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MollyMetroid posted:I've read the text, thanks, and it sure as gently caress doesn't contain misandry. You're just a loving idiot. I think explicit sexism against men is called misandry even if Redditors have misused the term friend to mean "Women telling not to hug them" or "Women getting scholarships just for women". The Text Explicitly says the Scarlet Empire is "Sexist towards men", and has details in the book like "Men can't attain significant ranks in the Navy" or "Discouraged from duties outside of being mere house-husbands when joining their wives' family, depending on the House", "DB women are told that men are sluts and always down to gently caress". It's not bronze age sexism, but it's intended totally intended text in-game. MollyMetroid posted:You wanna talk sexism though let's talk about your assumption up there, NutritiousSnack, that a woman (me) would need a man (you) to loving explain the text to understand it Anyone can read the text wrong, especially since it seems like you are jumping at me for using the Redditor word, even though in this fictional fantasy universe it directly applies to the culture in question. NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 00:30
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NutritiousSnack posted:HEY THE NEGATIVES OF SOCIETY ARE ACTUALLY BEING SHOWN AS ILLOGICAL AND BASED ON PERSONAL, UNFAIR BASIS! Just like all forms of discrimination in society, which inevitably trace back to a legitimate personal grievance with another human being wrongfully extrapolated outward! No one ever uncritically accepts that the powerful hold power because that's "just the way things are"!
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Apr 9, 2019 00:53
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Honestly, given the mood of online nerdery these days, my first thought about the nerd outrage against the Realm in Exalted now being LGBT friendly was that people were upset the Realm wasn't being fascist enough for their liking.
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Apr 9, 2019 02:09
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Cythereal posted:Honestly, given the mood of online nerdery these days, my first thought about the nerd outrage against the Realm in Exalted now being LGBT friendly was that people were upset the Realm wasn't being fascist enough for their liking. It's both, but the undertones are (usually) related the to the first. Glazius posted:Just like all forms of discrimination in society, which inevitably trace back to a legitimate personal grievance with another human being wrongfully extrapolated outward! No one ever uncritically accepts that the powerful hold power because that's "just the way things are"! The DB book is fuckin' good NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 02:23
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I'm sorry if I offended anyone for using a loaded word like "misandrist" but I literally was thinking of the dictionary definition and not the CHUD one.
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Apr 9, 2019 02:39
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I feel like "contains" is the real problem because it's super ambiguous.
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Apr 9, 2019 02:45
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Rand Brittain posted:I feel like "contains" is the real problem because it's super ambiguous. Yeah, I got to be clearer when I write, but I thought from how supportive I was from at least a slice of that type of fluff, it was clear I was talking about the Realm and author's intentions in creating a fascist state, not ugh...real life.
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Apr 9, 2019 02:48
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I would not characterize the Realm as fascist - it’s not the only form of authoritarian imperialism. I’d say feudal, instead, though it’s a weird mix of several forms of feudalism drawn from multiple cultures. But, like, calling them fascist is like calling Imperial China or the Eastern Empire fascist.
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Apr 9, 2019 03:30
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Fair enough. I don't think any country here is actually fascist, literally. Wavecrest is more real life Galt's Gulch than even that.
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Apr 9, 2019 03:37
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Yea the realm is matrilineal and socially biased to 'you want a girl to carry things on' and all and that's not an egalitarian view of things but men are held in much better regard than women in the real world patriarchal societies that the realm is twisting. It's in fact pretty explicit the empress' whole thing was 'yes women are the heads of house traditionally but men don't really have much in the way of 'you're second class citizens' because that's a lovely way to run a realm'. It's just she created a system where women could have the final say...what with the very good reasons she had for that in a greater context and all.
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Apr 9, 2019 03:48
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gourdcaptain posted:Ah, the kind of "ruin the setting" that is incredibly unlikely to actually come up in play but breaks a bunch of underpinnings in that view. Why is Second Bread a thing? (Besides the oh-so-witty Jesus joke they wanted to put in.) That second part is why arguments about things like second bread always lose me well before they begin. The central conceit of the setting is an empire roughly the size of modern day Russia in a mishmash of technological development that could be described as "bronze to early iron age-ish". That empire is not only able to hold together a consistent internal culture and administration, but has been able to maintain a mixture of hegemony and outright colonialism over territories bigger than Eurasia, and has done so in part by transporting legions of thousands of troops hundreds if not thousands of miles with some regularity. And has done so for nearly 8 centuries without falling apart in all the various ways autocratic tribute based economies usually do. In other words, Exalted has about as much relation to historical reality as...well, most fantasy settings. I'd actually put it on a lower tier of realism than something like DnD even. Which is fine; the game at least originally wasn't trying to push its setting as being a simulation of bronze age life if there were demigods running around. But for some reason Exalted in particular seems to often tie itself in knots trying to get to some sort of "realism" that doesn't seem to be rooted in much of anything. Like, I hear people grousing sometimes about DnD settings not really showing the full implications of what having all these spells and magic items around would be. But I think that's probably a wiser course of action for settings like this, then to try to make your whole historical mishmash with absurd population numbers, distances, and historical tenures of nations all have some sort of mechanical underpinning.
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Apr 9, 2019 04:02
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Realism is a literary effect, not a question of simulation verifiability. Exalted has consistently produced the kind of realism that matters, i.e. the sense that logistics and the economic underpinnings of Creation matter and operate on rules similar to our own. That's not to say Creation isn't ludicrously big (though uh, compared to the Legend of the Five Rings Rokugan, the Realm is remarkably reasonable) but that the setting is more concerned with creating the texture of a real empire than simulating one. D&D setting writing is often obsessed with the opposite; the whole 'Gygaxian Naturalism' idea is founded on a belief in that kind of simulation which holds to its own rules and functions as a real living world. That kind of naturalism does nothing to create a sense of the setting and its cultures, but rather attempts to reinforce only the idea that this world exists by piling on details and consistency of number. It pleases me that 'realism' and (gygaxian) 'naturalism' in TTRPGS pretty effectively map onto Lukasc's complaints about naturalism and justification for realism from his theories of narrative and description.
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Apr 9, 2019 04:36
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sexpig by night posted:'. It's just she created a system where women could have the final say...what with the very good reasons she had for that in a greater context and all. Expect, it doesn't unless that context is "I want to have multiple lovers, but for them for the most part for them to have it harder to break their fidelity to me" and "All my successors can possibily replace me, better find a way to limit the chances of that." In text men are explicitly slut shamed and prevented from doing the logical thing and doing the bang bus with women peasants or Patricians AFTER that brief window where they're done doing the deed, but spending Essence during it with their wives, while women are explicitly allowed by society to do so with men (homosexual individuals of either gender don't have to worry about this slut shaming poo poo) even though it there is more justification of fearing this when it happens when women do it, and even then it doesn't make any sense, but 9 months isn't a big deal when your partner needs 25-50 years to reload his Essence himself, because Matriarchal biased Great Houses and society says men are less important, and because the Scarlett Empress is/was an aforementioned hypocrite and doesn't like her partners sleeping around. Otherwise it would be Matriarchal, but in a reverse Spartan type of way, where women encourage their husband's infidilites when it comes to trusted underlings, promising soliders, and realtives; they'd be more concerned with their families getting DB kids (preferably daughters) to carry on the line rather than it be the product of herself personally. More importantly, according to NPC profiles and implied with the text proper, WOMEN FEEL ENTITLED TO MEN'S BODIES AND FEEL FREE TO CREEP ON THEM OPENLY BECAUSE "MEN ALWAYS WANT IT". The game doesn't go further with this, but this implies men suffer under rape culture to a various degree that leans to "Female Joe Bidens' are allowed to be overly 'affectionate' to the more obvious and scary implications that are found today. Likewise, there is deep social and cultural stigma in various branches in the military. Some House Legions will not promote men if they come from another family at all, maybe not even let them enlist, and tell them to stay home and care for their wives' estates and children, maybe do art or magic and other 'low' work. The Admiralty outright refuses to take men seriously at all and let ANY of them have substantial rank in the Navy. An entire wave of discrimination follows them in any job for being unreliable and second best compared to a Women Dragon Blooded. Sure, this isn't bronze age sexism (more like Classical), but it heavily mimics modern day sexist thought. Male DBs are allowed to advance and partake in the Realm's leadership. In the real world, there were Jewish members of the Jefferson Davis' cabinet in the Confederacy; antisemitism paled in comparison racial supremacy, but it definitely was there and felt heavily. I hate bringing in a real world comparison like that, but it contextualizes this here. Male Dragon Bloods don't have near as hard as Patricians, let alone actual peasants. They benefit from entitlements other people can't fathom, outside of women in their station, who almost always start with more and the chance to get more than them than them at least when effort is concerned, and have little recourse when women abuse that power over them. The Scarlet Empress built her empire on blood and bones, and even many of it's supposed chosen people are actually struggling under it's tyrannical yoke. It's an imperialist, sexist society! It's a misandrist slave state! Even if it doesn't go fully to those extremes because the authors know you'd be very uncomfortable if they went to far and decided to stop the descriptions at the safe side of that point. And they did a good job!
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Apr 9, 2019 05:06
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The hurdle people seem to have here is the idea that because Dragon Blooded men aren't being treated like Athenian women, that The Realm's sexism is extremely minor, or that the game doesn't have that many declarative POVs about the many ways men Dbs personally feel and are marginalized by their women counterparts, even though there is little wiggle room in that interpretation from what the text says openly. It would be very uncomfortable for a lot of groups to display that level of focus on it though.
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Apr 9, 2019 05:13
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Mors Rattus posted:but those who die heroically he offers a form of immortality to, sending his spirit cattle to devour their corpses and draw forth their ghosts to be woven into tassels for his cloak. Incidentally, this is illegal. There's a very slow- moving investigation ongoing into Ahlat's abuse of his position.
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Apr 9, 2019 06:05
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The Lone Badger posted:Incidentally, this is illegal. There's a very slow- moving investigation ongoing into Ahlat's abuse of his position. I deeply enjoy Ahlat, who is 'the most cynical and careerist possible Shaka Zulu and who is also a god and a large ungulate' because there's a wide open space for being Solar Shaka and ultimately rising up against him, less for the warmongering and more for the blatant war profiteering. He's both a cool patron and a ready antagonist, and very naturally can go from one to the other for Harborhead PCs who either decide they want to call the shots or realize how much his unchecked influence has made Harborhead's culture into a stewing pot of tensions and civil war, which has made it much easier for them to be subjugated by the Realm. Harborhead is good, doing an Isandlwana to the Realm is doubly good.
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Apr 9, 2019 06:36
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Cults: Scourgers, pt. 2 Degenesis Rebirth Primal Punk Chapter 3: Cults  Warui Probably the only place where the book remembers that Africa is big and inhabited by many peoples instead of “black people be here” is in languages: there were a shitton of those even after the Eschaton and the plagues. But then stuff happened. Wanky stuff: quote:It started in the south, close to the Psychovores. The people lost their fathers’ tongue and communicated on a rudimentary level with simple words, clicks, and other basic sounds. This new language formed images in the minds of its users, conveying a painful intensity of emotions with few phonemes. The Scourgers call it Warui, meaning “from the river”. They consider it the legacy of the eight ancestors who pierced the barrier by interfering with the human world and making way for a flood of emotions and ancient knowledge. Those who drink from this river are rid of the intellectual ballast of centuries, of grammar and vocabulary, and regain the first and most primordial of all languages in which the spirits and ancestors communicate with the Africans.  If there were programmers in Africa after Eschaton, they'd probably settle on a single new programming language, too! So yeah, Scourgers wouldn't have ever come together if not for this entirely-innocent-and-not-suspicious-at-all phenomenon. Who could have ever learned other languages or settled on English or French or some other international language! No, we need some special Psychovore bullshit.  Yes, it's tied to Psychovores, since the language breaks down in the North (Europe), so Scourgers take some Psychovore seeds with them to chew and to restore the “Can Speak Primordial” buff.  Face...OFF! Immoderate Scourgers don't really have personal property aside from weapons and armor. They don't need much, since the other Africans feel obligated to give them what they want. And if a Scourger abuses this privilege, “be it at a Neolibyan’s table or in a brothel’s bed,” the other Scourgers will grab him, tie him to a pole and torture him till he remembers his manners. Equipped The Scourge is a shock whip (you know what those are) and it's the symbol of Scourgers. However, they get the other weapons from the arsenals of the Neolibyans. Tunis used to supply them with helmets, armor and camo pants, but it was overrun by escaped slaves. In the meantime, you have to scavenge that poo poo from The Koms that Scourgers love so much are also provided by Neolibyans and they're amazing all-terrain vehicles suitable for slave hunting. The Scourgers also train hayenas, because of course they do. quote:Just like at the Neolibyan’s table, a Scourger has to be modest in battle: a Hybrispanian village full of old people, women, and children will not be subjected to a softening- up barrage, but attacked with spears; a boar will not be killed from a distance, but attacked with a knife. For the Scourgers, fighting means a battle between souls and trial of strength. What cowards would they be if they attacked any given enemy with grenades? I dunno, if you're attacking with a sharpened shovel in one hand and a box of grenades in the other, you are a badass. On the other hand, I'd be more concerned with the ease of manufacturing grenades in the post-Eschaton times, but that's just me. Death Masks This side-section says that Scourgers wear their Family Trees Scourgers carve their family trees that depict both physical and spiritual links, usually back to one of the eight ancestors. Apparently, there's a slab with a family tree in front of every building in Africa, telling visitors about the lineage of the inhabitants. Also, carving is the only job that Scourgers can do. Fighting, hunting and carving: those are the only things that are suitable for warriors – anything else is left to the slaves. I wonder what the other Africans would think of that.  This Kom has seen better days Far From The Frontlines Scourgers know no peace except in the moments of transit. In Africa, they guard oil fields and other holdings. They might be sent into the jungle to hunt animals. They track down escaped slaves. That's why Scourgers are invited to the evening gatherings, where people fawn over them and admire their biceps (no, really). Meanwhile, the virgin Neolibyan obsevers the chad Scourgers and skulks: quote:The Neolibyans grimly observe the merrymaking. They do not join in but watch the villagers squander their wealth – and adore the Scourgers. What assholes. Eight OH BOY. This side-section takes half a page and talks about those mystery ancestors that Scourgers love so much. Every African can feel them, but Anubians and Scourgers feel them the best. It invokes silent cotemplation in the former and a great inspiration to act like the ancestor (Uknown Armies: Post-Eschaton edition) in the latter. The ancestors are only ever referred to obliquely and in metaphor. Apparently, their influence covers entire regions. The Eagle symbolizes the first one: he inspires intuition and foresight. The second ancestor is the strength and superiority of the Lion: his influence on a region causes duels and challenges. Third ancestors inspires great works of art and architecture. The fourth one is community and love. The fifth is all about loving (the book says “sexual reproduction”). The sixth is essentially Babel fish. The seventh ancestors works to mesh the influence of two ancestors when their areas of influence meets. So he makes people affected by third and fifth make titty anime. Scourgers say he's the source of Warui (and not the sixth, who literally does language). The eight ancestor is the Next time: This is my Scourge, this is my gun.
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Apr 9, 2019 09:03
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 The Rifter 9½, part 9: "The Entertainment Factor is similar to Horror Factor or Awe Factor, except it's funny and entertaining." Magic Best Lost? by So, we have two new spellcasting classes and magic introduced here: the Trickster Mage and Ludicrous Mage. They were both developed on the "Palladium World" during "The Time of A Thousand Magics", which I think is a fancy description of the d20 craze. They're usually found on the Palladium World, Rifts Earth, and Phase World, but are rare in the other two places. Most mages think they're jokes, and the practitioners of both kind of magics also think they're jokes - but they clearly like jokes more. And, true to this being an old-school gaming supplement, spellcasters get thirty-two pages, making them almost a third of this entire issue. The Rifter 9½ posted:Warning: These characters can be loads of fun to play, but players need to exercise some measure of self-control, otherwise they can disrupt the game too much and ruin the fun for everyone. So try to be clever and/or funny, not annoying.   Pro Gambling tip: it the cards start floating, play somebody else. The Trickster Mage O.C.C. (4%) is playing card-themed, but unlike something like Deadlands' Hucksters, this is literally just magic themed around 52 card decks. They get an "Entertainment Factor" where they can do magic tricks with cards and render people enthralled and distracted, but only out of combat. They also get a magic effect where they can be perfectly calm and do the movie trope where they unnerve people and give them penalties unless they save against "temporary insanity". (I think that's an insanity save that does not actually inflict insanity...) Lastly, they can learn normal Wizard Spells (levels 1-2 and any spell regarding illusions or distraction), Ludicrous Spells (levels 1-5, we'll get to those), and any Card Spells (any level). They get a variety of bonuses, the biggest ones being to Affinity or Prowess. However, given their attribute requirements, you're very unlikely to see one at the table legit.  "Yeh, I'm the result of your apex spell, wanna make something of it?" Trickster Card Magic requires a 52-card deck to use, and is really good for cheating or distracting people, but... is generally underwhelming until you get to higher-level spells, with some truly... Palladium spells. Flick Cards or Card Tossing let you... toss cards with more accuracy than you normally would, Shuffle Deck Magically or Magically Palm Cards do what they say, Restore Deck of Cards lets you repair a deck of cards but takes 20 minutes of casting because cards are so rare and valuable, which I guess would be useful if you cast Literally Cut Deck which chops a deck literally in half. Others, like Count Cards, Magically Mark Cards, Change Card Face, Endless Deck of Cards, and Stack Deck, are mainly only useful for cheating or winning games. Spells like Spinning Card, 52 Cards in Your Face, Spinning Hypnotic Card, or Knots are good for distraction. Then we get to some actual wizardish spells. Mark of Guilt lets you mark somebody with a playing card's image, with different meanings for different crimes... The Rifter 9½ posted:Joker laughing with large fangs and pointed teeth marks a rapist or child molester.   "Whoa! That'd be really dangerous if it was a knife!" Stairway to Heaven lets you make a stairway out of cards, Buzz-Saw Cards is a crap combat spell (1d6 damage per level), but not nearly as much as Card Daggers (1d6 per thrown card, or 2d6 for two cards thrown at -2 to hit). Turn Object into Playing Card does what it says, but only for small objects under a pound. And Magic Cards of Vengeance is the apex spell written by a Daniel Denis, which lets you fire off red cards at up to 4 at a time (for 4d6 x 4 fire damage) or black cards (for 2d6 x 10 electric damage). However, you can also summon face cards as creatures, which is a great way to annihilate the game's action economy, or use an Ace of Diamonds as a shield, or use an Ace of Hearts to heal or ward off demons and undead. Magic Cards of Vengeance alone would be the sole reason to play this class, but you can't get the spell until 6th level. Also there's the "Spell of Legend" House of Cards that lets you make a house out of cards. I'm not sure that's all it's cracked up to be, but sometimes you just have to play the hand you were dealt. Next: Killer Clowns from Palladium World. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 11:35
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 Neotech 2 Part 11: But now it's time to have some fun, So Darkstar, Judy Judy, I'm goin' in for guns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQAmvKMGUko Neotech posted:“He apparently died from acute lead poisoning…” With the basics over with we swiftly move onto the ranged combat chapter. It’ll be here we’ll start to see the full width of optional rules that the game has on offer when it comes to combat. It’s worth noting that they have done their research for this and there is a lot of technical terminology showing up at places. Another thing worth nothing is that they will not stop referring to weapons by their full specific names. Buckle up people, this might be a long one because there are so many mechanics to deal with. All ranged weapons have four different ranges. Short-Medium-Far-Very far. These correspond to the difficulty chart from easy difficulty and onwards. There is also two more rangers that you can then tack onto this but we’ll get to those later on as they are strictly optional. Some guesstimation might be required to see at which interval you might be shooting at. Now shotguns on the other hand are much easier to hit things with, especially if they’re loaded with buckshot. This means that the difficulty range for shots taken using those are done at a -Ob1D6 at far and very far ranges. If you’re firing slugs or flechette rounds you have to use the normal rolls. There are three types of single shot options and they all have their different effects. Single shot: Resolved normally. Double tap: You shoot two rounds after one other. This is resolved by rolling once to hit for both shots and once on the hit table for both shots. If the attack is successful that means the first bullet hits its mark and the second one hits right above the first one. How far up is dependant on the weapons recoil value and distance. For example a medium shot is -(Recoil x20) on the hit table. Potshots: Resolved as automatic fire so we’ll be dealing with that in a while. Whenever you shoot Burst fire the attack rolls difficulty can be modified by the weapons recoil minus 2. So if a weapon has a recoil of 1 that means that a standard difficulty roll is made at Ob3D6-1 as -2+1=-1 Then there’s another table that you have to roll 1D6 to see how many of those rounds actually connected with the target. For example: You fire a three round burst at someone. The 1D6 roll shows a 4, that means two of your rounds have connected and you resolve those. Then we get a sidebar talking about DSS or Drei-Schützen-Systeme. As far as I can tell this is an in universe thing that I’m pretty sure is based on the G11. What the DSS does in this case is that it fires a three round burst so fast that the recoil can not affect the bullets. Mechanically speaking this means that the D6 burst roll gets modified to a D6+3 roll where rolls over 6 counts as 6’s. Also all rounds hit the same area as the first one. When resolving hits for burst fire you need to remember to go upwards if the impacts were in the torso, head or limbs. Or downwards if they were in the legs. Automatic fire is resolved normally. But there are two different ways to use it, either Controlled automatic fire or Suppressive fire. Before that you need to decide if you want to shoot over a small or wide area, and for that we need to determine our fire zone. The fire zones size in meters can’t exceed the number of rounds fired from the weapon. As Fire zone ≤ Rate of Fire. At the same time it can’t be smaller than a certain size based on distance, so one used within medium distance can’t be smaller than 2 meters. From the fire zone we then get our Intensity of Fire or EI. The EI is equal to the number of fired rounds divided by the width of the fire zone. For each target in the fire zone you need to do an Automatic Fire skill check. Difficulty for the roll is derived from the range. The results will modify the EI. A critical success means that the EI is doubled, failure means it’s halved and a fumble means the EI is zero. A normal success is just the EI result. Fumbling the roll also means that all shots miss and you have to roll on the fumble table. Oh yes, those exist. Either way there is even more to this. Weapons recoil is also something that can affect the EI in what the book calls Modified Intensity of Fire (MEI). MEI is a measure of how many hits you can get on a target. As we’ve previously established this is influenced by four different factors; How many bullets fired (or EI), the size of the fire zone, the factor from the automatic weapons skillcheck and the weapon recoil. The formula for this is EI x Skill check factor - Recoil. Oddly enough that one is table N2-89 so it goes before other table suchs as the EI factor (N2-90) and the fire zone size one (N2-91). Also the lowest result you can get is 1 with this. So for each point of modified MEI you get you roll 1D6, while also remembering that it can vary from target to target. You think this is over? Think again. Because now we’re not supposed to add all the dice results together. Instead we’re supposed to count the number of dice that comes up as 1, those are considered hits. Those hits are then distributed randomly but you also need to be mindful if the affected areas are in cover and how well that cover can handle being hit. If it turns out that you have more hits than bullets fired then that is resolved by the targets closer to the shooter being hit first and then the fire is walked backwards until the number of hits corresponds with the number of bullets fired or all targets have been resolved. The book mentions that with some luck you, or more precisely in this case the PC’s, can survive if some unlucky bastard takes all the bullets meant for them. On top of that the GM can decide that objects standing the bullets path are counted as targets and thusly uses up bullets. There, finally done with that massive clusterfuck of rules. Who in their loving right mind would even want to use automatic weapons with rules like those?! Combine these with the active and responsive action system and the action penalty stacking I’m amazed combats don’t take forever. For that part even being able to hit something because of atrociously low dice pools. A friend of mine who has actually played this game mentioned that actually trying to kill things is nearly impossible in the game. The better option would to be to shoot single shots or simply grab a melee weapon. If anything that would make combat run a bit faster rather than everything coming to a screeching halt as everything around automatic fire has to be calculated and rolled. Now image a fight involving multiple combatants with automatic weapons shooting. There’s a reason why the rules example is half a page in length. Moving on from that we get a sidebar explaining a few things. It begins with saying that the reason why 1’s count as hits instead of 6’s is because the latter is easier to see in a pile of dice. Which is sensible decision to make. But at the same time if you suddenly realize this is a problem then maybe you should consider how your dice system is built. Then it talks about suppressive fire in a semi-smug way and also how many rounds you can fire when shooting potshots. Finally the sidebar talks about shooting multiple times. The gist of it is yes you can. But why would you want to? Taking the stacking penalties to actions into consideration means that the chance for fumble goes skywards. Something which you don’t want in a fight since then you have to roll on the fumble table. There’s also blind fire. It’s resolved as before but the difference is that any hit rolls are rerolled to confirm that they hit someone hiding behind an object. That’s it. This could’ve been mentioned in the previous part but nope, it got a separate section and an example to it as well. Suppressive fire is our first optional rule. Doing it counts as an action that takes a whole round to perform which means no other actions are allowed. Mechanically speaking, and I can be much briefer with this one, is that you fyre four times the weapons rate of fire, and the fire zone has to at least be twice the size of the smallest available one. MEI is divided by 10 in this case and hits are counted as 1’s as usual. If you find yourself on the other side of suppressive fire they need to roll against their Combat Experience. If they succeed then they can act as normal. The difficulty level is always easy (Ob2D6) but you also add Ob1D6 per point of MEI. Failure means you go to ground and can’t do anything. If they lack ranks in Combat Experience then they can roll against their Cool but it’s done at a level higher. I mentioned Potshots earlier and they are resolved much like automatic fire, but instead you use the characters Pistol or Rifle skill. The fire zone is always considered to be the smallest one possible, based on the range. MEI is obviously also calculated for this, so you’ll be rolling a minimum of 1D6 to see if you hit. Funny enough the example is Jace Ryker being attacked by a company ninja armed with a katana. Ryker wins because he has a gun. Shooting at prone targets is always one difficulty level higher. Hits from the front is counted as you aiming high, while shots from the back is counted as aiming low. Shooting a prone target from the side is resolved using the normal hit table. You can hold your action as well if you want to wait for the right moment to open fire. This consumes all your actions, including active and responsive ones. Otherwise you’ll lose the opportunity. When the target you’re waiting for appears you need an opposing Combat Experience roll between the ambusher and the target. There is a difficulty table for both sides. If the target doesn’t know they’re being watched then they automatically lose the roll. The one with the biggest effect result wins and gets to start first. If the ambusher wins they get to attack, if they lose then the target gets to do all of their actions and the ambusher can only do theirs on their round. The hold action rules can also be used for staggered advances. Neotech posted:“The jungle is rocked by the sound of Carn’s rifle and the cocaine baron falls heavily onto the now red ground.” Throwing things is resolved like normal ranged combat. The exception to this is obviously grenades, which comes with a scatter table. But it only becomes relevant if you fail the roll. The range to the target from where the grenade lands is equal to the negative effect on the check. To my slight surprise it’s actually a 1D10 table you need to roll on in this case. The example has Jace Ryker throwing a hand grenade at a motorcycle, which seems somewhat pointless. Of course combat isn’t all about shooting, it’s also about positioning so at last we get rules about movement. Why this wasn’t in the basic combat chapter I don’t know because it feels more fitting there at it would obviously count for both ranged and melee combat. Moving around in combat is done before any other active actions. All characters can, without it counting as an action, move up to 2 meters. They’re are also allowed to do this while doing other things. So it’s perfectly possible to move and shoot with only the shooting counting as an action for the purpose of penalties. They’re also allowed to move forwards a bit, shoot, and then cover the rest of the distance. More involved ways of moving does however count, things like moving backwards, faster or crawling count as active actions. There is also a limit on 1 move action per round. If they run or sprint you are unable to do both active or responsive actions. To be able to sprint they also need to have been running or sprinting the round before. Responsive actions can be done if the motion is visible, they are however unable to shoot unless they decided to hold action beforehand. Also shooting at someone who is running or sprinting is done at one difficulty level higher. If the GM allows it’s possible to shoot while a character is running or sprinting. But in that case only potshots are allowed and the difficulty goes up with one level outside of other modifications such as action penalties. If you might remember from the skill description section there was a skill named Draw Weapon, it’s here we finally get the rules, and table, for it. So in order to draw steel first you need to roll a skill check. The difficulty for this is dependant on where the weapon is located. If your weapon is right next to you or you’re holding it in your opposite hand then the difficulty is Ob1D6. If it is however slung over your shoulder on in a shoulder holster then the difficulty is Ob3D6. But if you were holding onto your weapon when it’s holstered (or slung I suppose but that’s not mentioned) you get -Ob1D6 to the difficulty roll. That makes me imagine a character who has their hand on their weapons at all times just so they can get that bonus to their draw weapon roll once combat starts. If you succeed with the skill check then your initiative is reduced by half and you get to do more active actions under this new temporary order. While you don’t need to declare as the round starts the difficulty from the draw weapon action will be included in the successive actions. If you fail that means they weren’t able to draw their weapon and aren’t allowed to do any more active actions during that round, but their weapon is out at the beginning of the next round, but their initiative is halved. If you manage to critically succeed then you initiative is not halved but they get to do more active actions without penalties and also don’t need to declare them before pulling their weapon. If you fumble, then guess what, you drop the weapon like a klutz and don’t get to do any more active actions that round. If someone does a responsive action to you while the weapon is drawn means that the attempt is aborted and a new roll has to be made later. You can also decide not to draw your weapon fast and spend a whole round to pull it out safely. But this prohibits you from doing any active actions but it does mean you have your weapon out without any difficulty checks needed. But the attempt will be aborted if they do any responsive actions. Dropping a weapon does not count as an active action, while putting it down carefully does. I don’t have much to say about this other than it’s cumbersome and so incredibly unnecessary to the point I would’ve slapped a gigantic optional rules tag onto this. Or ignored it completely. There’s a table showing the difficulty for reloading different types of weapons. To reload your weapon you roll with the relevant weapon skill, usually it’s either Rifle or Pistol. Reloading takes whole rounds during which no other action can be done, if a responsive action is made then the reload attempt has failed. The difficulty check for the reloading action can also be modified through various means. If the magazines are taped together then the difficulty is lowered by one, if the ammo is not in your hand and somewhere else then the difficulty goes up by one or two steps. If the roll is a success then the weapon is reloaded the next round, if you fail you need to try again. A fumble means that you dropped the ammunition. A critical success means that you reloaded extra fast and you can continue doing active actions during the same turn but your initiative is halved and none of the actions need to be declared. But their difficulties will be increased due to the reloading action. Otherwise you can decide not to roll when reloading and take your time. But that means that it takes two turns longer compared to a successful roll. Neotech posted:“Pain is my friend. Let me introduce him to you!” Lastly there is Deathblows, or Coup de Grace, for when a target can’t defend themselves somehow. Meaning that they’re standing still, tied up, paralyzed or unconscious. It can also be done against sleeping people but then you first need to roll successfully on Stealth. It also says that the character has to “fail to wake up” but doesn’t elaborate on what that actually means. So in order to perform a deathblow you need to do a relevant skillcheck depending on if its a melee or ranged weapon. Only a fumble means that you have failed. But if you do then you’re unaware of this and completely convinced that you succeed in killing them. How you’re able to actually botch a point blank execution shot to the head is not elaborated on in this case. The killer gets to pick the hit location. Instead of just automatically killing the target you have to roll damage for it, which is weapon damage multiplied by 10. Armor is calculated as normal if the would be assassin doesn’t discover it beforehand. Then we get an example of the “sadistic Dr Glauber” executing a prisoner. Why is this a rule they needed to add to the game? Wouldn’t it just have been better for the GM say “Okay, you shoot him in the back of the head and he dies” instead? The target is helpless anyway so it’s not like they can do anything about it. Not to mention the dice roll is ultimately pointless because any result is multiplied by 10. So regardless of the outcome the target is loving dead. Next time: Ranged combat, but with options.
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Apr 9, 2019 12:09
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Bear in mind Mors hasn't even started with What Fire Has Wrought and Heirs to the Shogunate, you may want to wait on the hot hot debates until then. (Well, depending when Heirs comes out, anyway.)
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Apr 9, 2019 12:13
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maybe I'm just a millenial but no game needs specific rules for double-tapping somebody with a pistol instead of making one abstract Attack or fight. I'm glad I missed this era.
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Apr 9, 2019 12:14
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Neotech is not a game who believes in the concept of abstraction. Nor does it believe in the gameplay concept of downtime for that part as well. Double Taps main issue is really the whole hit location thing. The automatic fire rules are 100% trash though.
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Apr 9, 2019 12:37
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Cooked Auto posted:The automatic fire rules are 100% trash though.
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Apr 9, 2019 13:59
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Also, I have to ask, what the gently caress is with this YOU JIZZ OUT YOUR ESSENCE WHEN YOU BANG-thing that Nutritious brings up? Like, is that actually in the loving books as a rule or just some weird-rear end sidebar comment or something? Because jfc that's something I do not need or want in any rulebook.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:12
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It's weird that people here are having a hard time grasping that misandry can exist in a fictional setting even if "reverse sexism" isn't a cogent idea in real life. Don't read Reign. Your heads will pop off like a champagne cork.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:16
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FMguru posted:This is true about literally every roleplaying game with autofire rules. Not far off no but as far as I can remember both Dark Heresy and Shadowrun have slightly less clumsy rules for it than Neotech.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:21
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PurpleXVI posted:Also, I have to ask, what the gently caress is with this YOU JIZZ OUT YOUR ESSENCE WHEN YOU BANG-thing that Nutritious brings up? Like, is that actually in the loving books as a rule or just some weird-rear end sidebar comment or something? Because jfc that's something I do not need or want in any rulebook. The way Dragon-Blooded stuff works is, to prevent a thing that happened in past editions where people talked about the literal ideal DB practice was constant stud farming: Dragon-Blooded charge up their elemental chi within themselves and, when they have a kid, all that Essence goes into the kid. It then takes time to rebuild, and the more elemental chi goes into a kid, the better their chances of Exalting as a Dragon-Blood. As a result, the Realm has developed a culture of essentially aiming for one kid every twenty years or so, and there is a strong prejudice against having kids outside that cycle, and men are typically the ones blamed for loving it up, since...men don't get pregnant, so it is way easier for them to be "irresponsible" with their progenerative Essence. e: also can we just accept that the word 'misandry' has had its well thoroughly poisoned
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Apr 9, 2019 14:23
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Mors Rattus posted:The way Dragon-Blooded stuff works is, to prevent a thing that happened in past editions where people talked about the literal ideal DB practice was constant stud farming: Dragon-Blooded charge up their elemental chi within themselves and, when they have a kid, all that Essence goes into the kid. It then takes time to rebuild, and the more elemental chi goes into a kid, the better their chances of Exalting as a Dragon-Blood. But, I... don't understand why this needs to be in the rules or flavour text at all. If the GM does not want to run a Magical Realm game, there are not constant orgies all over the Realm. It's not like popping out Dragonblooded babies is a mechanic that players could somehow abuse if it wasn't limited. I just don't get why it needed addressing at all except that the author was really eager to write about DB's loving. I mean. Please tell me there's no way to abuse this by using magic/charms to instantly pop them into fighting-ready 20-year-olds five minutes after they're out of the womb or something.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:28
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PurpleXVI posted:But, I... don't understand why this needs to be in the rules or flavour text at all. If the GM does not want to run a Magical Realm game, there are not constant orgies all over the Realm. It's not like popping out Dragonblooded babies is a mechanic that players could somehow abuse if it wasn't limited. I just don't get why it needed addressing at all except that the author was really eager to write about DB's loving. this is how i feel too. how is it at all relevant to things that will happen in games
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Apr 9, 2019 14:30
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There isn't. This entirely exists because: A. Exalted fans in past editions were really loving creepy and defining this makes it less creepy because it rules out Dragon-Blooded breeding camps, and B. it provides a family structure for the Realm where you're likely to have siblings that are of wildly varying age. A was not a minor factor. This was a plan players were promoting, for use by Solars to create Dragon-Blooded armies with gently caress camps. e: you have to understand that the 2e White Wolf Exalted forums were a terrible loving place, and I am fully in support of executive decisions that make it so that people stop theorizing about Dragon-Blooded Sex Camps.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:30
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Mors Rattus posted:The way Dragon-Blooded stuff works is, to prevent a thing that happened in past editions where people talked about the literal ideal DB practice was constant stud farming: Dragon-Blooded charge up their elemental chi within themselves and, when they have a kid, all that Essence goes into the kid. It then takes time to rebuild, and the more elemental chi goes into a kid, the better their chances of Exalting as a Dragon-Blood. As a result, the Realm has developed a culture of essentially aiming for one kid every twenty years or so, and there is a strong prejudice against having kids outside that cycle, and men are typically the ones blamed for loving it up, since...men don't get pregnant, so it is way easier for them to be "irresponsible" with their progenerative Essence. Ah, holding people personally responsible for bad luck. Now that's familiar societal territory.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:32
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FMguru posted:This is true about literally every roleplaying game with autofire rules. The best and most realistic compromise has always been it either gives a bonus to damage or a bonus to hit, depending if you're drilling a target with concentrated fire or spraying-and-praying an area.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:35
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Mors Rattus posted:There isn't. This entirely exists because: A. Exalted fans in past editions were really loving creepy and defining this makes it less creepy because it rules out Dragon-Blooded breeding camps, and B. it provides a family structure for the Realm where you're likely to have siblings that are of wildly varying age. Eeeeeeh. Sure, you should revise the parts of your text that "accidentally" promote bad ideas, but if you're going down this particular rabbit hole I'm not sure why you're still writing the Eugenics is Actually A Good Idea splat in the first place. The heritability and, especially, the blood purity thing for DBs has always been one of the worst and seemingly unselfaware things about Exalted that everyone just doesn't talk about.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:48
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I feel like it is a bit too late to remove the Dragon-Blooded entirely; 3e DBs explicitly makes it so "blood purity" is a purely fictional thing, though. "Pure Blood" is a merit you can take as a Dynast. It is purely social - it means other Dynasts like you more because you have a strong lineage. It has no actual effects, and indeed explicitly has no bearing on your kids' chances of Exalting or not - it is a fiction the Realm believes in that doesn't do a drat thing. e: and now can I request that we hold the DB debates until I actually get to that book, so we can see the actual text instead of arguing about what it might be like?
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Apr 9, 2019 14:52
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Mors Rattus posted:e: and now can I request that we hold the DB debates until I actually get to that book, so we can see the actual text instead of arguing about what it might be like? Adding to this, I'm just gonna remind y'all - if you wanna argue about Exalted, we already have a perfectly good thread for that!
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Apr 9, 2019 15:11
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Exalted 3rd Edition: Demonic Might Agatae, the Beautous Wasps, are First Circle Demons. They are immensely beautiful creatures, appearing as giant wasps carved from rainbow crystal. The sound of their wings is as falling water, their voices are as birdsong. Their heads shine with a nimbus of golden light. However, while they are lovely, they are also dangerous. Agata minds operate far more aabstrusely than mortals, and their emotions flow quickly and change often. While they are brilliant, their philosophies largely make no sense whatsoever in human language, and their behavior is eccentric, mad or childlike even in the best of times. They may destroy what they love or abandon friends in time of need, may laugh or weep without warning, then go on their way as if nothing happened. To the agatae, this is reasonable and normal, and they don't at all understand anyone questioning their motives. By nature, an agata is a mount to ride. They feel immediate bonds with their riders - intense live and wild outbursts of other emotions. It is extremely rare for them to harm their riders, though a few have been known to shake mortals off their backs to their deaths, only to mourn them in deep or elaborate ways...usually. Sometimes they just shrug off the concept of mortality and move on, given their eccentric nature. Agatas cause wonder in all that look at them and are extremely fast, hardy mounts who can move with extreme speed when they choose. They are even able to briefly turn themselves into refracted light to dodge away from attacks without losing their riders, and can stun people in combat with their beauty. Erymanthoi, the Blood-Apes, are also First Circle Demons. An erymanthus resembles a gigantic, garnled ape with rust-colored fur and rubbery black skin, but with immense spurs of jagged black bone jutting from their shoulders, spine and skull. Their twisted limbs are heavy and end in large black talons, and their eyes glow gold and have no pupils. While they shamble about, they move with shocking speed and have unnatural strength. They can move faster than the eye can see if they must, and bellow with force to shatter stone. Most prefer to remain material as much as possible, and even when dematerialized, their strong animal stench lingers nearby and the snuffling and grunting they do constantly remains audible, as are their scraping footsteps. They love the taste of hot, fresh blood and meat. Some are unusually eclectic in what blood and flesh they prefer, but most favor cats and humans. The cravings for blood make them hard to control, and if they become hungry enough, it is only the command of a binding sorcerer that can hold them back from attacking. They can pounce at foes to knock them down and tear into them, move with blinding speed, are very dangerous in a grapple and can attack with their powerful howl. They're good at breaking things, too. Neomahs, the Makers of Flesh, are First Circle Demons as well. They appear as sleek, hairless, androgynous and immensely alluring mortals with purple skin. Whenever they enter a new place, no matter where it is, they spin a thread of brass and fire out of their throat, weaving a small tower over the course of one hour. This then serves as their base of operations for their one duty: courtesanship. They may alter their gender expression easily, appearing however their companions desire, and their scent is entrancing. They have no real interest in money, but instead charge in the form of part of their client - blood, seed, flesh, nails, whatever works. Once they gather enough, they cast their gathered parts into the fire atop their nautilus-shaped tower, then weave them into an infant child, a hybrid of all of the donors. Once done, the neomah will unweave its tower, inhale it back in and move on, leaving the baby behind. Sorcerers often use them for their courtesan skills, as spies or as bodyguards - but most often, they are called to make children, allowing people who cannot otherwise reproduce to have a child of their own flesh and blood. These children are wholly mortal, unlike many of the other creations of a neomah, which are strange beasts made from mixes of mortal, demon and other beings, that sorcerers often call on as guards. Neomah are creatures of passion that adore their crafts - both that of the courtesan and the crafter of infants. Others became fascinated by various other arts and crafts as well. Neomah rarely care much about their lovers or children, for whom they feel at best a distant affection, however. Neomah are attractive to all species, regardless of what they are, and can communicate even complex messages or conversations with body language alone. They are also able to weave flesh into infants, as noted above, though the more donors are involved, the more likely the child will have some abarrenat personality trait. They may spite the fire they weave their tower out of at foes, as well. Eclipses can learn their Seductive Shapechange, which allows the neomah to, having read a target's intentions to determine what they are attracted to, shapeshift into that form. They remain recognizably themselves, but may alter their gender expression, height, build, facial features and other such aesthetic traits. Alveua, the Keeper of the Forge Of Night, is a Second Circle Demon. She is always followed by the hum of insects, for she built many of the insects of Malfeas in her forge, and they love her. Her limbs are vaguely insectile, as are her eyes and her dark skin. She is delcate, but of immense strength, and the giant, burning hammer she carries is light as a feather in her hands. When called by mortals, it is always for a single task - she takes those petitioners she favors back into Malfeas to her night-forge, where there is no light, not even the alien stars of the Demon City, and she lays them on the anvil and reshapes them into a black metal tool that fits their nature. A sword, a coin, a flask, it doesn't matter. Then, she returns that tool to Creation, where it will find its way into the hands of someone who will achieve the desires of the human that it was forged from. Sorcerers sometimes call on her to make relics of power, in exchange for mortals willing to be reborn upon her anvil. Her philosophy of existence is simple: "If I had the shaping of all things, as I have for those I reforge, then the Yozis would not be imprisoned; the gods would not rebel against them; the mortals would not be so bold; and both harmony and happiness should fill the world. Sadly, as Erembour and the Ebon Dragon are held, so held am Il and I can fix only certain aspects of Creation." This statement, above all, drives everything she does. She has a tiny cult, largely those who would offer themselves to her anvll. She does not track Crafting XP, unlike, say, the neomahs - rather, she has enough XP when it serves the story and when it doesn't, she's busy gathering it. Her hammer is powerful in combat, especially for disarming people, and she can call down a swarm of insects to attack her foes. Darkness can coat her as armor, as well, and she is extremely good at crafting, so long as she doesn't have to use orichalcum, moonsilver, jade, starmetal or soulsteel - the normal magical materials used in Creation and the Underworld. Eclipses can learn her Night-Black Carapace, which allows them wear darkness as armor which they can shatter as a counterattack to explode at anyone nearby. Mara, the Shadow-Lover, is also a Second Circle Demon. Her appearance changes whenever she visits creation, and she may wear nearly anything, but in summer it is always green, in fall it is red, and in winter white. Her skin can be any color, her hair as well, and she may appear old or young. However, she is always beautiful, her eyes the color of sapphires, and her feet are deer hooves. There are many folk tales of Mara. Some say she is a tree spirit, but she is not - she is a demon, a seductress that saps the strength of people in the night and steals the souls of some of her lovers, drawing them forth as small creatures to bring back with her. She is attracted to mortals with dark destinies, taking them as lovers as well, but these she doesn't destroy. Instead, she feeds them stolen souls, strengthening them and making them fascinated by cruelty and death. She has a small cult, both infernalists and those who mistakenly believe her a woodland spirit, and she is the creator and a master of Black Claw Style as well as a skilled sorcerer herself, able to wield almost any spells of the first two Circles of Sorcery, save those which summon other spirits, which she cannot use. She can steal souls with a kiss, is extremely good at seduction, and is very good at persuading her lovers to cause pain or death. She can change her form in nearly any respect save for her eyes and hooves, or can turn into a housecat or a cloud of mist. She can also feed souls to people to empower them but make them gain a Major Principle of "I take pleasure in death and suffering." Octavian, the Living Tower, the Quarter-PRince, is another Second Circle Demon. He is ten feet tall and in Malfeas he is mostly found on his alabaster throne, in his court of malachite and basalt, attended to by his manacled prayer-slaves. Oil oozes from his stone-like skin constantly, staining his throne black. He is muscular and elephant-tusked, wearing only a loincloth, from which hangs the skull of a Solar on a strand of jade beads, a broken Hearthstone set into its forehead. The oil that coats him and blights the earth where he walks is a potent, sense-destroying venom. Despite his brute appearance, he is a cunning and intelligent demon, once a champion of Malfean armies that rose to amass his own empire, now covering a full quarter of one of the many layers of Malfeas - an empire of size beyond dreams. He has fought his fellow demons over the centuries, singlehandedly destroyed many Exalts, dragons and behemoths, but he is unsatisfied. He once had loves, in the early days of the world, but he no longer pursues love at all. All that is left to him is testing his strength on the world, and he has reached the limit of what he can do in Malfeas. He is weary of his throne, having no temper for governance, and wishes to conquer new lands and new worlds. He is an eager ally to sorcerers that seek a champion or bodyguard, for even when bound to simple guard duty or murder, he sees each trip into Creation as a chance to see what he will one day conquer. He is constantly accompanied by his agata mount, Damaskenos, who even comes with him when summoned. She is the largest and first of all agatae, and is thus much tougher than the rest. He once loved the earth, but it spurned his passion, and so he is especially deadly to earth elementals, and his black oil is a crippling poison that blinds, deafens and eats memories. His empire is full of prayer-slaves that give him more worship than most demons could hope to receive, though not nearly so many as even most smaller gods. He wears an acorn talisman that lets him speak to and command any animal that lives on or burrowns beneath the ground, and it cannot be stolen from him, as it will crumble and then regrow in his palace. Octavian can do massive damage or cripple foes easily with several attack powers, can hurl people around the battlefield, and can generally boost his own actions pretty easily. He can roar so loudly it bursts hearts, move with blinding speed, and can gain Initiative by killing or intimidating powerful foes. He can harden his own skin against attacks and disarm foes, grab weapons to enter grapples as a clash, and can turn his own damage into Initiative. Further, he is super good at destroying stuff and feats of strength. Ocatvian is basically your peak for combat 2nd Circles. Sigereth, the Player of Games, is a different kind of Second Circle Demon. She appears as simple, elegant box. Her voice echoes from within it, and she contains an endless supply of game boards, cards and game pieces, some warm and pliable like flesh, others cold and bone-hard. All are part of her and throb with her pulse. Sigereth is one of the best game players in MAlfeas, and an inveterate gambler who will bet all manner of things on any game at all. If a mortal wages their own existence in a game and loses, they will be sucked into Sigereth and turned into one of her soulless servants, her pawns, which can only be reversed by winning their freedom in another game. She requires all bets be weighed equally on both sides, and there is nothing she despises more than cheating. She cannot fight, and is usually carried by one of her pawns, who does it for her, but she is able to levitate if she chooses. She is an esoteric demon, and has only a tiny cult, largely of decadent, infernalist gamblers. She cannot be forced to accept cheating by asny means, either. She is able to enforce game rules on actual combat, which forces everyone to use War instead of their normal abilities unless they spend Initiative to "cheat." She is able to boost any battle group that obeys her orders, and can launch rainbow flames at those who cheat and do not obey her combat game. She can turn her game pieces into a battle group, too, and empower them as they defeat foes. She may also bind people to whatever agreement was made as the bet, and can facilitate the transfer of literally anything, so long as it was part of such a bet. She can't give away the things she bets - they have to be won, period, either in a game normally or as part of her enforced combat game. Next time: The Wyld
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Apr 9, 2019 16:19
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord Tomb of Horrors So, it's time to get into the actual Tomb of Karitamen the Death Scarab. I won't be going room by room in case someone inspired by this review actually wants to play this adventure some time and also because 7 levels of dense dungeon crawl would be a little more than I want to summarize. Instead, I'll be talking about particular encounters, the structure of the Tomb, the way the trap rules work (or don't), and what killed Team 1. You see, I ran through the encounters with the canon team and with the upgraded Team 2 I made. Team 1...did not have a good time in the Tomb of the Death Scarab. Team 2 did way better, as you'd imagine from versions of the characters where everyone was brought up to 5500-5700 EXP like Woldred. Team 2 managed the tomb with 0 casualties. Having a useful primary fighter, a caster who has actual relevant magic, a skilled doctor, and a thief who is both 20% better at thieving and a good secondary warrior makes the Tomb a lot easier! Who could have guessed? One of the nice bits about the Tomb is that it's got a lot of flavor to it. The Tomb tells you a lot about Karitamen himself, and about ancient Nehekaran burial practices for their wealthiest and most powerful citizens. There's good descriptions of the ornate art, the mummification practices, the statuary, the ships to bear the entombed to the underworld; it's great. You get some really ridiculous, opulent stuff like how Karitamen ordered Nehekaran sand brought in to cover the valley and try to recreate the Great Desert of his homeland (which has mostly blown away, this was pointless of him. It's also eroded the hell out of the front of his tomb and defaced it due to the elements) or huge tribute rooms full of trophies from every tribe the great King conquered. Characters with knowledge of history can puzzle out how to do the proper signs of humility and respect to avoid many traps (Ehrl is an MVP for avoiding combat encounters in both teams). In general, a party that isn't trying to steal everything will avoid a lot of traps and combat encounters; many of the hazards of the Tomb are specifically set up to gently caress you if you're defacing or defiling things. In general, a party of explorers here to plumb the secrets of history will have a way, way easier time than a party here to get rich on a dungeon crawl. That's not to say there's no treasure; there's a lot. Every single room has a format where it has a nice description of the room, then a sidebar on what traps you can expect, what creatures are placed here and how they act, and a 'Development' section on how the plot can develop based on what players do in the area. Another interesting bit: There's actually a rosetta stone reference in the adventure in case you don't have a scholar who knows ancient Nehekaran, because that's a bit of an unusual skill and they still want a scholar or Tomb Robber to be able to read some of the puzzles during the dungeon. When you approach the Tomb, there's a great monument to Karitamen carved in Nehekaran, with translations in Eltharin and Khazalid, plus an additional translation in Classical from some ancient scholar. Anyone who can read those languages and spends some time studying the monument will learn enough about hieroglyphs to be able to puzzle out most of the stuff in the tomb. This is a good thing to put in an adventure intended to be played by long-running PCs; PCs not created specifically for this campaign are unlikely to know Nehekaran. Besides, it's a neat Egyptology reference and it makes sense for the setting and character for the King to have wanted his glory able to be read by the Elder Races, too. The opening also shows how wildly some of the difficulty in the Tomb can swing. Early on, you encounter a separate temple to the Mortuary cult (which also contains a secret passage that lets you skip down to level 6 if you study it properly), but if you don't do the proper signs of respect (which takes an Academic History test) you get attacked by two Ushabti. Ushabti are basically angry Egyptian statuary mecha. I'm gonna give you the full stat set on an Ushabti, because they killed Team 1 to the last on one of the other levels: WS 46, BS 0, S 55, T 38, Agi 25 (No mental stats, construct). 24 Wounds, 3 Attacks, Strike Mighty, all attacks count as Impact, Movement 5, and AV 5. So they're DR 8, have a pile of wounds, good attacks, decent WS, and hit for Damage 6 Impact. They're also totally fearless, and cause Fear. Every single combat encounter in the Tomb causes Fear, so each character has to succeed at WP or freeze until they succeed WP. One of the things hurting both teams is most of the PCs don't have enormous WP (they're not bad, but no-one's really a stand-out except Woldred) and so Fear hurts them a lot on action economy. Team 1 just doesn't have the firepower or DR to handle the Ushabti. Team 2 does; Goran can take on one of them mostly by himself (though it's a tough fight) long enough for the rest of the team to kill another. Also, Team 2 has the huge advantage where if Therese makes her Fear check, she has a fairly easy spell that instantly snaps the whole party out of Fear. Team 1 does not have this. Now, all Ushabti encounters can be avoided by showing proper respect, but that takes a skill test. If you gently caress up, you are in for the Ancient Egyptian Pain Train. These specific ones will back off if you flee; later encounters might not. The other big bit of swingy difficulty is that the traps can be pretty random in how nasty they are. The entrance steps to the tomb have two hard to notice, hard to disable (though if you notice them, you can probably just go around) traps in a row. An interesting bit: If you have a halfling PC, they're actually too light to set off any of the pressure plate traps like these. They all require 100 pounds of weight. Most traps give you a chance to dodge and evade them with an Agi test or something after you trigger them, which is appreciated. What's not appreciated is the way the scything blade trap here not only inflicts a Damage 5 hit, but it completely bypasses the Wounds and DR system and permanently severs your foot if it hits you (-1 Mv, permanently). That's kind of a dick move; the Wounds/Crits system exists for a reason. There's also a lot of 'bleed traps' in this dungeon, where instead of a poison being a save or die, it inflicts slow damage over time, with Toughness saves every round until you die from the damage, get 2 successes in a row, or get a Heal-10 check from an ally. Team 1's Therese is a competent medic with a 55% Heal skill, but that goes to 45% in that context and it's pretty do or die. By contrast, Team 2's polymath Ehrl has an 83% chance to stop those poisons. Also, an important note about Heal for resource-management of HP: You can get a Heal test per series of traps or per battle where you lose wounds. So Doctor Ehrl on Team 2 does a lot to keep up the party's health. Not all the traps are like this; in fact, the 'just takes your foot off instantly' one is pretty rare, even for the 'Damage 5 hit blade trap' types. It's just weird that they open right off the bat with potential Ushabti encounters and some of the meaner trap types before easing up. In general, traps are fairly hard to spot (often at -10 or -20) but as this adventure is for higher level PCs and as every PC in a party makes checks to find traps (and even Team 1 has a bunch of sharp eyes and good searchers) that's not a huge issue. Disabling traps is harder, still often at -10 or -20. Team 1's Thorgek was just completely not up to disabling traps; 59% base and 1 Fate is not what you want when going through -10 and -20 checks often. Team 2's was better, but you still want to avoid rather than disable most traps. There is a nice mercy rule where characters who locate or disable traps get a +10 cumulative bonus to defeat similar traps for the rest of the tomb; your adventurer starts to notice the ancient architects' patterns and how Nehekarans engineered their defenses. That's a cool way to reflect what the designers want, which is for the Tomb to be something of a conversation between the players and Karitamen before they meet him. There's also a very good basic overview of the Tomb and its atmosphere in the book. They talk about why the Nehekarans built this tomb as an inverted pyramid, why they used gold and silver leaf, what scholars know and don't know about Nehekaran burial practices, and what the decision to build a Tomb rather than an external pyramid says about Karitamen's attitude about his own death. This style of Tomb was built for the dead, not to impress the living. It isn't about showing off the glories of the deceased to the living, but rather easing the occupant's passage to the underworld and impressing the Gods with their deeds and life. Also, Karitamen himself knew necromancy, and knew that big pyramids invited necromancers and grave robbers; it's possible he built this place to defend his own dead body from defilement. They give good background on what you'll see among the decor; painted murals and stylized scenes of battle, domestic scenes of the robed King giving out justice or spending time with his family to show he had a good life and was beloved of his subjects, and then images of the great King making a majestic passage to the underworld. There's enough material described to really evoke the tomb itself, and to give a good idea of what Nehekaran architecture and construction was like. This material is also meant to be useful if you want to run additional Nehekaran tombs in other games, and it's really neat. There's a good description of the colors, the art styles, the extravagance, and why it's all there. For the adventuring archeologist and the treasure-hunter alike, there's a lot to do in these ancient tombs. I know I said I'd try to do the Tomb in one, but there's no way I could do it justice like that. So I'm going to break this up into a bunch of updates instead. After this general overview, we'll go into more detail about the upper levels and how the two teams did at the most dangerous parts of them. Next Time: MORE TOMB
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Apr 9, 2019 16:27
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Thesaurasaurus posted:Adding to this, I'm just gonna remind y'all - if you wanna argue about Exalted, we already have a perfectly good thread for that! But only if you're using somewhat questionable definitions of "perfect" and "good". 
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Apr 9, 2019 17:00
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Mors Rattus posted:e: and now can I request that we hold the DB debates until I actually get to that book, so we can see the actual text instead of arguing about what it might be like?
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Apr 9, 2019 17:29
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Mors Rattus posted:Exalted 3rd Edition: Demonic Might I know I keep harping on it, but it still annoys me when Solars start invading the other splats' turf in terms of ability thematics. Is it fluff as actual shapeshifting or just as illusions? Because if it's actual shapeshifting, goddammit guys, get a loving proper thematic for Solars and stop stealing from the Lunars and Sidereals. Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Lure of the Liche Lord I presume that if the PC's walk in on Karitamen with arms bulging with his treasures, he's going to be a lot less cooperative than if they show up empty-handed but mildly bloodied from traps and fights. 
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Apr 9, 2019 17:30
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