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Halloween Jack posted:West End's DC Universe RPG had one very specific possibility of death in character creation: if you bought high Speed Manipulation, you had to make a roll to resist transcending the mortal realm and merging with the Speed Force. Or you could just write a Roman numeral "II" after your character's name and try again! (Also, as much as I love Mongoose Traveller 2e, I'm slightly disappointed that corpsing out of chargen is now an optional rule.)
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Apr 3, 2019 16:09
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The next question strikes me as probably fake, as a reader talks about the funny names his group has come up with the Xiticix as "City Chicks", Atlantis as "At Land This", and... Phaeton Juicer as "Fat on Juice, Sir". Ha ha. Ha. Hahahaha. Ha. I say it's probably fake because "City Chicks" is one Kevin's referred to before. But in truth, I can't say. But I just did say. It's fake. Probably. Also I have a hard time believing anybody but the author thought "Size Talker" was funny. you called a game Starfinger for like two months, let's not throw stones from our unfunny joke house.
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Apr 3, 2019 16:47
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Lynx Winters posted:you called a game Starfinger for like two months, let's not throw stones from our unfunny joke house. On the contrary making fun of Paizo products is pretty high-tier humour.
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Apr 3, 2019 17:04
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I thought the Starfinger joke was funny the whole time and basically can't read/write the game's actual name anymore. Come at me.
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Apr 3, 2019 17:06
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Lynx Winters posted:you called a game Starfinger for like two months, let's not throw stones from our unfunny joke house. Spent a part of the morning tying stones to my hand with a cord figuring out how tricky it was to get the thing back in my hand after I threw it. Its not impossible.. but its not a swift action
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Apr 3, 2019 17:14
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Cowboy Style Righteous Devil Style draws on the legend of the Righteous Devil, a furious warrior and solemn judge that wanders the land to protect the innocent and banish the wicked in fire. Its practitioners master the firewand, wielding these rare weapons with deadly precision. The heart of the style lies in its judgment of the wicked and selfish, who oppress the weak and put their own needs first, and the formerly righteous who break from their old ideals. They find these villains wanting and judge them in the purifying flame. Many Righteous Devil martial artists follow firm codes of moral conduct – though some turn against such moralizing, using the techniques without the strong ethics. Righteous Devil uses only firewands and other flame-discharge weapons; it is not compatible with unarmed attacks. It is, however, compatible with light and medium armor. This is your gunkata, though mostly rifles. Before the Form, it gets extended range and damage, combined reloading and aiming, and turns aim dice into damage. Righteous Devil Form lets you roll Presence to intimidate people at a bonus when you first use it in a fight, gives harsh penalties to those you intimidate, lets you reflexively aim at them, allows you to use your guns as medium melee weapons (and lets them count as staffs or spears for other martial arts styles that care). You can auto-activate the Form after hitting with a Decisive Attack after aiming. Past the Form, you can ignore Cover and target weak points, create a ring of fire to hurt those who get close to you, boost damage based on how close foes are, or perform area Decisive Attacks. Its ultimate technique gives an enemy the choice to either repent their crimes (and get a Defining Intimacy focused on atonement and enter Initiative Crash if they don’t immediately surrender), or take a bunch of agg damage. Righteous Devil has 9 Charms ranging from Essence 1 to 3. Black Claw Style was developed by the demon Mara, the Shadow-Lover, and like its creator, it wields misdirection and love as weapons. The style opens itself to enemy aggression, playing at innocence and casting the foe as a brute or madman. The style is as much about manipulating the views and emotions of watchers as it is about winning, so that it can turn bystanders against the foe and win their love. The true master can pick a fight in the middle of a crowd and come away loved while the foe is despised and dying. All students of Black Claw have an Intimacy of love towards their teacher – it’s simply impossible to learn the style without being exposed to your sifu’s inner heart and accepting it. The Intimacy is genuine, unbreakable, and while it can be weakened to Minor level, it cannot ever be removed or have its context altered, even by magic. This is the nature of the demon Mara. Black Claw exclusively uses unarmed attacks, focusing on claw strikes and lunging kicks, and is incompatible with armor. Dodge and Presence are both quite useful to its practitioners. Before the Form, Black Claw lets you make everyone think the other side started the fight even if you did and gains Initiative based on how many people it fools, lets you make social influence as a counterattack to make your attacker (and bystanders) like you, and poison enemies to steal their Initiative. Black Claw Form boosts Evasion and attempts to disengage or withdraw, reduces the Initiative cost of disengaging or withdrawing, and makes it easier to hit people who like you or those standing near them. You can auto-activate it whenever you successfully defend against a foe and it causes them to drop past you in Initiative. Above the Form, you can penalize attacks based on your Guile, buffs your grapples but prevents you from savaging or throwing the foe (but extends the duration of poison on whoever you grappled), lets you disarm and steal weapons of attackers (and use them as style weapons) while making onlookers like you and hate the foe, and make a Presence-based social influence counterattack to make onlookers try to stop the fight or protect you. The ultimate technique lets you coat your hand in black shadow and deal massive damage to a target that likes you. If you take a foe out this way, you tear their heart out and burn it to ash in your hand. Black Claw has 9 Charms, ranging from Essence 1 to 3. Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style is a subtle style, designed to maneuver around foes, find the perfect spot to strike and get past the foe’s defenses by earning their trust. Once the victim is at their most vulnerable, whether that means in bed, having food with a friend or meeting in secret, the style reveals its killing nature, striking them down with dream-like grace. The style’s unarmed strikes resemble dance moves more than anything, and it also uses war fans, whips and improvised weapons such as clothing or teacups. It is incompatible with armor. Dodge, Performance and Presence are frequently used skills for Dreaming Pearl Courtesan stylists. Before the Form, you can boost Evasion or disengage checks (with extra bonuses for being pretty), you can increase a weapon’s damage based on its accuracy or turn something not normally usable as a weapon into one with special bonuses, and you can make your clothing count as armor compatible with the style (even though normal armor isn’t) that you can boost further by being pretty. Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Form lets you attack at range with your martial arts attacks and makes your clothes and improvised weapons boosted by your Charms count as Artifacts. You can auto-activate it whenever you disengage really well. Above the Form, you can further boost your weapons based on their abilities, boost your damage and get massive bonuses if you are ambushing a foe, have intimate knowledge of them and/or have been loving with them successfully using the style, get a bonus to social influence to make people like or trust you and drain Initiative while you do so, and penalize foes’ attempts to disengage, rush or grapple you based on your prettiness. Its ultimate technique is super weird, allowing you to reveal your true Essence and become a giant gazelle-giraffe-fish monster that can fly, tank hits better, and boosts the style’s Charms while you’re in the form. However, if you get hurt sufficiently to take a -4 wound penalty while in the form, you vanish from reality in a puff of dreams. …yes, really. Dreaming Pearl Courtesan has 9 Charms, ranging from Essence 1 to 3. Steel Devil Style is a dual-blade style that cuts people up. It is elegant, graceful and impossibly fast, attacking from every direction at once. It can be used with any paired swords, but is not compatible either with single blades or unarmed attacks. “Some claim that the masters of Steel Devil Style learn to concentrate their fighting skill in one hand, and to contain their killing intent in the other.” I’m not totally sure what that means. You must have paired swords. It is compatible with light and medium armor. It also gives you a special stat, called Offhand Charge, that lets you store Initiative in your offhand weapon. Before the Form, it boosts your Join Battle and lets you shift successes into Offhand Charge, deal damage twice if you manage to beat an opponent’s Defense twice over, do the same but three times if you beat their Defense by three times, and make a special Decisive Attack if you do enough damage with the double attack to beat your Offhand Charge. Steel Devil Form increases your capacity for Offhand Charge, increasing further whenever you Crash a foe, and ignores the offhand penalty, plus reduces the costs for earlier Charms. After the Form, you can risk Offhand Charge to get successes on a rush, make a Decisive attack against everyone nearby with damage based on your Offhand Charge, boost your parry and make counterattacks based on your Offhand Charge, turn your Charge into extra Parries that you have to force an attack to get past if it gets past your normal Parry with special sfx (but no mechanics) if you retain some Charge, do the same special attack as before the Form but spending Charge instead of Initiative to do it, and gain Charge plus launch a new set of attacks if you manage to land basically every special attack you have in order. The ultimate technique lets you activate your counter stance and the Form at a slight discount. Steel Devil has 13 Charms, ranging from Essence 1 to 3. It is also way more obtuse and boring than any other style. Next time: Sorcery.
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Apr 3, 2019 17:41
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It's almost impressive how uninspired Steel Devil is, goddamn. Especially right after Dreaming Pearl Courtesan's "counter your enemies to death with a dessert spoon while they stand there stunned by how sick your hairstyle is and then turn into a magical dream giraffe dragon and eat them."
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Apr 3, 2019 18:05
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Black Claw and Dreaming Pearl are rad and Steel Devil sucks. The first two feel like they are doing a particular flavourful thing and it all works. Steel Devil is just two swords and that's it. Single Point is way cooler as an extra attack thing.
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Apr 3, 2019 18:06
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Dreaming Pearl Courtesean is what I imagine when someone does “social combat.”
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Apr 3, 2019 18:13
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I think Steel Devil got added later after the backers who bought "choose a martial arts style" all picked weird-rear end stuff and they realized they were going to have a book of nothing but super-weird martial arts, which is why it's the one that isn't written by Vance.
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Apr 3, 2019 18:17
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Look, sometimes you just want to slash a bad guy a very large number of times.
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Apr 3, 2019 18:23
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord The Situation So, the interesting thing about Lure of the Liche Lord is that it isn't a prewritten campaign so much as it's a prewritten campaign setting. There is no central narrative, no long list of plot beats that the PCs will follow, and I think this is a strength for the book. You see, the central narratives for these campaign books have always sucked. Paths of the Damned tries to make a single Khornate demon and cult into a central villain for 3 books, and found itself having to constantly throw in side villains because Khorne can't sustain a full level 1 to max level campaign, at all. Thousand Thrones is All Aboard the Railroad, as is Terror in Talabheim. The writers for this line are generally much better at plot hooks and campaign seeds than actual campaigns. I don't know why this is; I suspect the secret lies in the lovely pre-mades. My guess would be that it's very hard to write for a 'standard party' for WHFRP2e, because who knows what your party's going to look like? I've had everything from 'one thug, 2 wizards, and a runesmith' to 'Basically a Standard D&D Party' to 'a Norse Freeholder, an Estalian Diestro, and a Tomb Robber go on archeology adventures'. You never quite know what you'll get even if people are picking the classes they want to play rather than rolling for it, because there are a ton of classes. So balancing combat progression, non-combat progression, etc is really difficult in a long term pre-made; when I was originally showing off a party going through Paths of the Damned, notice how often the plot assumed they'd have someone with Follow Trail when they just didn't. And that was a pretty diverse and talented group, too. It's really hard to assume the PCs will have anything in this system, and that makes set-in-stone plotting hard. So they don't try, here. Yes, you'll be robbing a tomb. You should be 'late 2nd career or early 3rd', but you see with their pre-mades that what that means varies wildly, too. There's also the weird brain spiders that infest parts of this line where 'what your Career is' has to be 'exactly what you do, right now', which is something the game grapples with much more than it should. Take Dr. Wilhelmina Schmidt, in a game I am writing right now. She is a Tomb Robber, with the fluff being she's a university student who really wants to do the 'practical' side of history and archeology to explain why she knows a bunch of ancient languages. It's plausible within what the career gives her, and she's much more archeologist than thief despite training to deal with traps and such. This book's approach would have been to demand that character start in Student, then go to Dilettante, then into Tomb Robber and then would count the character equal to someone in a 3rd tier career. Despite Tomb Robber already giving her everything needed for that character concept as a 1st career. Trying to balance by number of careers rather than tiering of careers or just EXP level (Amount of EXP is the true way) is brain spiders. That aside, let's talk about what's going down in the Border Princes. In this region of the Fantasy Balkans, three powerful figures have arisen. Two of them are decent enough people (especially by regional standards) and one is a total prick. Together, they fight over the kingdom Karitamen used to rule, and the Tomb King is a little miffed about this. Artilli Levrellian is the son of a mercenary and the tavern girl his father married. He's a slim, charming man who happened to pick the right mercenary company to join and make a name for himself through a couple years of campaigning. Being essentially a Mount and Blade character, he eventually convinced his fellows that they could make way more money if they just took over a small town and ruled it. After taking over his first town and studying why people considered rulers legitimate or not, he continued to do so; this is the Border Princes, you can rule whatever you grab. He dreams of taking over the whole region, because ruling land has gotten him more money (and less need to actually fight personally) than mercenarying ever could, and he's become a hero to his men by making them important. He's a selfish man who thinks that big displays of public violence help serve as deterrents, and who is much more comfortable with threats and posturing than actually fighting people. He likes to get his way by bullying; it's safer than fighting. Until recently. He's taken in a slim, weird man as an advisor and ever since he's gotten much more violent to little actual gain. He is being tricked by a Khornate Magus, who only had to tell him 'Hey, Artilli, you're the best' to get into his complete confidence because Artilli is, at heart, a bad person. He's also quite strong, but all 3 Princes are; he's done all of Mercenary, Sergeant, and Captain and entered Politician, and his stats are mostly in the 50s and 60s with a full array of combat talents and 3 attacks. He's no pushover if the PCs end up getting violent with him eventually. His little pet advisor only has to keep telling him he's worthy to be a king and he'll keep falling deeper down the murder hole. Because he's the kind of person who trusts a slim, weird man named Strykssen who always looks like he never sleeps. Seriously, the man's name is Strykssen. Strykssen is unusual for a Khornate, being much more of a serial killer. He was a burgher boy who hated the rich, and one day murdered a rich lad and stole all his poo poo. His parents were horrified and told him to run before he was hanged for it. He became a con man, pretending to be a noble with the clothes he stole and randomly killing whenever he felt like it or saw money in it. Being an idiot, he believes Khorne will give him immense wealth and power over men, all he has to do is keep hurting and killing people to get this. Oh, he's also possessed as gently caress and desperately trying to figure out how to get the powerful Khornate demon out of his head before the mutations make him a Chaos Spawn. He's only in the region to try to find a powerful artifact protected in Karitamen's tomb that he thinks will get the demon out of him (It will, by letting the demon manifest completely and devour him. Dumbass cultist.) Strykssen is supposed to be very smooth, but I think it's more that Artilli is easy to manipulate. And even the Khornate's influence hasn't really spurred the prince to action yet. Strykssen is available for a major human villain for the PCs to expose and destroy, and Artilli is the powerful noble and reason they can't easily just stab this sniveling rear end in a top hat in the dick. Strykssen himself isn't a complete pushover, either; he's got Cult Acolyte of Khorne (despite being described as a Magus) and pretty good stats, though a 3rd tier fighter would just butcher the prick even with his ability to turn into an angry bear man when in trouble. Like most cultists, he's already lost the game, he just doesn't know it; there's no way for him to actually get what he wants in this adventure. Our second Prince is a Princess, Fatandira, an Arabyan nomad who has ended up a noble in the Border Princes. Her family were wandering peddlers and entertainers who roamed the area, until eventually her family was accused of witchcraft. She managed to escape the attack, but the crazed townspeople seized her mother and brother. She eventually got word that they had been tortured into a confession of Chaos Sorcery and burned at the stake, and this lit the fires of vengeance in the young Arabyan. She learned to fight, she learned to kill, and when she came back, well, that village isn't there anymore. She found vengeance to be pretty empty. She didn't exactly regret taking revenge, but it didn't solve anything, or protect anyone. Wandering the badlands of the Border Princes as a mercenary, she eventually hit on a better purpose in life: To build a state where her family would not have had to fear harassment and where there would have been no cause for vengeance against the villagers in the first place. She began to pick up other mercenaries and soldiers with similar ideas, other people sick of how violent and vicious the Border Princes are, and began to build her own fiefdom on top of them. At first mistaken for a bandit leader as she raided from the Worlds' Edge Mountains, villages in her chosen principality soon found that she harbored no ill intentions once they gave up. She is the smallest of the three principalities in the region, but those who have tried to crush her have found her soldiers are motivated by more than just a petty urge for more gold; so far, they've been too stubborn and dedicated to destroy. Stats wise, Fatandira is a force to be reckoned with; all the Princes are. Mechanically she's let down a lot by the game's insistence the Repeater Crossbow is a viable weapon (Seriously, it's Damage 2 and has poo poo range. Use a Longbow! You have Rapid Reload!) but even with that, she's a great shot with pretty much every ranged talent. She's way more directly combat focused than Artilli, though she's still got Outlaw Chief to give her Command and stuff. She's also the toughest of any of the Princes by a longshot; Tough 60% makes her a tank. She hates the other two princes in the area because both of them have treated her like a joke for being a woman, and Haflok (we'll get to him) also looks down on her for not being white (he dislikes any 'foreigners or nomads', despite being a foreigner to the region, leading a nomad band of knights). None of them take her seriously, despite her being written as the best of the three. The only one who actually takes her seriously is Karitamen, amusingly; he plans to eventually destroy all 3 Princes when he gets free because they're usurpers, but he wishes he didn't have to do so to Fatandira. He sees her as a woman of good sense with the right instincts as to order and rulership. She's also pretty lonely and would like to marry some day. A PC who gets in her good graces might end up a co-ruler by marriage. Haflok is our last Prince, and a Sigmarite Knight. Mir Haflok is an Imperial who tried to run away from home at a young age, nearly starved to death, and was saved by a wandering Sigmarite priest. He became an Initiate, studied the ways of his God, and decided to become a Templar rather than a Priest. While he is a serious knight, his true love among the Sigmarites was having a good reason to read all about ancient campaigns and battles and histories. For a time, he thought about retiring from the Knighthood to become a church scholar, but he had ended up with a large number of fellow knights following his banner. Not wanting to let them down, he looked for a place to campaign where he might make a home and being a bit of a dolt, decided invading a wartorn politically unstable hell bordered by massive swarms of Orcs was a good plan for this. He also thought that maybe invading the Badlands (the region full of orcs bordering on the Border Princes) would stop them from attacking the Empire. Apparently he never read about the time Bretonnia tried to do that for an 80 year Errantry War to absolutely no effect. Good job on the history there, Mir. He discovered almost right away that his campaign was hopeless, and decided to withdraw and make a region of the Border Princes his outpost instead. He decided he was chosen by God to defend this region and rule it, his knights and himself thinking themselves Sigmar's missionaries by the sword in the region. He would rather spend all his time fighting orcs, but will protect his 'god given' territory against the other princes, too. He believes God has a purpose for him, he just doesn't actually like it very much; it's a weird mix of zealous arrogance and reluctance with this guy. This is because he has dreams of Sigmar himself coming to him and telling him to conquer. This is because Karitamen has picked him out as the weakest willed Prince and the easiest to control; the man will believe whatever he's told as long as it's Sigmar telling him, and he's the kind of man who thinks he'll get the personal attention of his God. Karitamen intends to use him as a tool to get out of his tomb and start his reconquest of the region. Haflok is actually the weakest of the three Princes in combat, amusingly; he only has 2 Attacks, never having done a 'full' fighting track. He's an excellent poet and if he wasn't being urged around by what he thinks is Sigmar himself, he would gladly be spending his time trying to 'fill his lands with culture and beauty'. He wants to be done fighting and to build schools and things for his people, but God is telling him to fight and so he'll keep being a knight. He thinks Artilli is a stupid little weasel and petty bully (he is correct) and sees Fatandira as beneath him for being a woman, a nomad, and a Arabyan, because he's still kind of an arrogant prick. He's not a bad ruler, just...he's the kind of guy who thinks he's the super important main character, is the sense I get, and that leads him to make some very poor decisions. These are the mortal rulers of the area, all of whom are intended to be able to be enemies, patrons, allies, or obstacles for the PCs. You won't get a lot on using each individual Prince, but instead they're all there in case you need a human villain or you want to focus on bringing down that Khornate prick and the idiot he's bamboozled by telling him he's great. It's amusing that Fatandira is the only one not being influenced by some outside supernatural force, too. Next Time: Slaanesh o'Clock
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Apr 3, 2019 18:29
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The thing about Steel Devil to me is mostly how it dictates the SFX of your fight. (Well, that and how Offhand Charge is a super awkward mechanic and the style doesn't actually allow you to boost your accuracy enough to utilize most of its major attacks by itself.) Like, the one Charm I mentioned that gives you special SFX if you retain some Charge?quote:The Steel Devil narrowly parries away a strike with her second blade. This Charm can be used after failing to parry an attack; the Exalt pays three motes and converts points of Charge into an impromptu second Parry at a one-for-one rate, in order to deal with the attack’s remaining successes. If the Exalt is able to expend enough Charge to nullify the remaining successes, she strikes away the incoming attack with her second blade. If she can negate the attack with at least three Charge remaining, she is seen to cross her blades, catching the opponent’s blow between them, a technique called the Cross-Blade Catch. So I guess you can't say you catch blades unless that happens?
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Apr 3, 2019 18:35
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You can, it's just not Proper Noun Technique.
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Apr 3, 2019 19:23
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Mors Rattus posted:The thing about Steel Devil to me is mostly how it dictates the SFX of your fight. (Well, that and how Offhand Charge is a super awkward mechanic and the style doesn't actually allow you to boost your accuracy enough to utilize most of its major attacks by itself.) Like, the one Charm I mentioned that gives you special SFX if you retain some Charge? Get hit with a penalty for improper stunting, I guess. :P Ah, air-breathing mermaid effects/descriptions.
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Apr 3, 2019 20:18
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I feel like BLACK CLAW is the first Exalted martial arts style I've read that made me go: "Oh, cool, this sounds useful and interacts with something other than giving me tons of dice. Thanks, game."
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Apr 3, 2019 21:10
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PurpleXVI posted:I feel like BLACK CLAW is the first Exalted martial arts style I've read that made me go: "Oh, cool, this sounds useful and interacts with something other than giving me tons of dice. Thanks, game."
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Apr 3, 2019 21:13
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord I liked you guys better in Ashes of Middenehim One of the reasons these three Princes matter to the wider world is that they're fighting over one of the solid passes into the World's Edge Mountains. Going east through these passes is one of the few ways people get out into the Darklands, and from there onto the road to Ind and Cathay. While Fatandira controls most of the land at the base of the mountains and near Mad Dog Pass, all three Princes want it. Fatandira also has the fewest troops and the smallest domain, so she's never been able to fully secure it. The Pass is the key to the strategic situation and something all 3 rulers contest. Also, north of the pass is the Tomb Valley and Karitamen's actual house. Something to note about the scale of the area: None of these principalities are big places. Haflok has the south of the Howling River, and from border to border his land is about 50 miles across. Artilli has the northern bank, and he's got a similar size of territory. Fatandira controls the area near the mouth of the pass and the meeting point of the Howling River and its tributaries, and at longest point her land is only 20 miles across. All three only control a single large, walled town and then a few scattered smaller settlements. These are not grand nations and huge armies, these are more like warbands and mercenary companies. This leads to the weirdest part of things, the Town of Vitrolle. Vitrolle is a trading post and fort that is at a tremendously important strategic location for all 3 Princes at the meeting point of the branches of the Howling River. Somehow, they have always ignored it and left it neutral. It was a fairly small town that existed to service traders and travelers, until shortly after the Storm of Chaos when a caravan of 40 outsiders came to settle in the area. Then killed the town guard, took over, and began to systematically torture and convert the inhabitants. Yeah, it's a Slaanesh cult. In fact, it's a Slaanesh cult you might remember from Ashes of Middenheim's city write-up. These are the survivors of the massive fuckup at the Templar's Downfall, where a relatively minor (they claim to be way more major in this book) Slaanesh Cult called the Jade Scepter tried and failed to summong a shitload of Daemonettes out of one of the city's cabarets during the siege. Directly into a bunch of Warrior Priests and Battle Wizards who were investigating suspicious magic at the cabaret already. You can guess how well summoning some of the weaker demons in the setting right into the teeth of a bunch of actual demon hunters went. Most of the cult was rounded up and executed, but these guys escaped, fled to the Border Princes, and established a torture-murder cult semi-unnoticed in the middle of an exceptionally strategically important spot at the meeting point of three warring principalities. No, I don't know how they're getting away with it either. You know Chaos. They get free passes. There's a big sidebar about 'No, actually the Jade Scepters were really powerful and not kind of incompetent like in Ashes, you see! Boris Toddbringer's young wife was actually their Magus but then the boring generic super Tzeentch cult the Purple Hand killed her and the Scepters hid and then-' and I'm guessing a lot of this is referencing the 1e grand campaign again, just like the Purple Hand cult. I liked them a lot better as a kind of isolated minor cult that was mostly keeping to itself until the invaders managed to promise them enough that they did a stupid and tried to pull off the demon summoning. It was endearing. Now they're your standard murderous Slaaneshi warband types, led by the standard issue bored noble who found his calling in how much he enjoyed hurting women because there's really only one way official stuff ever writes Slaanesh despite there being more potential in that God. You know how Chaos goes. Gotta stick to the basics or it might accidentally manage to be compelling some time. Their leader is reasonably dangerous because he has the full Slaaneshi Magus career, but his 85% Fellowship isn't going to help him much against PCs because A: His cult has set itself up in a town where it's displaying art objects made from the bones of travelers they've murdered so hiding his presence is out the window and B: Charm and stuff don't actually, you know, do anything to PCs. You're supposed to be horrified by this bog standard torture-sex-murder guy because he's so affable and polite while being a sadist and he's so boring. He's every cliche you have about Slaaneshi and he sucks. He and the Jade Scepters are barely important to the story, too; all 3 Princes know something's up with his town (but haven't actually done anything about it) because Artilli's been told by his Khornate, Haflok's been warned by 'Sigmar', and Fantadira just has scouts who actually saw the torture-murder people kidnapping travelers to torture-murder. They do have a giant six-armed statue of a snake woman with a fist-sized chunk of warpstone on her jade scepter, though. That's the only reason they matter; a lot of characters want that warpstone for various reasons. Strykssen wants it because he thinks it might have the power to banish the demon in him. Karitamen wants it because gently caress yeah, massive magical battery will be really helpful if he escapes his tomb so he can call shitloads of skeletons. The Jade Scepters would like to keep it because they lugged this loving thing all the way from Middenheim, you have no idea what a chore that was. Note: The cult is only like, 40-60 people, most of them ordinary cultist types, and the only wizard is their Mag 2 Magus. An actual well-built 3rd tier party would wipe out Vitrolle by themselves as a sidequest. Keep this in mind for how future developments treat them. One of the general flaws in this adventure is the way the adventure tends to treat the two Chaos villains as nearly unstoppable, when again, they're supposed to be up against PCs who are on the very scary side of the power curve. I could forgive them a lot more if they at least did something more interesting than the standard 'oh they make art out of slashed up bodies how transgressive! And their leader is a polite man who loves the screams of the tortured!' Slaaneshi stuff. C'mon, guys, it's the Goddess of Desire and Perfection! You could do so much better. The writing for Karitamen and the Princes generally makes up for the weakness of the Chaos third of the plot, but c'mon, it's Warhammer. We all knew Chaos was going to be the third wheel on proceedings and even with how much they can suck, I can still see a good way to get a good climax to the story out of them. We'll get to that in time. Next Time: The Realm and Plans of Karitamen the Death Scarab
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Apr 3, 2019 21:16
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Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RijRYRaJ_zw&t=357s
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Apr 3, 2019 21:22
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Rand Brittain posted:I think Steel Devil got added later after the backers who bought "choose a martial arts style" all picked weird-rear end stuff and they realized they were going to have a book of nothing but super-weird martial arts, which is why it's the one that isn't written by Vance. It does feel kind of like the author tried to pick a "we have to include this" style, as though they were looking through tvtropes to determine the most popular sword style.
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Apr 3, 2019 21:24
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Apparently this whole adventure is an adaptation of one of the Hams novels or something, according to one of the sidebars later in it. All the characters and things are taken from the novel, and the same author wrote both the novel and the RPG book. What's really funny is it has a section on how much better things end in the novel than any of the possible endings it presents for what your PCs achieve. Seriously the endings section (and the Jade Scepters) are absolutely the worst part of this book.
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Apr 3, 2019 21:55
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Lynx Winters posted:you called a game Starfinger for like two months, let's not throw stones from our unfunny joke house. Look, I put serious and dedicated effort into my unfunny jokes. Do you know how hard it was going into an update and realizing that I'd forgotten to edit the logo in an image? And it's not like I had an existing font to draw on, I had to modify that "D" by hand to make into a G, more than once. And I still missed it a few times! But I did it because I care. Don't you understand? I care about annoying you, you big dummy!
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Apr 3, 2019 22:17
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 Neotech 2 Part INTERLUDE: Character creation Or: my general dislike for this game deepens. So now that we have gone through all the steps required to make a character in Neotech, how about we put it into practice and see what we’ll get. Everything will be rolled in this case just to see how much of a clusterfuck this might actually be. Time to whip out the D6’s and D10’s and get to rolling. Starting off we have gender and nationality. For this we’ll be going for male and from England. Then we roll for what environment he was raised in so that’s a D100 roll on a table and for that we get 88 which means he grew up in the Corporate District in let’s say London. Then we roll for his social status, which another D100 roll on the Corporate District table, and we get 34 which means he comes from the Middle Class. Pretty atypical British so far. As for a name? First result for English names on a random generator was Sylvanus Shayne so let’s go with that. Putting our D100 away we grab our D6’s and begin to roll Sylvanus’ attributes. Which is 3d6 nine times. This gives us 14, 6, 3, 9, 10, 11, 14, 8, 8. This makes his attributes: STY: 14 TÅL: 6 RÖR: 3 PER: 9 PSY: 10 VIL: 11 BIL: 14 SYN: 8 HÖR: 8 Looks like Sylvanus has average strength but also at the same time kinda frail and not very gracious. At least his sight and hearing is average so he is spared using glasses or hearing aids. His BIL score is also unaltered due to his middle class background not incurring any bonus or penalties to it. With his background being from the middle class he is not eligible for gene therapy. Now it’s time to see what Sylvanus’ physique is. To figure that out we then take STY+TÅL+3D6 and end up with 32 which means his physique is average. He also gains 6 damage columns. Next up its his shock value which is STY+TÅL+VIL/3 and from that we get… 10,3333333... Great. So that is truncated to 10 as per the rules. Calculating mental stability is PSY+VIL+3D6 and after rolling we get 29. Which puts him solidly in the normal area here as well. He also gets 6 psychosis columns from this. Sylvanus is still fairly British then. But how well can he handle traumas without it leaving a lasting scar on him? To figure that out we take PSY+VIL/2 and get 10,5 which is truncated to a 10. When it comes to exhaustion columns (TÅL+VIL/4) we get 4,25 or simply 4 of them. Sylvanus is not someone who would go last in a long distance sprint that’s for sure. His Cool, based on the formula PSY+VIL/5 +2D6 is 16,2 or 16. Sylvanus media status is 1D6-4 and as the dice comes up a 4 he simply gets 0. He’s just another face in crowd. Then we get to the god stat of the game, Initiative. The formula here is RÖR+SYN/2 +Cool +Combat Experience x2, to which he gets 21,5 or 21 because he has no Combat Experience so far. He starts with 11 luck like any other character. Sylvanus is 175 centimeters tall and weighs 74 kg. Due to his physique being normal his weight is not altered. To see what his FÖR score we use RÖR+TÅL+10/4 and we get 4,75. That is truncated down to a 4. Moving on we see what his carrying capacity is, which is STY+TÅL/2, and we end up with 10 kg. His base damage for when he is involved in melee fighting, derived from his STY cross checked with a table is Ob1D6+2. He can throw a pretty mean punch if he has to by the looks of it. He’s also left handed thanks to a lucky d10 roll. Now it’s time for the really fun part of this. What kind of benefits and drawbacks does he get? First we need to roll D100 twice for the benefits and we end up with 28 and 39. Looking at the table we can see he gets Seducer and Can Ignore pain. The first one means that the seduction skill is an easy learned one so he gets an automatic 10 ranks in it. The second one means that the difficulty rolls he gets from being too much in pain is lowered by two levels. Rolling D100 twice again to see what drawbacks he gets we end up with 85 and 12 which translates to Refractive error and Bad breath. So he gets to lower his sight value by half and unless he does something about his bad breath gets a difficulty level higher on social rolls when he’s in close proximity to people. I’d say he got off lucky in this case. Glasses are cheap anyway. Problem is of course now that his SYN has decreased by 4 points that means we now have to recalculate his Initiative. So redoing the math we get 19,5 truncated to 19 instead. As for behaviour we get from two more D100 rolls; Scatterbrained (95) and Condescending (61). So I guess Sylvanus is scatterbrained, condescending, has bad breath and has to wear glasses. He sounds like the worst kind of nerd who has a tendency to push their glasses up the bridge of their nose when they’re about lecture someone in the importance why catgirls are so incredibly moe. Now we get to know what happened when he grew up. As we grew up as a middle class boy we get to roll a D100 twice on that relevant event table. We also get a number of skills and a starting capital of Ob3D6x100 euros. Sylvanus in this case gets 800 euros as his capital. As for events we get 59 and 69 and looking at the table we get Rebellion and that we have to roll on the lower class event table. Oh dear. Turns out Sylvanus managed to piss off his parents quite badly to the point that the wounds haven’t healed even as an adult so he gets his parents as enemies with 16 (3D6) resources. Then we roll on the lower class event table and we get 93. Which bounces us instead over to the general events table in this case. Guess he has luck on his side a bit. Rolling there we get 18 which translates to Dance freak on the table. Apparently he likes strutting his stuff on the dance floor. But as a result we have to lower HÖR by 2 but also get 11 (1D6+6) units to spend on the Dance skill. So at this point his attributes are STY: 14 TÅL: 6 RÖR: 3 PER: 9 PSY: 10 VIL: 11 BIL: 14 SYN: 4 HÖR: 6 At this point he also has ranks in either Dancing, Seducing, Sports, Drive: Car, Music, Swimming, Social performance Persuade, Administration, Biology, Data technology, Economy, Physics, History, Chemistry, Mathematics, Media, Programming, Psychology, Read/Write and English. By this point in character creation Sylvanus is now 18 and we get to see what careers he chose. While I could at this point cheat as I would now have to start calculating skill ranks and such but I won’t. But here you really need to build towards a specific career that you want. For middle class you get 15 units to spend on both background and educational skills and seeing as it costs 2 points to raise a skill to rank 5 you will barely have enough for all of them. At least the educational ones. Not to mention that you’ll also only get 5 ranks in them and to succeed with some careers you need to roll Ob3D6 below you skill. So having as many as you can at 5 will ultimately hamper you. So our choice requires some forethought in this case. Looking over the various careers we can see the following: Businessman: Can’t pick that due to Sylvanus only have 800 euros to his name. Worker: He’s going to have a hard time passing the advancement roll because of his low TÅL and RÖR. So he’d only succeed once due to his average VIL score. Artist: Once again, not the best chances due to low PER, Mediastatus. He’s a great dancer though. Corporate: Sylvanus might stand a chance here if he manages to go through university. With an average PSY value and points in Economy he stands a chance at succeeding here. Ganger: Without any points in Underworld and lacklustre PER score his chances are low to go far with this. Gang Member: With a good STY value and a decent Cool score he will at least pass two out of three rolls. Hacker: Will only be able to pass 1 out of 3 rolls at most. Criminal: Two out of three successes isn’t too bad. This would also get him access to the Underworld skill which lets him continue into gangster if so wanted for the second or third option. Media worker: Once again two our of three if we sink units into the media skill Officer: Unless he manages to succeed as a soldier he’s not having that many chances. Playboy: Right out due to wealth requirements. Police: With his PSY score he might make it, but the lack of ranks in Underworld and only 5 ranks in interrogation techniques puts his chances for advancement at very low. Space Worker: The biggest crutch would be his low TÅL score but with his decent PSY and good Cool score he might have a shot at going into space. Medic: Also another good second career if he goes into Medicine and specialising something via University studies. Soldier: Sylvanus is not cut out for the soldier life with his low TÅL value. Not to mention you’re also required to roll for Combat Experience. Which I’m not even sure is possible unless you pick a career that gives you points in it beforehand. Solo: If he had some points in Underworld this would be another career he’d make some good progress in with his attributes. Technician: He has a pretty solid BIL score which means chance of progressing here is good. University: With his BIL and PSY values he will at least advance two times successfully even if he’ll might fail on the Information searching check It’s at this point that I realize that 100% advancement is, in some cases, outright impossible. Take university for instance, for that you need Information Searching as the final requirement check. Everyone gains ranks in that skill regardless of social class, but only 5 ranks. Making any progression roll for that skill impossible to do at a normal Ob3D6 roll. So this begs the question, how are you meant in this case to upgrade the skill in order to succeed? The units you gain from lifepath is only meant for those specific skills and nothing else as far as I can see. Not to mention Soldier requiring a check for Combat Experience to be able to reach the rank of Sergeant so you are eligible for officer. So either the case here is that passing all three advancement rolls is outright impossible to do for your first career attempt or you are meant to spend the units you gain from the previous two rolls to upgrade your the relevant skill. But the latter isn’t mentioned anywhere in the book so that’s more Rules As Intended rather than Rules as Written. I feel the writer’s intention is that you’re simply meant to fail the third advancement on the first go. Which to me feels like bad design somewhat. Especially for something like the university career which is very essential to a lot of the other advanced ones. This just means you run a large risk of being locked out of progression. Either way, looking over our career options we’ll have Sylvanus’ first career choice deciding that Corporate Town where he has grown up in is really boring so he decides he wants to go places and become a bodyguard, or a Solo in this case. So first we’ll roll an Ob3D6 check against his PSY and get 8 which is a pass. But we need to pass two checks at least to see if we’ve had a normal career so we now roll against his Cool score of 16 and get 8 again. So Sylvanus is now a Bodyguard. We can’t get any further though with this attempt as we have no ranks in the Underworld skill. His job as a Bodyguard lasts for 6 (1D6) years. He gets 20 units to spend on career skills, 15 on optional skills and 3 points to spend on Combat Experience. Then we roll 1d100 twice on the Career Event table and get 68 and 64 that translates to Assumed Name and Special training. At some point Sylvanus had to get another identity for something he done, as a result he gets a counterfeiter with 13 (1d6+10) resources but has to lower his capital by 13000 (Ob3D6x1000) euros which puts him squarely into -12200 euros debt. Oh dear. The other result on the other hand means that he has managed to get special skills and gets a military instructor with 13 (2D6+6) resources and gets 8 (1d6+6) units to spend on the Explosives skill. Those debt collectors might need to look out for booby traps whenever they come around to collect. So that’s our first career done. But what about the second? If Sylvanus stays as a Solo he’ll get an automatic success on one of his rolls to advance. But at this point we might actually have enough units put into the Underworld skill to make a third progression easier. So instead he decides to be a cop. So our first check is against PSY again and we get 14, which is sadly a failure so he has to pass at least one of the two subsequent rolls to make it through. So then we roll against Underworld (at an arbitrary value of 12 because I don’t want to fiddle around with unit costs) and we get a 5 and then we roll against Interrogation technique (also set at 12) and get a 9 so we’ve once again passed two out of three attempts. So now Sylvanus spends 4 years as a cop and gets 25 career units and 10 optional units. As well as 3 combat experience points. So at this point he does have a decent number of points into that skill. He also gets promoted to police assistant. On the event table we get 65 and 71. Which both are the same result so the GM decides that Sylvanus gets to reroll the second one and he gets 43. So the first result is Reparation, Sylvanus managed to find out just who managed to steal all the candy from the office vending machines despite the chief told him the case had been closed. So he got suspended for a while but before long he managed to get the truth out and got promoted so he’s now a Police Inspector. His media status also goes up by 4 (1D6). The other result on the other hand is Retirement! During a shootout Sylvanus managed to get hit badly and his TÅL is lowered by 1 and the wounds forced him to quit the service. So he can’t select police next time. But his starting capital goes up with 12000 euros which puts his debt at only 200 euros. Lowering his TÅL obviously means we need to recalculate some things but gently caress that. Sylvanus is now 28 years old and it’s time for his final career choice. Looking back at this past life he realized he actually had quite a bit of fun as a Solo but now decides he’s going to be a Bounty Hunter instead of a Bodyguard. But as we went for something else during our previous career we don’t get to select an automatic success. On the other hand we’re not experienced enough to maybe squeeze out a full three successes. So our rolls against PSY, Cool and Underworld are 10 (pass), 8 (Pass) and 10 (Pass) which means that he’s had a stellar career as a bounty hunter. So in turn he gets 25/20 units on skills and 4 combat experience points. As for events we get 30 and 33, which once again gets the same result so the GM graciously allows a reroll, realizing things have dragged on enough as it is. Our reroll gets us 79. 30 means that Sylvanus is now a licensed private detective, but the GM just files of the label and changes that to bounty hunter. While 79 means that he’s worked abroad for a while and gets 7 (2D6) units to increase another language. So that’s Sylvanus Shayne, Solo/Police/Solo. His final attributes are STY: 14 TÅL: 5 RÖR: 3 PER: 9 PSY: 10 VIL: 11 BIL: 14 SYN: 4 HÖR: 6 Imagine a bunch of skills here. Turns out I forgot that the careers also get their own starting capitals so with that last career attempt he's earned at least Ob3D6x5000 euro in funds thanks to roll successfully three times. He also has the following gear from his last Solo career: An ID-card, a Bag, Keys, a Credit card, a pocket knife, a handkerchief, Sunglasses, a Mobile phone, a palm computer, a suitcase, a business card, a advertisement envelope, an attachécase. A Luxury apartment with furniture, TV and a computer A van Complete wardrobe with all sorts of designer clothes and real leather shoes A pistol with ammo and a license Bugging equipment An office With that he’s ready to play. To which the GM scratches his head. Sylvanus is obviously a very combat focused and investigation focused character so his role is clearly defined. But what about the others? Uuuuhg, this is not a fun character creation process. It’s mostly long and boring with a lot of skill rank calculations. And that’s before you get into the multitude of career skills that you need to decide where to allocate points for. This is the kind of process that you almost want some guide of program to do to make it bearable. Much like Shadowrun I would want to say. Especially it would also simplify the career advancement rolls. Then there is also the issue of the massive cockblock that is being locked out of the third advancement at your first attempt at a career. Also all those loving decimals that needed to be truncated. Whyyyyy! Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 00:23
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Neotech seems to conflate things that are background professions, like businessman and space worker, with things that are character classes, like medic and solo.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:43
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Halloween Jack posted:Neotech seems to conflate things that are background professions, like businessman and space worker, with things that are character classes, like medic and solo. Yeah pretty much. The fact that you can take more or less any combination of careers means that you can have some really weird party combinations, and there's still no real solid explanation what they're all supposed to be doing. As I mentioned before at least SR established that early on and you build towards the Shadowrunner archetype. But what's the archetype to go for here when you have that many different career types and combinations. What on earth links together a military officer, a gangster and a shop owner together? It can work as a one shot session but as a long lasting campaign? No idea.
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Apr 4, 2019 01:03
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Night10194 posted:His little pet advisor only has to keep telling him he's worthy to be a king and he'll keep falling deeper down the murder hole. Because he's the kind of person who trusts a slim, weird man named Strykssen who always looks like he never sleeps. Seriously, the man's name is Strykssen. Strykssen is unusual for a Khornate, being much more of a serial killer. He was a burgher boy who hated the rich, and one day murdered a rich lad and stole all his poo poo. His parents were horrified and told him to run before he was hanged for it. He became a con man, pretending to be a noble with the clothes he stole and randomly killing whenever he felt like it or saw money in it. Being an idiot, he believes Khorne will give him immense wealth and power over men, all he has to do is keep hurting and killing people to get this. i really feel like khorne could use something thematic other than murder. even something like gold would work, since it's already all over his iconography. besides blood and skulls, khorne is gold and tin/bronze, and wants to to build him glorious golden monuments embedded with skulls. cultists of both khorne and slaneesh fighting over what wealth is, whether its decadent consumption or cold dead idols. plus unequivocally evil murderers who build golden statues is a handy if lazy hook for a game about murderhobos. Night10194 posted:She found vengeance to be pretty empty. She didn't exactly regret taking revenge, but it didn't solve anything, or protect anyone. Wandering the badlands of the Border Princes as a mercenary, she eventually hit on a better purpose in life: To build a state where her family would not have had to fear harassment and where there would have been no cause for vengeance against the villagers in the first place. She began to pick up other mercenaries and soldiers with similar ideas, other people sick of how violent and vicious the Border Princes are, and began to build her own fiefdom on top of them. At first mistaken for a bandit leader as she raided from the Worlds' Edge Mountains, villages in her chosen principality soon found that she harbored no ill intentions once they gave up. She is the smallest of the three principalities in the region, but those who have tried to crush her have found her soldiers are motivated by more than just a petty urge for more gold; so far, they've been too stubborn and dedicated to destroy. arab woman big boss rules
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Apr 4, 2019 03:26
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Cease to Hope posted:arab woman big boss rules If they just built her with Longbow (or the Repeater crossbow did what it does in the TT game, Damage 3 AP like the Longbow) she'd actually be mechanically the best fighter of the three, too. She's the pure commando type one. The author seems to think Haflok is the strongest warrior of the three, despite him being easily the weakest (his full plate does not make up for his WS and BS being worse and him only having 2 Attacks). There's...going to be a lot of 'I don't think the rules work like the author thinks they do' mechanical moments in this. The actual characters and writing are pretty good, though!
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Apr 4, 2019 03:33
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I'm with arab female big boss.
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Apr 4, 2019 03:39
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So obviously the objective here is to make Arab Lady Big Boss the undisputed ruler of the pass, right? Maybe get her to marry the dead guy too.
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Apr 4, 2019 04:40
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Ratoslov posted:So obviously the objective here is to make Arab Lady Big Boss the undisputed ruler of the pass, right? Maybe get her to marry the dead guy too. I think you are going to really like one of my proposed endings for this.
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Apr 4, 2019 04:50
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 The Rifter 9½, part 4: "Caucasian, slighly overweight but very attractive." Where's Wayne? A Heroes Unlimited™ Adventure By Like Waldo, but Wayne. So, Wayne Smith, editor of The Rifter, has been kidnapped by a group known as the Motown Maniacs. I'm... not clear if that's a joke, or a reference to something, or what. We're told they're so feared that "no one on the streets" will snitch on them. Their scheme, such it is, is to keep him prisoner so he can run Palladium RPGs for them, stealing whatever he requests to try and keep him content while blocking his contact with the outside world.. (He doesn't know his requests are being provided for via theft.)  Wayne Smith via Ramon Perez. The Rifter 9½ posted:They so love playing Rifts® and other Palladium games, that they decided that it would be cool to get Wayne as their own personal Game Master and "gaming guru". (guess they don't know him very well, do they?) The Rifter 9½ posted:These misanthropes may be a bit wacko and goofy (Why else would they want Wayne?), but they are also dangerous, superhuman criminals. We get a statblock for Wayne, who has "average" attributes; i.e. better than you're ever likely to roll, and is a "3rd level writer/editor and 5th level computer tech". The Rifter 9½ posted:He has a good sense of humor (we hope!), enjoys a good meal (and how!), a good night of gaming and a good-night "kiss" from his pet pooch, Alex. (The doggie not [Alex] Marciniszyn!!! Hey, this is a family publication, so get your minds outta the gutter!) Don't inflict this publication on your family. I know some folks think that children were better behaved when we were allowed to threaten them with reading The Rifter, but studies just show it harms them later in life.    Bungee, Crashley, and Headcase. So the Motown Maniacs are... I'm guessing they must be somebody related to Smith in real life, either his gaming group, friends, or both. It's never actually stated, but given some seem to be caricatures without obvious gags, it's the best guess. Either way, it feels like one big in-joke that's never explained. They include:
  Burnout, Dusty, and Wizzer. As far as somebody's in-joke and some solid Perez art, it's... fine? But it just comes across as odd, and the general lack of powers with the group means they're going to be pushovers if you actually play this rather than just a couple of pages to headtilt over. I'm not sure Crashley can do with a Computer Operation of 105%. "I've enabled God Mode in Windows 10! Look out! I have access to every system tool! Nothing can stop me!" And in case you think I skipped a bunch of jokes, I didn't, really. Most of the Motown Maniacs are played fairly straight outside of the setup, which makes the whole thing just really stand out as weird in this issue. Next: Food is funny, right?
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Apr 4, 2019 05:03
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Cease to Hope posted:i really feel like khorne could use something thematic other than murder. even something like gold would work, since it's already all over his iconography. besides blood and skulls, khorne is gold and tin/bronze, and wants to to build him glorious golden monuments embedded with skulls. cultists of both khorne and slaneesh fighting over what wealth is, whether its decadent consumption or cold dead idols. plus unequivocally evil murderers who build golden statues is a handy if lazy hook for a game about murderhobos. The issue with Khorne will always be that his forces just plain don't work for long campaigns or large plotlines. They only want one thing, and if they try to play the long game he's screaming at them to stop the entire time. Like, the Slaaneshi are badly used; you could have them take over Vitrolle and just rule it in secret, quietly sending out evangelists and turning travelers who pass through with their leader's insane charisma instead of being incredibly obvious and stupid. You can have Slaaneshi want almost anything and still have it be in character. Tzeentch, silly as he is, could be attempting just about any plan; there's room for some variety with his puppets. What they think they're going to get can vary wildly, as can how they try to get it. Strykssen and Leibnitz in Ashes of Middenheim are about as good as you're going to get with Khornates beyond 'These assholes show up to be the muscle and we kill them as a combat encounter' and they're still not great. Nurglites will always poison the water supply/try to spread infection, and Khornates will always try to kill you. The uniformity of their objectives and the mono-focus of the Gods makes them weaker for use in RPG plots. Nurgle's issue has more to do with how there isn't that much 17th century Germans can actually do to deal with his poo poo, though. All you can do is prevent it before it goes off, unless you have a 3rd tier Shallyan. E: The other issue with Nurgle will always be the massive, massive overuse of Neglish Rot. Instead of a variety of lesser diseases that you can actually survive, almost all of his followers go straight up to the near-uncurable (outside of our friend the 3rd Tier Shallyan) kill-disease that mutates you as it progresses, which is basically 'succeed a Toughness test or die after you beat them anyway'. It's supposed to be an extremely rare and powerful disease. It is not rare in ToC. It is very powerful. It single-handedly fucks most of the disease rules. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 06:24
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I feel like Khorne works as regimented order where the only expression it considers real is the struggle of life and death. A Khornate to me is the bloodthirsty equivalent of a person who wont play poker unless theirs money on the line, a jousting match where we all laugh together at the end of the day is fake because your lives arent on the line. To Khorne, slaneesh wants pointless trivialities, tzeentch is too cowardly to put actual skin in the game, and nurgle allows ties. Like an army of Khorne should be a place someone kicked out by society could fit in because all Khorne asks of you is you be willing to always fight to the bitter end, to go down quite literally screaming. In a perverse way Khorne should be the most group-cult like, Khorne doesnt need you to carry disease and his followers arent usually in it for themselves because the best fights are one with the most people; a knife fight to the death has much less "meaning" than a war of annhilation. Barudak fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 08:13
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Night10194 posted:E: The other issue with Nurgle will always be the massive, massive overuse of Neglish Rot. Instead of a variety of lesser diseases that you can actually survive, almost all of his followers go straight up to the near-uncurable (outside of our friend the 3rd Tier Shallyan) kill-disease that mutates you as it progresses, which is basically 'succeed a Toughness test or die after you beat them anyway'. It's supposed to be an extremely rare and powerful disease. It is not rare in ToC. It is very powerful. It single-handedly fucks most of the disease rules. I firmly get the impression that this is deliberate; PCs are intended to acquire mutations that have to be hidden from orthodoxy and battle lingering stat-lowering diseases as part of the game balance. At least some of the line writers seem to assume pretty much every PC will wind up a mutant eventually, and have to go on the run from Sigmarite cults (and speaking of Sigmarite cults, I do like the warrior dude in this one getting his "orders" from "Sigmar". If handled well that could produce a genuinely chilling reveal as Sigmarite PCs discover his Sigmar talks to him every night). The less said about players who love Nurgle because he provides problems that can "only" be solved by indulging a nice genocidal purging fantasy the better, but they can be safely tossed into Dark Heresy. Followed by a lit match.
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Apr 4, 2019 10:29
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Wizards Sorcery is a terrifying power feared across Creation, because it breaks rules. It shapes the Essence of the world itself, commanding the basic forces of reality and demanding obedience even from potent spirits. Its power is divided into spells and sorcerous workings, which is new for this edition. Spells are specific, discrete effects that you can call up relatively quickly, while sorcerous workings are great mystical projects that are unique, take time to complete and have wide scope. Sorcery is divided into three circles, known in the First Age as Terrestrial Circle, Celestial Circle and Solar Circle, and to modern Realm sorcerers as the Emerald, Sapphire and Adamant Circles, though since the vanishing of the Solars, no one has really been using the highest circle. Lunars and Sidereals can access to the Celestial Circle and Terrestrial Exalts can manage the Terrestrial Circle but no higher; Abyssals use necromancy, which isn’t in this book. Solars can access the highest tiers of sorcery, however. To become a sorcerer means following some method to achieve enlightenment into the nature of reality. Most sorcerers have a teacher. Realm sorcerers usually study at the school known as the Heptagram, while others might learn from demons, elementals or stranger beings. A few sorcerers seek their own paths, using meditative techniques or mind-bending contemplations, sorcerous relics or places of power or studying in lost, ancient libraries. No matter what, all paths to sorcery involve effort, dedication and a willingness to put aside old views and beliefs. Sorcerous enlightenment requires you to see the world through new eyes, after all. Unlike Charms, sorcery does not tap into your mote pools. You don’t draw on your own Essence to do sorcery. Instead, you must manipulate the Essence flow of the world around you, shaping it into a sorcerous pattern in order to activate your spell. This is done via Shape Sorcery actions. You declare what spell you want to cast, then make Occult rolls, with each success giving one mote towards the spell’s cost. It may take you multiple rounds to channel enough Essence into your spell, but once you have enough, you reflexively cast the spell. Shape Sorcery cannot be flurried, but it can be used in combat. You can pause in your shaping to do other combat actions, but for every round you don’t gather any sorcerous motes, you lose three sorcerous motes. You must abort your spell to start casting a different one, however, and cannot transfer sorcerous motes between the two – casting a new spell before you finish the old one loses all sorcerous motes. Otherwise, they drain at that 3 motes per round rate. Certain spells require extended periods to shape and cast, and the game doesn’t track sorcerous motes for them. Instead, they are noted as having a Ritual cost, and just aren’t usable in combat time. Most spells also cost at least 1 Willpower, which must be paid when you start casting. However, if you successfully cast the spell, you regain 1 Willpower spent on it from the fulfillment of your sorcerous design. If you abort the spell, fail to cast it, or have it countered, you do not regain any Willpower. Sorcerous motes are not committed…which is good, because they aren’t from your pools anyway and are purely a resource you gather to cast the spell. No matter how long a spell’s duration is, once it’s cast, it just goes, with no further investment from you. If you are in Crash when you cast, you regain no Willpower from the casting, and all spells cost an additional 3 sorcerous motes to cast in Crash. All Sorcerers also have at least one control spell, a signature spell that they excel at beyond all others. Most spells grant special benefits if taken as your control spell, and some shaping rituals, which we’ll get into, give bonuses when casting your control spell. So, I mentioned countering. A sorcerer can attempt to unravel another sorcerer’s spell during the casting. This is an Occult roll, and every 2 successes on it drains 1 sorcerous mote from the spell. If you know the spell you’re attempting to counter, you instead drain 1 mote per success. However, to use countermagic, you must be within Short range of the caster and must be initiated into the same level of sorcery as the spell being cast. If you reduce the spell to 0 sorcerous motes, the casting is broken and the sorcerer must start over, paying any Willpower costs over again. However, the mystic backlash of a countered spell prevents the countered sorcerer from using Shape Sorcery as their action on their next turn. Countermagic can be done as a combat action, but it can’t be flurried. Once a spell is cast, it is harder to deal with. You can’t just turn it off. However, a sorcerer can attempt to twist a standing spell, using a Distort action. This is an extended Occult action, with a difficulty based on the spell’s circle. It’s much easier to distort a Terrestrial Circle spell than a Solar Circle one. Each spell has a different goal number and different effects when distorted, but it almost always diminishes the spell’s benefits or turns some of them into a drawback on the caster. Instant-duration spells or spells that summon stuff typically cannot be distorted, however. Distortion always has a terminus of 5 – you get five rolls to attempt the distortion, and if you fail, you can’t try to distort that specific casting of that spell again. As with countermagic, you must be in Short range of the spell’s target or effect and must be initiated into the appropriate Circle. If you don’t know the spell you’re trying to distort, your rolls are at -2. Attempting to turn off a spell completely requires a sorcerous working, with an Ambition of 3 and the same circle as the spell you’re trying to negate. The ST may alter these guidelines to fit the story, and may declare some effects simply cannot be fully negated and dispelled at all, while others may be easier to undo. What’s Ambition? We’ll get to that. Eventually. Every sorcerer has at least one Shaping Ritual, which is a method to perceive and shape Essence into the proper shapes for spells. It is possible to have more than one – Solars get one for each Circle of sorcery they have the Charm for, for example. They each represent your unique path to understanding sorcery. Maybe you bargained with a spirit, or use a relic to access the power, or you must keep a specific taboo or ban. Each path will have a few options for shaping rituals and Merits you can buy, and you can mix and match paths if you have access to multiple rituals. You can come up with your own paths, too – the ones in the books are examples. Next time: Shaping Rituals
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Apr 4, 2019 13:24
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Ratoslov posted:So obviously the objective here is to make Arab Lady Big Boss the undisputed ruler of the pass, right? Maybe get her to marry the dead guy too. Dem Bones is a lit ruler, but yeah if poo poo Farmers could elect anyone it would either of those two and not the idiot who has Serial Killer Jaffar as his Vizer
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Apr 4, 2019 13:24
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Isn't there an entire bit in the Exalted 3e Sorcery section on "and gently caress you if you try to learn it from a book in some kind of formal way" because Holden and Morke wanted to win an internet argument?
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Apr 4, 2019 13:30
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Barudak posted:I feel like Khorne works as regimented order where the only expression it considers real is the struggle of life and death. A Khornate to me is the bloodthirsty equivalent of a person who wont play poker unless theirs money on the line, a jousting match where we all laugh together at the end of the day is fake because your lives arent on the line. To Khorne, slaneesh wants pointless trivialities, tzeentch is too cowardly to put actual skin in the game, and nurgle allows ties. The only interesting take on Tzeentch I've read was on 1d4chan and 4chan where his entire purpose is to lose and that he's the God of Failure. Yeah, he has a million and one plans, each growing and replacing one another, but if any of them come to fruition that would mean his death (as it would create a static status quo) or at the very least be empowering his enemies. So inevitably during an adventure or campaign to stop some doomsday scenario, he'd be actually pushing his thumb on the scales to ensure the players would barely stop whatever was happening in time, with his goal to just ensure the Old World is weak and susceptible for future wars with Chaos, but Chaos unable to actually win those wars for real. NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 13:30
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gourdcaptain posted:Isn't there an entire bit in the Exalted 3e Sorcery section on "and gently caress you if you try to learn it from a book in some kind of formal way" because Holden and Morke wanted to win an internet argument? I'm not seeing it, and indeed it'd be a huge departure to do that, given places like the Heptagram have existed since all the way back in 1e.
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Apr 4, 2019 13:59
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NutritiousSnack posted:The only interesting take on Tzeentch I've read was on 1d4chan and 4chan one where his entire purpose is to lose and that he's the God of Failure. Yeah, he has a million and one plans, each growing and replacing one another, but if any of them come to fruition that would mean his death (as it would create a static status quo) or at the very least empowering his enemies. So inevitably during an adventure or campaign to stop some doomsday scenario, he'd be actually pushing his thumb on the scales to ensure the players would barely stop whatever was happening in time, with his goal to just ensure the Old World is weak and susceptible for future wars with Chaos but Chaos unable to actually win those wars for real. This is a lot funnier considering your average Tzeentch sorcerer is absolutely convinced that they're the smartest man in the room, if not the universe.
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Apr 4, 2019 14:04
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