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Libertad! posted:Rapid Reload (Horrifically Overpowered, Mythic) -ahem- "including siege weapons."... Wouldn't this allow one to use, say, a ballista as their primary weapon? Just wield it like an Epic Crossbow? Heck, it's potentially Pathfinder, so they have guns. Big guns. A Fiend's Mouth Cannon does 8d6/shot. Admittedly damage isn't the end-all, be-all, but what's to stop you from loading up, say, a war elephant with a pair of cannons on the back and instantly reloading them with this feat to pummel everyone. For that matter, get a dozen cannons on the elephant and have minions or cohorts fire them off, then instantly reload them. Just feels like there's more use there than you gave it credit for.
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Jun 14, 2014 01:40
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The only thing I really recall about Changing Breeds was the Man Your Man Could Kill Like... that, and the Were-Elephants being equal in toughness to a main battle tank.
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Jan 31, 2015 03:06
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Ratpick posted:Having played WFRP 2e and heard trip reports from my friends who are hugely into the 40k RPGs, the problem with Psykers (and WFRP Wizards) is that they're a bit too unpredictable. Like, making their abilities potentially dangerous as a way of combating caster supremacy is a good balancing act in theory, but in practice it means that the die rolls of a single character can potentially bone the entire group. In trying to make Wizards/Psykers not dominate the narrative by making their abilities have potentially dangerous they've actually made said characters doubly more important to the narrative, because a single die roll from said characters can result in "Welp, you accidentally summoned a Greater Daemon, campaign over I guess?" And as my friends played it, you resolve this issue by having an all Psyker party. What could possibly go wrong?
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Mar 14, 2015 21:25
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Given I recently acquired it and loved it, and the other review of the original stopped before it got that far, I'll probably do The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor; which is an expansion, of sorts, to Monsters & Other Childish Things. More of a side-spansion, in a way. You could even use it totally standalone from the original. It has a rather delightful flavour to it. Very rarely have I found myself reading through an RPG book for fun more than once.
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Mar 20, 2015 14:14
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Cythereal posted:Unfortunately, IIRC from the previous thread, which petered out halfway through the book, most Changing Breeds can look down the barrel of a tank's cannon and smile calmly. What? The ability to have 28 health levels as a 0 XP character and take only bashing damage from firearms and have two attacks for free every round is overpowered? Pshaw! How dare you imply such things about my precious were-elephant, sir!
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Mar 28, 2015 23:22
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The Vosgian Beast posted:God loving drat it. How long are people going to have to go off that issue of Dragon magazine adapting Bas-Lag to 3.5 D&D rules? How long? ... please tell me which issue that was in.
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May 6, 2015 00:53
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Mimir posted:#352. And when I googled "Bas Lag Dragon Magazine", as one is wont to do when prompted, I found the beautiful, perfectly home-made map of the setting he did as reference for their map. Marry me. -cough- I mean, thanks,
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May 6, 2015 13:30
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I'm a bit late to the party on this, but I am running two games of Hellsing: The Vigil and it's pretty sweet. The tone rapidly flips from Hellsing Ultimate to Hellsing Abridged, and it's super fun. Especially taking the existing lore and mechanics of the nWoD and brutally violating them to make them fit Hellsing's setting.
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May 20, 2015 12:33
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Crasical posted:Is this an actual mechanical thing because I would very much like to play a Lucifuge member who's sole supernatural talent is that tiny little hellcritters love the gently caress out of him. One of the Castigations is for a familiar. You could probably talk your ST into letting you take it more than once.
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May 28, 2015 12:45
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So, from black and hateful sources of which I am forbidden to speak of I have acquired the original and revised PDFs of FATAL. Sadly, the excess splatbooks are lost to the decaying annals of history... for now. With that in mind, I'm going to attempt to usurp the poster formerly known as Syrg's position as 'Worlds most foremost expert on FATAL' and finish the work that he started so long again. For FATAL and Friends.
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Jul 24, 2015 02:47
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MadScientistWorking posted:If I remember correctly it wasn't homebrew. Someone gave him an unreleased Fatal supplement. Yeah. The deity almanac and the monster manual equivalent. Sadly, they remain beyond my reach. Or possibly fortunately. I only have so many SAN points left.
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Jul 24, 2015 16:44
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Fatal, Part 8 (The Continuation): Gender & Race Yeah. ... yeah. Look, I'll be honest, you may want to just hit your Page Down key until you're past this one. But, if you're still with me, let's get started. Again. Really, this game needs no introduction. It's the reason this line of thread even exists. The review of it was cut short due to the game threatening to destroy the sanity of the original writer... that, or they decided that it just wasn't worth it. Maybe it wasn't. The thing for me, though, is that Fatal is too much of a joke. Admittedly that's for good reason; it is an incredibly meme-worthy game. Most of the people I've explained or shown bits of it to think that it is some sort of legendary trolling. Then I point towards the 901 pages, 981 in the revised version, of work put into it. Along with all of the research which, while not very sanely done, is heavily cited throughout the book. Effort went into crafting this Necronomicon of role playing game tomes. A lot of genuine, heartfelt effort. If that's the right word to use. As such, I feel that this review should be concluded. Mostly because near as I can tell there isn't really an in-depth examination of this game. There should be. Because it's the little touches that can just horrify you. I'll be continuing on from where my predecessor left off, albeit somewhat intermittently. His posts can be located here. PG 38, Chapter 2 "Gender" One of the more notable things about the revised PDF is that it's kind of laid out... oddly. Personally I feel that the original makes more sense in this regard in that it tells you what all of the abilities mean before expecting you to pick your gender and race. Equally interesting is the fact that the original version does actually just tell you to pick your race and gender without providing a random table. When compared to the revised edition this stands out quite a bit as that particular piece of offal seems to have been remade by someone who felt that 3d6 in order wasn't quite hardcore enough and instead encourages you to randomize every single aspect about your character for the purposes of 'realism'. "Though sex usually refers to biological differences and gender usually refers to environmental differences, gender is chosen for this chapter because sex may be confused with sexual acts." Let's start with this little footnote. I am actually a little surprised that it bothers to make this distinction. It's a pleasant surprise, actually, since this game is not known to be particularly friendly to anyone who isn't a heterosexual male. Yet another difference between the editions is the reversal of Gender and Race. The old one puts Gender first and the new second. This is a change I would agree with as picking what species you want to be is probably more important than the dangly bits or lack thereof. The gender differences table is about what you expect; although I'll note that in the revision it was changed to a percentage increase as opposed to flat. Men are supposedly more fit, stronger, less attractive. In the new version they also have less pretty faces. Then there’s an increase in mathematical and spatial processing abilities which some cursory investigation tells me is still a hotly disputed topic. Men also possess more ‘Drive’ than women, according to Fatal, and lower intuition and reflection. Finally, men are more Choleric and less Sanguine… whatever that translates to in sane terms. For the moment let’s ignore the general idiocy of having universal stat modifiers for gender. I’ll get to that. Let’s look at this from a purely mechanical point of view. Or, rather, the point of view of a sneaky munchkin min-maxer, as it were. In the old version the sum of the ability modifiers for men is positive fourteen. Opposing this is the sum of the female ability modifiers which is, obviously, a negative fourteen. The revision changes to percentages, so it’s a little trickier to figure out the overall benefit. But considering that the male negatives are a negative two, three, four and five percent whereas the bonuses are two, three twice, five and thirty percent… yeah. I’ll come right out and say it; Playing a woman in Fatal leaves you at a clear mechanical deficit. Not particularly unexpected. But the sheer scale of it is… rather fascinating. The largest bonus a woman gets is a +5, or a 5%. For men their largest bonii are a +15 in the old and +30% in the new. Then there’s this… “According to the adjustments above, it may seem as though males are superior, though it is important to understand that there are other instances, such as nurturing, that are not apparent in the adjustments and may become evident and valuable during role-playing.” This is just plainly not true. Being a male is mechanically superior to a female in every way. Now, there’s no way to take advantage of this superiority as the game provides no system for distributing your statistics other than randomly rolling. But, if we assumed there was one, then you could simply take advantage of the skewed increases to boost your statistics in your, very few, weak areas at the expense of your strengths. If there were any sort of point allocation system it would be entirely possible to create a statistically superior male character about 75% of the time. That outlier is in the case that the female character somehow maxed the five abilities that she gets bonuses to. In which case the male would have at most ten percent less than her in those abilities, which is not a lot given the ‘mean system’ that Fatal uses, and be able to equal her in at least ten other abilities, then beat her in five himself. These numbers may appear to be superficially balanced. I have no doubt that the logic I’ve just presented was how the creator assured himself the system was balanced. However, due to the highly skewed numbers in favour of the men the male will, in practice, be able to outstrip his female counterpart in more of his abilities than he will equal her, be even to her in all the rest and, finally, only be inferior in five occasions. But that’s quite enough thought put into that. I’ll just note that the following line is absent from the revised edition and move on. “The shift in range represents masses of characters better than extreme instances. For instance, the highest measured Intelligence is that of a female, though by large numbers females tend to score slightly lower than males in Intelligence. In this case, shifting the range lower for females also prevents the possibility of a female possessing the highest Intelligence. This is an unfortunate limitation.” PG. 40, "Race" Now we hit the other snag that I glossed over earlier. Those gender modifiers are identical for every race. Which means that every single species available to play in the Fatal verse apparently has a patriarchal society structure with identical sexual dimorphism. That’s just the start of the issues with this section. Putting aside the previously-stated obsession with the revised rules and rolling randomly for literally everything about your character we have what would be your first real warning sign if this were a published product. Well, no, the first real warning sign would probably be the introduction, or the cover, or the ominous latin chanting that fills your hearing whenever you’re facing the book. From a roleplaying standpoint, however? This is it. Namely; Disposition and Temperament modifiers. For those unaware, the former is the attempt at having a Good/Evil and Law/Chaos axis without getting sued by Wizards of the Cost and the latter is the stat that tells you the personality of your character. We’ll, uh, get to that. Interestingly, the sum of sub-ability modifiers for the races appears to come out even as well. That said, the best race is still probably the Anakim. You get one to ten random traits chosen from a random table. This is one case of the random realism obsession that actually exists in the original. There are the expected cosmetic options and a few negative options and, of course, the sex related options. But then there’s stuff like this: “33 The anakim is only harmed by special weapons. Consult with the MM.” “54 The anakim has gills on the side of their neck, allowing them to breathe underwater.” “56-59 The anakim has skin that reduces damage due to fire/cold/electricity/corrosion by 50%. The skin does not seem abnormal when examined.” “68 The anakim has a wingspan of 2d8 feet. They are able to fly if the wingspan exceeds 10 feet. Consult the MM for specifics.” “76-86 The anakim is able to cast Call Fog/Call Maggots/Bestow Virus/Force Rancor/Force Scream/Force Slumber/Acidic Touch/Frosty Touch/Seal Orifice/Detect Magic/Determine Magic once per day. No chant, ingredient, or ritual is necessary.” “87 The anakim has barbed skin. All who make forceful contact with the skin of this anakim suffer an additional 1 LP of damage.” “100 The anakim has 1% immunity to magic per occupational level.” And that’s all from the original. The revised edition has most of those, albeit more spread out, but also options for reading the thoughts of animals, dissolving water at 1d10 cubic feet per round on touch, turning rocks into silver once a week, farting as loud as thunder to stun enemies, secreting acid from its fingernails, a random bonus to all sub-abilities for a given ability, +50% to brawling damage, immunity to non-magical weapons, telekinesis and fire breath. Rolling luckily can get you up to ten of these pick-and-mix powers. A lot of the negative ones appear to have been cut in the revised edition as well along with the cosmetic options that were essentially blank spots. Some options, like smelling perpetually of poo poo, have no associated mechanical penalties either. All in all it’s pretty much a guaranteed positive. There are some benefits owned by other races. Bugbears are pretty much worthless. Dwarves don’t suffer aging penalties and can shapeshift with an increasing duration based on age at the cost of instantly dying when exposed to sunlight. Black dwarves are, predictably, notably evil. One of their lines notes “It is rumored that their race was born as a result of the sorcerous combination of humans and maggots.” It’s pretty hard to imagine that isn’t some form of racism given the later magic items that I’m sure we all know about. Brown Dwarves leave their mothers in young adulthood and find a human family to serve or torment. Could be socially commentary, could be stupidity but it seems to be equating dwarves with legends of brownies and other helpful fairies. Unsurprisingly the White Dwarves are universally more ethical and moral. Hardly seems required to comment when the game does it for me but, buried in the middle of their info block, is the comment that dwarves are differentiated only by garment colour and not skin colour. Uh-huh. Sure they are, Fatal. Sure they are. Elves are less Tolkien and more, again, tiny fey. Dark elves immoral, light elves moral, dark elves black, light elves white, I’m sure you see the pattern. For some reason it notes they’re universally vegetarian and fart 3d10 times per day as a result? Elves also have lifespans based on the size of their home forest and, again, can shapeshift. However, they also get weaker the further they get from their home forest. This, of course, makes them worthless to players unless the entire campaign is based around your homeland. Then there’s the racial differences. “Dark elves are immoral and ugly. Nonetheless, they are incredibly fertile and are always trying to mate. Few children are born.” Because that makes sense. The revised version adds an extra note that because they’re unattractive and lecherous they consistently use magic for seduction. I’ll take a moment to note that I’ve not been mentioning the, uh, ‘art’ in the revised version. That’s because it’s pretty much all just unrelated pornographic images. That’s rather noticeable here as there’s a picture of what I assume is meant to be a Dark Elf orgy but all the women are notably attractive because… magic, I guess. Of course, the White Elves-uh, I mean, the ‘Light’ Elves are incredibly beautiful. A better-written game would let you ignore this but with its track record it’s pretty clear this is meant to be intentional. Apparently humans commonly kidnap elven maidens to attempt to force ‘marriage’. Of course. Marriage. That is obviously what a Fatal human would do. Notably, the only repercussion for this is that if the female perceives herself to be slighted, exact words, she will punish her kidnapper ‘harshly’ by ‘playing mischievous tricks’. Humans get a single page. Bog-standard fantasy stuff. Totally average, no bonuses, no penalties and no noted skin-colour variations. It’s the little things that count, really. Kobolds. Short, greedy, lazy and fire resistant. No mention on whether or not they have unusually large noses but we can probably assume that was intended without too much fuss. They steal silver whenever possible and enslave everyone they can. No special abilities. Ogres next! For some reason there are four kinds. Base ogre, cliff ogre, gruagach ogre and kinder-fresser. The firstmost is large, hairy, tan, strong, dumb. Pretty much what you’d expect. They apparently abandon their kids at birth which makes them the smarter kind of ogre given the very next variety, cliff ogres, devour their parents when they get too old. Grugach are fat, lazy, and inexplicably the strongest variety of ogre. Finally, kinder-fresser pretend to be friendly so they can lure in children and devour them whole. They are a player race. Finally we have Trolls. A notable trend here is ‘races that are offered to players but are an absolutely horrible choice unless everyone is that race’. Only in the case of Borbytingarna Trolls, the first of three types, the latter qualifier doesn’t even apply. They aren’t petrified by sunlight, at least, but will apparently attempt to kill anything they meet that is not an opposite-gendered troll. Hill trolls are also not turned to stone by sunlight, always handy in your adventuring species, but have the same note of killing and eating everything that isn’t a potential gently caress buddy. They also particularly love eating humans. Yum yum. Sounds like a great time to play; I think I’ll roll one up as a Paladin. Finally, subterranean trolls. These ones are almost interesting in that they were driven underground due to an apparent hatred of loud noises and sometimes like humans. The females are also apparently beautiful redheads? It quickly returns to form with the usual ‘hates everything, kill and eat’ nonsense. Second to last in this chapter is the Racial Hatred chart. Let me sum it up; “All these races hate pretty much everyone else that isn't one of their own kind so building a varied party is almost impossible.” It looks like humans are at least indifferent to white dwarves, brown dwarves and white elves. Last, and absolutely least, we have racial slurs. This is obviously incredibly important. Apparently humans are the only people with racial slurs for Anakim and at least one of them is basically a stealth compliment. Pages Done: 64/901 And that was Gender and Race for Fatal. Closing thoughts? Stupid. Really, really stupid. The game design obviously favours playing a party of all one particular race and the best race is also plainly obvious. The penalties to Dispositions for a majority of these races means that even if you did find them interesting you couldn't run one without special dispensation to ignore that stupid rule. A number of races are also unplayable in any sort of epic fantasy campaign. Dwarves all instantly die in sunlight and elves can’t stray any real distance beyond their forests. Ogres and Trolls are all pretty horrific, as are Kobolds. Rather tellingly the overall standard for whether or not a species is considered ‘good’ is whether or not they’re beautiful and/or like humanity. Which is odd, given how piss-poor of a choice being human is. Not that there necessarily is one. The revised edition seems to have an odd fixation with not letting you choose anything about your character. It suggests that the Aedile, because every game needs a pointless name for its GM, might want to allow you to pick your species but then chastises you for wanting it by saying how ‘realistic’ it is to not do so. Considering the literally magical creatures available to you I don’t think realism is that much of a sticking point. Next up: Body roll for anal circumference Bacchante fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 14:04
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Cooked Auto posted:So wait, the author uses the Swedish folklore term for changelings and then completely fucks it up? Yeah, I just copied verbatim from the PDF for that. So yes, it's spelt wrong. There's even a footnote I glazed over which claims that all the races were drawn from European folklore so that is almost certainly where they got it from.
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Jul 29, 2015 14:01
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