkvision, or improved range for that sense type if they already have it. They can also mark a target for an hour once per short or long rest, letting them see the target perfectly even through total cover and deal extra damage equal to their proficiency bonus against them. At 7th level their darkvision range increases, can see in magical darkness, and can spend a reaction to impose disadvantage on an attack made by a marked target. At 11th level they can make a free weapon attack against a hostile creature who misses them a number of times per long rest equal to their Wisdom modifier. At 15th level they gain for one turn +2 to AC and proficiency in all saving throws against a target’s attacks if the Ranger hits it with an attack. The Swift Blade originated among the Sylvan Elves, and it would be Drizz’t Do’Urden’s subclass if he was statted up in 5th Edition. You’re all about two-weapon fighting and being a speedy warrior. At 3rd level you gain +2 AC when fighting with a weapon in each hand, your speed increases by 10 feet, and opportunity attacks against you are made with disadvantage whenever you Dash. At 7th level you can turn invisible for 1 round as a reaction once per short or long rest if you take damage. At 11th level you can make two attacks instead of one as a bonus action when doing two-weapon fighting, and you can make one attack each with your main and off-hand weapon whenever you make an opportunity attack. At 15th level you can enter a state of increased focus for 1 turn a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus, dealing +1d8 damage with melee weapon attacks and critting on an 18-20 with such weapons. Thoughts: The Marksman’s initial woodcrafting ability is not so hot given that many gaming groups don’t track ammunition or make it very cheap, and it’s honestly the kind of thing people should be able to do by default with the proper tool proficiencies. However, the subclass has great damage-dealing potential in gaining additional attacks, and the ranged counter-attack at 3rd level will be a very common trigger. As the 11th level ability isn’t limited in use and Archery is already a Fighting Style that adds a +2 bonus, they are a very good offensive option for a Ranger. The Shadow Tamer is obviously competing for the Gloom Stalker’s role in being a “hunter in the dark,” and unfortunately Gloom Stalker wins out. From its bonus to initiative, being outright invisible to darkvision, proficiency in Wisdom saves, plus a free attack at the beginning of combat, the only things Shadow Tamer has going for it that Gloom Stalker doesn’t is their ability to see through total cover against targets they mark. Swift Blade is focused almost entirely on combat like Marksman, but it helps make two-weapon fighting a more effective and viable option. The initial +2 AC makes up for the lack of shield and can stack with the Dual Wielder feat, and gaining an additional off-hand attack also really helps. The only feature that feels out of place is the one-round invisibility, which at best will mostly be good for gaining short-term advantage on a foe for when the Ranger attacks it.  Rogues are…well, in Solasta the only commonality is that they’re unpredictable and specialize in all sorts of stuff. How imaginative! The Darkweaver represents rogues who specialize in using poison and striking from above. They initially gain proficiency with the poisoner’s kit and can poison a weapon with their Cunning Action, and can substitute the DC of poisons with their own (8 + Intelligence modifier + Proficiency Bonus). Not only that, they gain a climbing speed equal to their walking speed and they can trigger Sneak Attack without the need for advantage when striking from a higher elevation. Quite a front-loaded subclass! At 8th level they ignore reduced movement from difficult terrain, have advantage on saves vs effects that would Paralyze or Restrain them, and they reduce a target’s immunity and resistance to poison damage one step down (immune becomes resistant, resistance is lost) when attacking targets with poison. At 13th level they can infuse a weapon with magical poison that lasts until they die or infuse a new weapon, and deals bonus poison damage and the poisoned condition whenever they perform a Sneak Attack, and can poison enemies immune to the poisoned condition. Finally, at 17th level they can double the damage of an attack provided it’s a weapon attack made against an already-poisoned creature, and this can be done a number of times per long rest equal to their Intelligence modifier. Hoodlum represents those Rogues and criminals who are more brawns than grace. Initially they apply their Strength modifier to Intimidate on top of Charisma, gain proficiency with martial weapons, medium armor, and shields, and can make Sneak Attack with melee weapons that don’t have the Finesse property. At 9th level anyone they Sneak Attack has disadvantage on attack rolls against the Rogue until the start of the Rogue’s next turn, and at 13th level they can use a bonus Action to blind and incapacitate a target for 1 turn if they fail a Constitution save (targets become immune for 24 hours after being affected). Their 17th level capstone gives them +51 hit points and they gain +3 bonus hit points each time they gain a level afterwards. Additionally, when they trigger Uncanny Dodge and the attack is within melee reach, they can spend a reaction to attack and apply Sneak Attack if they don’t have disadvantage on the attack. Shadowcasters are Rogues who dabble a bit in spellcasting to enhance their abilities. They’re like Arcane Tricksters in that they can learn up to 4th level spells and draw from the Wizard spell list but have a relatively wide option of schools: conjuration, evocation, necromancy, and transmutation. At 3rd level they can apply Sneak Attack to spells with attack rolls, and can use their Dexterity instead of Intelligence when making melee and ranged spell attacks (save DC is still based on Intelligence). At 9th level they can spend a bonus action to teleport up to 25 feet, and can do so a number of times per short or long rest equal to their Intelligence bonus. At 13th level they learn two cantrips from any class and can spend a reaction to cast a cantrip at a caster who damages the Rogue with a spell. At 17th level they can spend a use of their teleportation to automatically dodge an attack as a reaction. Thoughts: First off, Darkweaver is very front-loaded and thus will be quite friendly to multiclass dippers. Poisons in 5th Edition tend to be cost-prohibitive, given that it’s one of the most commonly-resisted damage types and Conditions. The subclass kind of solves this problem in making it so that the Rogue can ignore this, but as this comes in at 9th level and later its best features won’t see use in most campaigns. As for the Hoodlum, it comes off as another subclass best for multiclassing: while I do like they’re trying to emulate those musclebound gangsters without making them Fighters, Strength is still one of the weaker stats in 5e. As for Shadowcaster, being able to apply Sneak Attack to spells is pretty nifty, and as they can do a reaction-based cantrip at 13th level this can potentially let them apply Sneak Attack twice per round. In comparison to the Arcane Trickster they’re not going to be as good of a utility-based Rogue, given that they cannot choose Enchantment and Illusion spells. The spell schools that would be of greatest use to most Rogue concepts.  Sorcerers originated from the magical maladies wrought from the Cataclysm, where a rare few were born with the ability to drain magic from the surrounding environment. Some of them bonded with disrupted magic, in effect having their very essence changed. Child of the Rift is our first subclass, arising from the confluence of energies between Solasta and Tirmar. Their bonus spells draw heavily from the Cleric list such as Guiding Bolt, Spirit Guardians, Banishment, and Lesser/Greater Restoration. At 1st level they gain a swappable proficiency and expertise in two skills, languages, or tools every long rest. At 6th level they can teleport up to 30 feet whenever they use Metamagic. A 14th level whenever they’re about to take damage they can spend 1 Sorcery Point and a reaction to become resistant to a single damage type for 1 turn. At 18th level their free teleportation use increases to 60 feet and they can bring along one adjacent creature of equal or smaller size (unwilling targets get a Dexterity save to resist). The Haunted Soul represents those who are haunted by spirits who died during the Cataclysm. Their bonus spells are heavily necromantic and debuff-centric such as Inflict Wounds, Animate Dead, Phantasmal Killer, and Geas. At 1st level they learn Chill Touch for free and can cast it as a bonus action whenever they cast a leveled spell that takes 1 action to cast. When leveling up they can also replace learned sorcerer spells with enchantment/necromancy spells from the warlock and wizard spell lists. At 6th level they gain resistance to necrotic damage and can spend a reaction and 2 Sorcery Points to haunt a foe that damaged them, causing attack rolls to be made against them with advantage. At 14th level they can once per long rest touch a recently slain creature as an action, regaining half of their spent Sorcery Points up to half their Sorcerer level or half the target’s Hit Dice, whichever is lower. At 18th level they can spend 6 Sorcery Points to be possessed by a powerful spirit, letting out a paralyzing selective AoE wail along with a variety of buffs such as flying speed, immunity to necrotic damage, can reduce the Sorcery Point cost of Metamagic spells by 1 (minimum 0), and can perform a frightening gaze attack. The Mana Painters are those born with the ability to draw magic from the environment, and when arcane magic seemed all but lost after the Cataclysm they were the only kind of spellcaster who could still cast such spells by leaching them from elsewhere. Their bonus spells draw heavily from the Druid list and are elemental and battlefield control themed, such as Spike Growth, Call Lightning, Wind Wall, and Tree Stride. At 1st level they gain temporary hit points equal to three times the level of a spell whenever they cast a leveled spell, and at 6th level they can substitute their Charisma modifier for another ability score when saving vs spells. At 14th level they can spend a reaction to leech magic from someone casting a spell within 60 feet. The spell is weakened if it would roll an attack or force a save, imposing advantage/disadvantage in favor of the targeted. The Mana Painter then regains Sorcery Points equal to the level of the spell. They can use this once per short or long rest or by spending 5 Sorcery Points, but they only regain Sorcery Points the first time they use it per long rest. Their 18th level capstone lets them buff themselves up with infused magic for 1 minute once per long rest, letting them apply two Metamagic options to the same spell, and can substitute Sorcery Points by taking a number of d8 worth of force damage by the amount they’d otherwise pay. Thoughts: Child of the Rift turns the Sorcerer into a pseudo-Cleric, and gaining double proficiency in two skills or tools that can be altered every long rest will make this a very dip-friendly subclass. The higher-level teleportation and context-based damage resistance are practical in that they help increase the class’ staying power. Overall, not a bad option all around. Haunted Soul can be good for damage builds in that they effectively get to apply Chill Touch whenever they cast most spells in combat. The advantage-imposing haunting has great synergy with Rogues, but 2 Sorcery Points can be a bit costly. Being able to choose from warlock and wizard spell lists may sound good, but as they can only replace learned spells rather than learning them as entirely new spells, this isn’t as versatile as it seems. Regaining Sorcery Points from the fallen is nifty but comes in too late for most campaigns, and the same applies to the buff-based possession even if it has a lot of broad abilities. As for the Mana Painter, their low-level features are very good. The temporary hit points will apply almost all the time given that spellcasting is their primary feature, and their 6th level ability makes them much more resilient against magic. Interestingly their mana leech can be harmlessly used on non-offensive spells, so they can still gain Sorcery Points if they do something like “leeching” off a Cure Wounds cast by the party healer.  Warlocks operate a bit differently in Solasta, given that contact with the outer planes was severed due to the Cataclysm. Instead, warlocks nowadays choose patrons from powerful entities who live in the world, many of which are trapped in unknown locations. The Hive represents warlocks who tap into the hive-mind of monsters known as Redeemers. These monsters are giant insects bred during the Manacalon Empire to eat magical waste and unruly slaves. Their expanded spells focus on bug and gas-based effects such as Giant Insect, Cloudkill, and Acid Arrow. At 1st level they can once per short or long rest apply pheromones to a target they damage with a spell, giving them disadvantage on their next saving throw. At 6th level they learn Counterspell, can cast it once per short or long rest without a spell slot, and can add their proficiency bonus to the ability check if the Counterspell would call for that. At 10th level they have advantage on all saving throws versus spells, and at 14th level once per turn they gain temporary hit points whenever they’re about to take damage from a spell. The Timekeeper is a mysterious figure who is singularly focused on healing the areas of land where time malfunctions due to the Cataclysm. Such warlocks are tasked with stabilizing areas of distorted time. Their expanded spells focus around speed and mobility such as Blur, Longstrider, Slow, and Freedom of Movement. At 1st level any hostile targets they affect with a leveled spell cannot take reactions for one turn, and at 6th level once per long rest they can spend a reaction when damaged to pop out of the timestream like the Blink spell, also negating the damage and its effects and then reappear in a nearby space the next turn. At 10th level they can grant an ally the benefits of Haste for 1 turn, but with no lethargic side effects, a number of times per long rest equal to their proficiency bonus. At 14th level once per long rest they can take one additional action on top of their regular action/bonus action. The Tree is a plant somewhere in the Lost Valley that is said to be able to grant wishes. Those who braved the dangerous journey to find it become its warlocks, brimming with new magical power. The expanded spells draw heavily from the Druid list with a side of debuffs such as Barkskin, Confusion, Conjure Woodland Beings, and Spike Growth. At 1st level any enemy who attacks them in melee takes 1d4 piercing damage, and at 6th level they gain immunity to the poisoned condition and resistance vs poison and necrotic damage. At 10th level once per short or long rest they can emit a sudden thorny growth as a bonus action, damaging and restraining adjacent targets who fail Dexterity saves. At 14th level their piercing counterattack deals +1d4 poison damage, and they gain a permanent +2 AC and half-cover against all ranged attacks. Thoughts: The Hive patron has a nifty 1st-level debuff, but from here on out the rest of its features are specifically to deal with spellcasters. Due to this, its overall effectiveness depends on what foes the DM pits against the party. As for the Timekeeper, the 1st-level ability is a good way to prevent enemies from conducting opportunity attacks against the warlock and their allies, making the party a bit more mobile in that regard. A lot of their expanded spells are concentration-heavy, so they compete for influence with what few spell slots the warlock has. The one-turn Haste at 10th level with no downsides is best for martial allies, but otherwise of limited use for other classes and roles. The Tree feels rather underwhelming in that pretty much all but the 10th level ability are passive, and the thorny growth and counterattack damage is something only useful when the warlock is in melee; something a non-hexblade arcane class should not be doing!  The practices of Wizards originated in the Manacalon Empire, and through the use of spellbooks their knowledge spread widely even after the Cataclysm. Spellbooks are a particularly sought-after treasure in the ruins of the Badlands, for it allows modern-day mages to add such powers of the past to their repertoires. Court Mages served the rich and powerful as supernatural bodyguards, using their magic to protect their charges where ordinary steel would fail. They gain proficiency with shields and the Protection Fighting Style. They can also generate a Spell Shield, a protective magical aura around themselves and a nearby ally a number of times per long rest equal to their proficiency bonus. This aura has a bunker of hit points equal to 3 x wizard level and any damaging effects apply to it first. The shield remains for 10 minutes, until another use is expended and thus refreshed, or the wizard or ally gets out of range. At 6th level the wizard can spend a bonus action to teleport adjacent to an ally with their Spell Shield and also grants +2 AC to the Wizard when they’re adjacent to an ally. At 10th level they and an ally gain resistance to a single damage type whenever a Spell Shield is generated. At 14th level a Spell Shield that runs out of hit points creates a short-range AoE that blinds, defeans, and silences hostile creatures on a failed Constitution save, and also grants the protected person resistance to all damage for 1 turn. Greenmages originated among Sylvan Elves, blending magic of the natural world with wizardry and archery training. They gain access to an expanded spell list drawing from the Druid class such as Speak with Animals, Dominate Beast, and Commune with Nature. They also grain proficiency with light armor, shortbows, and the Archery fighting style. At 6th level they can transform a piece of ammunition from a ranged weapon attack they perform into entangling vines a number of times per long rest equal to proficiency bonus, restraining a target. At 10th level they can spend a reaction to halve damage from a ranged attack or spell. At 14th level they can substitute their Intelligence for Dexterity when making ranged weapon attacks, and can imbue ammunition with leveled spells that go off when the ammo is shot, but once such an ammo strikes a target they need to wait for another short or long rest in order to do so again. Loremasters are all about gaining as many magical spells as possible, dedicating their lives to quantity over more focused purposes. At 2nd level they gain proficiency in Arcana and History (if proficient in one or both they gain proficiency in Medicine or another Intelligence-based skill) and the time and money to craft potions and scrolls is halved. They also gain a bonus cantrip from any class. At 6th level they gain three wizard spells instead of two whenever they level up, and can learn ritual spells from any class. At 10th level they can prepare a number of additional spells equal to their proficiency bonus, and once per day they can swap out a prepared spell with one from their spellbook after completing a short rest. At 14th level they learn 4 cantrips from any class, and gain one bonus 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level spell slot. The Shock Arcanist originated among elite troops of the Manacalon Empire, overloading their spells at risk to their health to gain unmatched magical devastation. At 2nd level they can treat any spell that deals more damage when upcast as one level higher, but only a number of times per long rest equal to their Intelligence bonus. At 6th and higher levels they learn various kinds of Arcane Shocks, which can modify a cast spell. For the first time per long rest they suffer no negative detriment, but each time thereafter they take psychic damage that cannot be reduced, or are blinded and deafened for one turn for the most powerful kind of Arcane Shock: Overwhelm. The Arcane Shock Types are Power (6th level, roll damage twice and take higher roll), Pierce (10th level, ignore magic and damage resistance), and Overwhelm (if it would deal half damage on a successful save, deals full damage no matter what). At 10th level the wizard converts their Hit Die to d8 and their maximum hit points increase by 10; they don’t recalculate hit points for 1st through 9th level, they just use d8 from then on out. At 14th level they can apply multiple Arcane Shock types to a single spell, gaining the benefits and drawbacks simultaneously, and can treat damaging spells as two levels higher via their 2nd level upcasting ability. Thoughts: The Court Mage has some nice defensive features that help the squishy wizard be less squishy. However, some of them are counterintuitive: the Fighting Style doesn’t work well unless their charge is equally fragile, as most foes will opt to attack unarmored spellcasters instead. As the Spell Shield’s range is a mere 30 feet until 14th level, it’s risky to use on front-liners as the wizard will need to be in close contact with them. As for the Green Mage, it feels like a gish but does a poor job at it, as the restraining shot competes with actual spells for an action and one of their expanded spells is Entangle which can do that but with more targets. Not only that, the imbuing of spells into ammo and substituting Intelligence for Dexterity for ranged attacks kicks in way too late. For those reasons it’s a rather poor option for a subclass. The Loremaster feels rather unimaginative in concept: it’s really just giving the wizard even more spells and can cast spells more often. That being said, this is the class’ bread and butter, and is a good option in that it gives them more options to do during the adventuring day. The Shock Arcanist is first and foremost a blaster caster: being able to roll damage twice and take the better result is an amazing boon for spells such as Fireball. The main drawback is that its core features deal damage to the Wizard, which individually aren’t much (two or three times the slot level used) but given their low hit points that damage adds up quickly even when they later get a d8 Hit Die. The Shock Arcanist is best used conservatively rather than all-out, when they know they can risk some self-inflicted damage.  Chapter 7: Backgrounds Much like subclasses, backgrounds in 5th Edition are heavily restricted due to the OGL. However, while we got an awful lot of subclasses, we have only 8 backgrounds in this book, one of which is the Acolyte repeated from the Player’s Handbook. Each new background in Solasta is without exception a retooled version of one that already exists in the official rules. Instead of Sage, you have Academic. Instead of Noble, you’ve got Aristocrat! The backgrounds here also dispense with some universal commonalities. For instance, two of them grant three skill proficiencies instead of two: the Academic grants Arcana, Nature, and Insight, while the Aristocrat grants History, Persuasion, and Intimidation. Two backgrounds even grant weapon and armor proficiencies! Lawkeeper grants martial weapons, while Sellsword grants Medium Armor (and presumably Light Armor as well, which it did in the video game). In terms of bonus equipment there’s a few winners and losers: Lowlife grants worn clothes and nothing else, while Aristocrat grants 40 gold pieces on top of fine clothes and a signet ring. As can be expected, all of their Features are background-related fluff such as Academic having ties to a mentor in the Guild of Antiquarians. But several have explicit benefits, such as Lawkeeper gaining advantage on Persuasion when dealing with law enforcement in your home nation, or Philosopher being able to collect plants and craft potions 25% faster. Thoughts: Given that the Backgrounds here are already covered by existing official ones and are unbalanced in terms of benefits, I wouldn’t allow any of these in a campaign. The Sellsword in particular screams “pick me” for unarmored casters. Thoughts So Far: For the rest of the subclasses, I do like how some explicitly close up the weak points of certain play styles such as the Way of Survival for a tanky Monk or the Darkweaver for a poisoner-based Rogue. The Paladin subclasses were a low point for me in being relatively underpowered and situational, while some of the arcane subclasses like the Tree patron and Greenmage play to suboptimal strategies. Which is a shame, as I do like the concept of a nature-based arcane caster. While each class has a little bit of something new, the Cleric wins out by far with seven new domains. The new backgrounds left me cold and are obviously a relic of the video game. But unlike the subclasses which got some heavy revisions from feedback, the backgrounds are more or left as is. I also noticed that some features made reference to crafting, like the Loremaster Wizard or Philosopher background. These were useful in the video game which did have a sub-system for this, but in default 5e this more or less requires DM Fiat. Join us next time as we finish up reviewing Solasta in Chapter 8: Monsters and Chapter 9: the Sorr-Akkath!
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Jun 16, 2024 03:40
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Rand Brittain posted:Honestly, the bit I find most annoying is how much time it spends on buzzwords reminding you that the author has the correct politics instead of just making it implicit in the text. Is the part of the guy mooning over the Arabic tiles instead of reading them based on something? It's so specific that it sounds like it's rooted in some actual event rather than just being the seventh line under "THIS GUY SUCKS"
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Jun 16, 2024 05:22
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Alright! Let's continue our foray into the game that has too much stuff: Lancer! We're starting this post with the Orchis, a Variant-Frame of the Black Witch from the sourcebook Field Guide to the  The Black Witch was a Defender pretending to be a Controller, and the Orchis stops pretending. The Orchis doesn't lose the gimmick of Involunary Movement, and since it shares the same Licenses as the Black Witch, it gets everything the Black Witch gets to help with that. The Orchis also follows the trifecta, just focusing more on the Defender/Support roles. The Frame is much faster than most Defenders. With its base speed of five, and the Royal Guard Trait, the Orchis can move up to 11 hexes a turn without Boosting or any points in Agility! But you'll want to pump points into Agility, since it has 10 base Evasion as well! Just with what we've seen already seen, six points in Agility and the SSC Core Bonus that increases Evasion can pop this baby up to eighteen. Combined with 1 Armor and the average base HP, the Orchis is impressive at avoiding damage. And due to Guardian and Perfect Parry, it's also good at extending that durability to its allies. It has a lack of mounts, with only one Main/Aux mount, and terrible Tech Attack, but come on. Save Target 12? E Defense 10? Base SP and Heat Cap of 8 and 6 respectively? Incredible. Oh, and the Pankrati Talent is practically made for the Orchis. Definitely take that. And of course, the Core System. The shield throw passive is pretty nice! A free 3 damage once a round when you slam them into something, AND they don't get to take reactions? Yea, that's pretty great... But what about the Core Power? Well, it's wretched, right? You only get one attack, it doesn't do any damage... It's a never-miss Ram that has Knockback 3 instead of 1. Cool, but nothing that should cost your CP, you only get one of those! Well, notice the Efficient keyword. It's not the first time we've seen that one, actually. It was on the Empakaai, too! What it means is that at the end of the Scene, you get your CP refunded. So the Orchis can only do this once per Encounter... But it can do it multiple times in a Mission. A lot of the newer mechs have Efficient in their Core Powers to help balance out their use over multiple Encounters, instead of the CP being too awesome to use. A pretty great idea, I think. Either way, it's still a bit on the weak side, but the Core System's passive is more than enough to make up for that. All in all, play an Orchis if you want to protect the party while pretending to be a Nelson. And dodge ALL the things.  Next, we have the Death's Head, from the Core Rulebook. Warning: possible Arachnophobia trigger for this particular Frame. I'll put the Frame image in a spoiler tag.  The core design philosophy of SSC is "Speed, Precision, Beauty, and fusing man to machine". And nothing exemplifies Precision more than the Death's Head. Every part of the Death's head is built with the purpose of delivering long-range strikes with as much accuracy as possible. It's one of the only Frames in the game to straight up get +1 to anything, let alone attacks, and the Neurolink trait can turn a miss into a hit... In the rare case the Death's Head misses. Higher than average speed helps it get into position for the best possible line of sight, and a decent heat cap makes it capable of making good use of Overkill, always a good thing. Sensors 20 is the longest Sensor range in the game, shared by only 3 other mechs (4 if counting the Anansi from G&S), which makes sure the Death's Head can always find its target, and with a Main/Aux and a Heavy mount, it can take full advantage of that. That said, it has average HP, no armor, and a stunningly low repair cap of 2! 6 SP isn't a lot, either, and its middling e-defense and lack of tech attack bonus means it really won't be doing anything impressive with hacking or melee... But that's not what the Death's Head is for. It's for putting holes in things at extreme range no matter what. The Core Power doesn't make the Death's Head more accurate, but it makes it a hell of a lot more deadly. 3d6 extra damage on any crit from a ranged weapon? And note that the max range for this effect is outside of the Death's Head's Sensors. Which means someone gets to be a spotter! Of course, this doesn't extend the range of your weapons, just sets the maximum range in which Mark for Death gets its effect. We've discussed crits before, rare in early game, but in mid to late game, they're extremely common. So in practice, what this means is exactly what the Action is named: Some poor SOB gets marked for death, then obliterated. The fact that it keeps you from moving is only a problem if the enemy can find lots of cover, but more rough is that Mark for Death is a Full Action, so you'll have to either Overcharge or wait for your next turn to fire on your initial target, or after your initial target gets turned into scrap. Play a Death's Head if you're that camping rear end in a top hat.   License I High-Stress Mag Clamps: Uneven terrain? Walls? The CEILING? Anywhere and everywhere is your sniper nest. It's a pretty good system for low-gravity environments like space, too. Not so much underwater unless you're using another mech as a surface, which... You know what? Possibly valid. It's only 1 SP, too, which is really cheap for this effect. A must take for Death's Head, and depending on the situation, nearly any other Frame! Tracking Bug: While it seems practically made for the Death's Head, making sure nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can hide from the Frame. But the lack of bonus to Tech Attacks makes it a little hard to hit without some Systems investment. While 2 SP is the average cost for a System, needing that on top of Tracking Bug being a Tech action is a steep price, but you can't argue with what you get from it. A Death's Head's worst enemy are Hidden or Invisible enemies, so with this, even the Frame's worst nightmares like a Dusk Wing can't hide from it. License II Core Siphon: When you really, really need that first attack to land, Core Siphon is there for you. It's a great choice on any mech, especially those that rely on Inaccurate weapons, but the Death's Head using it means you get ACC on top of a reroll. And when you're at higher levels, the DFF on the rest of the attacks matters a lot less. This system excels both at low levels and high ones, so it's a great choice for any mech that really wants a particular weapon to hit... Just remember, it's a Protocol. You can't game the system by shooting everything and then using Core Siphon. Vulture DMR: The core battle rifle for SSC is really drat good. 1 more damage than the Assault Rifle, 5 more Range, and Accurate. That it gives 1 heat is a trade-off I'm just fine with. And with 1d6, Overkill is rarely an issue. It's just there in case the dice screw with you. There's not much more to say other than how solid this weapon is, and any rifle-specialist should consider taking it. License III Kinetic Compensator: If you're taking Core Siphon, take this too. The DFF from Core Siphon makes you more likely to miss with a weapon you care less about, and then you get even more ACC for your next shot with the weapon you do care about. At higher levels, this falls off as you become far less likely to miss, and the 2 SP is better spent elsewhere. But if you're going all the way into Death's Head early, this'll help until you get to that point. There's also ways to intentionally try to miss a shot, though they're few and far between. Railgun: And uh, this. This is what the Core Siphon and Kinetic Compensator are REALLY for. If you can get the right setup (with a little help from your wing), the Railgun does absolutely massive damage in one shot. A Line 20 with 1d6+4 damage?! And since it's Ordnance, a mech with this weapon can't move before firing it, so why not just fire it first and that Core Siphon ACC? And if you missed with the last weapon you used, and assuming you're in a Death's Head, that's +2 ACC, +1 to the roll, and a reroll. You're basically demanding to get a critical hit. The book doesn't seem to be clear on interactions with AoEs and ACC or DFF, but the implication seems to be that ACC and DFF applies to the attack itself rather than individual attack rolls, so I'd rule that, yea, you get that ACC on every single attack roll in that line. So you're probably going to nail every single target. This is an excellent weapon. Even if you don't want to use this Frame, it's not hard to justify going to L3 in it just for this. Appropriately, after the Death's Head, we have a mech Frame that it has a real hard time dealing with: The Dusk Wing.  DHIYED, by the way, is (or was, depending on how you look at it) a para-causal being that has a lot of reality warping, mythos-esque powers. It was presumably destroyed, but at great cost. In whatever way the term 'destroyed' applies or means to something like DHIYED. The Dusk Wing is a Controller focused on stealth and making it harder to hit it and allies. With 12 base Evasion, being Invisible when it moves, and hovering instead of running everywhere, it does a real good job of not being hit. That said, it's small and fragile, and has a low repair cap, so it needs that badly. Its E-Defense is nothing to write home about, but the Frame itself is a decent hacking platform, if you want to go for that, but it also functions well as a damage dealer. Whether at range or in melee, the Dusk Wing excels at getting into a fight, getting out of a fight, and being annoying as hell. Be careful of its heat cap, though, especially since it has only average base E-Defense. Like the Orchis, and Nelson, it's also really fast with a base speed of 6, but unlike those Frames, it doesn't really have anything in its Licenses to make it faster aside from Boosting. The Core Power is an interesting and fun one. The Dusk Wing leaves illusory copies of itself behind in its original hex whenever it moves, which also function as low-power mines. While 1d6 might not seem like a lot, proper play with this Frame means you'll be Boosting every chance you get! Surrounding enemies with these holograms and then teleporting to one of them makes a large series of explosions that catch everything nearby in their wake! Not only stacking the damage, but also providing the Dusk Wing an easy out if its pilot gets surrounded or caught in AoEs itself. For a third benefit, savvy enemies will want to stay away from the copies as much as humanly possible, so these can be exploited to herd enemies where your wing wants them. Play a Dusk Wing if you just like being the second most annoying thing on the battlefield. ... What's the most annoying thing? Oh, we'll get there eventually. But it sounds like cobalt and tends to make barking noises a lot.  License I Neurospike Mk1: On damage-focused enemies, Shrike Code is immensely useful. The 2 heat from Invade + 2 heat every time they try to attack stacks up real quick, and a lot of damage focused mechs don't exactly have great heat caps. NPC Mechs in particular will have to choose between doing nothing or outright exploding, most of the time. Mirage allows you or an ally to be Invisible for the target, and that's always useful. Mind you that with Mirage, it's not giving you or your ally the 2 heat from Invade, it's giving it to whatever will be forced to consider you invisible. I love this system for a lot of reasons, but the sheer fact that it almost-completely exemplifies what the Dusk Wing does is one of them. Veil Rifle: A nice weapon! Accurate with only the drawback of reduced damage, but it's a Line so who cares about that? Of course, the main feature of the weapon is to give enemies +1 DFF to enemies trying to shoot at your friends. An extra layer of protection certainly doesn't hurt, and this blends very well with the next Frame we'll be talking about. License II Burst Launcher: Speaking of extra layers of protection, the Burst Launcher is one of the few Accurate Arcing weapons. It's also one of the few that doesn't have an AoE attached. But if an enemy is hiding in hard cover, waiting for a good shot, you can keep them from their BEST shot with this. As long as you crit. The heat damage also helps. So you're probably starting to see why this Frame is kind of a nightmare for a Death's Head. Flicker Field Projector: And it only gets worse. Not only is Overwatching the Dusk Wing hard because it's Invisible when it's moving, with this it also STAYS invisible for the next attack. That player who had the stealth-Raleigh used this to great effect, and let me tell you as a GM: ANNOYING. Which means as players, you'll love it. License III StunCrown: More like SunCrown! Blast 3 is a pretty huge area, and it forces two separate saves! While a use of this significantly slows down a turn, the effects are worth it! Nothing likes being Jammed or Impaired, and approximately negative amounts of things like being both. Not affecting enemies in cover can be harsh if you're in a cover-rich environment, but even if you only hit one enemy with this, it's worth the use. OASIS Wall: So it's sort of like Magnetic Shield, except it gives resistance to Energy, hard cover instead of soft, and only one hex high. It forces the Dusk Wing to move in a straight line, but it's still an excellent defensive option that really screws with Artillery in particular, given that at those ranges, they'd have to move a LOT to get around the +2 DFF. It isn't an OBSTRUCTION, though, so it doesn't break line of sight. Still, only Seeking weapons can really get around this easily. And here we are. Finally. It's time for my BABY to get its spot in the sun: the Emperor from Field Guide to the  Yea, dude, good thing it'll always be under your control and never in the hands of mercenaries or something. ... Oh. Oopsie daisy. So what is this mech that has been so flaunted and favored by me? Well, it's a weird one. The Emperor breaks some rules. First, it only has 2 HP. It can't gain HP through Grit (though other methods still work). Instead, it starts every Mission by gaining Overshield. Now, this Overshield will never be enough to equal even the mid-range HP that other Frame end up with, but that hardly matters. The Emperor is really hard to actually damage. Imperial Vestment means that the Emperor is constantly refreshing its Overshield, effectively "healing" itself constantly. And while Sovereign Presence doesn't really stick to the theme, it is an excellent reason to let the Emperor's pilot go first every round. The Emperor's stats are slim, though. 10 base Evasion helps it stay alive, and 5 base speed allow it to easily reposition and be the best Support it can be. The base repair cap is extremely low, especially considering that it has only 2 HP that doesn't increase through Girt, but see above: It's hard to actually DAMAGE the thing. It has decent E-Defense, good Tech Attack Bonus, and 7 base SP is incredible, allowing the Emperor a great deal of flexibility... In theory. In practice? Not really. The base heat cap of 5 is a little worrying, but it's manageable. The Emperor also only has one weapon mount, which doesn't matter in the slightest. Why? The Marathon Arc Bow is the only weapon the Emperor needs. Line 15 and AP, doing 1d6 damage... On a Support mech? I could understand if it was 1d3 damage, 1d6 seems a tad overtuned. But I'm not gonna complain about that! Overcharge to attack with this multiple times as often as feasible for your heat cap... Oh, who am I kidding?! What are you even doing with that reactor anyway?! Just Overcharge it! All the time! It's also the Emperor's main source of both self-"healing", and "healing" for allies, keeping them going long beyond their expiry dates. It's already a powerful weapon, how could it get better? Well, pop that CP and see for yourself. Now it's not a lightning bow, it's a chain-lightning bow. The amount of Overshield and damage you can put out with Xerxes Apex makes it incredible for dealing with swarms of NPC Mechs and nasty Player Mech wings alike. Keep zapping everything that moves for victory! Pro-tips: The Ace and Bonded talents work very well for the Emperor's support capabilities, allowing it to pick someone who gets bonuses just from being near it, get those bonuses itself, and making sure it's never far from said someone.  Play an Emperor if you play Sage in FFXIV, because that's literally what this mech is. It's Sage from FFXIV.   License I Dominion's Breadth: So I mentioned how having 7 base SP doesn't really help the Emperor, and that's because the Emperor mostly just gets Techs for its Licenses, and does not have nearly enough SP to mount them all1, which is a shame because they all kick rear end. The first one you get is no exception. Burst 2 is fairly big, and as discussed before, Impaired is not something anyone likes to get. The damage is just the icing on the cake. Note that all but one source of all damage the Emperor does is AP. That's kind of wild. Make enemies think twice about hitting an ally with this, or put it on an enemy to turn it into a bomb for all nearby enemies. Bolt Nexus: This is the only one that isn't. The initial hit from a Bolt Nexus is very weak, and has nothing really going for it. But every successive hit after that one deals four times the damage, at twice the range, and gets Seeking. There is no hiding from it. Once someone's been hit by a Bolt Nexus, they're getting hit with 4 damage every turn until they die, the Nexus is destroyed, or the user gets bored. The Bolt Nexus is one of the best options in a weapon category that's under-represented and under-used, but there's one teensy little issue: It's on the Emperor and every action you use this is an action not shooting the Marathon Arc Bow. That honestly means the Bolt Nexus is best used on other mechs, and if you're going for a Nexus-heavy build, it's a great option. License II The Imperial Eye: Oh, so you're approaching Shahnameh: The Emperor's main "healing" tool outside of the Arc Bow, it grants a significant Overshield on top of giving them Resistance to heat... Specifically, heat inflicted by someone else. What this means is that you won't be shutting down any HA mechs due to using this on them, while simultaneously making it much harder for enemies to weaponize an ally being in the Danger Zone. It's only got 3 base uses, which is reasonable considering how good it is at "healing" both an ally and yourself. Be careful about using it on a Sherman, though, since it can disrupt their attempts to Stabilize as often as possible. License III Ayah of the Syzygy: Yes, those are real words that mean things. No, I don't know how to pronounce them properly. Either way, this is an incredible system. Blast 2 isn't THAT big, but get enough enemies stacked inside of it with your Black Witch buddy, and let the entire wing pour fire into it! Even if you only get three in there, that's an extra six damage to everyone inside the field! It's a great tool for wrecking large groups of enemies, and if you can keep a bigger, meaner enemy inside of it, 2 extra damage sure never hurt anyone. The only issue is that the Emperor has a lot of really cool things it can do, but not enough action economy to do them all, so it can sometimes be a pain to set this up. Note: The wording is a little hard to parse for me on this one: It might mean the first time you hit any enemy period, but even then it's still good. Just less good. The Walk of Kings: This is basically the button that just refills the Emperor's Overshield to max. I mean, it does other things too, I guess. As long as they have your beefy shield, your melee allies now all have AP and create AoEs when they whack stuff. The wording is a little vague, but it does seem to imply each ally only gets the effect once, even if they both hit an enemy and get hit by an enemy. Next up, the Metalmark!  The Metalmark may as well be SSC's flagship Frame, given that it's such a well-rounded one. While it has the usual SSC focus on Evasion, being Invisible while moving and gaining more benefits from soft cover, it also has armor and a relatively high repair cap for an SSC Frame. Its heat cap is also decent, if below average, but its real weakness is lack of a decent save target, having low Sensors for an SSC mech, and a terrible E-Defense. However, that's okay, really, as the Metalmark's main purpose is to do damage. With three weapon mounts (Aux/Aux, Main, and Heavy) it has plenty of room for firepower. While pretty good at medium range, the Metalmark most excels at combined arms with a melee-leaning focus, so, unsurprisingly, the Combined Arms Talent is a good choice, along with the Infiltrator talent to prop up its stealthiness. The Core Power for this Frame is extremely simple. Tactical Cloak just makes you permanently Invisible. Yep. That's a flat 50% chance for attacks to miss you, period, for the rest of the Encounter. That's all attacks, whether normal, smart, or tech... And being Hidden is only a Quick Action away, to make yourself totally untargettable. There are ways to do this outside of this core power, of course, but Metalmark comes with it just built in. As with the Everest and the Nelson, sometimes the best Core Powers are the simplest.   License I Flash Charges: A good way to break line of sight so you (and your allies, possibly) can Hide. Or just avoid being shot at! Mines allow the enemy an Agility save, so grenades are the more immediate emergency option. Reactive Weave: Awkward pronoun switch mid-description aside, this offers a mech a good escape after taking a hit. If you're bracing for a hit, it's probably a big one you'd really like to not be hit by again, so it's a pretty nice system. Plus, only 1 SP cost! There's really no mech that couldn't benefit from this, but of course relatively fragile mechs get the most out of it. License II Rail Rifle: It's the Death's Head's Railgun, on a smaller scale. Less damage, less range, less heat. Other than that, everything I said about the Railgun applies to the Rail Rifle. It's a really good weapon when given a proper setup. Shock Knife: And then there's this rear end in a top hat. 1 damage is nothing, this is just a vessel for transmitting the pure evil that is Burn. It's an Aux weapon, so you can take two on some mounts. That's four Burn a turn, with one Quick Action. Watch your GM realize he's going to have to have that mech stabilize instead of actually doing anything useful, that's worth the price alone. License III Active Camouflage: 3 SP and 2 heat is a little steep for this, but any source of Invisibility that doesn't involve using your Core Power is good, I suppose! The Metalmark is swimming in methods to become invisible, so I'd say that if you take this, maybe lay off some of the other methods. Shock Wreath: Note that this version of the Shock Wreath is outdated; Comp/Con has a different version: First, the Shock Wreath is supposed to be Unique, which it isn't in the core rulebook. It also works differently: 1/round, you can add 1d6 Burn on top of the weapon's usual damage. Not only that, but if the enemy is already Burning when a weapon with this mod is used to attack it, the target loses line of sight to all but adjacent hexes. Generally, I think it's a major improvement over the original, which was already a pretty good weapon mod to begin with. Finally, we'll handle the Monarch, and its Variant from the mission book, Dustgrave.  Ah yes, the Monarch. Missile Platform extraordinaire. Saying the Monarch is an excellent Frame doesn't quite do it justice. It's the largest SSC Frame, at Size 2, shared only with the White Witch. It's not as durable as most mechs larger than Size 1, though. While it has 1 Armor, it has average HP, Evasion, and E-Defense, and only 2 base Repair Cap. That's not quite enough for how much of a big target the Monarch is. But you're going to use it anyway. Why? With a Sensors of 15, a speed of 5, and a Tech Attack of +1, the Monarch is surprisingly flexible beyond its true calling of firing missiles at everything that moves, everything that was moving, and everything that doesn't move. If you're a trope kind of person, the Monarch is the personification of the Macross Missile Massacre. The Monarch isn't content to just hit its target, either. With Avenger Silos, you get to hit another target with some bonus damage every time you crit2! And it's not going to let people in cover go, either, since any enemy that has Lock On can eat a Seeking missile, too. And since the Monarch is an Artillery mech through and through, with none of its weapons' ranges being below 15, it has the range to back that threat up. And the Core Power makes that threat a reality. For the cost of 1 CP, you do your best Megas XLR impression, spewing those bad-boys in every direction within a 50-hex radius. 1d6+4 is a lot when you have a railgun hitting 4 or 5 mechs. When it's hitting everyone on the planet that's quite a bit more substantial! It allows an Agility Save for half damage, but so what? It's not uncommon to be using a large number of NPC mechs in some Encounters (15-20 is actually a pretty reasonable number to throw against a powerful wing of PCs), and even if half of them save, you're still looking at a total damage of nearing or over a hundred. If the players know they're going into a target-rich environment, starting off with Divine Punishment is actually a great idea; the Core Power is best used early, in order to leave the entire enemy force crippled from the get go. Most likely it's not going to kill anyone at that stage, but it's going to make it a lot easier for the rest of your wing and allies to finish the job. Play a Monarch if you like giving out free damage like presents, or you're a dirty Capellan.   License I Javelin Rockets: A great tool for area denial, the Javelin Rockets might not entirely discourage enemies from moving through them to get to the Monarch, but if there's a mech like the Black Witch on the field, they might want to think twice. In my campaign, several mechs met their end because they forgot the vital lesson of FAFO and wound up being Involuntarily moved through every single Javelin-targeted hex and took the full 9 damage to the face. And that's one use of this: You can always fire more to cover a wider area. Sharanga Missiles: You can hit two targets at a time with 3 Explosive, and each of those can crit, which in turn causes 3 more Explosive from Avenger Silos. With two chances to crit, making it far more likely you will, that's a total damage of 9 (3 from both Sharanga, +3 from Avenger Silos). Not bad, right? Granted, if you're in a fight with one big nasty, the Sharanga really doesn't hold its own and feels like a burden, taking a weapon mount that could be used for something else. License II Gandiva Missiles: I'm not sure what the in-universe explanation for these being Energy damage is? Maybe they're ZoE style homing lasers? Well, either way, that's a lot of weapon tags, and all of them are great. While the weapon requires 1 SP, that's a very small downside for having Accurate, Seeking, Smart, and 1d6+3 damage on the same weapon. Stabilizer Mod: Especially if you attach this to it. I actually had a player who took the Death's Head's Railgun, stuck this on it, and used that as their main weapon instead of missiles. Which feels kind of like blasphemy, but I couldn't fault it for effectiveness. And since the Railgun is already Ordnance, not really losing anything. Note the lack of the Unique tag, so if you're willing to use up all your SP on this, you can have it on all your weapons. License III Pinaka Missiles: These practically require you to have someone in the wing who specializes in Involuntary Movement to regularly make use of the delayed version. Otherwise, this is still a pretty solid weapon that gives the Monarch an AoE option. Even so, given it takes two weapon mounts, including your Heavy, I'd only take it if you can regularly use it's delayed version. It'll be your only attack in your turn unless you Overcharge, after all. Also keep in mind, the range of this is outside of the Monarch's Sensors, so you might need a spotter to use it at max range. TLALOC-class NHP: I'm a little amazed this wasn't on the Death's Head. Either way, it's a pretty solid system for... Pretty much any mech that isn't Tech focused, and doesn't feel like moving much. Which is a surprising amount of mechs. I feel like this feels out of place on the Monarch; it could have been more appropriate on a number of other mechs. SSC Mechs just aren't built to not move a lot. Finally, we'll wrap this post up with the Viceroy Variant-Frame!  While rivaling the Sherman as a "standard" frontline mech might be a bit of a stretch, the Viceroy sure does a good job of its role: Getting in people's faces and saying, "No. You move." The complete opposite of its bigger sibling, the Viceroy is a CQB mech that decides anything that launches anything else is actually CQB now, thanks. Also, instead of single-target focus, its version of the Avenger Silos instead does damage to everyone around the Viceroy on a crit. It's Resistance against Explosive damage is pretty good, though amusingly it seems more likely to take affect against the Viceroy's own attacks as it just launches AoE markers all over the place at Danger Close. That said, it's barely any more durable than it's big sister, with 1 more base repair cap, and it loses the longer-ranged Sensors and Tech Attack Bonus. Otheerwise, its stats are identical. So what's the benefits of turning all Launchers into CQB weapons? Look, buddy, by now you should know the Vanguard Talent by heart. You know what the benefits are. While it's less powerful than the Monarch's, overall, the Viceroy's Core Power is incredible at jumping into a group of enemies that feel pretty good about their chances, and blowing them all apart. Burst 3 is a pretty huge area, and getting some friends to spam Lock On on everything in the area beforehand ensures your damage will get through... And then knocking them all prone for any melee allies in the general vicinity. What's that noise? Oh, just the incoming Atlas and Nelson fighting over who they get to stab. It doesn't have the raw damage potential of a Monarch's Divine Punishment, but Heaven's Downpour is a great way to inflict pain, then set the enemy up for more. Pro-tip: If the Viceroy goes last in a round, and all these enemies are prone, you can then drop Pinaka Missiles on them. This will force them to either take 3d6 damage, or waste an action boosting to get away from the Pinakas. Play a Viceroy if you're the kind of person who throws Stratagems way too close to your squadmates in Helldivers.  1. You can get enough with three points in Systems, but let's face it, there's other stuff you're going to want too. 2. Well, once per round. Mecha_Face fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jun 16, 2024 |
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Jun 16, 2024 14:11
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If we weren't meant to throw the strategems pretty close, they wouldn't take the form of little glowing red grenades!
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Jun 16, 2024 15:12
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Night10194 posted:If we weren't meant to throw the strategems pretty close, they wouldn't take the form of little glowing red grenades! Found the Viceroy player.
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Jun 16, 2024 15:32
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Mecha_Face posted:
The Catapult is my favorite 3025 mech...  Missiles and sensor shenanigans are a very Capellan thing come to think of it, but there's no way SSC would build something as ugly and grunty as the Vindicator.
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Jun 16, 2024 16:13
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The real question is, where is the equivalent of the AC-20 surprise shank urbanmech.
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Jun 16, 2024 16:14
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Traveller posted:The Catapult is my favorite 3025 mech... The Catapult is my favorite mech period, though none of the major factions in BattleTech really appeal to me. I do like the Kell Hounds and Grey Death Legion for mainly being lovable dorks that are nonetheless really good at fighting.
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Jun 16, 2024 20:19
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The best Battletech faction is Your GuysTM, the rag tag fools you've collected minis for and painted in your own color scheme. That being said I like the GDL because Grayson Carlyle has the preposterous ability to land himself in terribly dangerous situations where one misstep means horrible death, surviving by the skin of his teeth, then jumping right back into the next terribly dangerous situation.
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Jun 16, 2024 20:24
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