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Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
We never touched that until the Forgotten Realms Adventures hardcover came out, because that section was even more vague than 3E's CR calculations and we were wary about breaking things. Strangely, no-one seemed to notice that the canon specialty priests had absolutely ridiculous variations in potency and usefulness too.

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gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
Spheres of Power



When you learn the Dark sphere, you learn the following abilities:

Darkness: as a standard action, create a sphere of darkness with a radius of up to 10 feet + 5 feet per 2 caster levels, centered anywhere within Medium range of you.

You must concentrate within Medium range of the sphere to maintain it, but you can spend 1 spell point to make it last 1 minute per caster level without concentration.

Inside the darkness created by the sphere, bright light (including daylight) becomes dim light and imposes a 20% miss chance to attacks. Normal light and dim light become absolute darkness. Sources of normal light will only cast dim light and only within a 5-foot radius, while sources of dim light will not do anything anymore. You cannot resist the effects of this darkness, but Darkvision can let you see through the darkness.

Meld: As a standard action, grant yourself or a touched target the benefit of a [Meld] talent, which confers some benefit as it interacts with the sphere of darkness.

Dark Talents are classified as either [Meld] or [Darkness]. A sphere of darkness can only gain the benefit of one [Darkness] talent at a time.

Clearsight [Meld] - you may spend a spell point to grant your target immunity to all of the negative effects of your sphere of darkness. The target still cannot see within the darkness, unless they have Darkvision, but if they do have Darkvision this meld will let them see through even Pure Darkness. This effect lasts for 1 hour per caster level.

Dark Slaughter [Meld] - you may spend a spell point to grant your target additional damage when making attacks. If the meld target attacks a creature that is being flanked, or is denied its DEX bonus to AC, or cannot see the meld target, the attack deals an additional 1d6 precision damage which stacks with Sneak Attack. This effect lasts for 1 hour per caster level.

Nothing in here about how the attacker needs to be within the sphere of darkness to gain the ability, though I imagine "cannot see the meld target" already involves that. And the precision damage doesn't scale.

Darkvision [Meld] - you may spend a spell point to grant your target Darkvision 60 feet. If the target already has Darkvision, its range increases by 30 feet. You can take this talent multiple times to increase by granted Darkvision by another 30 feet per time taken. This effect lasts for 1 hour per caster level.

Disorienting Darkness [Darkness] - your sphere of darkness can disorient creatures: when a creature enters the sphere, they must make a Will save. If they fail, they must roll a d8 to determine the direction of their next move action; a 1 means they go off in their intended direction, and 2-8 diverge from the intended direction in a clockwise manner. The creature does not know that it's heading in the wrong direction until it leaves the sphere.

Fearful Darkness [Darkness] - as soon as a creature enters the sphere, they must make a Will save. If they fail, they become Shaken. If they succeed but remain within the sphere, they must make another Will save at the end of every turn they spend within the sphere. The Shaken effect goes away once they leave the sphere.

Feed on Darkness [Meld] - you may spend a spell point to grant a target Fast Healing 1 for 1 minute per caster level. The healing only works while the target is inside your sphere of darkness.

Greater Darkness - you may spend a spell point to double the radius of your sphere of darkness as you're creating it.

Hide in Darkness [Meld] - you may spend a spell point to grant your target the ability to make Stealth checks to hide even while being observed while inside your sphere of darkness. This effect lasts for 1 hour per caster level.

So yeah this is the tie-in to Dark Slaughter

Hungry Darkness [Darkness] - as soon as a creature enters the sphere, they must make a Fort save. If they fail, they take 1 CON damage. If they remain within the sphere, they must make another Fort save at the end of every turn they spend within the sphere.

Lingering Darkness - When you cease concentrating on a darkness effect, you may choose to have the darkness remain for two rounds before dissipating

Basically letting you retain the darkness for 2 rounds without concentration, but also without having to spend a spell point.

Looming Darkness [Darkness] - creatures that enter the sphere must pass a Will save or suffer a -1 penalty to all saving throws so long as they remain within this area of darkness. This penalty increases by 1 per 5 caster levels. If any creature enters this area of darkness, they must immediately save or suffer this penalty.

Pure Darkness [Darkness] - You may create a darkness effect that negates low-light vision. Darkvision is reduced to 5 ft. In addition, all other senses (blindsight, scent, etc.) are reduced by half.

This would seem to be a critical talent to take considering how many races in PF have Darkvision, although at the same time it's in conflict with a lot of the other debuffing Darkness talents.

Quick Meld - You may use [Meld] talents on yourself as a swift action instead of a standard action.

Silent Darkness [Darkness] - you may create an area of darkness that dims sound as well as light. All Perception checks made to hear noises originating from within the area of your darkness suffer a penalty equal to your caster level.

But it doesn't silence casters? Lame

Snagging Darkness [Darkness] - creatures that enter the sphere must pass a Reflex save or become entangled. Creatures who succeed at this save but remain in the darkness must save again at the end of your subsequent turns. If any creature enters this area of darkness, they must immediately save or suffer the effects. An ensnared creature can attempt to escape its entanglement by making a Strength or Escape Artist check as a move action, with a DC equal to the Reflex save DC.

Step Through Darkness [Meld] - you may spend a spell point to grant the target the ability to step into one patch of darkness and emerge in another. As a move
action, the target may teleport up to 30 ft. This lasts for 1 hour per caster level. Both the location they are in and the location they are teleporting to must be within an area of your darkness.

This is very cool and somewhat evocative of the Thief games where you need to dart from shadow to shadow.

Thick Darkness [Darkness] - your sphere of darkness counts as difficult terrain. Creatures move at half speed through your darkness, cannot run or charge, and cannot make 5-ft steps.

Wall of Darkness - rather than create a sphere of darkness, you may arrange your darkness as up to three 10-ft cubes, +1 cube per caster level. These cubes must be arranged contiguously, but otherwise may assume any shape. You must be able to perceive all areas your darkness will inhabit.



All in all, another utility-ish school. I can imagine a gish or partial-caster build taking this to be a sort of Hunter in the Night that makes their own night.

Up Next:

Alteration
Creation - 1
Conjuration
Dark - 1
Death
Destruction
Divination - 1
Enhancement
Fate
Illusion
Life
Light - 1
Mind
Nature
Protection
Telekinesis
Time
War
Warp
Weather

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Pussy Cartel posted:

I actually really liked all the side-details in Trinity, too, and I'm kinda looking forward to the Aeon Continuum re-release/reboot that Onyx Path is working on. I just hope we finally get some details on the quantakinetics and what exactly the paramorphs were supposed to be.
By the way, guys, in all this talk about Trinity's metaplot, let's not forget the real focus of the game: an excuse for illustrations of nude women floating in giant fish tanks.

Simian_Prime
Nov 6, 2011

When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

Halloween Jack posted:

By the way, guys, in all this talk about Trinity's metaplot, let's not forget the real focus of the game: an excuse for illustrations of nude women floating in giant fish tanks.

FATAL & Friends 2016: An Excuse for Nude Women in Fishtanks

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Alright, sorry I'm late on updating my own review, I got distracted by running my Bret game and killing infinity skaven. Vermintide is pretty great.

It's time for more WHFRP 2e!

It's time for one of the biggest chapters in the book: Magic. Magic is an odd duck in WHFRP. It's not nearly at the same level as all the psyker stuff in 40k; most wizards are, after all, reasonable, licensed people who are tinkering with the stuff of Chaos for the good of the Empire under controlled conditions, combined with bickering academics. They're distrusted by the common folk, because who the hell knows what a wizard is going to get up to (and they don't often show up outside their colleges unless something has gone terribly wrong), but all in all they're much saner than 40k's sanctioned psykers. Wizards draw on a single Wind of Magic to avoid corruption; by focusing on one color and one lore, they can handle the stuff of the Warp much better. This means there's no such thing as the D&D 'I can use every spell ever!' wizard in Warhammer Fantasy. Similarly, your spells aren't limited by casts per day, but rather by the chance of things going fundamentally wrong when you use magic (though it's a smaller chance than in 40kRP).

Magic's general resolution method is simple. You take as much time as the spell says you need to take, use an Ingredient for a bonus to cast the spell if you have it and wish to (+1 to +3, depending on the rarity and difficulty of the spell), Channel for an extra half action and a Willpower test to add your Magic rating to your casting check if you have time or want to, and then roll a number of d10s up to your Magic stat. You then compare the result to the casting number of the spell; if you equaled or exceeded it, the spell goes off. If you get all 1s, you gain some Insanity (we'll go over that when we get to Sanity, it's bad) and the spell fails automatically. If you roll doubles, triples, or quadruples, you roll on a Chaos Manifestation table to see what went wrong; your PC will only instantly die from magic 10% of the time on a quadruple result, in a game where Mag Rating 4 is the highest PCs will generally get. The chances that you just die and get hosed forever are fairly low. You're much more likely to get stunned at an inopportune time, gain insanity, take damage, or lose the ability to use magic temporarily from miscasts. Armor also screws up magic, so don't expect spellcasters to wear much unless they're priests.

Priests also get magic (eventually), but it works differently. They only have one miscast table, the Wrath of the Gods, indicating they drew the personal attention of their God and get interrupted by an untimely holy vision or something. It's generally much safer than arcane magic but less powerful, and priests can get a Talent called Armored Caster that lets them use magic in armor just fine. Their Lores are based around their gods, but a Priest won't get their God Specific Lore until their 3rd career at earliest; this is sort of a problem because it takes forever for a cleric to actually have the spells they signed up for and the petty divine magic they get at 2nd Career isn't very useful.

All wizards start with Petty Magic. Petty Magic is the basic stuff, not unique to any Lore or Wind, taught to all apprentices. It's stuff like a basic damage 3 Magic Missile, some relatively useful illusions (considering how much you want to avoid combat, generally, being able to distract people by summoning the sound of an incoming State Troop regiment of reinforcements can be very helpful), and Sleep. Sleep is exactly as useful as Sleep always is; hitting an enemy with Sleep (50% chance for a new wizard to cast, then a WS test to touch the target, then a WP save for them, so it's not easy to do) pretty much takes them out. Not only are they dropped for d10 rounds, but they're Helpless. A Helpless character takes an extra d10 of damage from any hit they take. They wake up after the first hit, sure, but doing 2d10+3 to a mook is probably going to kill it. Sleep is never not useful.

Priests get a variety of minor buffs and heals for Petty Magic, basic stuff like instantly restoring 1 wound or giving +1 Move, +5% Agility. Priest Petty Magic is helpful, but nothing great. Thankfully, Priest is a pretty good general career already, so they're not reliant on magic.

Hedge Magic is terrible. A Hedge Mage is a mage with no official training, on the run from big-hatted witch hunters and with no further way to advance as a mage besides going into normal Apprentice Mage and begging the colleges to let them in. They get no ability to deal damage, some useless stuff like protection from rain, and a minor stun-shock that isn't as good as Sleep. Don't play a Hedge Mage, it's just asking for trouble.

Next, you have Lesser Magic, which is universal across Divine and Arcane magic. Lesser Magic is a group of utility spells everyone who works the Winds might pick up, like Dispel or the ability to summon armor equal to your Mag that won't interfere with spellcasting. Nothing here is essential (outside of Dispel. You want Dispel), but almost all of it is helpful.

Finally, the Lores. I'll be doing the Lores as a separate update; they're long and there's a hell of a lot of them. The big deal with Lores is you get your entire Lore when you learn it. You're limited only by your ability to get the spells off. So while a newbie Bright Wizard might know Conflagration of Doom (their insane supernuke) he's not going to pull off Casting Number 31 with a 2 Mag rating. Still, getting your Lore at Career 2 as a wizard is a huge deal and a big step up from being an Apprentice. It becomes an even bigger deal once you have the Wizard Sourcebook, which includes a bunch of really cool alternate spells and a neat system by which you begin to take on traits of your Lore, with bonuses and penalties (a Jade wizard of life starts to make plants grow by their presence or have difficulty handling metal, etc). I'll get to that when I finally get to that book later.

Next Time: The Winds of Magic!

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
The amount of effort focused on magic in WHFR2e is weird (two sourcebooks and an entire large chapter of core), considering that thanks to the nature of character creation and advancement, you're not even particularly likely to have a caster in any given campaign. Granted, the priest sourcebook also has a lot of cool fluff and other materials outside of actual priest magic.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The priest sourcebook is really loving cool and I'm looking forward to getting to it, too. And I think part of the reason for the focus on magic is that if you don't have a wizard, chances are you'll be facing an evil wizard at some point, anyway.

A lot of WHFRP2e's sourcebooks pass a very important sourcebook test: After reading them, you often find yourself wanting to play with the fluff and stuff they described. I love this game's add-ons a lot.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

fool_of_sound posted:

The amount of effort focused on magic in WHFR2e is weird (two sourcebooks and an entire large chapter of core), considering that thanks to the nature of character creation and advancement, you're not even particularly likely to have a caster in any given campaign. Granted, the priest sourcebook also has a lot of cool fluff and other materials outside of actual priest magic.

If you want to play a wizard, you can just switch classes to Apprentice Wizard by paying an XP cost. You can switch to any Basic Career that way.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Though, since you'd come into Apprentice Wizard with no real skills/talents for it unless you came out of an academic career, you might be there for awhile.

One game I ran in another setting (a campaign based on Bungie's Myth: The Fallen Lords; WHFRP worked really well for that tone) had a PC start as a Dilettante and go into Wizard after he finished it, and it didn't take him that long to get through Wizard afterwards, though.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

MonsieurChoc posted:

If you want to play a wizard, you can just switch classes to Apprentice Wizard by paying an XP cost. You can switch to any Basic Career that way.

At the cost of something like 1500 XP to be able to advance to Journeyman, yes. You end up way behind if you do that. Not a huge deal, but it's an uphill battle for a while.

PoptartsNinja
May 9, 2008

He is still almost definitely not a spy


Soiled Meat

Midjack posted:

Looks suspiciously like Space Battleship Yamato. Phone posting so no pic, but Google provides.

They're pretty much straight out of Legend of the Galactic Heroes.



Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Yeah, I covered Long's tendency to swipe back in my review of Rifts World Book 5. There's probably a lot of stuff I missed, but I was surprised at just how much I could find nonetheless. I don't say that as a condemnation, necessarily - a lot of RPGs are built on IP with the trademarks filed off - but Long was really heavy on referencing from existing works.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

darthbob88 posted:

Indeed, and generally much larger than frigates, which I also do not expect the Hunter class to match. To be unnecessarily fair, though, extrapolating from modern blue-water navies to magical space fleets is always fraught with peril, and the frigate category is a much closer match for size than cruiser. Still should have called it the Hunter-class frigate, though.

It doesn't help that blue-water navy ship classifications aren't exactly written in stone - especially "frigate".

Night10194 posted:

Finally, the Lores. I'll be doing the Lores as a separate update; they're long and there's a hell of a lot of them. The big deal with Lores is you get your entire Lore when you learn it. You're limited only by your ability to get the spells off. So while a newbie Bright Wizard might know Conflagration of Doom (their insane supernuke) he's not going to pull off Casting Number 31 with a 2 Mag rating. Still, getting your Lore at Career 2 as a wizard is a huge deal and a big step up from being an Apprentice. It becomes an even bigger deal once you have the Wizard Sourcebook, which includes a bunch of really cool alternate spells and a neat system by which you begin to take on traits of your Lore, with bonuses and penalties (a Jade wizard of life starts to make plants grow by their presence or have difficulty handling metal, etc). I'll get to that when I finally get to that book later.

Looking forward to the Lores. I have a weird nitpick for that section.

PoptartsNinja posted:

They're pretty much straight out of Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

To be honest, there aren't too many ways to make your blocky, elongated spaceship that is vaguely battleship-shaped all that distinct from any other blocky, elongated spaceship that is vaguely battleship-shaped. Pretty much all the human ships in FreeSpace look like that, just to name another example.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Doresh posted:

Looking forward to the Lores. I have a weird nitpick for that section.

Is it that Amethyst and Amber kind of suck?

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

Night10194 posted:

Is it that Amethyst and Amber kind of suck?

My problem with it is that it goes through some lengths (in the wizard sourcebook, at least) explaining that each wind of magic is the incarnation of a particular human emotional response, then proceeds to only give them spells based on the 'element' it embodies. Hysh (Light) is the lifting of burdens, protectiveness, comfort, serenity, conviction, and dawning understanding, for instance, but it's spells focus mostly around shooting lazers and blasting demons, with a bit of healing thrown in.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Yeah, I covered Long's tendency to swipe back in my review of Rifts World Book 5. There's probably a lot of stuff I missed, but I was surprised at just how much I could find nonetheless. I don't say that as a condemnation, necessarily - a lot of RPGs are built on IP with the trademarks filed off - but Long was really heavy on referencing from existing works.

The one that got me is the Grasshopper powered armor is basically a Knight Sabers hardsuit and I recall that the combat unibike from Atlantis sourcebook is taken from the monobikes in Venus Wars.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

fool_of_sound posted:

My problem with it is that it goes through some lengths (in the wizard sourcebook, at least) explaining that each wind of magic is the incarnation of a particular human emotional response, then proceeds to only give them spells based on the 'element' it embodies. Hysh (Light) is the lifting of burdens, protectiveness, comfort, serenity, conviction, and dawning understanding, for instance, but it's spells focus mostly around shooting lazers and blasting demons, with a bit of healing thrown in.

This is definitely also a valid problem and comes from them trying to depower and then directly port the TT game's spells.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Night10194 posted:

Is it that Amethyst and Amber kind of suck?

And there is this weird omission about what happens to your Arcane Lore if you get a Dark Lore. You can most likely have both, but the rules aren't exactly clear about it.



The Dark Eye


Man, it has been a short while. Well, in any case, let's talk a bit about the metaplot of TDE.

Metaplot Basics

Aside from adventure modules, the main way TDE's metaplot is developed is through the Aventurian Herald, a bi-monthly magazine at around 12 pages presenting itself is an in-universe newspaper (a newspaper of the same name does in fact exist in Aventuria) with lots of fluff and some rules stuff thrown into the mix. The Herald used to cover around 2 Aventurian years per Earth year, but 3rd edition's last big event has slowed it down to realtime.

I've never subscribed or read the Herald, but kudos to any official magazine that is almost as old as the system itself (the first issue came out in 1985, with the 1st edition having come out in 1984) and is still alive and well.

Metaplot NPCs and You

TDE is pretty weird when it comes to major metaplot NPCs. You know how White Wolf and its copycats protect their most important NPCs by giving them ridiculous stats and a broken combination of spells and/or magical items? Well, TDE doesn't even give them stats. The most you'll ever get is a summary in a sourcebook detailing the NPCs most important stats and skills, with maybe a Fate-like description ("Something von Whatshisface is a remarkable strategist and a masterful combatant" or something like that) which under the NPC creation rules almost always equal a truckload of EXP to spend on stuff. Appearances in adventure modules are then usually complemented by a spell and magical item combo diminishing any chance of the party spellcaster from actually being able to do anything against the NPC. If the NPC in question is also a spellcaster, expect him to have minor freecaster abilities that allow him to cast suped-up versions of exsiting spells without verbal and somatic components (or really anything that could warn the party). Fun times.
If the players are actually supposed to fight a major NPC, the GM basically has to fudge things till the railroad says the fight is over (we'll get to that).

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Big G

I think the best way to experience the metaplot is through one of TDE's most long-running villains: Gaius Cordovan Eslam Galotta.


This guy.

G.C.E. Galotta used to be head mage of a previous Middlerealmian Kaiser (these guys die like flies these days). Being number 1 at court of course attracts its fair share of rivals. In Galotta's case, it was the female Tulamidian mage Nahema ai Tamerlain.

One faithful day, Nahema convinced the Kaiser that it would be a great display of Galotta's power if he were to summon a demon for the court's general amusement. I think this was a bit more accepted before demons became the ultimate metaplot bad guys?
Anyhow, the summoning was a success, though controlling the demon (essentially a weretiger on steroids) failed utterly, causing it to maul a nearby dancer. I'm sure Nahema had absolutely nothing to do with this.

Speaking of Nahema, she also suggested the punishment for Galotta's failure: the Scarlet Cap Dance. Pour some red paint on his head, throw him on a giant grill and let him dance till he passes out. The Kaiser approved of this, so not only did Galotta get banished from court, but his head was also now permanently colored red. I am not entirely sure why they thought he wouldn't immediately seek revenge. He's only the Middlerealm's most powerful mage.

Has fate will have it, Galotta came into possession of the Ogre Eye a couple years before this whole mess. The Ogre Eye is a Dark Eye which doesn't really work like a not-Palantir, but can rather be used to mind control ogres. He almost immediately started assembling an army of over 1,000 ogres, let them built a gigantic catapult and had them march towards the capital of Gareth. This had the Garethians freak out, seeing how the last March of the Ogres almost 2,000 years ago nearly wiped out the entire population. And thus 2nd edition's first adventure was born.


Old edition artwork used to be quite pulpy. Apparently, oldschool ogres were in a much better shape than the fat inbreds we have today. I also suspect these two doofuses in the front aren't supposed to be PC expys, because PC expys in these old covers tended to be bare-chested badasses with winged helmets.
Also, "fantastical fantasy games" is a pretty stupid subtitle for your game's logo.


Then again, Gareth's population was now around a million as opposed to a thousand, and the Middlerealmian's army was of course a tiny bit bigger and more advanced. So of course did the ogres get killed by an army around 10 times its size. Galotta himself just laid low for a while, teaching at a black mage academy or two and eventually releasing a dragon chimera on a city (he's a metaplot mage; of course he can just use a big dragon as an ingredient). And then Borbarad happened.


Fabulous

Borbarad was originally the Alveranian of Forbidden Knowledge, a son of the demi-god Nandus (maing him a quarter-god I guess?) who alongside with his more talented brother - the Alveranian of Hidden Knowledge - used to be reincarnated as mortals every couple centuries or thousand years (it fluctuated a bit). His last reincarnation came over 500 years ago as Tharsonius of Bethana, while his brother became Rohal the Wise (more or less not-Gandalf).

While Rohal was busy being the Middlerealmian Kaiser for more than 100 years and introducing the world to the current coinage and the thinly-disguised metric system, Tharsonius was busy doing dark magic stuff. He supposedly "invented" the Gargyles, created a brand of mosquitos that suck out EXP (a real riot for players) and came up with a variant of the forbidden blood magic that would allow even non-casters to cast spells if they were willing to pay with their own Life Points or use a sacrifice. And if you go by a certain adventure module that has quickly been deemed non-canon, he also built a spaceship to fill his dungeon with aliens. He also apparently had 12 fingers for some reason.
Tharsonius eventually started calling himself Borbarad (which is apparently old Tulamidian for "bringer of death"), which was also around the time Rohal had enough of his shenanigans and decided to bring him down. Their forces clashed in a desert and pretty much everyone died or disappeared, including the two brothers. It's not entirely clear what happened to Rohal, but Borbarad had his soul flung into the Limbus.

Fast forward near the end of 3rd edition TDE, and Borbarad got prematurely rezzed thanks to followers of his bringing back his soul and the high elf Pardona brewing together a new body for him. Borbarad made for his old hideout in the desert, were he turned the remains of the ancient emperor dragon Rhazzazor into some kind of dracolich and made pacts with seven archdemons, granting him that funky crown he's wearing. Said pacts included Belkelel aka Rapey McNotSlaanesh, but not Blakharaz aka Archdemon of Vengeance and nemesis of the main pantheon's leader. I think getting rezzed caused a bit of brain damage.

Behing impressed by his dragon chimera shenanigans, Borbarad quickly became BFF with good ol' Galotta. Together with their zombie dragon, a bunch of other followers and an army of undead, demons, mercenaries and rad lobster dudes, the forces of Borbarad invaded Tobria, a region that makes up the Middlerealmian's east coast and is largely isolated through the mountain ranges surrounding it, with the only connection to the rest of the realm being a mountain pass protected by the mighty Troll Gate.

This invasion of Tobria (quickly rebranded to Dark Tobria aka The Dark Lands) heralded 3rd edition's last big adventure path: The Signed Campaign. This campaign revolved around the Seven Signed, a group of heroes destined to duke it out with Borbarad. These Signed are of course PCs, with NPCs filling the remaining slots. And if your group has more than seven PCs, I guess some will just hang out as secondary dudes.
The campaign in question was about travelling all over Aventuria, uncovering hidden secrets (like the trolls' secret society of historians), defeating fiendish villains (like at least one vampire), making sure that the legendary blade Sevenstroke gets reforged, and of course looking out for those signs they are named after. Said signs are essentially funky super powers, ranging from slowly turning into a lizardman, getting a silver hand prosthesis that acts like a magical swiss army knife for thieves, or a divine cloud wolf buddy you can summon for artillery support.

All these preparations culminated in the Third Demon Battle* at the Troll Gate. All sorts of knights, Sanctified, demi-humans and even a group of trolls joined the fight against the legions of undead, demons and other nasty things.
As the Troll Gate just so happened to be the same battlefield were Galotta's ogres were slain, the Big G of course didn't hesitate and raised an army of ogre skeletons. You'd think they would've disposed of those corpses years ago, seeing how the Troll Gate is the only land trade route to and from Tobria.

*) The First Demon Battle got started around 1,500 years ago by a Bosparan (aka not-Roman) emperor wanting to annihilate some Garethian rebels. The demons eventually started attacking everyone, turning the battlefield into a wasteland that still exists to this day. The Second Demon Battle happend around 1,000 years ago started for similar reasons (just with a Horasian emperor instead of a Bosparanian one, as the not-Roman empire has already vanished and Bosparan itself was merely the Horasian capital) and was so bad that the gods themselves had to enter the fray to avoid the end of the world. This later resulted in Bosparan getting annihilated, forcing the Horasians to get themselves a new capital.

The battle didn't exactly go well for the good guys. Along with the surprise ogre skeleton army, there was also a giant demon that was essentially a walking fortress, and Borbarad also summoned a powerful demon who was a doomsday event in and of itself. And he threw in a Not Greater Daemon of Not-Khorne for good measure to cleanse the ranks of the Sanctified of Rondra. Nevertheless, the Signed managed to get close enough to Borbarad - and then thinks went weird and metaphysical.
The 7-on-1 fight with Borbarad happened on different planes of existence (I think), with several mind battles happening at once. The lizardman Signed for example had a duel with Borbarad in some pocket dimensions were both had the bodies of Leviatanim (the only case in the entire aventure were Borbarad got a statblock), will the cloud wolf buddy had to concentrate to aim his heavenly companion at Borbarad.
But this was all rather pointless, because when the writers of TDE decide that one metaplot villains has to kick the bucket, he'll kick it no matter how much the PCs fail. This was especially easy here because the Signed are supposed to die from the start, either because they lost to Borbarad or because they suffered one too many wounds. I think they did this so they could keep mentioning the Signed without having to mention who they were, and because they don't want PCs with mild super powers running around.
So even if a Signed were to lose and die, his spirit would still pop up to help wield Sevenstroke (so if all but one Signed were to die, you can re-enact the first season finale of Sailor Moon), whacking Borbarad in the head to break his weird crown. This was then followed by a weird Gainax ending because a strange child appeared to spirit Borbarad away into a pocket dimension, effectively sealing his soul for good and protecting it from the archdemons' grasp.

Now that Borbarad is gone and a new Age was about to start, things just got started for the Dark Lands: The seven most powerful allies of Borbarad grabbed one of the shards of Borbarad'S crown (each corresponding to one of the archdemons he made a pact with) and fleed the battlefield to start their own little terror regime. These shard wielders were known as the Heptarchs:

Rhazzazor

Aventuria's first (I think) dracolich naturally got himself the Targunitoth Shard to turn the Tobrian region of Warunkia into a realm of the undead. The citizens of Warunkia not only had to contempt with guards that were a bit rotten, but Rhazzazor also had a tendency to have weird nightmares about the Soul Mill (were the souls of the damned are slowly grinded into demons) which he shares with everyone in his realms. There's an adventure where the PCs take a trip into his realm, and a single nightmare-fueld night is enough to give them a chance of catching a windmill phobia. Weird.
Rhazzazor eventually got offed, being replaced by a council of necromancers that have recently also been offed, leaving Warunkia in a somewhat chaotic state.

Portifex Maximus Xeraan

A weird, bald mage with a serious case of Scrooge McDuck who got the Charyptoroth Shard to take over Tobria's coast region and fund Xeraania. He was the first Heptarch to get usurped, being replaced by the pirate admiral Darion Paligan who holds the shard ever since, proving that he who has the most rad lobster pirates wields the shard.

Queen Glorana

A hot ice witch with the Nagrach Shard. She doesn't have much to do with Tobria, but instead rules over her kingdom of Glorania in Aventurias north east. She spends most of her time using gigantic spiral structures to drill for the world's life essence. Think of a pre-industrial Shinra Corporation (so without power plants, robots and all the fun stuff) run by that queen from Narnia.

Helme Haffax (his first name is the German word for "helmets". So weird.)

As the wielder of the Belharlar (aka "No blood for the Not Blood God!") Shard, is was only natural that this Heptarch is not some sissy spellcaster, but a manly warrior dude who rules over most of northern and middle Maraskan (which also got invaded by the Borbarad's forces). So not only are Maraskans arabic/european dudes with a very thin Japanese shtick, but they are also freedom fighters.

The Skrechu

A serpentine chimera who naturally got the Shard of her "father" Asfaloth, she and her spawn hang around in the central mountain range of Maraskan and doesn't really do a whole lot.

Dimiona of Zorgan

Wielder of the Belkelel Shard, she founded Oron in a part of Arania that also got invaded. Oron is essentially Hentailand, where even the vine stock is out to get you. Thankfully the writers didn't really do a whole lot of icky stuff with Oron, and it was the first of the Dark Lands to be wiped out. Dimiona lost her head in the process, but not before transfering her soul into the body of Arania's queen. She still uses the shard, which she has hidden beforehand.

The one and only Galotta

Saving the best for last, the Big G got himself the Agrimoth (Mr. "2/3 of the elements are mine to command") Shard, with which he took control over the northern Tobrian region of Transysilia. He build himself the super-sized fortress Kholak-Kai und used a magic staff to install a city-wide suerveillance system consisting of Gotongi (spy demons that are just an eyeball with batwings. Not sure if they were introduced before or after that one Zelda monster that looks pretty much the same) and holding big partys, some of which involved the real-life German medieval rock band Saltatio Mortis (who are also Aventurian NPCs for some reason).

Galotta's last big coup was right at the start of the Year of Fire, 4th edition's first big adventure path. This Year of Fire was for the most part a kind of succession war for the Middlerealmian throne, but the events that kickstarted it were pretty darn batshit. Things started harmless with a tourney and a little "Where'd all the gryphons gone?" mystery - and then Galotta projected his smug face over Gareth and went all "Your city is mine!". As it turned out, Galotta and Rhazzazor have started a joint venture, with Rhazzazor unleashing his undead hordes towards Gareth while Galotta lifts off with his fortress.
So while the Middlerealmian army was busy fending off a crapload of undead, the heroes used an airship and/or rescued gryphons to attack the flying fortress, with little help from other gryphons and magical anti-aircraft statues positioned on Gareth's walls. How did they plan to kill Galotta? With poison. Not the useful kind of poison in this situation, but poison you have to ingest. So after storming his throne room, they either had to force it down his throat (rather unlikely seeing how Galotta was buffed with every defensive spell in the book and is a pretty good mind controller) or somehow convince him to drink it (which was admittedly more likely as Galotta was somehow convinced the potion they were carrying was some fabled potion of power level increasing, and the PCs probably got their hand on another potion that would make them immune against mind control so they can pretend to be mind control - which was pretty much necessary because Galotta's mind control always works otherwise, and the adventure specifically mentioned how brainwashed people always act after the controller's intend, unlike demons who just follow the words as spoken for more loopholes.). But my favorite solution comes whenever the players completely fail in their task. Then Galotta would just jank the poison away from them via magic... and just drink it, thinking it would boost his power level.
That's right. The metaplot is so railroady that the villains will straight up off themselves if the players just fail hard enough.

With Galotta dead, his flying fortress ceased to be flying and smashed an entire city district of Gareth, destroying the holiest artifact of Praios' church in the process. Rhazzazor and his flunkies sodded off a bit earlier after the PCs and/or a metaplot NPC poked him in the head with a magical lance, causing some magical migraine of sorts.

Though the Big G has now left the building (for now, at least), his shard has now fallen into the hands of Leonardo of Havena who is straight-up Evil Leonardo da Vinci. Only the future can tell whether he can come up with something even crazier than a flying fortress. He certainly raised the bar pretty darn high.

And that's it in a nutshell. There have been a couple more succession shenanigans, a Drakensang-related tie-in and more adventures dealing with the Dark Lands. But it's all rather loose and short at the moment. If anything, TDE keeps the amount of world-shattering events rather small.

Next Time: Let's take a look at the spells. All the classics like invisibility and wildshape who don't quite work like you think they do.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
The number of world-shattering events may be kept small compared to other fantasy games but darn is they aren´t railroady as f***.
This cannot be understated. One module in the Signed Campaign (Bastrabuns Bann) was 90% a collection of "GM-Read-Aloud-HERE" texts and
NO player interaction. Not to mention the inherent stupidity of many of the decisions the NPCs made even though they were supposed to be so super clever and great.

This last part got so bad that there is a running joke in the german TDE community about giving artifacts to NPCs only to advance the plot because
you can be assured that they will somehow lose it, either by being stupid or making some really idiotic choice.

Pussy Cartel
Jun 26, 2011



Lipstick Apathy
Actually, there is a way to get access to multiple Lores in WFRP 2nd! The Tome of Magic includes careers for witches, warlocks, and other unsactioned mages, and they get a talent called Witchcraft that allows them to learn spells from any Lore. Of course, at that point you'll need all the help you can get to hide from the Empire's witch hunters. :black101:

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Mr.Misfit posted:

This last part got so bad that there is a running joke in the german TDE community about giving artifacts to NPCs only to advance the plot because you can be assured that they will somehow lose it, either by being stupid or making some really idiotic choice.

I guess at least TDE's railroad-to-victory is marginally less awful than CTech's railroad-to-failure?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Pussy Cartel posted:

Actually, there is a way to get access to multiple Lores in WFRP 2nd! The Tome of Magic includes careers for witches, warlocks, and other unsactioned mages, and they get a talent called Witchcraft that allows them to learn spells from any Lore. Of course, at that point you'll need all the help you can get to hide from the Empire's witch hunters. :black101:

Witchcraft also makes you roll an extra casting die that does nothing but contribute to miscasts. Oh, and Witches often use Dark Magic, as well, which lets you roll an extra die that replaces your lowest die, but ALSO contributes to miscasts.

Witches have pretty good odds of exploding. Witch Hunters are completely right to try to stop them.


This man is your friend. He fights for Sigmar.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!

PurpleXVI posted:

I guess at least TDE's railroad-to-victory is marginally less awful than CTech's railroad-to-failure?

Well, some of the events are pretty cool and interesting if you are into the TDE lore, as many people who also read the novels, actually are, and of course you don´t usually encounter rape camps or unwanted pregnancies along the way. So yeah.

Doresh
Jan 7, 2015

Mr.Misfit posted:

Well, some of the events are pretty cool and interesting if you are into the TDE lore, as many people who also read the novels, actually are, and of course you don´t usually encounter rape camps or unwanted pregnancies along the way. So yeah.

And the metaplot progession is rather steady because they guys at TDE don't have to look for a new publisher every 2 weeks or so and aren't too busy complaining about piracy.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

In order to review Witch Girls, I had to buy a pdf of it off Drivethru. Then I read it and realized it had never been edited by anyone ever. Even the logo had misspellings in it. We made great and happy light of this on the show.

Then it came to pass that because I bought the drat book, I'm on the Witch Girls mailing list. So hey, here's an email about them:

Channel M Publishing posted:


Princess Lucinda demands your obeidence!

We're offering for this week only a free previw of her first Graphic novel!

along with a discount for book one and 2 to Celebrate her Birthday!
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=9611bcbe43

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


theironjef posted:

In order to review Witch Girls, I had to buy a pdf of it off Drivethru. Then I read it and realized it had never been edited by anyone ever. Even the logo had misspellings in it. We made great and happy light of this on the show.

Then it came to pass that because I bought the drat book, I'm on the Witch Girls mailing list. So hey, here's an email about them:

poo poo, if they could spell correctly the magic would've worked and you'd have to buy their books.

Phew!

Ego Trip
Aug 28, 2012

A tenacious little mouse!


Kurieg posted:

Remember that homebrewed monster from a while back that was larger than the observable universe and could spawn an infinite number of offspring from his arbitrarily large hit point pool.

From a bit back, but you have a link? I've been looking for this thing.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.



Even our System Mastery standard podcast needs to have a Halloween episode, so here's The World of Tales from the Crypt! Please pretend I put some puns here, I'm completely spent on those.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Ego Trip posted:

From a bit back, but you have a link? I've been looking for this thing.

I can't remember which thread it came up in, it's probably archived now but I remember breaking down all of it's various abilities and figuring out how mathematically large it actually was when compared to the observable universe. I seem to remember it being able to move multiple light years as a move action, just via it's base speed.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

theironjef posted:



Even our System Mastery standard podcast needs to have a Halloween episode, so here's The World of Tales from the Crypt! Please pretend I put some puns here, I'm completely spent on those.

Hahaha yesss, this was one of the first games I owned and ran.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Vermintide both continues to inspire and impede my attempt to review.

More WHFRP 2E, The Lores of Magic!

One of the big things preventing a WHFRP wizard from being as batshit insane as a 3.5 one is that the average wizard will only ever learn 1 Lore. It is POSSIBLE to learn a second Lore, but that second Lore will be a Dark Lore (requiring you to use an extra die that can count towards miscasts and getting very serious men and women in stylish hats to have an unhealthy interest in you) and is mostly unlocked via a miscast giving you some insanity and the ability to buy it. Or being turned into a vampire (We'll cover vampires when we get to their book). Neither of these are really standard procedure for a practitioner of wizbiz. Thus, you only ever have, say, The Lore of Beasts and your lesser magic, preventing wizards from being able to do absolutely everything. On the plus side, buying the Lore talent means you know every spell in the Lore. On the downside, I feel like no-one ever really ran the numbers on the Casting Numbers for spells; a lot of them are ruinously hard to cast even as a Master Wizard and still don't have the best odds as a Wizard Lord. 4d10+4 (if Channeling) still doesn't give you good odds to hit, say, the 31 that Conflagration of Doom requires in the Lore of Fire. Certainly it's the Lore's nuke spell, but it always feels like something is just a little off in the CNs. As an added note, magic changes its users; wizards' personalities and bodies are slightly reshaped by their favored wind. This won't be mechanically enforced until Arcane Marks come up in Realm of Sorcery, which is a really cool subsystem that helps make wizards nice and weird.

First, then, the Lore of Beasts. I have to say this is another problem: The Lore of Beasts just sucks. It's the magic of controlling and directing animals, shapeshifting, and summoning murdercrows. The problem is, it's locked into a very old-school sensibility of shapeshifting, where using something like 'turn into a wolf' or 'turn into a bear' just gives you that creature's entire statline, meaning you'll quickly be outclassed by any fighters in your party by the time you can cast those spells. You can force allies into a Frenzy, but this isn't actually very good: It just gives them -10% to WS and Int, +10% to S and WP and makes them attack the nearest enemy without control. The game consistently overvalues Frenzy, considering the number of high level spells that grant it. Controlling and speaking to animals can be useful, and summoning a large blast template of crows to eat peoples' eyeballs out is hilarious, but Beasts just isn't really worth taking as a lore. At best it makes you into a mediocre sort of fighter, it lacks for combat magic, and the utility spells are very situational. Beast mages tend to shun villages and towns, turning anti-social and nervous in crowds.

Coincidentally, the next lovely lore is next, the Lore of Death! Death magic is really cool, fluff-wise. Whereas necromancy is the magic of clinging to life, Death is a lore about acceptance and natural endings. It's about knowing when it's time to let go, and drawing power from that. Unfortunately, they couldn't seem to translate that into particularly useful magic. At the very least, Death's ability to speak to the dead is really useful for mystery scenarios and investigation, and they do get some cool stuff like being able to decay an enemy's sword to dust in his hands (though it's heavily capped on the size of the object) or summon a (not that effective) magic scythe to their hand. They can make allies accepting of the possibility of death, turning them Fearless, which is much better than Frenzy. They can also permanently debuff foes by making them age in an instant, drain small amounts of HP from enemies, and their big capstone spell does d10 damage to a ton of enemies with no reduction of any kind. Death isn't as useless as Beasts, just its combat magic is, surprisingly, really bad at actually killing people. Death mages slowly get paler and more drawn, but are known for their patience and sense of humor.

Do you like burning things and having absolutely nothing but combat magic? If so, the Lore of Fire is for you! Almost everything in the Lore of Fire is straight up direct damage, ways to defend against fire, or ways to make you a bit harder to hit in melee. You can also summon a kickass sword made of fire. When combined with the Mighty Missile talent to gain +1 to damage rating on all spells, a Bright Wizard can wreck the hell out of people. A high up Bright Wizard can pull out stuff like a d10+8 AoE cone as he breathes fire on his enemies, or a bunch of lighter multi-hit fireballs. Their problem is that's all they got. If you're a Bright Wizard, your solution to everything is going to be fire and you'll have to rely on your mundane wits for utility and investigation. Their nuke, the Conflagration of Doom, hits a large area for d10+4 every round with a duration of 'until nothing lives within in the target area, due to escaping or burning to ash'. That should tell you a lot about Bright Wizards' mindsets. Bright wizards tend to be rash and fiery. Who would have guessed.

The Lore of the Heavens is an interesting one. The magic of prophecy and the sky, Astromancers can read the omens and try to get clues about what's coming up next, can use their foresight to grant rerolls by warning of future mistakes, can reveal illusions and impediments to truth, and can throw lightning at dudes. Heavens is a really solid all around lore, having some decent and fairly easy combat magic and a lot of useful prophetic and detection stuff. Their combat magic never really gets that much better than just carrying a crossbow (though it should be noted magic weapons work much better on demons and ghosts) but it's reliable and easy to pull off, and they do get a big AoE lightning storm once they're a skilled enough wizard. Their capstone spell is really interesting, though: It strips a Fate Point off an enemy permanently, or ensures that the next critical hit instantly kills that enemy instead of rolling for effect. They have the ability to twist fate to ensure someone's doom. The book notes (like most capstone spells) that all wizards within miles can feel that spell being cast and that your Order will have words with you if it's used frivolously. Celestial Wizard grow unhurried and dreamlike, moving about life with slow, wise purpose.

The Lore of Life is one that gets much better with Realms of Sorcery and some added spells, though it's an okay support and utility Lore as is. Jade Magisters practice the magic of plants and natural places, and are much in demand because they can bring a field back to fertility or bless a couple with children; I'm pretty sure you can see why both the peasantry and the nobility would love having these wizards around. They can slow enemies down with thorny curses, help people continue on without needing food in lean times, heal themselves if they're standing on natural ground and have plenty of time, teleport along leylines, talk to rivers and terrain features, do the aforementioned returning of fertility to barren lands, livestock, or couples (which, while not useful in combat, is a great way to earn money and make friends), end plagues and unnatural blights, and freeze people or hit them with geysers. Life is great if you're not expecting to use much combat magic, and a lot of the utility and support magic IS very useful, I'm just always surprised it only has a self-heal instead of being able to heal allies. Jade wizards grow uncomfortable with metal, and start to bloom and wilt with the seasons.

The Lore of Light is a strong contender for the most powerful general Lore. The magic of illumination and enlightenment, it has a great deal of power against demons, it lets you shoot lasers from your eyes, it can heal you and others for a small amount, let you see through illusion, enlighten others temporarily, blind guys, protect yourself from arrows, and straight up instant kill demons or summon an orbital laser strike. Light's power lies in the fact that it has a bit of everything: Healing, buffing, debuffing, a great low level direct damage spell, and the aforementioned ability to, with some luck, instant-kill some of the most deadly enemies in the game. Being able to test WP against a bunch of demons at once and Banish every single one that fails is insanely good. Light Wizards grow more intellectual and meditative as they grow in power.

The Lore of Metal is really neat. It's the magic of created things, logic, and mathematics. Gold Wizards can turn peoples' armor to lead, rust a sword to dust, spray silver arrows all over someone (and them being silver means vampires and other things vulnerable to it get turbo-screwed by that spell), craft fine items from their raw materials in minutes, temporarily enchant things, turn off enemy magic items, and even help make people more intelligent or transmute a disordered mind back into an ordered one (they can cure insanity, one of only two real ways to do this). Metal magic is mostly utility and crafting magic, but the crafting ability is tremendously useful; raw materials are much less expensive than finished goods and with some luck, they can produce Best quality items, which normally cost 10 times as much (for a +5% bonus to tests involving them). Great for making money and friends, but also great for equipping your allies in beautifully crafted plate and with fine swords and shields. Gold Wizards tend to grow stiff and inflexible, becoming increasingly conservative as they age.

The Lore of Shadow is the magic of illusion and trickery. Grey Wizards practice magic that can let them hide easily, change appearance, befuddle enemies, cut people apart with terrible knives of shadow (don't know quite how that fits in but everyone needs an attack spell, I suppose), create all manner of illusions, and throw entire enemy forces into complete confusion. Shadow magic is obviously mostly utility and spells for loving around with people when it comes to combat, but it does a pretty good job of allowing the wizard to be a neat wizard-spy and trickster. Their only direct damage spell is hard as hell to cast (Shadow Knives, CN 22) but it's also tremendously powerful, hitting a number of times equal to their Magic stat for d10+3 (d10+4 with Mighty Missile) that ignores armor. I'm not quite sure why the trickster mages have a particularly powerful but difficult attack spell, but there it is. Shadow Wizards grow more roguish and indistinct as they grow in experience.

Next Time: Dark Lores and Divine Lores!

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Kurieg posted:

I can't remember which thread it came up in, it's probably archived now but I remember breaking down all of it's various abilities and figuring out how mathematically large it actually was when compared to the observable universe. I seem to remember it being able to move multiple light years as a move action, just via it's base speed.
Wasn't this the Mortiverse, or am I thinking of something else?

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Night10194 posted:

Vermintide both continues to inspire and impede my attempt to review.


gently caress Packmasters...

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Kurieg posted:

I can't remember which thread it came up in, it's probably archived now but I remember breaking down all of it's various abilities and figuring out how mathematically large it actually was when compared to the observable universe. I seem to remember it being able to move multiple light years as a move action, just via it's base speed.

It was a long while ago, but I remember that that thing was only part of a longer work dedicated to extending the 3.x size scale chart to utterly absurd dimensions.

NGDBSS posted:

Wasn't this the Mortiverse, or am I thinking of something else?

I think that's it! http://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/epic-level-insanity/1/

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

NGDBSS posted:

Wasn't this the Mortiverse, or am I thinking of something else?

Yeah I think it was the mortiverse. I couldn't remember the name.

JohnnyCanuck
May 28, 2004

Strong And/Or Free
Hey System Mastery guys! I'm trying to grab older episodes, but I keep on running into issues with my podcast client. I found this discussion... does any of this mean anything to you?

https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/1259

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

JohnnyCanuck posted:

Hey System Mastery guys! I'm trying to grab older episodes, but I keep on running into issues with my podcast client. I found this discussion... does any of this mean anything to you?

https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/issues/1259

Yep, Faassen's a fan that let us know about that on twitter. Apparently there's an issue between the RSS feed generator on Wordpress and podcast aggregators working in the most recent version of the Android OS. It's a know issue affecting more than just us, and there are a few aggregators that have already applied a workaround (Antennapod and Pocketcasts have tweeted at us about applying fixes).

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

gently caress Packmasters...

I can't decide if I hate Packmasters or 'Surprise! There are 3 Stormvermin mixed in with those Clanrats!' more.

Vermintide is so good. I bought it with my WHFRP group and it's pretty much a kickass action version of high tier WHFRP play. It's great.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Kurieg posted:

Yeah I think it was the mortiverse. I couldn't remember the name.
Luckily ENWorld isn't deleting its archives like WotC, so digging up a nine-year-old post isn't so hard. There's nothing quite like utterly silly and insane number porn for its own sake.

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
My favorite part about that, which is unfortunately buried in the numbers

quote:

Special Qualities: Accretion, cosmic consciousness, cosmic firmament, DR 528,187,750,000,000,000,000,000,000,000/-, elemental traits, evil eye, fast healing 792,281,625,000,000,000,000,000,000,070, flight, generate spawn, hardness 1,500, omnicompetent, regeneration, rejuvenation, SR 1,584,563,250,000,000,000,000,000,000,270, time lord traits, transtemporal, undead traits
It's also a time lord.

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