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hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

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oriongates posted:

I don't own it myself but there is actually an updated "No Honor" edition which may feature a few key rule edits. As the title implies one of the main ones is ditching the honor system, which is fairly over-burdened. Might be worth considering if you're looking to getting the most up-to-date version.

There are at least 4 versions in that case. I still have the first one which is an A5 cardboard bound leaflet and uses the BEER system (which is normally Brawn, Endurance, Extraneous and Reactions, but they changed it to Strength, Agility, KI and Endurance to have SAKE). Then there's a much larger second edition but I can't remember what system it used, but it did have the dispatcher-as-GM thing.

Ninja Burger 1e posted:

If ever a character commits seppuku when they were not supposed to, they have instead committed harakiri, a vast stain on their honour which follows them into their next life. The player's next ninja will only be allowed to master the Geography skill and must be named Wang.

hyphz fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Apr 19, 2014

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hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Ahh, Maid. The game where the translator had a character sodomized in the example of play, by mistake.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Oops, old news, delete.

hyphz fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jan 16, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Doresh posted:

The rules start with a short paragraph on the "Rule Zero", or "If a rule annoy you, ignore it", as the writer quotes from the Project A-ko RPG (wow, that's a thing?). Common sense, basically.

I actually saw a copy of that at one point borrowed from a random guy in an Anime society.

Basically, it's the first Silhouette game before Dream Pod 9 were a thing, so the system is Heavy Gear's human side with the A-Ko characters. It's rather weak though, since the only powers it supports are the very minimum needed to make the A-Ko characters, and in an attempt to add extra playable PCs they threw in a bunch of minor characters from the cartoon without really giving them anything to do. Like Asa, who I think shows up in maybe one or two shots throughout the cartoon, and whom one of the sample adventures vaguely suggests might be cheerleading at one point - which, if true, would take them completely out of the adventure as they'd be in completely the wrong place for the hook - and then forgets about entirely.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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PurpleXVI posted:

So, looking at the F&F Wiki, we DO have an Eoris review, but it's listed as "abandoned" despite getting a decent distance into the text. I'm thinking of giving it a try, because what we DID get sounded crazy as hell.

That's me. Basically, I realized I'd screwed up the rhythm by covering most of the rules during chargen so there wasn't a great deal left except for the initiative rules - which I couldn't make any sense of - and Primordial Clay, which lets you make new species. Also I had gotten to the point where opening the books was guaranteed to bring on a headache, since you have to basically scan and memorize the whole thing to know that you're not missing something elsewhere at any given moment. By all means pick it up though.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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PurpleXVI posted:

Well, was there enough missing that there's actually anything new I could cover? Or would I basically just be repeating your words with more swearing and crying?

There was certainly some new stuff to cover. You could actually try to play it instead of just making a character, for one thing.. :)

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Dragon Dice is still going, I think - it got bought up by another company who rewrote most of the rules to eliminate breakages in the original.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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I was the "anonymous donor", and in part I sent it because of this question. The art and Lucinda are fetishy but the system isn't really, and I was interested in what you'd think of it compared to Maid. I think the directors version turned down some of the Lucinda art though (but the same artist continues to do other images that are outright disturbing)

That and the awful editing, of course. And hey, I could never have anticipated talking Cujo, which nearly resulted in a ruined keyboard..

I also sent them Noumenon, just to see if they could be the first people on the planet to understand that game, after the rather awesome Nobilis discussion.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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theironjef posted:

Bleah, I missed that. Grossest thing we found was her turning some guy into a bug and some guy into a frog and then the frog eats the bug. Even then, I was in benefit of the doubt mode (we've had recent complaints about being too negative) and figured it was just cartoon violence.

Well no more. From this day forth System Mastery has no benefit to provide regarding doubt, this is my solemn oath.

The artist for most of the Lucinda art - and her original player as a PC - is a woman, Abby Soto. So no chubbies were involved. (Yes, she's the transformation girl, and the sample wicked witch NPC.)

I don't know if the smoking thing was in the game book.. (Lucinda has a bunch of her own media). Apparently there's a "wicked edition" of WGA with one of the un-scaled-down Lucinda comics at the front, but it's hard copy only. Given that these include Lucinda zapping a guy into a maid uniform, having him clean her house, then telling him to clean out the mouse cage and shrinking him to put him IN the cage, with the now-larger mice, who've been starved.. Uhh, yea.

But I'm actually pretty glad you thought it was usable without the ick factor. If you do play it, please podcast your game (and do voices :evil:) And it scores self awareness points for having Mary Sue as a trait.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Bieeardo posted:

Fine. 'Aroused someone of non-specified genitalia'. Nit: picked!

Oh, sure, I just figured that might be relevant to the lack of "traditional" sexualisation of women in the images.

And.. eh, they're still going in spite of that stupid lawsuit - they tried to sue Disney for including a witch called Lucinda in Sofia the First. I could have seen this as a clever move, to lose and get a judgment that the characters are not copies (that would then work both ways) before Disney circulated the character and it became too hard to prove, but it seems they are determined that Disney actually read their books because a traditionally dressed witch who turns stuff into stuff is their idea dammit.

I guess it comes down to whether the fact that someone was getting off on doing something makes that thing intrinsically skeevy or not...

Here, have some newly updated disturbing Lucinda, complete with unedited misspelling. Thumbnailed for eww.

hyphz fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Mar 17, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Grnegsnspm posted:

Man, it is super weird to hear that people are calling Witch Girls a fetish thing because it really doesn't present itself as fetish material at all. The art has no standard sexualization to it and even the transformation stuff doesn't have that "lingering on the transformation itself" thing like in that picture you posted. There is maybe one chapter opening story about Lucinda that is hosed up but that seemed more to reflect that the character is a terrible person than it being about sexy transformations. All the rules for play and everything else was just standard RPG. Maybe I just can't see it because I'm not into that poo poo.

Sure, it's about the context - the whole idea of a group of people taking a fetish of theirs and designing a kids' game around it, even if they hid it in the process. (I'm told Totally Spies had the same thing going on.)

Plus there's the morality shown by the character as taught to kids (Lucinda is also seen in the game shrinking humans and putting them in jars and straight up blowing up another student), and if this has some kind of connection to the previous thing. I'm reminded of the Twisted book they read elsewhere on this forum, apparently by someone who had a thing for anthropomorphic roller coasters (!), where the villain has lots of evil trappings but doesn't appear to be hurting the people they supposedly rule and kills 1 person, while the hero repeatedly incinerates groups of innocent cops while spouting Arnie catchlines.

I'm not "into that poo poo" either but I just find the morality of the situation kind of interesting, plus I wish there was a good open-ended game about being magical and mischievous :blush: without feeling you were utterly wrecking society. (Yea, I backed Costume Fairy Adventures. Speaking of which, someone do Eclipse Maid :) )

There's also the nature of RP - I recall when WGA came up on Rpg.net, someone mentioned they had RPed online with Abby Soto, and her basic attitude was that everything was purely wish fulfillment and this trumped everything, even coherence. They were playing a superhero type game and her character killed an innocent person deliberately(!), but when another character called hers out on it, she was shocked and assumed the player was only doing it because they wanted to play an argument. It's weird to think this might be how WGA was played, although it doesn't come across in the system.

hyphz fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Mar 17, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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theironjef posted:

Yeah, I'd say the failing of the book is that it presents itself as a cartoon with real consequences for the foes but not the heroes. If they had genuinely adapted to the cartoon level, you could turn your classmates into frogs all day, because they pop back into being a human while the scene changes.

That was one thing that made Lucinda's antics more disturbing, although I'm not sure if it was intended: that business about reversing magical death being a much easier spell than reversing natural death. So if you hit someone with a lightning bolt, you could bring them back, but if you shrink them and then step on them - well, they were shrunk by magic but killed by physics. So the implication is that she's going out of her way to make sure her victims can't be brought back, even by magic experts.

quote:

Honestly it's closer to Harry Potter than it wants to admit. Potter had a structure of laws and rules and poo poo, but it was all conveniently ignorable about 75% of the time, leading to students just trying constantly to kill each other, and teachers teaching them how, generally with no more serious repercussions than some bullshit house points.

That's a really good point. Why the heck wasn't Voldemort chugging Polyjuice Potion anyway?

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Zereth posted:

And as such, it's presenting a setting where the witch hunters/anti-magic government agency/whatever else there was in the antagonists chapter are firmly in the right. These people are dangerous psychopaths and need to be stopped.

Turns out that System Mastery has solved that problem for us.

DAME HILDA PUNCHWITCH
(Note: once you get around the awful editing, making Witch Girls Adventures characters is actually quite easy and fun. Who'd a thunk it?)
Type: Outsider
Body d8 -> d10 (Outsider) -> d12 (Jock) -> d12+1 (Immortal-Kin)
Mind d6
Senses d6
Will d6
Social d4
Magic d8

Wealth Class: From the block (+2 Life, +1 Reflex, 1 Free rank in Fighting/Hide, Wealth 2, Savings 20)
Skills
Mundane 25: Hide 6+1 From the Block, Fighting 6+1 From the Block, Basics 3 (Free) +1, Athletics 6, Leader 6
Magic 10: Casting 6, Focus 4
Traits: Jock, Goody-Goody
Heritage: Immortal-Kin (ignore 3 damage and boost body type)
Knacks: Wards (ignore 2 damage), Sweet-Tooth
Wand: modification: Aligned Good, Weapon (+1 to resist evil spells, +2 to hand to hand damage, cost 4)

Life points: Max body * 2 +2 from the block +2 athletics 6 = 30
Reflex: Max body + 3 + 1 from the block = 17
Actions: 3
Resist Magic: Magic + 3 = 16, +1 Goody-goody +1 wand vs wicked spells = 18
Zap: Magic*2 = 26

Here's the good news: we're pretty safe from Lucinda. She has casting d10+7 plus Wicked, so she'll roll d10+8 to cast stupid transformation stuff on us. (d10+7 is obviously selected so she can't fail to transform non-Witches). Since our resist against wicked spells is 18, she has to roll a 10, and by using some shield equipment we could boost this to 19 and be safe.

Even better news is that we probably won't have to; we have +6 to hide. Lucinda has no perception skills and her Senses is a d4, so we can surprise her whenever we like. Even if we don't surprise her, initiative order is governed by raw Reflex, with no rolling. Ours is 17. Hers is 7.

So, Lucinda has all kinds of weird magic resistance stuff geared up (she has Resist 15, again obviously just out of reach of a starting PC with a maximum of d8+6), but fortunately we're not going to bother with that. We're going to jump in with the blunt end of our wand. We roll fighting at d12+8 (body + fighting + 1 for goody-goody because smashing Lucinda's head in is unquestionably heroic). We have to beat her reflex. It's 7. We hit. 3 times. Our base hand-to-hand damage for d12+1 Body is 12, +2 for a punch action, +2 for the weaponised wand, +4 for Fighting 6, so 20. Lucinda also has some mundane damage resistance: her Wards ignore 2 damage, and her skull bracelet ignores 3. We deal 15 damage, and because of our 3 actions, we'll deal 45.

Lucinda has 8 life points. Our starting character pounds the co-authoress's psychopathic Mary Sue into jam in 10 seconds.

Even magical protection doesn't save her. Her protection MTR is 2, but because she's Diabolic and protecting yourself isn't evil, her shield spell would subtract 5 damage - she'll still take 10 from each hit for 30 total. There's also a spell that makes you immune to the next physical attack against you, although she can't cast it, but if she somehow did she'd ignore the first 10 and still take 20.

So cheers for System Mastery, you may have saved the world! :)

hyphz fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Mar 18, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Grnegsnspm posted:

This makes me happy. You ended up statting her out almost exactly the way I did except I had taken Tough instead of Goody Goody since it gives a universal +1 to resist magic instead of just harmful spells. Also good to see you found the Sweet Tooth drawback is the most obviously able to be ignored. Didn't mention it in the podcast but it's the only one of the Negative Knacks that can be entirely obviated if you get one rank in summoning since that lets you summon candy. It's also fun to note that the sample combat takes place without the aid of magic. If we get rank 3 in Alteration, we can cast Grow on ourselves to get up to the d12+2 Body die type which is important since that is the break point where we gain yet another action. So if we Hulk out, we can get one more punch in for 60 total damage. It is worth noting that a Dragon, one of the big bads of the monster section, has 34 HP.

edit: Actually, it looks like we do even more. The damage calculation should be base damage 12 + 6 for Fighting + 4 for punch action (every 3 ranks in fighting gives +1 damage) + 2 for wand = 24 damage per punch or the equivalent of a Rank 6 damage spell, the highest rank given in the game.

I just liked the idea of her being heroic compared to the nastiness of most of the characters.

Another must have for her, I think, would be a Winged Fairy Dress. It lets you fly, but also lets you voluntarily shrunk to 10 inches tall, with no mention of Body stat loss. Because the image of Lucinda being uppercutted into the stratosphere by Tinkerbell is just too hilarious.

(Young Freud, I had your picture in mind at the time too...)

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Oh, by the way. The author of Witch Girls Adventures just posted this on his public Facebook:

Malcolm Harris posted:

ASK THE GEEKSIAH
It's been a while, so ask me a geek related question, anything with full knowledge I suck at modern anime because most of it's crap about whiny misanthropic teenagers and i'm a crusty middle age man.

Yes, he does call himself "the Geeksiah". And no, of course you wouldn't know anything about misanthropic teenagers.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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theironjef posted:

Yeah, I think we might have to do an episode on the worst kinds of players. The Obstructionist, the Long-Range Planner, the Same Guy Every Time, etc.

Anyone want to start that thread?

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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I suspect Duckman is an April Fool, but it's up with the iCade as April Fool's that probably ought to be actually made.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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So, it turns out that Mr Harris from Channel M hasn't been idle. He also hasn't learned. He's just put out a whole wave of new stuff, none of which is edited.

First of all, there's the Witch Girls Adventures Coloring Book, which is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of line-drawn art to color in. And is sold as a PDF, but hey, you can print it out, right? The preview pages for this book actually show some quite charming children's fantasy artwork, like a girl cutting out paper butterflies which come to life and spin around her. And in fact, many of the pictures in the book are of that type, and would make it genuinely a good piece of work that would be delightful and enjoyable for your little girl (or boy), except that at some point she'll turn a page and see this:



Do make sure to color the tears on her screaming, distorted face, won't you?

Next up is Magical Minutia: Harqiinli. It's the first Magical Minutia book, which we are told will be a series of free supplements which add new features and errata to WGA. This is a fairly clasic model that Channel M are adopting, but they've introduced their own twist to it by making this "free" supplement cost 50c. Harqiinli, as the name probably suggests, are evil clowns which the book constantly reminds us "look like clowns". The strange thing is that there seems to be no reason at all for them to be evil. Their function, it seems, is to make people laugh so they can "drain humor" from them and use it to remain alive. If they drain a target without enough humor, they start taking Life points and eventually kill them, but there seems to be no benefit for the Harqiinli for doing that. They're mentioned as getting involved with evil pranks because they have "a childlike understanding of the world" and don't know what harm they're doing. Which seems a bit odd, since literally the first thing they'd learn is that laughing guy = humor energy, dead guy = none. It also throws in a comedy skill which can heal wounds (screw inspiring people, his hand grew back because we told him a joke!), and some "comedy" spells which are basically just real comedy props turned into spells for no reason, like spending 1 Zap point to spray someone with silly string, instead of - y'know - using actual silly string (which is especially daft when you consider there's a trait that lets you spend 1 Zap to summon any mundane practical joke item).

While we're on the subject of excuses for being evil, how about Annabelle DeVille's Guild to Mystical Mayhem (yes, "guild"). It has an opening comic in which two witches (Lucinda and the titular Annabelle) barge into a restaurant and insult the waitress, and then when the cafe owner intervenes (for no particular reason, since what they say to the waitress is probably no worse than what waitresses hear every day), the witches murder a total of 14 innocent people and then burn down the town. Ironically, the first pages of the book then state that they use the word "wicked" and not "evil" to describe these witches because they are talking about "story book villainy and not real world style madness and atrocities." Hmm.

But the highlight is Witch Girls: Respelled. See, remember how a while ago there was a Kickstarter to do a sequel to the original WGA, called Book of Shadows, and it didn't deliver anything? And that the Director's Cit, which System Mastery review, was explicitly described as the original version reprinted with "a few extras" from Book of Shadows? Well, it seems that they gave up on Book of Shadows and split it into a bunch of smaller books, and Respelled is the first of those, being the updated system. By which we mean that most of it is copy-pasted from the Director's Cit. They also made it a non-searchable PDF, whereas DC was searchable.

The only really significant change to the rules is the Maximum Die rule. That's as follows: if you roll the maximum on a die and still fail, you can spend Zap points or Adventure points on a 1:1 basis to increase the roll until you succeed. This is.. weird. The author's obviously trying to deal with the hard boundaries that come about when using a die type based system; as in, if someone else has a +6 modifier in a skill and you have a d4 in the stat that resists it, you can't possibly succeed. Now, you can, but only if you roll a 4 and you have to spend some points.

Sounds good, but there's a big problem, which I'm sure most readers have already spotted: smaller dice roll their maximum values more often than larger dice do. The math comes out within a hair's breadth of being inverted; a d8 still has a better chance of beating a d12 than a d4 does, but only by 3%. The effect is that having a higher stat lets you do things less reliably at no cost, whereas a lower stat means you can more reliably succeed when you have the points available to spend. This has the germ of a REALLY good mechanic - for playing classic anti-heroes who are usually mediocre can pull off spectacular feats on the rare occasion when it really matters - but I'm just not sure it hangs together and I'm not convinced that's deliberate.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what Adventure points are, so is everyone else. They're never mentioned again in the book.

So far, there's not a lot else changed apart from some extra character generation options which ironically make Punch Witch even stronger. Rustics, for example, can load spells into arrows and fire them at people; the arrow can do arrow damage if you want, or do nothing, but the spell takes effect on the target. The reason to do this? The spell can't be resisted with Resist Magic if the arrow hits, you have to dodge the arrow with Reflexes. Guess what secondary stat Punch Witch has at a higher value than everyone else?

CLASS: WITCH (GIRL)
Driver: Apathy
Good: Black Magic: When you're trying to inflict harm on a non-PC who isn't opposing or threatening you, PCs can't mess with you.
Bad: Math is Editing: Once a day another player can make you roll a d20 instead of 2d6, provided they make an argument as to why it must be statistically better to do so. If this causes you to fail, they gain 1xp.
Ugly: Twice a day you can interrupt someone's task by turning them into something random. This makes them fail at that task and they stay in that form for 2 more rolls. In that time they can't have their form changed again. If they can argue that being in their new form is helpful on something they are doing, they can claim +1 on that. You gain 1xp if they do not succeed on any of the rolls they make while in their new form.

hyphz fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Apr 1, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Ratpick posted:


Like, holy poo poo, I can't decide whether this game is terrible or actually kind of brilliant. It's got a really terrible layout, with nearly every page having a sort of watermark type of deal behind the text in a glossy grey ink, making reading this book kind of painful. It's got your standard early aughts standards of having dwarves but not calling them dwarves (they're dolonorri) and vis a vis elves (they're zhalanti). It's got an advantages/disadvantages system, but because they had to come up with a game-specific piece of vocabulary so they're called Valdreyr.

Oh, hey, I had that game. Except in the first edition the annoying grey watermark behind the text is actually printed in black on two of the pages, making them completely unreadable and meaning they had to be put on the website..

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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gradenko_2000 posted:

It was 3rd Edition that really busted down the walls of this whole system because now the Wizard could learn whatever spells they wanted as they leveled up, and they were guaranteed to learn them.

I think this and the earlier posts nailed it: it's less about the "Reverse of the nerds" fantasy-conspiracy thing and more about the fact that Wizards were kind of lame to play in 1e-2e, especially at early levels (with the usual caveat for your group/DM going way out of their way to stop them being so).

I remember playing a Wizard in a 2e Campaign (or maybe even 1e at that point? I'm not sure, we had a serious grognard for a DM at the time) and basically the entire session would be spent sitting by the side of the table nodding until something looked really threatening and then casting Sleep on it. You'd want it to be REALLY threatening though, because that was your one and only spell until an 8 hour rest. After that, you couldn't do anything in a fight except get murdered and you couldn't help out by being brainy with skills because there was no skill system and what check system there was didn't allow any checks equivalent to Arcana or Spellcraft.

So they decided to fix that, and had totally free rein to do it, because after all nobody really knows how magic "ought" to work. Then, when trying to fix the martial classes equally in 4e, they attracted fanrage because everybody - especially fantasy nerds - thinks they know how combat ought to work, and so complaint about things like Come And Get It in 4e, plus the relative power down of Wizards.

I just actually read the introduction of D&D 5e the other day (seriously, who reads the intro of an RPG, especially a new D&D edition?) and it actually specifically calls out that magic and the power of wizards is essential in the setting. When you see like that it just looks a bit like Mearls shrugging his shoulders.

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LornMarkus posted:

. . . and now I want a MAID game where a bunch of Maids serve an Antediluvian in torpor, and basically they're all crazy and just making up commands in the absence of input (possibly because they're trapped in its tomb/mansion).

There is a version called Eclipse Maid where the maids are all reconfigurable transhumans and they're serving a disembodied and unknowable AI.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

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Alright. So, what the heck. Semester is over. I can maybe handle another one of these.

HackMaster.

Sometimes you just.. kinda want a Fantasy Heartbreaker. Maybe it's boredom, maybe it's masochism, maybe it's that the latest official D&D was meh at best and your group have already comprehensively broken 4e and Pathfinder. But, I went on the search for alternatives and found this, and hey, it might at least be interesting.

HackMaster is best known as being "that game they play in the Knights of the Dinner Table comic". Initially it was nothing more than a way of avoiding using any D&D trademarks in the strip; no real sign of any unique rules came up. Even after the game's release, the KoDT continued playing without any reference to the actual rules that had now been printed for the game they were supposedly playing, although I think there was some handwaved excuse for this.

There's also an issue with the fact that there are actually two versions of HackMaster, although they aren't obviously distinguished by cover or.. well, by anything really apart from which section they're in on PDF stores. There's Hackmaster Fourth Edition which is actually a reprint of 1st Edition D&D, complete with all the cruft like stat-based class entry requirements, racial maximum class levels, source-based saving throws, etc. with a bunch of extra "parody" rules added to it and a truly ridiculous number of monsters, all of which came in supplements. In spite of that, some people did play it, and I'm told this may have caused a problem because the license they got to reprint 1st Ed D&D was conditioned upon the book being a parody.

Then there's the one I'm looking at. Also known as New HackMaster, it's actually a complete system in its own right, rolling in some design principles from more modern games. That said, it still pulls rank on "parody" several times, most notably with the text containing lengthy grognard rants from the pseudo-author ("Gary Jackson") about how bad other games are or how "entitled" players who play other systems are. So, like the first game, it does have a bit of a problem with its defenders deflecting any criticism as "well, of course it has (bad feature), it's a joke about how games have (bad feature), isn't it?". Fortunately, that's happened a lot less with New HackMaster than the previous one. And even more notably, the GameMaster's Guide for HackMaster (which was the last book to be released) rather disarmed me by actually including a fairly thoughtful discussion in the forums of the differences between this game and D&D/Pathfinder, and the design reasoning behind some of the changes.

So, let's do what the book does and get right into it with character creation. It's a step by step process, and the book provides flowcharts for it.. and flowcharts for the subsections of it.. um, yes.

1. You get 90 build points. (Actually the book says you get 40, but you can treat it as if you get 90 for reasons we'll see below).

2. You write down the standard D&D six-stat block: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha, and then add a seventh called "Looks" which is actually the old Comeliness stat from one of the 1e supplements. Then you roll 3d6 on each of them, in order. Ayup.

3. If you didn't get at least a 13 on one stat, or had 5 or less on two or more, then you have the option of having your character leave to become a shopkeeper and rerolling everything.

4. Now, you roll a d100 for the percentile/fractional component of each stat. Older folks may remember that back in the days of 1e-2e D&D, if you raised your character's Strength above 18, you started getting an extra Strength score based on a percentile (for example, Str 18/50). For some unknown reason this only applied to Strength, and if you actually went over Str 18/100, you could go to Str 19 which was ridiculously powerful. Well, HackMaster puts a percentile component on every stat, but it actually acts like a proper percentile: when it goes up over 100, you increase your main stat score and roll the percentile over as appropriate. This is mainly used for incremental stat gains.

5. You can spend 25 BP to swap two of your stats, or 50 BP to swap as many of them as you like. This is why the "40 build points" is really 90, since the game represents this as a bonus for not swapping stats.

While we're here, we should probably mention what the stats do:
Strength affects how much you can carry, your bonus to damage rolls, and your "feat of strength" modifier (a sort of combination of the old bend bars/lift gates type rolls from 2e..)
Dexterity gives you bonuses to initiative, to-hit and defense, plus affecting your Dodge save and your "feat of agility" modifier (as above);
Constitution gives you HP (as always), and modifies your Physical save;
Intelligence gives you a bonus to-hit, and bonus BP for buying intelligence skills (it also affects spellcasting, but that's in the class section);
Wisdom gives you bonuses to initiative and defense, a BP bonus for Wisdom skills, and affects your Mental save;
Charisma gives you BP for Charisma skills, and bonuses to Honor, Morale, and Turning Undead;
Looks modifies your Charisma (so everything has to be calculated twice, thanks a bundle) and also affects Honor and Fame, which we'll come to later.
In case you were wondering, those three saves - Dodge, Physical, and Mental - are all the saves there are. Which was one of the things that made me jump: that's from 13th Age!

6. Pick a race. You can choose from: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Gnome Titan (gnomes bred for battle), "Grel" (basically dark, psychotic elves), Half-Elf, Half-Hobgoblin, Half-orc, Halfling, Human, and Pixie-Faerie. We'll come onto these later, but they give the standard kind of stat modification things you'd generally expect from races.

7. Pick a class. We have: Fighter, Ranger, Barbarian, Thief (which has sneaky type skills), Rogue (which has faceman/conman type skills), Assassin, Mage, Fighter/Mage, Fighter/Thief, Mage/Thief, and Cleric. Cleric pops up at the end because there's an entire chapter of the book devoted to different faiths the Cleric might be. You also have to pay BP for your class, based on the class/race combo you chose. Most of them cost between 20-30 points, but there are a few that are ridiculously expensive, with some hitting 75 points (Dwarf Ranger, Barbarian or Mage; Gnome Titan Mage or Cleric; Half-Hobgoblin Mage; Half-Orc Mage or Rogue; Halfling Mage or Assassin; Pixie-Faerie Cleric or Assassin) and a very few being outright banned (Elf, Gnome, Gnome Titan, Half-Elf, Halfling or Pixie-Faerie Barbarian; Grel Ranger or Rogue). As you'd expect from the 1e heritage, Humans get any class at the cheapest possible value, 20 BP.

8. You can now top up your ability scores by spending BP on them, too. 1 BP gets you 5 percentile points on a stat - unless the stat is below 9, in which case it gets you 10%, or above 16, in which case it gets you 3%.

9. Roll up the "priors and particulars", also known as those things you rolled for in old D&D editions that almost nobody paid attention to (unlike the background-based things you roll for in new D&D editions that nobody pays attention to). These are Age, Height, Body Mass index (yes, you actually calculate your weight by rolling your Body Mass Index and then reverse-engineering your actual weight based on your height), Handedness, and Circumstances of Birth.

10. Determine quirks and flaws. These are essentially random minor disadvantages that give you BPs back. You can roll them randomly, or choose; the problem is, if you choose, they're all counted as returning half the BP value they would if rolled randomly. It's up to you how many you take, but there's a cumulative BP return penalty of 5 points per quirk/flaw beyond the first, so eventually it'll just stop being worth it. You can also reroll a randomly rolled quirk/flaw for 1 BP.. which is the first, and not the only, time that the character generation process has you spending BP on a one-way action, making it a serious nightmare to try and do character generation with a spreadsheet or similar. The book also says players should only get 50% return for quirks/flaws that they don't work into a backstory, but good luck enforcing that one...

11. Buying more fun stuff! Talents, Proficiencies, and Skills.

Talents are the simplest of the lot. You pay some BP, you have the talent, you're done.

Proficiencies, as you may have guessed from the name, are the Weapon Proficiencies from D&D... plus some other things, which are a bit like Talents. Profiencies are always gained with individual weapons, although their costs are determined in groups and some of the classes give proficiency in "everything" in one or more categories. You can also take Weapon Specialization, but that's a much more complex system in HackMaster than it was in D&D: it's not exclusive to Fighters, although they pay less for it. Essentially, any time you buy a weapon specialization you buy a +1 bonus to one of the weapon's traits (attack, defense, damage, and speed). Once you have +1 in all of those, you can start buying +2s, and so on.

Skills are skills as from any regular RPG, and they have their own system. They're percentile based: you roll percentiles, if you roll under your skill, you succeed - although there's some pretty huge modifiers for difficulty (an "easy" use of a skill lets you subtract 90% from the roll). Your default value in a skill is the raw number for its governing stat, unless it's a trained only skill in which case you just can't use it if you haven't spent any points on it. Like everything else, you buy them with BP, and they cost varying amounts, and also.. exactly how much of a skill bonus you get for your BP is variable. Whenever you spend BP on a skill, you get to roll a "mastery die", and add a modifier based on your governing stat, and that's how many points you get. The mastery die starts at d12 and gradually decreases size the more points in the skill you currently have - so getting the last few points can be a real bastard. Oh, except for one little thing. The mastery die is also explosive, so if you roll a 12, you get to roll again and add one less than the result to your total, repeating if you roll more 12s. So you can technically leapfrog up the skill ladder like crazy if you roll well. This again is another case where BP expenditure is one-way, so good luck for min-maxers who want to play fair. The GMs guide actually gives an explanation for this rather strange way of doing skills, saying that they wanted to make sure that people couldn't just determine their entire skill build at level 1 as players tend to do in D&D and Pathfinder. That might be a bit of an overcorrection..

12. And now, finally, we can roll our HP and equip.

This section ends with a cheerful note that all ambiguity in the character generation rules should be resolved in the way that is worst for the PC. *grog*

So, we'll start looking at the races and classes next. Anyone particularly want us to make a character, and if so, what kind? :)

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
Pixie-Faerie Fighter is a 50 BP cost combo, and Gnome Titan Mage is 75 BP. That means you really have to pray you get decent stat rolls in the right order, because you'll get at most one swap for the Fighter, and none at all for the Mage. Rogues only have one special social ability, but they do get a few spells later on, although with some above average weirdness and ability to screw them up.

And no, Gnome Titans aren't the size of humans. In fact, by the table they're shorter than regular gnomes! That said, their player advice reads:

Hackmaster posted:

Dude, you’re a gnome titan. A Gnome Titan. You kick arse. You have so much arse to kick, you can’t kick all of it now, so you take names so that later you can remember to kick those you can’t get to just now. People say you’re short, but you don’t see it. You’re as big as a hill giant. And anyone that even thinks otherwise gets a swift kick in the ‘nads. Napoleon was probably a gnome titan; you both have the same complex and when he got pissed, he frickin’ conquered some world power or other like Austria or Prussia or something in a few days. That’s you in nut shell. You don’t take crap from anyone. You’re a lean, mean, fightin’ machine!

(And yes, they do use the British spelling of arse in the book.)

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
HackMaster, 2

Ok, let's have a crack at the first of those characters; a Gnome Titan Fighter. First step, the all important array roll.

Side note: HackMaster has a really odd idea about the order in which you roll your stats by default. Most D&D players I know use the Physical/Mental divide: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha. Some older edition grognards use Str, Dex, Int, Wis, Con, Cha; and 4e fans use Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha. HackMaster suggests Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Looks, Cha, which I'm not sure has any relationship to anything. I'm going to go ahead and use phys/mental, because it's what I'm used to and makes sense.

So, here we go:
Str 13 / 18
Dex 9 / 40
Con 10 / 26
Int 13 / 27
Wis 6 / 26
Cha 11 / 78
Looks 13 / 14

That's a pretty good start. Good Strength is helpful. Dex 9 isn't great, and Con 10 might be a problem. On the other hand, switching them out will cost 25-50BP, so we might be better sticking to what we have. With a 78% percentile, buying up the Cha might be a good idea.

Now we go Gnome Titan. The full list of stuff we get for this is as follows:
* -1 Str, +2 Con, -1 Cha.
* Considered Large for knockback when fighting giants and giant-kin, and get +6 defense against giants, ogres, and trolls or +4 against everyone else.
* +1 attack vs Goblins and Kobolds.
* Get the attack bonus of the next level up in our class.
* Low light vision.
* Automatic proficiency in Groin Stomp. If someone's prone, knocked down or asleep, we can jump on them (the book mentions it need not actually be the groin) to stun them for 2d8p ticks, cause 1-4 points of damage, cost them a point of Honor, and repeat the maneuver every 10 ticks.
* -1 foot effective reach.
* Native language of Gnomish; must buy other languages.
* Size small for hit points and knock-backs.
* Half movement speed.
* 10% XP penalty.
* Inappropriate Sense of Humor Quirk (tends to laugh when bad things happen to other people and play pranks at the wrong moment)

So, we've got a few terms coming in here. First of all, that "2d8p" business - that indicates the dice are explosive (Hackmaster calls them "penetrating"). Secondly, the attack and defense bonuses. Unlike D&D, in Hackmaster most of the rolls for attack and defense are opposed d20 rolls, which means they have a bell curve and small modifiers are more important - this is part of the reason why it isn't such a huge panic to have lower stats.

Finally, we also mentioned "ticks", also called "seconds". Hackmaster uses a counting initiative system a bit like Feng Shui and the older versions of Shadowrun, with the exception that those systems have you counting down seconds until the end of the round. In Hackmaster, the count goes up, to no limit and there is no such thing as a round. So 10 ticks means that the action takes 10 cycles of the count-up.

Now, on top of this we add the Fighter class. This gives us a hit dice d10, and..

* Our progression statistics (the stuff that goes up as we gain levels) are Attack Bonus, Speed, and Initiative. At level 1, we don't get any bonuses yet. Oh, but wait! Because we're a Gnome Titan, we get the Attack Bonus of a character one level higher, which is +1.
* We start with proficiency in Minimal Skill Weapons - which is fists and clubs. Any other weapon proficiencies we buy are half the usual cost. Weapon Specializations cost 5 BP, no matter what weapon they are for.
* We also start with proficiency with heavy armor and shields, and some additional proficiencies: Hiking/Marching (increases your travel speed across terrain, and allows you to force-march faster at the cost of being fatigued), Laborer (allows you to meaningfully contribute to menial group tasks), and Phalanx (allows you to fight in ranks with polearms behind you and pikes behind them, without accruing penalties). Unfortunately, at the moment we won't get the Hiking proficiency because it requires 11 Con, so we'd need to swap stats around in order to get it.
* We get a free purchase of the Appraisal (Weapons) skill.

So, questions for the moment:
* Do we go ahead with these stats, or swap some or all of them?
* What weapons shall we go for proficiency with? The choices we have and the adjusted BP costs (not counting the ones we already have) are:
1 BP: Bardiche, Battle Axe, Crossbow, Dagger, Fauchard, Fauchard-Fork, Flail, Glaive, Great Warhammer, Guisarme, Hand Axe, Javelin, Knife, Mace, Military Fork, Military Pick, Morningstar, Partisan, Pike, Scourge, Short sword, Spear, Spetum, Staff, Warhammer, Voulge
2 BP: Bec de Corbin, Bill-Guisarme, Broadsword, Glaive-Guisarme, Greatsword, Guisarme-voulge, Halberd, Horseman's Flail, Horseman's Mace, Horseman's Pick, Lance, Longsword, Ranseur, Sabre, Scimitar, Short Bow, Sling, Thrown Axe, Thrown Knife, Trident, Two-handed Scythe, two-handed Sword
3 BP: Longbow

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

KittyEmpress posted:

But Gnome Titan apparently gives you +2 to Con, so you should have enough for that? Or do you already have the racial bonuses baked into the rolled stats or...?

Yes, you're right! I hadn't already added the racial modifiers because the stats might have moved.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

unseenlibrarian posted:

The biggest condemnation I have of Emilie Autumn is that every fan of hers I've ever met were also huge into Changeling: The Dreaming.

Isn't she also the one who tried to set up an armchair treasure hunt called Enchant that nobody ever solved and she ended up just not being bothered with later on? I remember seeing fanforums going on about how smart she must be, ignoring the fact that anyone can fart out a puzzle that can't be solved. Plus, the prize was just a bunch of fairy costume items, thus probably significantly limiting interest in solving the puzzle..

Didn't she voice act in something for Nintendo too? I'd laugh out loud if she was the "Hi I'm Daisy" girl. :)

(Amazingly someone's still doing it: https://enchantpuzzle.wordpress.com/ )

hyphz fucked around with this message at 19:45 on May 26, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
Hackmaster, 3: Size problems and lots of luck

Ok, so, bearing in mind the requests so far, we're keeping our stats in the same places. That means we can lock in the racial stat modifiers, giving us:

Str 13-1 = 12/18
Dex 9/40
Con 10+2 = 12/26
Int 13/27
Wis 6/26
Cha 11-1+1 = 11/78
Looks 13/14

Notice the -1+1 to Charisma caused by the fact that while being a Gnome Titan gives us -1 cha, having Looks 13 gives us +1 Cha.

We have 90 BP because we didn't reorder our stats, and being a Gnome Titan fighter cost us 20 of them. While it'd be a lovely idea to spent the remainder on being proficient with every single polearm in the game, we find a bit of a snag here..

See, in the race description, you'll remember it said "Size small for HPs and knockbacks". But, what size are we for everything else? Well, it seems nothing actually says. You might just infer "small", but elves also have that line about being small for HP and knockback purposes, so that isn't so obvious a solution. It turns out that the trick is to look up your race in the Hacklopedia of Beasts (that is, the Monster Manual) which will helpfully tell you that Gnome Titans are Small. And unfortunately, most Polearms are Large, which means a Gnome Titan can't wield them. Bummer. The one we can wield is the Short Spear, so we'll spend 2 points on that.

Short Spear: M, reach 5, speed 12, d4p+d6p, shield take lowest, set for charge, jab speed 8, puncturing.

We'll also spend 1 points on Great Warhammer (d8p+d10p, shield d10p, speed 12, reach 2.5) and 1 on the regular Warhammer (2d6p ignoring 1 DR vs 5+ DR, shield d6p, speed 8, reach 1.5) because that way we can use a shield if we want, and shields have some funky rules we should probably mention. We already have the shield proficiency from being a fighter.

So, so far our proficiency list and BP expenditure looks like:

20 Gnome Titan Fighter
P - Laborer
P - Hiking/Marching
P - Phalanx Fighting
P - Groin Stomp
P 1 Short Spear
P 1 Great Warhammer
P 1 Not so great Warhammer

While we're here, we may as well look at the other proficiency options we have:

Angawa Battle Cry: a whoop at the start of the battle which triggers morale checks on opponents.
Bilingual: gives you an extra native language. Normally languages are picked up as skills, but this lets you get the bonus for a language being native. However, the HackMaster equivalent of Common is Merchant's Tongue, and since that isn't anyone's native language, it presumably can't be taken this way.
Etiquette: You know the manners of a particular culture.
Glersee: You can write runes or similar that convey messages and are hard to see. They aren't encrypted, but can be hard to spot.
Local History: You know the history of a given area.
Magical Transcription: Lets you copy spells, if you're a mage, which we're not.
Maintenance/Upkeep: you can fix up dwellings and adventuring equipment.
Peg Leg: yep. You have a peg leg. This is actually a serious disadvantage - it gives you -2 to Attack and Defense - and it costs 10 BP, so the only reason to take it is later in the game if you've had a leg hacked off.
Skinning: you can skin and tan hides.
Style Sense: you know the art, music, fashion, etc of a particular area.
Taxidermy: you can stuff and mount dead creatures.

And also the talents. These are similar to proficiencies, but they're much, much more expensive.

Advanced Sighting: When you shoot at things they're treated as only 2/3 their actual distance away.
Attack Bonus: Gives you +1 to hit with a melee weapon. Can't stack.
Blind-Fighting: You take half the penalties for fighting in darkness or fighting invisible creatures.
Blind-shooting: You can fire at things you can't see, with a penalty.
Combat Casting: You can defend fully against one opponent while casting a spell.
Crack shot: Attack Bonus, but for ranged weapons.
Damage bonus: Gives you +1 to hit with a melee weapon. Can't stack.
Deceptive Defender: You can trick opponents into thinking you have openings you don't, so you get +1 defense for an opponent's initial attkc.
Greased Lightning: You get -1 speed (lower speed is better) with a ranged weapon.
Improved Reach: Adds an effective +1 foot to the reach of your weapon. Unfortunately, it needs Dex 13.
One-Upmanship: If you tie your Attack with the opponent's Defense, you normally miss; but with this, if you have greater Honor than they do and can come up with a snarky one-liner, you can hit instead.
Parry Bonus: Gives you +1 defense with a melee weapon. Like everything else, it can't stack.
Precision Aiming: lowers the penalties for making called shots with ranged weapons.
Precision Combatant: like Precision Aiming, but for melee weapons.
Swiftblade: Like Greased Lightning, but for melee weapons.
Age Gracefully: You never lose appearance for age.
Charm Resistant: You get a +12 bonus to saves against magical charms.
Diminish Spell Fatigue: Normally, after a mage casts a spell, they enter Spell Fatigue and are vulnerable for a short time. This lets you reduce the amount of time.
Dodge: Increases your defense against missile weapons.
Fast Healer: as you'd expect, you heal wounsd faster.
Forgettable Face: people forget you quickly. Specifically, NPCs only remember you 10% of the time, or 85% of the time if you had a significant conversation wit them.
Hit Point Bonus: You get an extra d4 hit bonus. This one does stack.
Illusion Resistance: +6 saves against illusions.
Improved Awareness: HackMaster's version of improved initiative. Instead of giving a flat bonus, it lets you roll a better dice type; we'll get onto the initiative dice types when we first have a fight.
Less Sleep: You only need 3 hours sleep and get +12 save against sleep spells.
Long Distance Runner: You can run long distances at 40 miles a day in good terrain, but have to make regular Con checks if you do.
Mitigate Spell Fatigue: Lowers the penalties from spell fatigue.
No Accent: You don't give away your area of origin when speaking a foreign language.
Pain Tolerant: You get a bonus to your Threshold of Pain. This is actually a pretty big deal: if a single blow exceeds your threshold of pain, you have to make a Con roll or be stunned and knocked down (called being "ToPped"). This is not an uncommon way of going down.
Physical Conditioning: You get tired less fast.
Poison Resistance: You get a +1 bonus to rolls to resist poisons.
Polyglot: Buying new languages is cheaper.
Resolute: Any time you're knocked to 0HP, you can make a check to regain d8 HP.. but only for a limited amount of time. In that time, you need to do something to heal or you'll just fall over again.
Stort: You're harder to knock back.
Supernatural Affinity: You get 20 spell points. This doesn't let you cast spells, but some items made for mages have you spending spell points to activate them, and you can use them.
Tough as Nails: you roll a better dice type when making checks to avoid being topped.
Tough Hide: You get 1 natural armor.

We also have skills and quirks to deal with. Skills we'll leave until next time because there are rather a lot of them, but let's go ahead and roll a few Quirks now. Being a Gnome Titan, we already have Inappropriate Sense of Humor. The roll is made on.. a d1000. Of course.

First roll: 026. "Abstinent". We've sworn off something, specifically (roll d10: 10) sex. This doesn't have a great deal of effect, except we can't gain the Seduction skill. And we get 10 BP back. Nice start.

Second roll: 443. "Nagging Conscience". Whenever we do something bad or mess things up for someone else, we have to spend way too long making unnecessarily exaggerated apologies. Normally worth 15 BP, but it's only worth 10 because it's our second quirk. Still not too bad.

Third roll: 194. "Compulsive Liar". Speaks for itself. So now we go around randomly telling lies and then regretting it and apologizing. Normally worth 25 BP, but only worth 15 for being our third. This is still really good.

Fourth roll: 717. "Allergy". We are allergic to (d10 roll: 6) some kind of food. Probably nuts. This is normally worth 15 BP, but is now worth sod all because it's our fourth quirk, so it's probably time to stop.

Our total quirk return was 35 BP, which is a really good deal - we'd spent 23 so far, so we've actually made a profit, and are now on 102. So, what talents or proficiences or skills should we get? We probably have the scope to go pretty wild.

While we're here, let's see just how silly it would have been if we'd made this Fighter a Pixie-Faerie instead of a Gnome Titan. (Given the pattern of the thread we shall call them Emilie and then forget they ever exist.) With the Pixie-Faerie stat modifiers, our stat would come out as:

Str 13-8 = 5/18
Dex 9+4 = 13/40
Con 10-4 = 8/26
Int 13/27
Wis 6/26
Cha 11+0+3 = 14/78
Looks 13+4 = 17/14

It costs a Pixie-Faerie 50 points to be a Fighter, so we're down to 40 points already. Also, forget being limited by being size Small: now we're size Tiny. We promptly get proficiency with the only polearm available, the Fairy Spetum, costing us 1 point, and having no reach at all and only 2d3 regular damage. This probably isn't going to work too well...

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
HackMaster, 4: Budget, Budget, Budget

Seiklos McBucket posted:

Str 13-1 = 12/18
Dex 9/40
Con 10+2 = 12/26
Int 13/27
Wis 6/26
Cha 11-1+1 = 11/78
Looks 13/14

20 Gnome Titan Fighter
(+4 defense, +1 attack vs goblinods, small size, -1 reach, half move speed)

P - Laborer
P - Hiking/Marching
P - Phalanx Fighting
P - Groin Stomp
P 1 Short Spear
P 1 Great Warhammer
P 1 Not so great Warhammer

Q Inappropriate Sense of Humor
Q -10 Abstinent: Sex
Q -10 Nagging Conscience
Q -15 Compulsive Liar
Q 0 Allergy: Food

102 BP remaining

So, the votes (well, the vote) is for Angawa Battle Cry and Maintenance. These cost us 12 BP together. For the Angawa Battle Cry, we need to have novice proficiency in Sarlangan (the language of the Grels who invented the cry), but that won't be a problem when we come to skills.

Talents are a bit more of a problem. One-Upmanship is a given at 10BP, but Tough Hide costs a whopping 40. Improved Awareness is also useless to us because assuming we're going to be wearing heavy armor eventually (which we presumably are since we're a tank), the initiative bonus it gives us will be cancelled out by the armor. (Wearing heavy armor can negate an initiative bonus, but can't actually impose a penalty.)

quote:

P 7 Angawa Battle Cry (need Novice Sarlangan)
P 5 Maintenance / Upkeep
T 10 One-Upmanship - win ties if have more Honor and snark at opponent
T 20 Stout - one size larger for knockback
T 24 Less Sleep - +12 to save against sleep, 3 hours sleep enough
T 12 Tough as Nails - ToP checks are d12p, not d20p
24 BP remaining

Now it's time for skills! Skills are percentile based. Regular skill checks are done by rolling under your skill on percentile dice, but with a modifier for anything harder that "hard" checks - -80 for Easy, -40 for Average. This seems a bit odd, but I like the idea that this is a message to the GM that "average" usage of a skill might not be great to roll for. Every skill is governed by one or more stats, and these determine the starting value of the skill. Some skills are Universal, and you get a starting rating of those equal to the value of the lowest dependent stat. So our starting Universal skill scores are:

Acting (Lks/Cha) 11%
Animal Husbandry (Wis) 6%
Animal Mimicry (Wis) 6%
Boating (Wis) 6%
*Cartography (Int) 13%
Climbing (Str/Dex) 9%
Current Affairs (Wis) 6%
Diplomacy (Cha) 11%
Disguise (Int/Cha) 11%
Distraction (Cha) 11%
Fire Building (Wis) 6%
Glean Information (Int/Wis/Cha) 6%
Hiding (Int/Dex) 9%
Interrogation (Wis/Cha) 6%
Intimidation (Str/Cha) 11%
Jumping (Str) 12%
*Law (Int) 13%
Listening (Wis) 6%
Observation (Wis) 6%
Oration (Cha) 11%
Persuasion (Cha) 11%
Pick Pockets (Dex) 9%
Read Lips (Int) 13%
Recruit (Cha) 11%
Resist Persuasion (Wis) 6%
Rope Use (Dex) 9%
Salesmanship (Int/Wis/Cha) 6%
Scrutiny (Wis) 6%
*Seduction (Looks/Cha) 11%
Skilled Liar (Cha) 11%
Sneaking (Dex) 9%
Survival (Wis/Con) 6%
Torture (Int) 13%
Tracking (Wis) 6%

We're limited in the ones marked with stars, though: Law and Cartography because we're by default illiterate unless we buy up the Literacy skill, and Seduction because of the Abstinence:Sex quirk.

We also get a starting roll of 37+2*Int+d20p in our native language. Rolling this, I got a 20 - which, because of the p, explodes, and the next roll of 12 gives a result of 31 (not 32 because 1 is subtracted from the exploded rolls, meaning it is possible to get a 20 by rolling 20, 1) 37+13+13+31 gives us..

Language, Gnomish (Int) 94%

Skill levels are divided into ranks based on the rating you have, and the book lists example tasks you could accomplish at each rank (although it doesn't list the modifiers for them, which is a bit of a bummer). Most skills, we are Novice in with a rating of <25%, but we are a Master of Gnomish, able to nitpick grammar with the best of them with the added bonus of actually being right (and having a hammer).

You'll also remember that being a Fighter give us a free purchase in a non-Universal skill: Appraisal, Armor and Weapons. Since it's a non-Universal skill, purchasing it means we raise it from 0 to the stat base minimum as above, then roll a Mastery Die. (If we purchased a Universal skill, we'd just roll the Mastery Die.) What's a Mastery Die? It's a dice that governs how many % points your skill increases. The die type is determined by your existing rank (higher ranks roll lower dice, so they have harder times buying up the last few points in a skill) and modified by your stat. As mentioned before, this is a really vicious mechanic at character generation because it means that skill purchases are one-way; if you screw up and realize you shouldn't have bought a skill, your GM would presumably be within the rights to tell you that you can't undo the purchase because otherwise you could just reverse the purchases for any rolls that turned out badly.

So. Appraisal is INT-based, so our base from our stat is 13%. That makes us a Novice, so we then roll the Mastery Die for a Novice, which is a d12p, and get a 7. Because of our 13 Int, we get a +1 bonus to the mastery die (the mastery die bonuses are exactly equal to the universal modifiers in D&D 3e+), so we gain 8 points on top of the 13, getting 21%.

We're also going to need to buy up the Sarlangan skill for our war cry. Buying languages at character generation is cheap, only 1 BP for a purchase (it gets more expensive in play, since you have to have exposure to the language - unless you took Polyglot, in which case you can buy languages cheap whenever you like). Languages are INT-based, so, dadada, base 13%, roll d12p, get a 9, add 1,

Language, Sarlangan (Int) 23%
23 BP remaining

And while we're at it:
Language, Merchant's Tongue (Int) 16%
22 BP remaining

We have only Novice mastery in these languages, which means we can "speak a few common words correctly and communicate with extensive pantomime". That's all we need for Sarlangan, which isn't too popular (it's the Grel language) but for Merchant's Tongue, which is Common, that might be a problem.

Ohh, but wait a second! The fact we have a high Intelligence also gives us bonus BPs to spend on Int-related skills. Int 13 gives us only one. Wis and Cha can do that too, but we don't have high enough scores in those. Still, we'll take what we can get:

23 BP remaining

You've probably noticed that these skills are.. kinda grainy. And these are only the Universal skills! The full list of other skills (which I won't give the stats for because there's too many) is:

Administration, Agriculture, Animal Empathy, Animal Herding, Animal Training, Appraisal, Arcane Lore, Artistry, Astrology, Blacksmithing, Botany, Carpentry, Cooking, Craft, Direction Sense, Disarm Trap, Divine Lore, Fast Talk, First Aid, Forestry, Forgery, Gambling, Geology, History, Hunting, Identify Trap, Leatherworking, Literacy, Lock Picking, Mathematics, Mining, Monster Lore, Musician, Pottery, Religion, Riddling, Riding, Urban Survival, Swimming, Trap Design, Weather Sense.

That makes a pretty good shopping list, but.. hang on a second. Before we get too lost, let's think a bit about the next step: our equipment.

HackMaster starting characters are poor. drat poor. Even if you use the Social Class table from the DMG, the highest class you can roll is "Upper Lower class". They also give the reason for this: rich or middle-upper class characters would probably have much more sense than to attempt to go adventuring, and so inevitably having such a class means fudging together a backstory about losing everything, and rags-to-riches stories are much more appealing than riches-to-rags-back-to-riches, so why even bother starting high? We get to start with 35+2d12 silver...

And I rolled a loving 2.

Fortunately, we can buy ourselves a hammer (2 sp), a bigger hammer (5 sp), and a small shield (15 sp), leaving us 15 sp left over. (A medium shield would bankrupt us.) Armor, however, is a problem. Heavy Armor? You're having a laugh. The cheapest is 120 sp. Even if we bought a poor quality suit (which is 25% cost with unspecified penalties that are hidden in the GM's guide..) we couldn't afford it. We can buy leather armor (6 sp, 9 left), and fortunately armor proficiencies are cumulative, so our heavy armor proficiency means we can use light armor too. The reason to think about this is that we can buy more SP at the cost of 1 BP per 5 SP.

We can now start to get some statistics together, too:

Starting HP: CON + 5 (size) + d10 = 24

Hammer (2.5 pounds):
Attack -1 (dex) +1 (int) +1 (fighter/GT) = +1
Speed 8 (hammer)
Damage 2d6p+1 (Str) = 2d6p+1
Shield damage d6p+1 (Str) = d6p+1

Defense:-1 (encumbrance) -2 (leather armor) -1 (dex) -2 (wis) +4 (shield) +4 (gnome titan) = +2
Damage reduction: 2 (leather armor) + 4 (small shield) = 6

Notice that armor makes you easier to hit, but gives you damage reduction - heavy armor does even more than this, so you literally end up being a walking tank. Shields are a little odd, in that they also change the nature of your defense roll as well as giving you a bonus to it, but we'll see more about that later on. For now, any requests on skills to buy up or BP to spend on silver to buy extra kit? Bear in mind that our leather armor is already making us lightly encumbered.

hyphz fucked around with this message at 00:57 on May 28, 2015

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
HackMaster, 5: Let's hack something

So, with our last few BP I missed the most obvious option. Being a Fighter, we can buy specializations for 5 BP a piece, so with 20 BP we can buy all four +1 specializations for the Hammer. This gives us an extra point of damage, an extra point of to-hit, one point less speed (which is good), and one point to defense when wielding it (since it can be used to parry). These are the four specializations you can take, and after taking these we could potentially move on to taking +2 specializations and so on, but we haven't the BP for that, and we won't have for quite a while.

quote:

SATYROS MCBUCKET

Str 13-1 = 12/18 (+1 damage, +1 FoS, Encs 215/14/28/56/84/538)
Dex 9/40 (+3 init, -1 attack, -1 defense, 0 dodge, -2 FoA)
Con 10+2 = 12/26 (0 physical)
Int 13/27 (+1 attack, 1 BP bonus)
Wis 6/26 (+4 init, -2 defense, -2 mental save)
Cha 11-1+1 = 11/78 (0 honor, +1 turning, +1 morale, 3 proteges)
Looks 13/14 (+1 honor, 0 fame)

Gnome Titan: Large for knockback vs giants/giantkin, +6 defense vs giants and trolls,
attack bonus one level higher, low light vision, +4 defense, +1 attack vs goblins
-1 reach, small for HP and knockback, half speed

Fighter 1: d10 hit dice, +1 attack bonus (GT), 0 speed, 0 initative

20 Gnome Titan Fighter
P - Laborer
P - Hiking/Marching
P - Phalanx Fighting
P - Groin Stomp
P 1 Short Spear
P 1 Great Warhammer
P 1 Not so great Warhammer
Q Inappropriate Sense of Humor
Q -10 Abstinent: Sex
Q -10 Nagging Conscience
Q -15 Compulsive Liar
Q 0 Allergy: Food
P 7 Angawa Battle Cry
P 5 Maintenance / Upkeep
T 10 One-Upmanship
T 20 Stout
T 24 Less Sleep
T 12 Tough as Nails

Initiative +3 (dex)

Hammer (2.5 pounds):
Attack: -1 (dex) +1 (int) +1 (fighter/GT) +1 (specialization) = +2
Speed: 8 -1 (specialization) = 7 (hammer)
Damage: 2d6p+1 (Str) +1 (specialization) = 2d6p+2
Shield damage: d6p+1 (Str) +1 (specialization) = d6p+2

Defense: -1 (encumbrance) -2 (leather armor) -1 (dex) -2 (wis) +4 (shield) +4 (Gnome Titan) +1 (specialization) = +3

Damage reduction: 2 (leather armor) + 4 (small shield) = 6
Speed 10 - 7.5 - 5 - 2.5 - 1.25

HP 10+5+9 = 24
TOP threshold = 7
TOP save = 6

Acting (Lks/Cha) 11%
Appraise, Armor and Weapons (Int) 21%
Animal Husbandry (Wis) 6%
Animal Mimicry (Wis) 6%
*Cartography (Int) 13%
Climbing (Str/Dex) 9%
Current Affairs (Wis) 6%
Diplomacy (Cha) 11%
Disguise (Int/Cha) 11%
Distraction (Cha) 11%
Fire Building (Wis) 6%
Glean Information (Int/Wis/Cha) 6%
Hiding (Int/Dex) 9%
Interrogation (Wis/Cha) 6%
Intimidation (Str/Cha) 11%
Jumping (Str) 12%
Language, Gnomish (Int) 94%
Language, Sarlangan (Int) 23%
*Law (Int) 13%
Listening (Wis) 6%
Observation (Wis) 6%
Oration (Cha) 11%
Persuasion (Cha) 11%
Pick Pockets (Dex) 9%
Read Lips (Int) 13%
Recruit (Cha) 11%
Resist Persuasion (Wis) 6%
Rope Use (Dex) 9%
Salesmanship (Int/Wis/Cha) 6%
Scrutiny (Wis) 6%
Seduction (Looks/Cha) 11%
Skilled Liar (Cha) 11%
Sneaking (Dex) 9%
Survival (Wis/Con) 6%
Torture (Int) 13%
Tracking (Wis) 6%

So, having worked through all that, we should at least be able to take out our frustrations by actually getting into a fight with something. So, our dear Satyros is walking down a shady road in a bad part of the world when A Goblin (Anthony Goblin to you) jumps out and ambushes him.

As mentioned previously, HackMaster's initiative system is based on counting up. Since the Goblin is starting the fight, he by definition goes on 1. What Satyros goes on is determined by his modifier and a dice roll, and the type of dice roll is based on how much he knew about what was going to happen. The default is a d12, but in this case he was likely expecting some kind of trouble, so he'll roll a d10. (If he could hear the goblin was around, he would roll a d8; if he knew exactly where he was about to jump out from, he would roll a d4.) Unfortunately, since he's kinda clumsy, his initative is +3, which is bad.

And he rolls: 7+3, 10. So his first action will be on tick 10. This is potentially very bad for him, but not quite as bad as it sounds.

So, on 1, the goblin jumps out and attacks. HackMaster determines the hit points of monsters by a semi-random formula; the hit points for a goblin are 17+d6, so a quick roll tells us that this goblin has 22 hit points. It attacks with a rather badly made short sword, rolling d20p+3 to hit. Unfortunately, since Satyros is still surprised, he only gets to roll a d8p in his defense, and doesn't get any defense bonus, nor his shield!

Results, 13+3 = 16 vs 7. The goblin has hit. His damage is 2d6p-1; he rolls 4-1=3. Aha! Satyros is in luck. Because he's surprised he doesn't get the damage reduction from his shield, but he does get the reduction from his armor, which is 2 points. So Satyros takes a 1 point wound. Insert Black Knight quote here. Also, having been attacked knocks him out of Surprise after 2 ticks, so he'll get to go on 3.

The Goblin's sword has a speed of 8, so he'll get to attack again on tick 9. However, the rules get kind of funky at this point: that doesn't mean he can't do anything in the meantime. He's actually allowed to move around freely while waiting for the next attack slot. If he managed to disengage completely from Satyros, by moving away further than 5' plus his reach with the hammer, he could potentially "unlock his count" and go hit somebody else right away. However, the GMG then mentions that apparently some Brian types decided to abuse this by jumping away from an opponent, unlocking count, and then immediately charging back in on the same opponent ignoring weapon speed, which it tells us shouldn't be acceptable.. so I guess the actual criteria for unlocking has a fair dose of GM fudgery in it.

I should probably mention movement, too. There's four versions of movement: Walk, Jog, Run, and Sprint. Each of these multiplies your base speed by a standard amount. Walking and Jogging are free, but Running and Sprinting require you to speed up and slow down (you have to Walk/Jog for a turn first, and it takes 10' to stop, although the rules for what happens if you slam into something aren't particularly clear). Sprinting also tires you out. If the goblin was determined to be an sniping rear end in a top hat, it probably could: it's the same speed as him, so the 2 ticks when he's still surprised would let the goblin jog or run away. But, this goblin is going to be either dumb or way too brave and hold his ground.

So, on 3, Satyros gets to strike back. He rolls a d20p plus his attack bonus of +2, and gets.. a 6, for a total of 8. The goblin gets to roll defense, and as the goblin is not surprised, he gets a proper defense roll.

Now, remember I mentioned that using a shield changes things up a great deal? If you don't have a shield, your defense roll is d20p-4 (before modifiers) because then you're actually dodging and that's hard to do, and wearing armor makes it harder. If you're using a shield, the logic goes, you aren't dodging any more; you're trying to get hit, just on the shield. That means you roll a full d20p (plus modifiers) but if you're missed within 10 points, it's assumed you blocked with the shield. This means you still take damage, but the opponent's damage roll is heavily reduced (usually halved) and you can apply the shield's DR. So, the goblin's shield and quickness means his roll is d20p+6. He gets a 6, for a 12. Since 12 is higher than 8, but within 10 points, the goblin blocked Satyros's attack with his shield, and Satyros gets to roll his shield damage.

Shield damage can either be calculated using a separate formula based on the weapon (reflecting that shields do better against swords than blunt weapons) or just handwaved by halving the dice component of the weapon damage. Satyros' shield damage with a hammer is d6p+2, and he gets a 4, for 6 damage. Since the shield offers 4 DR and the goblin also has leather armor for 2 DR, the damage is entirely soaked. Satyros's speed with the hammer is 7, so he'll get to go again on 10.

On 9, the goblin attacks again, but now Satyros is no longer surprised he can defend properly. d20+3 for the goblin vs d20+3 for Satyros. Unfortunately for the goblin, he rolls a 1. This means he misses, and is in danger of a fumble. Satyros rolls a 19 (I'm really rolling these, honest) for a result of 22. This means that not only has the goblin fumbled, but Satyros has rolled a near-perfect defense. The NPD gives Satyros a free hand-to-hand attack, which wouldn't be much use as he doesn't have a free hand.. but he does have a hammer, which is a Small weapon, so he can use that. (If he'd rolled a 20, he would have gotten a weapon attack no matter what weapon he was using.) That's 2d6p+2 damage, and he gets 7. Now, if it had been an unarmed attack, the goblin's armor wouldn't have counted, but the rules don't make it clear if it counts for an armed attack or not. Certainly his shield doesn't count, because he wasn't expecting the attack. So for the moment let's say that the goblin's armor does count. The goblin takes a 5 point wound. Bad start - and we still need to deal with that fumble.

For the fumble, we have to refer to the table in the GameMaster's Guide, for these rules are supposedly secret. We calculate the difference between the modified attack roll (4) and the modified defense roll (22); the difference is 18. Multiply by 10, 180. Then add this to a roll of a d1000. I rolled 403, so our fumble Id is 583. 583 indicates that the Goblin has just dulled or cracked the edge of his sword and from now on will get -1 to hit and damage with it. Also, because the fumble Id was odd, Satyros gets another free counter-attack, and rolls 2d6p+2, getting 8. With the DR, Mr Goblin gets a 6 point wound, and now has lost 11 hit points.

Things get worse for him. Intelligent (or barely intelligent) monsters have a Tenacity level, and goblins by default are "Nervous". Since he just suffered more than 20% of his hit points in a single blow, he needs to make a Morale check at -4 for being Nervous. This is d20p-4, and he gets 9-4 = 5, opposed by Satyros' Charisma morale modifier which is +1. He rolls 18+1 = 19. This means that the goblin, having screwed up its attack so spectacularly, metaphorically soils itself and starts attempting a Fighting Withdrawal. It moves away 2.5" with its walking movement (and also potentially gets a penalty to its attack if it was to try attacking again). Its next attack will be on 17.

Satyros, however, goes on 10. He walks up to the cowering goblin and proceeds to put the hammer in. d20p+2 gets 9+2 = 11. d20p+6 for the goblin gets 8+6 = 14. Another hit to the shield! This time, however, Satyros gets lucky and his d6p+2 roll explodes, coming out to 9. The goblin's shield soaks 4, his armor soaks 2, so the goblin takes 3 points of blunt trauma. And there's another catch, too.. any time you block with a shield, there's a chance of the shield being destroyed if the blocked damage was too high, and 9 points of damage is enough to trigger a check on a small shield, albeit an easy one. Satyros rolls a raw d20p and rolls 19, and the goblin rolls d20p+6 and rolls a 2 for an 8 result. Satyros's hammer smashes the goblin's shield into splinters as it cowers. Satyros's next attack is due on 17.. the same as the goblin.

At this point, the heavily panicked goblin decides to flee, Jogging away from combat on 11. Fleeing potentially allows the attacker to attack again if the flee occurs within half of the attacker's speed value, but since Satyros just attacked last tick, he doesn't get that. He can, however, jog after it, forcing the goblin to take another Flee action in the next tick. This continues until tick 14, when Satyros's next attack does become due within half of his speed's worth of time. At this point, he can carry on chasing the goblin or attack it, but the attack will delay his pursuit by half his weapon speed again. He goes for the attack. d20p+2 gets 6+2 = 6. But the goblin no longer has his shield, so he now rolls d20p-4+2, and gets 2-2=0. 2d6p+2 comes out to 8, and the goblin no longer has his shield, so he has only 2 DR. He takes a 6 point wound, now down 17 HP. However, this attack slows Satyros down for the next 4 ticks, meaning the Goblin will have 4 rounds of jogging away. He could potentially sprint after it, but decides not to bother.

So, this should give a feel for HackMaster combat. To whit, it's ridiculously complicated, but at the same time, offers a heck of a lot of detail for roleplaying types. And even a goblin is non-trivial for someone on his own. Our next step, of course, will be to make up our Pixie-Faerie Mage and see if caster supremacy is still a thing..

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Count Chocula posted:

I love that this thread is writing up Unknown Armies again. I was thinking of doing it, but I loved that game so much it broke my brain for awhile. I played in a few UA campaigns, and I started seeing UA in everything. I wanted to write up my favorite songs as Unknown Armies adventures. It had so many concepts that mapped onto reality.
I did lead to one of my most uncomfortable role playing experiences, when our GM flashbacked us into the 9/11 style scenario from one of the sourcebooks without warning. I know it was written pre-9/11, but I didn't expect to encounter it.

Ah, yes. Fly to Heaven from the One Shots sourcebook. That adventure has probably gotten more attention than many of the other, better UA adventures..

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

oriongates posted:

Yeah, my experience the main reactions to Unknown armies are "this is all really neat and weird but I have no clue how to run/play it." or it snaps perfectly and you are through the looking glass and everything becomes inspiration for bizarre events and plots.

In my case it was a hybrid of both: I got lots of bizarre ideas and plots but no clue how to get PCs involved in them. I think some of the published adventures reflect that as well. The aformentioned Fly To Heaven, and also To Go, both have to make Ascension way too easy in order to justify basing the plot on it. Some others, like Bill In Three Persons end up fudging the PCs into critical situations in terrible ways (that adventure literally has them teleported into the middle of things at random), or even just being like the starting adventure of Weep in which the PCs can't actually do anything for the entire adventure.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
Good god, that girl is like a study in all the comic book errors drawing women..

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Cythereal posted:

It also goes a long way towards reinforcing that the PCs aren't soldiers or otherwise trained killers who have had time and training to grow at least comfortable with the idea of potentially having to kill another human being. You're just normal people forced into it, and that can gently caress people up badly.

I think it's two other things. First is John Tynes, who although he's normally a great writer, has a bee in his bonnet about this kind of thing: he also wrote Power Kill, a meta-RPG where you play a session of D&D and then afterwards play a session where you're a bunch of guys in an asylum who actually just broke out and murdered some random hoboes in the subway. In other words basically the RPG version of Mazes and Monsters.

Second is the fact that it rubs in the idea that combat is scary because it's the balance for normal folks compared to the assorted supernatural stuff in the game. Yes, that guy can put a curse on you that will make you go bankrupt over time, no matter what you do or how you resist. But you can explode his skull into pieces and make him never see or do anything he loves again. Only the very highest power levels in UA actually give protection against that kind of thing, and even then it can be overcome.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
HackMaster, 6: We begin to make it better

So, the next step was going to be to make our Mage, but I've been a bit nervous about work events so instead we'll look at something a bit less complicated: levelling up.

Levelling up is based on a standard XP table for levels from 1-20. All classes level at the same speed (although Satyros would suffer a 10% XP earn penalty for being a Gnome Titan). There's no challenge ratings or similar: monsters just have an individual number of XP assigned to them. There are some other potential penalties, though: first of all, monsters fought on their own give 50% less XP than they do if met in a group (possibly with other types of monster). Secondly, there is a "wuss penalty" (not actually called that) for parties who do single fights then back out to rest, with the argument that they're learning less because of rote practice: the penalty is 75% for resting after one fight, 50% for resting after two, 25% for resting after three, and none beyond that.

Also, since we're in 1e country, you don't automatically level up when you hit the required XP total anyway: you have to take time out to train. From levels 2 to 5, you just head off and practice on your own for a bit, and get the benefits of your new level. At levels 6+, you can choose to go to school instead, or train yourself. There's a cost associated with either option, but it's not too big (10 silver for 6th level and 10 more for each level above that) - not as with the insanity in some previous D&D editions where you had to pay gold equal to the number of experience points you earned to get the level, meaning that dungeons mysteriously had to have millions and millions of gold in them or nobody would ever level up.

What happens when you level up? Well, your progression statistics for your class go up, and you also get a HP roll. However, HP rolls in HackMaster aren't always cumulative - at even number levels, you just get to reroll the previous levels' hit point dice and take the maximum, or (if you roll really badly both times) take the median dice result.

You also get to increase your stats. You grab a full set of dice - d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and d4 - and assign one of them to each of your six stats other than Looks, and that's how many fractional points you gain in that stat. Yes, you get to increase your stats every level, so the random rolling aspect is tempered a bit more. You then get 15 BPs to spend on anything you want to spend BPs on; you can save some for the next level if you want to. Finally, Mages get to roll a random new spell. (I should also mentioned that, you know that D&D thing where mages get new spell levels every two character levels? HackMaster doesn't do that. Every character level is a spell level and spells range from levels 1-20.

The main difference between training yourself and going to school is a few restrictions on training yourself. You can't learn any weapon specialization above +2 on your own; it costs double BP to go above 75 points in a skill; you can only learn skills you've actually seen (whereas if you go to school you can learn any skill you can argue they'd be able to teach you), and you get a single reroll on one of the mastery dice you roll when buying skills with your BP, assuming you do that. Beyond that, you also get noticed by people in the school; your Honor and Fame go up, you make a randomly rolled contact, and you get to roll on the Training Events Table (which is top secret and in the GM's guide, but is actually universally positive)

Now, what's that Honor and Fame thing? I haven't really mentioned these so far. Honor was a mechanism from the original HackMaster to.. to.. well, to make you play like you were in the KoDT. Essentially, it gave logic for almost all the bad behavior you saw in PCs. In new HackMaster it's been scaled down a bit. For some reason, it's considered a stat, even though it isn't generated like a stat, doesn't have any skills based on it, doesn't have any stat modifiers and doesn't even have a percentile. The only thing it has to do with stats is that you generate your stating value by averaging your seven stat scores.

The idea is this: every time you level up, the GM rates the players on how well they played their class, how well they played their alignment, how well they generally played, and if they actually showed pride and interest in their character's personal honor. Each is scored from 1 to 10, and then based on that score a modifier is applied to the PC's honor score. Then, all the honor scores for the group are averaged and everyone's honor moves 1 point towards the group average. I'm not quite sure what that last mechanic is supposed to be for - it's supposed to indicate that highly honorable characters shouldn't be hanging around with scumbags, but unless you're going to kick the low honor player out of the campaign, I'm not really sure how you're supposed to model it.

Honor can be used for a couple of things. First of all, you can spend certain amounts of honor to reroll any dice; the amount increases with your level. You can also spend them like PP in Paranoia to modify die rolls. Finally, the higher your honor score is the more global bonuses you get. If it falls too low, you get -1 to all rolls, +1 to weapon speeds, and 5% penalty to skill checks. At moderately high, you get a +1 point or 5% bonus once a session. At the next level up, you get the +1 point bonus plus a free reroll of any one roll in a session. And at the highest level, Legendary (which isn't even accessible to starting characters), you get all those bonuses plus a free reroll of an enemy's roll against you. Unfortunately, at that point you're so well known everybody evil hates you.

Fame is essentially a bit like Honor, except it can't be spent, doesn't have those direct affects, and only changes when people hear about stuff you've done. It's more an RP value, and relates to follower's morale, although if you're really famous fighting someone who's nearly unknown you can get a combat bonus from it (!).

So, there's a bit more to say about XP and design (the dungeon design chapter in the HackMaster DMG is actually really good, up with some of the best ones, and distinguished from the D&D ones by the distinct lack of a list of non-system details about types of door). But I think we'll leave it for now, until a time when I'm not worried about people at work who have influence showing signs of demanding that everyone exceeds the average performance...

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

oriongates posted:

Okay, like most horror RPGs Unknown Armies has a sanity system to model losing your mind from all the crazy stuff you have to deal with. However, where it stands out is the fact that it doesn't model sanity as a form of mental "hit points" or anything similar. In fact, as far as I'm aware its probably the most realistic system for sanity (at least as far as modeling mental trauma from shock and horror, it obviously doesn't delve into more complex mental issues). Personally, it's my favorite sanity system for any horror game.

Whenever you fail a Stress check you suffer from either panic, paralysis or frenzy. The effects are fairly obvious: running away, locking up or going berserk on the source of your stress. You lose all control and can't act with any rationality or thought. The upside is that at least while you're freaking out you can't be affected by other forms of Stress and don't need to make any Stress rolls until you snap out of it. You can choose which way you freak out but you can't change your mind afterwards and have to keep running, fighting or freezing until the source of your stress goes away or you can no longer act.

See, I also really like the Madness Meter system but the choice you get when you fail is kind of the elephant in the room. I know it's supposed to model the fight-or-flight response, but it can have a couple of problems in that it doesn't work well with some of the more subtle things that might trigger Challenges (how the heck do you interpret any of those three actions if it was a Self check you failed?), and it can make your character degenerate really fast. In the worst cases, it can introduce a save-or-suck mechanic to what should be the character's most dramatic moments. It's usually when this goes off that you realize that UA is still designed as a horror game, even though a lot of the writing is modern supernatural style.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
HackMaster, 7: It's a kind of really overused reference

Well, work stress is still a thing, as is being weirdly depressed for no reason - must have blown a Helplessness check or something. Still, it's time to be making up our pixie-faerie mage. Time for the stat roll! Again, this is seriously what I ended up rolling..

Str 15 / 98
Dex 14 / 49
Con 13 / 19
Int 9 / 23
Wis 8 / 31
Cha 6 / 49
Looks 8 / 66

Well. We are not going to attempt to play a mage with Int 9 / 23, and we're not exactly going to be the cutest faerie, but we can probably manage with just one swap. Swapping Int for Str and then adding the Pixie-Faerie modifiers, and while we're at it we might as well spend 1 BP to tip that Int 15/98 over the edge:

26 BP spent, 64 remain

Str 9 -8 = 1 / 23 (-7 damage, -14 FoS, 32/3/5/10/15/80 lift)
Dex 14 +4 = 18 / 49 ( -3 initiative, +4 attack, +5 defense, +3 dodge, +13 FoA )
Con 13 -4 = 9 / 19
Int 16 / 08 ( +2 attack, 10 intelligence bonus BP )
Wis 8 / 31 ( +3 initiative, -1 defense, -1 mental save )
Cha 6 / 49 ( -2 start honor, -4 turning, -2 morale, 2 proteges )
Looks 8 +4 = 12 / 66 ( +1 start honor )

Want to hear a joke? How about our hit point total? Mages get a d4 hit dice, and Pixie Fairies are the only race that instead of getting a size bonus gets a size penalty.. to whit, they roll one die worse than they normally would. What's worse than a d4? A d3, it turns out. Fortunately, we roll 3, but still:

HP 13+3 = 16
TOP threshold 4
TOP save 4
Knockback Threshold (tiny) 5
Reach modifier -2

Fortunately, Pixie-Faeries also get a whopping +8 bonus to defense, +8 saves against magic, and much faster healing.

Now, time for Mage things. A 1st level mage gets 140 spell points, +2 initative (which is bad, remember), and four spells to start with. The four spells are divided as two Apprentice spells, one Journeyman spell, and one First Level spell. Apprentice and Journeymen are, effectively, two levels of cantrips.

Mages get to memorize one spell of each level. Casting a memorized spell costs (10*level + 40) spell points, but doesn't unmemorize it, so you can fire it multiple times, as with 5e. Casting a non-memorized spell is perfectly possible, but costs twice as much. Apprentice and Journeyman spells cost 30 and 40 points respectively, but still have to be memorized or cost double points.

Oh, and, remember how this was based on 1e? We have to roll our spells. We can, however, spend 1 BP for a reroll on any one.

First Apprentice, 7: Jolt. 1s, touch, instant, physical negates. Gives the target a static shock which does no damage, but makes them drop anything they're holding. When we're a fast-moving fairy who hangs out with a Gnome Titan, this is remarkably useful.
Second Apprentice, 1: Amplify Illumination. 1s, 1 light source in 1 foot, 10 minutes, (+1 SP/minute, 15 SP/extra 50% radius). Exactly what it sounds like; makes a torch's radius larger by 50%. Unfortunately, it only works on physical torches, and we're probably not going to use one of those.. because we are one. Pixie Faeries have a natural glow. Unless we were to set ourselves on fire, this doesn't help so much.
Journeyman, 1: Audible Glamor. (1s, 90', 2min, +1SP/foot range 10SP/minute dur). Creates a sound up to 90' away which can sound like anything we like, although it needs to be something we've heard or a language we understand.
First Level, 7: Scorch. (1s, 10', 10x10' area, dodge half, 10SP/+1 damage max 6). Oh yea. Area effect attacks out of the gate. Anyone in the area takes 1d3p+6 damage, and potentially catches fire if they're silly enough to be wearing flammable clothing.

The Mage section is kind enough to actually point out that pixie-faerie mages have spellbooks so small they're 1/8 regular size and require a magnifying glass for anyone not a faerie to read.

So, how do we cast spells? It's a multi-step process. First of all, we need to get out any components we need. Just like D&D, it's having components available is handwaved as long as they aren't assigned a value; unlike D&D, it takes an actual action to get them out before casting the spell, which takes d4p ticks. Yes, that's an exploding d4, so you can easily end up spending ages getting them out if you roll badly.

Next step is actually casting the spell. Most spells only take 1 tick to cast, but they only go off after that period. In that critical moment, the mage's defense goes down to d8p. After casting the spell, the mage then suffers from spell fatigue for 5 seconds plus the casting time of the spell: in this period, the mage gets -6 to defense, can't attack, has a 30% penalty to skill rolls, and moves and does everything else at half speed. Oddly, the rules do not specifically state that another spell cannot be cast in this time, but I guess it makes a certain amount of sense that they couldn't. Presumably, this is how we make sure that mages do actually need people defending them.

Going with the theme of opposed d20 rolls, if a spell has a saving throw the enemy rolls a d20 and adds their level plus their save modifier, and the mage rolls a d20 and adds their level to set the difficulty of the save. However, the GMG throws in an interesting mechanic: the same result with different modifiers is used to determine if there's a spell mishap or not. The spell mishap roll is made by adding the caster's INT, the save roll is made by adding the caster's level.

Unfortunately the spell mishap calculations get.. remarkably complicated. The GM has to calculate the spell mishap threshold based on the level of the spell, whether it was "amped up", whether the caster is wearing armor and using a shield or not, and whether the caster got hit during the casting process, with a cap on the result determined by the spell level. The way it's written means that most of the time, as long as the caster isn't wearing armor and is casting unamped spells, there's no chance of a mishap, so mages aren't completely useless.

Regarding "amping up" spells: you'll notice above that some of the spells we got have schedules for increasing their parameters by spending extra spell points. That's amping up a spell. A spell is amped-up if you use any of these, or "over-amped" if you use so many that you are spending more spell points on the extras than on the spell. Either of these dramatically pushes up the chance of a spell mishap, as does getting hit.

If a mishap occurs, there's a range of penalties that can apply. The simplest is that the spell gets lost. The second simplest, but less serious, is that the spell casts without any of the amping applied, but all the spell points are still lost. Fail by more than that and you get to roll on one of the 10 (!) spell mishap tables, which are typical wild magic things. The 10 tables are levels of severity, and the cap based on spell level I mentioned above applies to which table you can end up rolling on, so it's very very unlikely that you'll cast Detect Magic and end up accidentally blowing the whole party to bits (I only mentioned that because I recall it could happen in one of the Warhammer games).

So, highlights from the tables: at low levels, you can get hit with a cartoon explosion ("casting is stunned for 3d4p seconds and face is black with soot"), all kinds of things can change colour, and you can, um.. "become sexually aroused for d4 hours". Nice. Mid level results tend to apply status sicknesses, such as ability score loss, permanent thought, random shaking or lethargy. The highest level will basically destroy the character, with entries like "caster permanently transformed into a Rhesus monkey", "character may never regain spell points", and "caster explodes and deals 5d12p damage in 30' radius".

So, suppose we'd decided to Scorch the rear end of Mr Goblin from the last example. Scorch is a 1st level spell. It costs 50 spell points to cast. We spend the points and roll a d20, getting a 14. That means we have a 30 on our mishap check and a 15 as the difficulty of the save. Assuming we aren't doing anything silly like wearing armor, the Volatility Rating (yes, that's a thing) for a 1st level spell is 3, giving a target value of 14; with INT 16 we couldn't have failed. The goblin rolls a 2 on his Dodge save, which he has a +4 too, so he has a 6 - he fails to save. Damaging spells ignore all damage reduction, so we hit the goblin with d3p+6 damage - 8 damage. Since he has 22 hit points as per the previous example, this is just below the threshold to give the goblin a ToP save, which means our dear faerie (who we shall call Emilie Guessfritz because of course we will) is in danger of getting swatted out of the sky unless someone can get in the goblin's way pretty fast. So, yep, a solo mage isn't going to be going far in this game, at least not at low level. At high level.. well, they get pretty ridiculous as usual, but the books calls this out as the 1e/2e "struggle early, reward later" tradeoff.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Fsmhunk posted:

If I remember this is spelled out in not so many words in the core book. You're not going 'insane', you're starting to understand the real way reality functions and seem insane because of it. Likewise, magic is the real physics of the world.

That is also part of the magic system of UA, if I recall. One of my favorite quotes from that book:

"It's not a matter of believing you can shoot magic blasts. It's not a matter of knowing you can shoot magic blasts. It's a matter of knowing you must be able to shoot magic blasts, because if you couldn't, the world wouldn't make any sense."

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

oriongates posted:

Not that "subtle" means weaker by any means. Personally I find Cliomancers probably the scariest of all the adept schools. The poo poo a well-charged cliomancer can do is downright insidious.

Cliomancers are a bit odd because they're kind of US-centric. In a smaller country, history will be much more concentrated and they'll presumably become more powerful. Heck, in the UK you can commute to London and pass through a number of historical sites on the way, possibly including the railway line you are on.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

oriongates posted:

The whole Naked Goddess thing is strongly tied into adventures and metaplot from between the first and second edition since the arrival of the cult and the new form of magick shakes up the underground pretty heavily. The cult even tried to reveal the existence of magic to the world by broadcasting the original tape world-wide. Fortunately it was stopped.

The Naked Goddess plot ran all through the rulebook in First Edition because it was a key idea and generated a lot of extra interest in the Occult amongst random people, although it probably can't be fully explained until we've covered Adepts. In Second Edition they took the metaplot stuff out, which is a bit odd, because it gave some interesting details (such as the fact that she had been appearing in porn films with religious overtones beforehand and therefore it's possible her ascension was planned). One of the supplements also mentions that by ascending, the Naked Goddess actually blocked an ascension by another man who would have embodied the same thing with money and success instead of sex.

Videomancers are really weird in the modern day with streaming - although you could almost see the rise of "+1 hour" channels, making it impossible for Videomancers to hold charges since they can't watch two episodes at once (and the OP mentioned that you can't have multiple screens since you have to pay undivided attention to the show) as having been set up by someone... For some reason Plutomancers were changed between the editions too; in the First Edition they power up by spending money.

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hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben
HackMaster, 8: The rest of the gang

So, having made a Fighter and a Mage, let's take a look at the remaining character class options. First of all, let's tackle one of the big ones: the Cleric.

The Cleric is a "big one" because they get an entire chapter of the book. And why's that? Because they get to pick a religion, and which religion they are can have a dramatic effect on what abilities they get. Fortunately all the religions presented are fictional (I'm sure there was an old Indie rpg, called The Quest or something like that, which actually let you choose a real-life religion and specified what powers you got for that. Yea. If you chose Christianity you even got to pick a denomination, although you didn't get that option for anything else, which is a shame as it would have been interesting to see how they differentiated some of them..)

Clerics have progression bonuses in Attack and Initiative, although much slower than the fighting classes. They can buy weapon proficiencies and even weapon specializations, but at a higher cost than martials and only in the weapons favored by their faith. Naturally, they're spellcasters, but they have a bunch of restrictions compared to mages; they don't get spell points, they don't get to "amp up" spells, and they get one spell per level per day. Ever. That's it. And they have to choose it in advance. They do still get bonus spells for Wisdom, but at most one bonus per spell level; having a higher Wisdom just increases the range of spell levels at which the bonuses are available. On the plus side, since cleric spells are granted by gods instead of depending on the caster's own concentrations, they're a lot more resilient; they aren't lost if the cleric gets hit out of the casting and there's no spell fatigue. As in D&D, clerics get holy symbols; unlike D&D, if a holy symbol gets lost it's a big deal and you can't just buy a new one from the equipment list. No, you have to get your rear end over to the local church and explain how you managed to get your holy symbol lost or smashed. There's also a note that says that the level of an adventuring cleric doesn't represent their advancement within the Church itself, because they aren't primarily looking after and nurturing the faithful.

So, on to the actual religions!

The Cathedral of Light is the religion to pick if you want to be a classic D&D cleric. They revere light as a symbol of good, their power is to turn the undead, and their favored weapon is the mace. You can probably guess the rest of the religious tenets, too.

The Courts of Justice is where classic Paladins come from. As well as turning undead (although without the bonus that Light gets), they get to detect evil and resist trickery, and their deal is that they believe in following the law (provided the laws are just, of course, you don't get that silly thing where an evil dictator can have Paladins because even if the law is his whim it is still technically the law)

The Church of Everlasting Hope are all about healing. They do get a weapon - in fact they get two, a crushing weapon and a sling - and as well as turning undead, they are immune to fear and have a radiant aura that makes others immune to fear. However, they also can't finish off downed foes nor ignore a surrender, even if they believe they're being fooled.

The Temple of the Stars worship The Traveler. Guess what they like to do? Travelling around is actually a requirement for regular priests to advance, although it's implied that an adventurer will be doing enough travelling to meet that requirement anyway. They are happy to fight evil insofar as it threatens people's ability to move around. They are the first religion that don't get to turn undead; instead they are immune to disease (thus eliminating the main reason for medieval folks to fear foreign movement - nice!) and can specialize with the staff. More important is that they get a whole bunch of free skills and talents related to travelling around, and it's mentioned they're often invited on caravans; not just for their deity's blessing, but because they really know what they're doing.

The Temple of the Patient Arrow is the first version of the druid. Yep, that's why there's no Druid class; they're just Clerics. These ones aren't the classic Druid, though; they're all about hunting and associated virtues of patience, thoughtfulness, and respectful interaction with nature (they teach how to hunt without damaging populations and to kill with minimum suffering for the animal) They get to use hunting weapons, especially ranged ones; get a bunch of hunting skills. Sounds like a Ranger so far? Well, true, but they also get to shapeshift! The snag is, they can only shapeshift into a hunting animal (such as a hawk, wolf, or bear) and they can't turn back until they've made a kill in the way their animal naturally would, then sacrificed the kill to the Great Huntress. It's mentioned that if you want to handwave this, it takes d4p days. Yea, that'd be fun to use in the middle of a dungeon..

The Face of the Free is, well, the "freedom" religion. Chaotic Good, overthrowing oppression, and so on. It is mentioned that they generally don't attempt to instigate complete overthrows of oppressive governments from inside their cities, but instead focus on celebrating what freedom is available; this keeps their followers safe, but does mean that they aren't necessarily that good at actually freeing people. They can use any weapon they want, and their power is Freedom of Action, which is basically Freedom of Movement from D&D except it's always on.

The Order of Thought believe in wisdom, thought, and education. Their main function is to wear super heavy armor, keep enemies away with a polearm, and give out advice; all their bonuses are to do with buying up skills, especially Wisdom skills, to huge levels and learning ridiculous numbers of languages. As you'd expect, their spells have a heavy slant to sense and divination.

The Coventicle of the Great Tree are the druid druids as opposed to the ranger druids. You know the deal, wisdom of nature yadda yadda, animal related skills, similar hunting-themed weapons, and full shapeshifting with none of that silly "you have to make a kill" business; you can turn back whenever you want. Levelling up increases the range of animals available and also lowers the time taken to complete the shift.

The Church of Chance are the thiefy clerics who worship the trickster god Risk. Unlike other clerics, they get thief-like progression in initiative and skills, as well as the Luck point mechanic directly cribbed off the Thief class (which we'll cover when we get to actual thieves). And because of the whole "trickster god" thing, their skill bonuses each level and their spell selection each day are rolled randomly.

The House of Shackles are the classic D&D evil clerics. They seek to take over the world for the Overlord and enslave anyone who won't willingly serve. As with the Cathedral of Light, they get to use blunt weapons and can command the undead instead of turning them.

The Order of Agony are the much darker version of evil clerics. I'll quote Saving Stone on this one:

Jonny Nexus posted:

Draag was not a stranger to pain. No follower of his dark and twisted religion was. To them, pain was the great revealer, a lubricant that loosened lies and revealed the truth that lay beneath. Pain bought an understanding of the universe and of one's place within it. It stripped away the comforting beliefs that men held close and in its fiery embrace, forged a deeper awareness of existence's true nature. To be subjected to pain was to have one's soul revealed. Thing was though, it was usually the poor bastards they were ritually torturing that were experiencing the pain, and not them.

They get some weapon proficiencies and a whole bunch of bonuses to the Torture skill.

The House of Knives are the evil thiefy clerics, aka the assassiny clerics. They basically get a bunch of toned-down stuff lifted from the Assassin class.

The Coventicle of Affliction are priests who seek to spread disease. Every priest must be infected with a deadly infectious disease, and they believe that once everyone is diseased, the faithful will be able to rise to power. In practice, most of the priests are people who were infected with deadly diseases anyway and either wanted revenge, or wrongly/desperately thought the order could provide a cure. Their abilities are kind of a mess; they can command undead and have a deadly touch which inflicts armor-ignoring damage, but doesn't actually pass on a disease.

The Temple of Strife are the evil version of the Church of Chance; their goal is to spread misfortune as far as possible, and if they find anyone who seems to be overly lucky, to grab them and ritually sacrifice them. As with most of the evil religions they obviously aren't meant to be played as PCs and it's most obvious with strife since their main power is to shut down the use of Luck points, a PC mechanic that's granted to Thieves and Rogues and similar classes.

Trying to give a list of all the spells would probably take rather a while, so let's mention the all-time favorite Cleric mechanic: healing. The bad news is, there's no special rules for healing. You get one spell per level and if that spell is a healing spell then, well, that's your spell for that level gone. The good news is that since this is HackMaster, spell levels match up exactly to character levels, meaning that you potentially get one spell from each level 1-20 and every one of those levels has a healing spell. 20 healing spells? Yes, and you can probably guess how they're named...

Cure Trifling Wounds, Cure Trivial Wounds, Cure Minor Wounds, Cure Small Wounds, Cure Light Wounds, Cure Lesser Wounds, Cure Middling Wounds, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Medium Wounds, Cure Intermediate Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Large Wounds, Cure Considerable Wounds, Cure Substantial Wounds, Cure Heavy Wounds, Cure Severe Wounds, Cure Extensive Wounds, Cure Terrible Wounds, Cure Extreme Wounds, Cure Massive Wounds, Cure Great Wounds.

Fortunately, the joke isn't taken any further than that: these names are just listed in a 20-level table listing the amount each spell heals (and the time it takes , which increases for the higher spells). Further, followers of the same god as the Cleric benefit from extra healing.

So, for next time.. we'll look at the sneakers and skillmonkies.

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