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The Sin of Onan posted:Sorry
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Feb 10, 2017 21:57
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If it helps, I'm somewhat less idle this weekend than I was over the week (work is being weird), so it might be a couple of days before the next Tooth and Nail part. There's probably two more parts left in it (or perhaps four; I'm not sure if I should do one big Compacts writeup or three smaller ones, one for each Compact. Any thoughts?).
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The Sin of Onan posted:Sorry In general I'd suggest shorter posts over longer ones in my experience (the TL;DR principle is at least strong in my brain, personally), but it really depends on how much depth you're going into.
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Feb 10, 2017 22:18
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Fight! - Round 2 Chapter 2: Basic Moves (Fatal & Furies) This chapter is all about movement, attack and other kinds of action that can serve as the baseline for what everyone in the campaign can pull off. Modifying Basic Moves First up are rules for diversifying Basic Moves. In the corebook, there's only one Basic Move, meant to cover everything from a light punch to a heavy kick depending on the Fighter's style, the circumstances and the damage roll. The first option is about dynamically adding an Element to your Basic Move, increasing its Control in the process. This let's one handle basic attacks with a variety of properties seen in video games, like say a punch that is good against aerial targets, or far-reaching kick. This gives Fighters more tools to use (and expect from opponents), but can steal the limelight from Special Moves if the GM allows too many of these Elements to be used. If having just one Basic Move is not enough, you can also get yourself a Light Basic Move (weaksauce damage, but good recovery) or a Heavy Basic Move (which is basically a simple Special Move you get for free). Modifying Jumps Jumps are one of the most basic ways to quickly cover distance to the opponent, at the risk of getting shoryuken'd in the process. This section offers variantes like Double Jumps, Super Jumps and Wall Springs, all of which are about getting defensive bonuses and/or better positioning. Advanced Grappling  This is what reading Beast feels like. Throws and grapples are handled pretty basic compared to the nightmare that is oldschool grappling roles in RPGs, just like in the video games. The range is short, but they're hard to evade. This section adds some more versimilitude to Throws, evoking the feel of many wrestling games. Instead of just pulling off a Throw normally, you can instead turn it into a grapple. This puts you at the risk of the opponent escaping, but if everything works out you can move him around a little, after which you can either finish the Throw or essentially "cancel" into three other options: increased damage, increased stun or some more moving around. Command Moves These are effectivel L2 Special Moves, aka stuff that would require 2 or so buttons to pull off in a game, like say an uppercut or a dash. The corebook only had a few of these as guidelines, and here are a bunch more. Air Dashes, as seen in many anime-inspired fighting games, are an alternative to normal jumps. It has additional defensive properties, but can't directly pull an attack or combo out of it like with a normal jump. Another jump alternative is Run, which covers the same distance, but obviously protects you from anti-air attacks. Has a slight Control penalty through, so combos out of a Run aren't quite as long. Sidestep on the other hand is an alternative to Evasion, and popular with 3D fighting games. The main difference is while a successful Evasion lets you move around, the Sidestep instead nudges the opponent closer to an environmental hazard of your choosing, to say prepare a ring-out. Also presented her are additional ways to do Power Ups. The one in the corebook lets you forfeit your attack in order to gain additional Super Energy fo those sweet Super Moves. In a fighting game, this would be the equivalent of a dedicated charge command like in DBZ, or the old tradition of attacking the air with fast Special Moves. Thes Power Ups here mostly deal with temporary buffs, either through increasing damage or adding an specific Element to a specific Special Move. These are mostly meant to be used on a per character basis. Fans of Guilty Gear will probably be familiar with the Burst Assault. This Move has its own energy bar to limit its use, and it can interrupt enemy attacks while maxing our your Super Energy. Fans of King of Fighters will like the Power Strike, which is basically a Blowback Attack (aka a basic attack that knocks the opponent away and to the ground). And if you're into the DBZ games, there's Close Combat, which has the Fighters trade blows for a while till one comes out on top in a contested Control roll. If you really, really want to knock your opponent down with now fancy breakfalls or anything to get in the way, there's the Tackle. That one also becomes unblockable if you get a running start, which is pretty sweet to use against turtlers seeing how the Unblockable Element is one of the pricier ones out there. As mentioned last time, you're pretty much invincible if your knocked down. Here are a few options to do something against that, which is mostly seen in 3D fighters. You can use a dedicated Pursuit Attack to hit a downed foe, or alternatively use any of your normal Moves at an Accuracy penalty. You can even pick him up for a throw. And you can follow up the above Tackle by Beating the crap out of the poor opponent, which unlike a Pursuit Attack can actually be used as a combo starter. A downed Fighter can react with all of this by either attacking while still being on the ground (the Ankle Kick) or attacking while standing up (the Recovery).  I'd like to see a fighting game made by Vanillaware. Next Time: Special Moves - time to buff up.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:45
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White Wolf should have followed up Street Fighter: The RPG with a Darkstalkers one, including conversion rules for iconic WoD characters.
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Feb 11, 2017 03:54
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Question about Fight since Im loving the concept: are their air juggles, resets, or mixups? Also can you do 2v2 or 3v3 battles and take you for a ride, take you for a ride?
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Feb 11, 2017 05:08
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 Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes - Beasts: Part 2 Let's finish off the Beasts so we can get into the... interesting stuff.  Kiele Kano: The Sky Crawler <The swift unspooling of silken threads, faint against the silence> As a child, Kiele Kano had an insect collection that she loved to display under glass. Her favorite was a pet tarantula that she loved to watch eat. Her classmates hated her because she was very observant and had a long, accurate memory. She was long accused of cheating but she was just very good at remembering her studies. In high school her friend Desiree joined her in the snooping. quote:The two of them made up stories together about the people they watched, imagining they held precious secrets that could destroy lives or win them fame and fortune. One day, when a group of angry girls cornered Kiele in the locker room and demanded to know what private knowledge she’d stolen from them, she was bewildered until one let slip that Desiree had told them about Kiele’s pastime spying on everyone, conveniently leaving herself out of the picture. quote:In her dreams, she stood at the front of a distended lecture hall naked and confused under a spotlight with all eyes upon her from all directions. A thousand faceless people stared and stared, consuming everything she was. Only their eyes were visible in their silent transgression. They weren’t supposed to be looking, but they did look, and she was helpless to escape their attention. When she finally realized it was she who saw them as they truly were, and all they saw was an illusion she wore to cover her true nature, she ripped the eyes from their faces, clothing her body with them like a suit, and in that instant she was Devoured. She became the spider queen of 1,000 orbs, building lofty webs and seeing everything. You get absolutely zero points for guessing that Yes: Desiree is a Hero. Upon seeing her friend transform she bought a gun and hid it in anticipation of a time when she would need to take action. It fell apart when they couldn't agree on who deserved Kiele's predations. Kiele was starving and couldn't wait anymore, and neither could Desiree, when Kiele turned her back she heard and felt the gunshot, but she was barely able to limp back to her Lair. Kiele wanted to forgive her friend but resentment burned inside of her, not just for Desiree but for herself. "For all her 1,000 eyes, she’d been blind to the enemy plotting right there inside her web the whole time." But she couldn't do it herself, instead she went on a rampage, feeding until sated, then retreated to her lair and waited until the Sky Crawler broke free. Her first act was finding Desiree. Description The Sky Crawler flits from dream to dream hunting people who harbor a dark secret about some act that they feel the need to keep secret at all costs. It then slips from their dream into the nearby shadow to stalk the target and learn the depths of their crimes. Having gathered all the intelligence it needs to pass judgement, it appears to the victim and terrifies her. It will fully manifest and consume the target if the crime is dire enough. The Horror isn't picky, and will feed on Beasts who engage in deceit and treachery. It loves feeding on heroes, but only ever in their dreams because it's bane is loving stupid. It can occasionally be convinced to help out a Beast in harrying a Hero, but it refuses to work with anyone guilty of hiding "important truths" for any reason, and will take offense at such an offer usually attacking immediately. The only way to get the sky crawler off your back if it's angry at you is to exploit it's bane, the blood of a Hero will remove all it's powers. Yup. Oh, also it's webs are made of greasy human hair and it communicates entirely through keening human screams.  Rumors “Beware the great Sky Crawler, servant of Fate, bane of the wicked. It walks on the underside of the sky and combs the stars for tales of human treachery. If it doesn’t like what it reads there, it descends from the heavens on threads of starfire to devour you whole. If you are one of the wicked, do not dare to dream, for in dreams its greatest power is revealed.” Nope, it's not divine. Just really good at hunting down secrets and compelled to do so. “She ascended beyond our kind to dwell wholly in the Primordial Dream as the Dark Mother once did, but keeps her many eyes on the world. She slips through to snare people and Beasts alike in her questing webs and takes them away, deep into the Dream, to rot in her Lair until they become shadows to do her bidding.” It does occasionally drag people bodily into their worst nightmares where they either die, or confess the depth of their crimes. “A monster lives here. You’d never know it if it found you, though, not until it’s too late. It appears to you as a dark-eyed man or woman. It seduces you into betraying everything and everyone you love, until you’ve given all of yourself to it. Then it drinks your blood, your pain, and everything else, and leaves your empty husk behind for your scorned family to find.” The Sky Crawler will use her influence to intensify petty betrayals into something she can feed off of. The blood draining is just something that came up when she and a Vampire shared some territory. “My Mastigos buddy told me a real doozy the other day. There he is, traversing the Temenos, minding his own business, when he runs across what he thinks is your run of the mill nightmare goetia. He figures he can handle it. Boy is he wrong! It traps him in its web and scares the poo poo out of him, ‘til he spills all his secrets. Stuff he’s never told anyone. He said he’s never seen anything like that monstrosity, and he thinks it’s still following him around even now. He thinks it’s an acamoth and the Abyss is seeping into the Astral, but the way he said it…it sounded kind of familiar. Like I’ve had that dream before, you know? Maybe we all have.” Nope, he somehow stumbled into the primordial dream, it can't get to the Temenos. But it is stalking him because he's a loving mage, and how many secrets do they have. Story Hooks quote:• A brood shares the unsettling experience of seeing a mass of shining black eyes watching them from the shadows wherever they go. Wherever the eyes appear, they find a Hero not far behind — sometimes hunting them, sometimes unaware of their presence. After some investigation, the brood discovers that the Unfettered wants their help to punish the Hero and fulfill its Hunger without getting too close to it. If they agree, they can dispose of the Hero themselves or put him to sleep and let the Sky Crawler deal with him in dreams, but taking the latter route doesn’t satisfy the Horror for long and it comes back for more soon after. If they refuse, the Sky Crawler views the refusal as a betrayal of their kinship and hunts them instead. Oh yes, an NPC that sees any refusal to acquiesce to it's immediate demands as a betrayal worthy of death. Fantastic. Oh and her Ban is "She must punish those with dark secrets, what constitutes a dark secret is mostly up to her." because gently caress you PCs how dare you keep that white lie from your parents YOU MUST DIE NOW.  Alvin Zane: Slimy Lobbyist You’ll spend tonight at a luxury hotel playing a game involving lines of white powder, a $100 bill, and a woman young enough to be your daughter. Whether or not the police catch you in the act depends on whether you convince the committee to send this anti-drug bill to the Senate floor today. quote:Alvin Zane’s great grandfather was a steel baron who made his fortune during the early 20th century. His grandfather sold his stake in Zane Steel and used the proceeds to create Zane Plastics, which swelled the family fortune even more. His parents began investing heavily in robotics and computer companies when those technologies were still largely unknown outside of science fiction. By the time Alvin was born in 1966, his parents’ fortune exceeded a billion dollars. quote:Alvin’s parents spent very little time managing their empire. His father often joked that they spent more time writing checks to their favorite charities than sitting in on board meetings. They were noted philanthropists who made large donations to the colleges, art institutes, and charities that served the people of Chicago. They also made significant donations to candidates for political office and were active in the local political scene, and young Alvin grew up watching these interactions with great interest. The night of his 18th birthday came with his devouring, and he took it up without looking back. Gaining a Foothold Alvin spent the next 6 years integrating himself with Chicago's political machinery while studying law at the University of Chicago. These were lean years for him as his peers weren't really powerful, or competing with him, and his Hunger refused to feed from them unless it was starving, which meant he attracted a few heroes. But once he started building a reputation as a campaign manager he was able to feed regularly. He struck out against his candidate's political rivals and left their careers in ruins, this kept his Horror in check but he longed for more. Then at 35 his parents died in a car accident, leaving Alvin the sole heir of the Zane fortune. He invested the fortune into several PACs and Super PACs and refined his feeding method. He contributed to a campaigns and manipulated events to put his prey into office, then he would threaten to withhold further funds unless they used the power of their offices the way he demanded. Some balked, but enough caved to ensure Alvin had a steady food supply. If he was peckish he'd show up in person and make outrageous demands until they relented, if the threat of losing their most powerful backer wasn't enough he had blackmail. At this point half the elected officials in Illinois owe him their allegiance, he pays particular attention to those who's political views oppose his own but are careless about accepting donations. Once a cycle he picks one of these rising stars as his special prey, pumping their campaign full of money and ensuring their victory, then a few weeks after they're sworn into office he shows up and starts demanding that they start voting on a bill, or throwing cases out of court, or pressing charges against companies he needs out of the way. At first it's just things that they might have done anyway, then come the visits to the top tier golf courses, or visits to social events, at both Alvin uses Nightmares to ensure future meetings. As time goes on he starts making them operate against their own interests and more in line with his. Or proposing legislation that makes absolutely no sense (the given example is "A fierce proponent of gun rights proposes a budget that includes supplying schools with enough guns and body armor for every teacher and child", which I'm fairly certain was a thing someone actually suggested.) At the same time the social events start taking a darker cast, usually involving drugs, hookers, and embezzlement before evolving to armed robbery, rape, and murder. The escalation feeds the beast until the victim is either arrested or resigns in disgrace. Only three of his victims have killed themselves, and Alvin sees them as disappointments. If he's feeling peckish he visits his past victims in prison to top himself off by offering them a way out that he will decidedly not provide. Description He's Wilson Fisk, okay? Seriously. quote:Despite his unshakable emotional detachment and his Hunger, Alvin remains fairly true to his upbringing. Like his parents, his politics are fairly liberal, and most of his victims are of a conservative bent — the better to discredit their political views in the eyes of the voting public. Moreover, while he freely admits that he’s a monster, he still feels that he serves God by humbling those who succumb to pride and using their fates to warn others about the hazards of seeking temporal power. He continues to carry the banner of his parents’ philanthropy, and although he is by no means gentle with his prey, the city would miss his charity work if ever Alvin suddenly vanished. The fact that he is an unmarried billionaire with no children of his own has only made him more eager to give away his money to the causes he supports. Rumors “Welcome to Zaneland, the best feeding ground this side of the Mississippi! Breathe deep. You can practically smell the fear and desperation of the people who live here. If there is an earthly paradise for those like us, this is it. The hunting is rich, and local law enforcement is so gormless and poorly funded that you can tear a man’s throat out with your teeth and never see the inside of a police car, much less a jail cell. Just one warning: Steer clear of local politics until you know what you’re doing. Yeah, the politicians are all narcissistic demagogues so corrupt that they practically leave a trail of slime behind them when they walk, but Boss Zane owns half of them. Trust me. You don’t want to get on his bad side.” Zane's increase in power has pushed him to put worse and worse people in power, and unfortunately that's definitely worsened the local social environment even if it's taking assholes out of power eventually. Probably the worst part is that his success has inspired imitators of his Prey, who don't have people in their corner to take them down. “My connection to Alvin Zane? I only met him once, back when I was running for a seat in the state House, to thank him for his PAC’s generous contribution to my campaign. We talked policy for a bit, which was awkward because I disagree with the candidates he usually supports on pretty much every issue, but then he got this pensive look on his face. ‘You seem like a nice guy,’ he says to me. ‘Why do you want to get into politics?’ So, I told him about my immigrant father and my high school civics teacher and how I think our state needs to turn itself around. I mentioned how much my mother had admired Alvin’s parents, and I guess it got pretty personal. Mr. Zane sat there quietly and let me talk. When I was done, he says to me, ‘If you accept my campaign contribution, I expect you to pass legislation for me that will keep you up at night. I need to know you will do whatever it takes to earn my support.’ That sounded shady to me, so I asked for clarification. He told me that my first test would be to skin my pet dog alive and then eat its heart raw. I was shocked, horrified. He says, ‘If you aren’t willing to play ball, Jeff, then give me back my money.’ So, I called my campaign manager and did just that. I lost that race, but guess who threw his support behind my opponent? I don’t think my rival ever had a dog, but his son died in a freak accident, right? No matter how crazy it sounds, I can’t help but wonder whether that was just the price of accepting the support of Alvin Zane.” Uhh....  I have to admit, I thought hair-eye-spider was going to be the edgiest thing I had to read today, but nope here we have mister Zane asking people to eat their dog's hearts. See, Zane's in the business of teaching lessons on a state-wide scale, seeing someone do evil poo poo and then get punshed for it teaches the lesson to everyone. He doesn't want to bring down actual nice guys even as he acknowledges that he's a loving monster. “As much as I admire what he has built, Alvin Zane has finally flipped his poo poo. His new PAC, Citizens for Public Safety, has not only convinced the governor that supernatural creatures exist but that they must be eradicated. If House Bill 2835 soars through Zane’s well-oiled political machine the way it’s expected to, our paradise will soon be a police state — ubiquitous surveillance, arrest warrants for anyone even suspected of possessing occult connections, and literal bounties on the head of anyone who fails to meekly show up in court on the appointed day. I hear his PAC is supplying intelligence to monster hunters like the Barrett Commission, the Union, and even loving Taskforce V.A.L.K.Y.R.I.E. so they can exterminate us. It’s also secured pledges of financial support from Deva Corporation, which apparently wants to set up some sort of regional headquarters somewhere in the state. This last decade has been really great, but I’m getting out now before Zane gives my address to the first Hero who sniffs around the capital.” Zane wants to get the rest of the Beasts out of Illinois for two reasons, one: he doesn't want competition, two: he blames them for the social ills his constituents suffer under. He refuses to believe that his political empire is hurting the state that he loves. He's going to fall, and when he falls he's going to fall hard. And whatever fills the hole he leaves will probably be worse. Story Hooks quote:• A gunman goes on a shooting spree in a public place where the characters happen to be at the time. Before they have time to react, the shooter fires on police who gun him down. The killer turns out to be State Representative Robert Butler, a legislator well known for his vocal opposition to gun control measures. Even before the public has time to absorb these events, however, Freedom From Fear PAC issues a strongly-worded demand that the state legislature take up a bill to weaken existing gun control laws — ostensibly in hopes of preventing such tragedies in the future. At the same time, Citizens for Public Safety insinuates that supernatural creatures in the area used mindcontrol powers to provoke Representative Butler’s rampage in order to feed their twisted Hungers. The characters soon come under suspicion and must go to ground to avoid being used as supporting evidence for House Bill 2835. Complicating matters, one of the victims killed in the shooting had a powerful supernatural patron who wants revenge on the characters.  Janice Esterhaus: Tears on the Sand <Sounds of growling and scrabbling, a half-grunt and half-warning bark from a dark building.> quote:She was born the sixth of eight children to a deeply religious family on the East Coast of the United States. Janice’s parents believed in discipline for discipline’s sake, and Janice was punished harshly, even as a toddler, for what might be just a minor infraction in another family — such as crying, fidgeting, eating too little, eating too much, or refusing to immediately obey an order from her parents. Too large family, overstressed mom, only way to get attention is to do something that invites punishment. Mother doesn't speak to her except to criticize, father doesn't touch her except to beat her in punishment. Her siblings were friendly enough but she couldn't interact with them without starting a fight which brought more punishment. She didn't want that treatment, but it was the only way she knew how to interact with the world. Keeping to the rules just meant you were ignored. Of course she was Home Schooled, but her parents let her go to High School with the rest of the kids. But now she's isolated from her siblings, under-educated, and has no social skills! The teachers initially took pity on her but her default method of getting attention quickly wore out their goodwill. Paradoxically she started to love detention as it was the only time she got to sit in quiet and think. She started deliberately breaking rules on tough days to avoid going home. Track and Field provided an escape, she's wasn't social enough for team sports but track focuses on the individual. Her teachers were thrilled that the "ugly duckling" had bloomed into a swan capable of running a 7 minute mile. But her parents hated it because the track uniforms were immodest and athletics were unseemly for a young woman. And every medal she won was just another sin of pride in their eyes. She only lasted one year before her parents made her quit in an epic fight that actually brought in Janice's coach in her defense. As a result Janice stopped acting out to get attention, now she started acting out to get revenge against her parents who had taken away the one thing she was ever really good at and loved doing. This new willfullness of her brought with it a commensurate increase in punishment severity and frequency. Nights without food, or sleeping in the garage were the mildest punishments her father could come up with. Her new escape came in dreams of the day when the tables would be turned on her parents, with her being bigger and stronger and forcing everyone to love her and do what she said. Sleep became her new escape, which meant she was now beaten for being lazy. She sought validation and quickly found her soul, an ancient tyrant named Tears in the Dark who thrived on the tears of the penitent. Once she accepted her heritage as an Anakim Nemesis she felt herself freed from any sense of ethical or moral obligations. She started breaking rules at a rapid pace: smoking, drinking, shoplifting, lying, brawling with her classmates. The meager punishments of her teachers and parents meant nothing to her now. At night she would dole out punishments against those who she believed had wronged her. Her father was her first victim and her first kill. Her horror took delight in breaking him down bit by bit until one night he simply did not wake up. His murder, and the absolute lack of suspicion cast upon her, just emboldened her further. Of course, now a widow, her mother couldn't deal with Janice on her own, so she used part of her husband's life insurance policy to send Janice to "A New Start For Troubled Teens" a reform school/summer camp in the New Mexico desert. quote:For a teenager brought to A New Start, life is utter misery. Even boot camp has better conditions. The students, or clients — a euphemism the staff likes to use — have every minute of their day highly regulated. Privacy is nonexistent; even the showers are communal. Education is minimal, as the clients spend most of their day on hard manual labor: digging ditches, building fences, hauling rocks, or cleaning the camp buildings. Those who break any of the camp’s myriad of small rules are denied sleep, meals, or even water (a dire prospect in New Mexico). Anyways, Barracks full of angry children and an underpaid staff of barely competent bullies meant Tears in the Dark could feast to it's lack-of-heart's content. Janice also made her first and only real friend during this time, a changeling named Madeline. After being used as a human pet for a year, Madeline was sent to A New Start since she had apparently run away from home and came back confused and rebellious. The two of them served as a decent balm for each other, making the camp slightly more bearable. And while Janice was able to help Madeline cope with being a changeling, the reverse was not true. As Madeline had no idea what a Beast actually was, and thought that encouraging Janice to revel in her horror and pursue more supernatural power was a good idea. Janice began to lose her grip on reality, but Tears in the Dark did not want to leave the realm of free meals, so Janice came up with a plan. Miraculously Janice became a model camper, at least on the outside, as a part of a long con to become a junior counselor at A New Start. She quickly rose through the ranks until she was the chief counselor at the camp. Madeline stayed on as well to support her friend, hurt by her distance but Tears was exerting more and more control over the young beast. Soon Janice's lair expanded across the whole compound, she had never met another beast and had never heard any kind of warnings against letting her Beast grow too powerful, exerting too much control, having too much freedom. By the time Madeline figured out that she had convinced Janice to do something wrong, it was too late. "Janice Esterhaus" was gone, and Tears in the Sand had been born. Tears no longer draws a paycheck from A New Start as they had her terminated for abandonment a long time ago. Nonetheless Tears thinks of the camp as hers, she's safe from any would be heroes and no one will believe a troubled teenager. Every 18 weeks a new crop of victims arrives. Tears finds the standouts, the strongest, smartest, best-liked, and breaks them down. She's especially attracted to male petty tyrants and female mean girls. Madeline, for her part, stays on as a Staff Counselor plagued with guilt over what she pushed Janice to become, quietly making sure that Janice remains hidden and supplied with enough victims to keep her stated. And enforcing the only rule that she has been able to make Tears understand - no killing. Description quote:Janice had a long, successful career at A New Start before succumbing to Tears in the Dark, and appears to be in her late 30s or early 40s, though that’s the only human aspect of her remaining. Now Tears on the Sand stands nearly seven feet tall, built like a cage fighter and covered with a thick, cracked skin that has more in common with an alligator than a person. Her long, formerly-brown hair is matted and coiled, turned the color of desert sand. Similarly, her nails have grown into sharp, jagged talons. Tears on the Sand vaguely remembers the use of clothes, and so wears little more than the tattered, soiled remains of shirts and trousers stolen from her prey. Tears on the Sand only bathes when it rains; as a result, the first hint her victims have of her approach is often the smell. Madeline is a Venombite Kith, though her mortal seeming is a mousy, nervous, brown-haired woman about the same age as Tears. The nearest freehold is two-hours away and she refuses to leave Tears alone for that long, so she's not joined a court and is fairly starved for companionship. Her primary concern is protecting her old friend. She lies, cheats, and steals to keep Tears safe, and she refuses to accept that her friend has become a creature devoid of human intelligence or warmth, hoping that Janice will come back one day. For her part Tears cannot function as a person. Some part of her recognizes Madeline as a friend, and she won't harm or attack Madeline unless she attacks Tears first. The campers and faculty are fair game though, she prefers to feed on faculty. If Tears judges a punishment dealt to a student is unfair, she'll ravage the faculty and leave the student alone. Occasionally another supernatural creature gets sent to the camp by their overwrought parents, changelings get sent to the nearest freehold by madeline, Beasts sometimes gain Tears' strange form of friendship(Until they break a rule), others are novelties to the rampant beast. Rumors “That changeling at A New Start used to be lovers with that Beast she has holed up there. That’s the only reason she’s stuck around for as long as she has. It also explains why she’s so defensive. She’ll fight you if you try to get to close. You want to deal with Tears on the Sand, you gotta go through Madeline first.” Nope, it's just guilt. Madeline has deliberately broken several rules in an attempt to get Tears to punish and feed from her, but Tears refuses. “Tears on the Sand owns the whole place, top to bottom. Madeline might be the face of the operation, but it can’t run properly without the Beast to control things. I don’t know the legal stuff behind it, but I’m pretty sure they have someone else fronting the business side of things to make it look legit on the surface. I bet you could come in with lawyers and sweep the whole operation out from under their feet.” On a financial level? No. On a metaphysical level? Hell yes. “Nah, man. I’m serious. You’re new, so I’ll be nice. There’s something that lives in that shed out there, and it’ll get you at night. If you want to be safe, sneak some food out during lunch and leave it by the door. Yeah, no worries. We gotta look out for each other, right? But, for reals. The thing also don’t like messy people. I know the showers suck and the laundry room ain’t much better, but don’t be a chump. Keep your clothes clean and take regular showers, the way the rules say, and you’ll be okay. No, I swear to god I’m not fooling you. This is for real, man. The teachers don’t know squat, but whatever is living out in that shed is real.” This is mostly what the kids have been able to piece together about Tears, not all of it is true, but she's in no position to educate them otherwise. “There is no queen of the werewolves, don’t be ridiculous. Even if there were, we would not bow to a creature such as the one that lives by the isolated camp for unhappy adolescent humans. That thing is pathetic and sad, utterly reliant on its fae minder. No, it doesn’t control us any more than you do.” There is a werewolf pack that lives in the desert near the camp, and they're aware of Tears and Madeline. At some point they might have feared her but now they pity them both as an object lesson in maintaining a link to your humanity. Story Hooks quote:• Legends and rumors about Tears on the Sand have circulated among Beasts for years, but no one has been able to get close enough to the camp to verify them. An opportunity to do just this comes to the Brood when John Finch, the co-owner, dies suddenly and his widow Carol decides to sell the business. As part of the process, Carol needs her land surveyed and appraised. By taking the job, the characters gain access to Tears on the Sand. Tears on the Sand, however, can sense the Horrors entering her territory and isn’t pleased at the incursion. She makes this displeasure known to Madeleine, and recruits her to help drive the characters away. The player characters must navigate an increasingly-hostile territory while attempting to both complete the job they’ve been hired to do and learn the truth about Tears on the Sand. Her statline is about what you'd expect. Honestly she's not a bad character, but just one that's hyper specialized for a single type of chronicle that you'd really need to shoehorn in. I do love the plot hook where Madeline brings in a beast band to try and fix her and the beasts go "nope she's fine, just keep her fed." But that's all the beasts. But now it's time to double down on the idiocy. Cause you see, Matt decided to try and make Beasts more palatable by creating something even worse than Beasts. Up Next: If you stare too long into the Abyss, the Abyss makes you burn your house down
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Feb 11, 2017 08:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Usually they're selected with those with physical impairments or weakness, and get VR training to make them into non-VR killers, then get made into cyborgs around age 18. A murderous teenager in a terminator body? Sounds like a perfect plan. In any case, they're most often used when heavy force is required in a mission.
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Feb 11, 2017 08:18
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I actually don't have a problem with any of these 3 douchebags. They're interesting characters.
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Feb 11, 2017 08:46
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Count Chocula posted:White Wolf should have followed up Street Fighter: The RPG with a Darkstalkers one, including conversion rules for iconic WoD characters. That would've been dope. I recently fantasized about making a "conversion" that's basically just Melty Blood. Though since the only iconic WoD characters I know of are two from the oWoD (Kain and that Gary Stu metaplot villain who had like all the splats), so I'm considering anthropomorphic personifications of the splats. (The final boss is a Beast who is also a teacher, since of course everyone's a student at the same high school.) Barudak posted:Question about Fight since Im loving the concept: are their air juggles, resets, or mixups? Also can you do 2v2 or 3v3 battles and take you for a ride, take you for a ride? Let's see... There's the Juggle Element that improves a knock down Move by letting you use it during a Combo. Even better, you deal extra damage if you start with a Juggle. You can add further Juggles in the combo for extra damage, though that's balanced as each of these Juggle Moves also needs to knock down, and those don't do anything beyond the first. You can further modify this with the Launcher (even more damage, but you can mess up the timing if you use more than one in a combo) and Spinning Juggle (prevents the juggled opponent from doing a Breakfall, which reduces the damage and prevents the knock down) Element. EDIT: Oh, there's also a Tekken-esque Bounce Element which is right between Juggle and Launcher in terms of effect. A reset is roughly what happens if you pull off a combo, win initiative in the next round and start another combo. This can basically be viewed as pulling off a single long combo, except the opponent has a chance to get out of this halfway through. There's nothing really directly about mixups, but it's probably one of the many explanations for the Increased Accuracy and Subtle Element (which is a cheaper Increased Accuracy that only works if the opponent wants to counter you) and just going on Full Offense with all attacks (which makes you more likely to land an attack at the cost of reduced defense and what is essentially a cumulative "frame disadvantage" in the next round, reducing both Initiative and Control). Team combat is fully supported, both for KoF-style elimination matches and tag matches where you can switch out during combos. Rounds 2 introduces a lot more options for this later on. You can also switch from fighting games to beat-'em-ups (aka like a normal RPG), with everyone fighting at the same time and with plenty of Thugs (aka mooks) to blow through. Making a boss character for that format can be tricky though thanks to hit stun and action economy, unless you make a counter monster with plenty of area effect attacks. I've been experimenting with "Monster of the Week" rules to make this a bit easier to pull off on the fly, which basically amount to letting the boss attack everyone within range and only making him be affected by Hit Stun and other nasty effects every couple hits. Doresh fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 09:26
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"Harriet the Spy but she's a spider made of hair" is cool in a J-Horror kind of way, and there's no law against J-Horror in WoD. She'd be a good antagonist for Persona 4 type story. Nothing horrifies me more than those reform camps for kids. There's a Stephen King & Peter Straub novel where a Changling (kinda) befriends a werewolf at one of them, if you want to steal them.
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Feb 11, 2017 11:43
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Kurieg posted:Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes - Beasts: Part 2 Aside from the obvious, I think one of the things that bothers me most about this book is how weirdly insistent it is, in the story hooks, on telling the PCs how they react to any given situation. "Why yes, book, I will of course assume that the Beast terrorising a whole camp full of children and guilting their counsellor into keeping her around is a normal, healthy, non-hosed-up situation. This is a natural and reasonable reaction that I, a player, might have."
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Feb 11, 2017 13:23
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 Rifts World Book 8: Japan Part 13: “Robot pilots are highly respected by the population at large; given Japan's long-time fascination for giant war machines, these robot pilots are the living embodiments of manga ‘legends.’.” SAMAS Samurai Pilot Well, these are Republic military pilots that fly SAMAS armor that’s like the Coalition’s, only samurai style, as we'll see, and... sigh... They live by Bushido and emulate samurai because I guess that's what you do in Japan. Unlike cyber-samurai, real samurai respect these guys because  This is a fairly generic pilot class that's supposed to double as half-assed cops (you can swing a nightstick, but don't expect to be great at solving mysteries). Skipping the pic because it’s just copy-pasted from the actual suit we’ll see later. About a 31% chance to play one. Not much else to add, the classes are pretty dull from here on out.  One Line For an Eye: Drawing Japanese People the Rifts Way Infantryman O.C.C. Well, this is like one of the worst classes in the corebook (the Coalition Grunt), but at least you can read compared to one's skull-helmed counterparts. These are volunteers from either the main population of the Republic or peasant refugees that have agree to join the army. They at least get a decent spread of skills. A low Physical Endurance requirement gives one a 74% chance of qualifying for this. That's that. Robot Pilot O.C.C. This is the generic class where if you want to pilot a robot vehicle, and they're highly esteemed by the population who sees them as the living example of Gundam pilots and anime and manga and anime anime anime.  Infantrymen resent this, seeing them as taking fewer risks and getting greater glory, so robot pilots and infantry tend to self-segregate into different hangouts and bars lest fights break out. Otherwise, a fairly generic pilot class with a relatively robust skill set. May randomly get some cybernetic implants. Ironically, a robot vehicle is not listed as part of their equipment, but one can assume that the military provides one reasonably. 37% chance to play one.Glitter Force Trooper O.C.C. Not nearly glam as it sounds, just glitter boy pilots in Japan that serve the Republic. They're more serious and dedicated than American glitter boy pilots because all hail glorious nippon or something and are serious, confident, dutiful sorts. It says they'd like American glitter boys if they really got to know them, though!... which should happen as soon as glitter boys learn to swim. You get a glitter boy and skills and some poo poo, I guess, some cybernetic implants, and... about a 50% chance to play one.  ”Wow, somebody drew art of me even though I’m not a samurai or ninja? I’m honored.” Police Officer O.C.C. You dress like your last name is Jensen and deal with crims and monsters. It notes that cybernetic implants are common, and another thing is common is being in the pocket of one corporation or another. Some are even ninja or spies planted by corporations as well. They get investigative and combat skills, but are surprisingly light on skills for a class that that doesn't get anything in the way of special abilities. Oh, 25% chance. Rifts RPG & World Books It notes you can play a variety of other characters from other books, like Chiang-Ku dragons, "Kilin", "Dragons: European style", True Atlanteans, Herbalists, and then weirder entries like "Hindu Gods" (wait, can I play Vishnu, then...?) or Minions of Splugorth (even though there's no connection between Japan and Atlantis and they're a literal world apart). Anyway! Buy more books! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDTwO0TlwOU A little short this time while I make space for the cybernetics section coming up. Next: Cyberagons. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 14:12 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 13:57
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The Sin of Onan posted:Aside from the obvious, I think one of the things that bothers me most about this book is how weirdly insistent it is, in the story hooks, on telling the PCs how they react to any given situation. "Why yes, book, I will of course assume that the Beast terrorising a whole camp full of children and guilting their counsellor into keeping her around is a normal, healthy, non-hosed-up situation. This is a natural and reasonable reaction that I, a player, might have." To be fair it assumes you are playing Beast.
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Feb 11, 2017 14:10
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Well Doresh youve completely sold me on Fight. It has Bounce.
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Feb 11, 2017 17:54
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Next: Cyberagons. Terra Malatora flashbacks imminent.
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Feb 11, 2017 18:00
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Young Freud posted:Terra Malatora flashbacks imminent. "I wonder what that is? It can't be good, it- oh, here's the thread-" 
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Feb 11, 2017 18:15
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Count Chocula posted:"Harriet the Spy but she's a spider made of hair" is cool in a J-Horror kind of way, and there's no law against J-Horror in WoD. She'd be a good antagonist for Persona 4 type story. What's the name of that novel? The concept sounds interesting.
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Feb 11, 2017 18:23
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The Talisman, although they've got the order of events mixed up.
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Feb 11, 2017 18:25
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It's been a while! Let me recap...Qelong posted:Two barely conceivable beings have fought a war for a generation over Sajavedra, a barely legendary land far to the southeast. They wish to claim its rich harvests of souls and fields, its intricate network of ley lines and temples, for their own. The short version?.... WELCOME TO FANTASY loving VIETNAM!!!  Qelong, Part 6: Creatures M-R, or “Ballad of the Green Bulette” Mists As a war-torn tropical environment, the Qelong Valley is lousy with obscuring mist. Normal mist reduces visibility. Travel through the mist obscures vision; any character who ends up in a mist-filled hex is automatically lost, and inhaling the mist increases the rate of aakom poisoning per hour. Some mists are also poisonous, explosive, or can induce madness if inhaled. Monsoon A poo poo-ton of rain; reduces visibility and slows travel. Characters who don’t find shelter will end up with any food that isn’t iron rations ruined. Wet bowstrings can’t fire, and paper goods like scrolls are at serious risk. Myrmidons Myrmidons are a particularly nasty breed of super-soldier created by one of the warring archmagi; they’ve spread beyond their control, and are now tearing a straight line of destruction across the east valley. They are a swarm of pinkish, finger-length ants that seek out human male hosts to convert into soldiers. The ants invade the bodies of their prey through their orifices and soft tissues, assimilating their minds into a hive mind. Infested victims are filled with a compulsion to eat clay. The clay forms a lacquered armor shell around the hosts, fully transforming them into obedient ant-men. Myrmidons act like man-sized army ants, eating every organic substance they come across, salvaging whatever weapons they can find. Human men are captured for conversion into egg-hosts; all others, like women and children, get slaughtered for food. (Only men are converted, but other humanoid males, like elves, can be converted as long as they’re large enough. Dwarves and halflings are too small) The ant-soldiers are 4HD monsters with natural armor and improvised weapons, so they’re not too tough when found alone. They’re almost never found alone. For every 2 myrmidons attacking a single target, they get a bonus attack between them; so 4 myrmidons attacking a target (the practical maximum) would get 6 attacks(!) among the group. Thanks to their hivemind, they’re immune to most charms, illusions, and mind-altering spells. Funny enough, casting Feeblemind on a single myrmidon grants Haste to 1d6 of its fellows. (Myrmidon) Egg-Hosts When it’s time to make more soldiers, the myrmidons regurgitate thousands of tiny eggs into the bodies of human male captives. The hosts’ bodies bloat as the eggs hatch and eat them from the inside and they turn into living ant-bombs. Cure Disease will purge the eggs from their bodies, but the hosts will still die without the aid of healing magic equivalent to a Cure Critical Wounds spell or greater. The egg-hosts themselves can’t do much beyond crawl and beg for death, but if they’re attacked, swarms of hungry ants will pour from their wounds to infest the nearest living target. A failed save means the ants burrow into the target’s body and try to convert it into a myrmidon. A save vs. poison with cumulative penalties for each day that has passed since infection, is required. Failure means the target’s body succumbs to the hivemind and loses 1 point of Intelligence a day. Until the last point of Intelligence is lost, the target’s mind remains aware, trapped inside a body that will not obey. A Cure Disease spell cast before all Intelligence is lost will cure the target, but the spell cast on an Intelligence 0 victim just leads to brain death. Like the Lotus Monks, the myrmidon horde is one of the major power players of the setting, but more due to their raw numbers and implacable nature; they have no plan beyond “march, eat, infest, repeat.” They’re essentially a rogue biological weapon that can’t be bribed, intimidated, or reasoned with, topped with a healthy dose of body horror. PC’s would likely have to find powerful allies to prevent them from laying waste to the landscape of Qelong. Naga Qelong  The Naga Qelong is the unruly demigoddess of the Qelong River. For millennia, she was something of a ‘necessary evil’, her essence bound by the sacred-geometry prison created by the network of canals and stupas built along the river. But with the sacred-geometry shattered by the war’s devastation, and The Cylinder leaking aakom into the river system, The Naga’s chains have loosened, and she is now free to manifest part of herself into the physical realm. Obsessed with taking full control of the river valley, she’s now using her new freedom to drown villages and create more Naga-Kin, monstrous half-breed children that worship her. The Naga appears as a giant river serpent with four heads. Each head resembles an elvish woman with long, flowing hair in a different color, either black, white, green, or blue. As the setting’s “dragon”, The Naga’s stats are already an impressive challenge for an adventuring party, but Hite highlights that this is only her avatar; a minor manifestation of her continent-size form in the spirit word (he’s basically giving the GM carte blanche to boost her stats as needed). She has 12 HD and four attacks per round with her lethal venomous bite. In addition, each head has its own special attack that it can use 3/day. The green-haired head can spray poison in a cloud to hit multiple targets, or spit a stream of concentrated venom on a single target. The black-haired head can make a howl that affects all who hear as a Symbol of Fear, Insanity, or Despair The blue-haired head can entangle foes with her hair, as a grapple attack. Any target entangled is affected by a Charm Person spell (The effect can’t force the target to make obviously suicidal commands, though a common tactic of The Naga is to say “Kiss Me” to bring a charmed victim close enough for a bite attack). The white-haired head can shoot lightning from its eyes (treated as a Magic Missile spell). The Naga Qelong is, in a way, the “Big Bad” of the setting. She wants nothing more than to destroy the remains of the stupa network imprisoning her so that she can drown the river valley and kill or convert all human life. The aakom contamination of the river valley makes her stronger every day, and she’ll eventually become unstoppable if the PC’s don’t find a way to contain The Cylinder. She is served by… Naga-Kin Naga-Kin are the mutant servants of the Naga Qelong, created from the human population by either breeding them with The Naga or Naga-Kin, or by drowning them in the aakom-tainted waters of the Qelong River (They’re the monsters chasing the adventurers on the book’s cover art). The Naga-Kin comes in a variety of forms, but all of them fit the general theme of “drowned corpses with snake-like or fish-like features.” (My favorite description is the one with “four tiny heads on a human-sized neck”). Their stats are identical, regardless of their features. They rely on their claws or on scavenged weapon; some carry nets. They have low armor and 2HD, but have significant Sneak Attack bonuses when in water, so they tend to stay close to the river and ambush tactics. If encountered in a group, there’s a chance for one of them to be a Level 3-8 Magic-User. Any victims drowned by the Naga-Kin must save vs. Magic or be themselves transformed into Naga-Kin. Needlefish A larger, more aggressive version of the real-world needlefish. Like the RL needlefish, these critters leap out of the water over any obstacle in their path - like, say, a passing riverboat – and anything standing in their flight path is likely to get impaled by their sharp, bony beaks. Any boat that’s unlucky enough to swim in the path of a school of needlefish is likely to get stabbed by a swarm of fishy knives (Ouch!). They can inflict a lot of damage on an entire party; because they swim away too quickly for any party to seriously attack them in the aftermath, they’re more of an environmental hazard than a proper monster. I think most of the fun will be pointing your players to the Wikipedia link and witnessing their reaction. Plague A hex containing an outbreak of good, old fashioned bubonic plague. Better have those Cure Disease spells handy! Refugees Starved, shaken people, desperately trying to find safe haven in this war-zone (Spoiler: They won’t find it). They’ll generally just beg for food and supplies; if they greatly outnumber an adventuring party, they may try to overwhelm them and take their gear, but they have low Morale (can you blame them?) and are driven off easily. If given food, they could be a good source of information. They have a 2 in 6 chance of carrying typhus, and a 1 in 12 chance that one of them will carry an aakom curse (an touch-based spell attack that can never be turned off, caused by aakom poisoning). Some have a tiny bit of treasure in the form of looted goods, if an adventurer is callous enough to rob frightened, impoverished refugees. Ruins One of many desolate, war-torn structures that dot the landscape of Sajavedra. Includes two mini-tables to roll for the chance of treasure or monster encounters, respectively, in the ruins. Not much to speak of otherwise. Next: Creatures S-Y: Snakes, Tigers, and rear end in a top hat Vikings, Oh MY!!! Simian_Prime fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 20:22
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 Whispering Vault: Spooky Shadows Now we’re on to the Shadows. Weirdly the Shadows are actually a lot more interesting than the main foes, the Unbidden. Partially this is because there’s more actual detail and variety on display for Shadows and while Unbidden typically get locked up in the Whispering Vault the Shadows just get cast back into the Rift, giving them the most potential as recurring characters.  So, what are Shadows? Basically they are things that were never meant to be. If the Realm of Flesh is the product of the Aesthetics Dreaming the shadows are a product of their nightmares. Which brings up a weird thought...why does the Realm of Flesh have to be so boring? I mean the entire premise of the setting is that the Primal Powers start off floating alone in the void and so they create the Aesthetics in order to then have the Realm of Flesh created (because reasons). The Realm of Flesh is basically the real world, with humans, dogs, whatever. But thinking about it...everything “unusual” about the Realm of Flesh is the result of a mistake. It’s not a secret monsters setting on its own, the only reason for anything supernatural are either the Unbidden mucking about, Shadows mucking about or Mortals figuring out how to summon Shadows or The Unbidden (who then muck about) and finally Stalkers coming along to stop all the mucking about. Also other than the Stalkers, anything supernatural seems to be only interested in eating people. But why are the Primal Powers so into their weird Sims game? The implication is that they’ve done this countless times as the universe ends and begins again, as it says that the Realm of Flesh is based on their memories of the last universe. They’re like really boring historical re-enactors and the Stalkers are assigned the task of keeping anything remotely interesting from getting into their Pens and Paperwork game. Anyway, aside over...Shadows. Shadows live in the Neitherspace of the Rift, between the Realms of Flesh and Essence. Since they are a bit of both they can drift along the borders of either Realm, observing mortal activity in the Realm of Flesh seems to be their favorite past-time. Theoretically these drifting Shadows can be communicated with and serve as a source of information but their general weirdness makes it unlikely that they’ll provide any useful insight. Shadows can Awaken under the right circumstances, forcing their way into the Realm of Flesh. Sometimes this happens due to “natural” events in the Realm of Flesh, and Mortals in the know may arrange these events to ensure the creation of Awakened Shadows as a summoning ritual.  Of course the main source of Shadow antagonists are the Minions of the Unbidden. Binding a Shadow basically crushes its will, meaning they serve with total loyalty but once their physical form is destroyed they may be pissed off enough at their former master to Awaken on their own and make a new physical form for revenge. Because Shadows seem to look universally monstrous the Unbidden must construct Husks that make them resemble humans (according to the Unbidden chapter only Architects can do this). This Husk won’t survive any damage however, so if the Shadow is damaged it will claw its way out, revealing its normal form. There’s some guidelines on making Shadows, mostly consisting of just assigning traits based on how difficult you want something to be or how much average damage your PCs inflict. Then we have some example Shadows: Gavandhar (Behemoths)  These guys are loving bonkers. Including one of them would take your game from “surreal cenobyte bounty hunters” to “weirdos with rocket launchers”. Behemoths are huge shadows with an apparent thing for ancient, abandoned ruins. Fitting their huge body into a human Husk requires them to be bound with twenty-eight leather straps and the result is still barely passable as an obese human from a distance. Stat-wise Behemoths are a far tougher fight than most Unbidden, coming with a Fortitude of 30! For those that don’t remember how damage works this means that you have to come up with a roll of 30 or higher (5d6 is “average” damage for a Stalker, with 8d6 being about as high as possible) on damage to inflict any Vitality loss at all. Anything less is going to be completely ignored. This means most attacks will inflict 0 Vitality, with a lucky blow inflicting 1 Vitality (2 is basically impossible). The Behemoth has 12 that you need to carve through. Attack-wise the behemoth gets 3 attacks per round, inflicting good damage with each and inflicts an extra -1 die cap to firearms. So yeah, right out the gate maybe a tad overpowered, especially since they make their boss look like a chump in comparison. Athkar (phantasm)  Athkar are Shadows that haunt mental institutions and people of poor mental health, making them worse. If they manage to get anyone to kill themselves they Awaken and go on the hunt for more human misery and death. Even Awakened they are invisible and intangible to anyone who isn’t Sensitive and mostly work by causing hallucinations which only really affect mortals. The Unbidden can bind them into the bodies of weird-looking birds and mostly use them as guard-dogs to keep mortals out or to get high off of the Athkar’s hallucinations. Stat-wise they aren’t much threat to a Stalker. Bazreth (Bogey Men)  quote:Fairly common in small towns before the advent of television blunted the imagination of the young Way to start off judgey Whispering Vault. I bet you don’t even own a TV. Despite the appearance these guys are some of the more benevolent Shadows, lurking around sleeping children to watch innocent dreams. Since many children are Sensitive they may catch glimpses, resulting in “monsters under the bed” stories. Alternatively they can befriend children, becoming “invisible friends” to them, only fully Awakening in response to trauma inflicted on their friends, becoming physical to avenge them. On their own, they’re nasty looking but basically benevolent. They can be bound by the Unbidden to serve as Minions, usually in the Husk of a weird looking dog or a creepy child. Stat-wise they’ll gently caress a mortal up but aren’t much of a hazard to a Stalker. Rethrett (Cameramen)  One of the most common forms of Shadows in the modern era, they are everywhere by the year 2000, except the UK since for some reason they seem to find the BBC unpleasant. They live “inside” television sets, watching the watchers. quote:Cameramen are Awakened when a viewer loses the ability to distinguish between reality and the phantoms flickering past on the face of the electronic basilisk. Did a TV grope you as a child Whispering Vault, you’re getting awfully preachy all of a sudden. An Awakened Cameraman will constantly change shape with a jumble of wires and limbs (always at least 3), making them easy to fit into a Husk of whatever form. Since their perception stat is really high and they have perfect memories they’re mainly used as lookouts or watchdogs by the Unbidden. They’re also common as dirt in the modern age so it’s ridiculously easy to find one. Otherwise they’re not particularly impressive in combat. Ghann Galowey (Hangmen)  Hangmen are basically just generic slasher villians. They can be Awakened by an offering of blood and silver but after Awakening they must be “incubated” for three days in a fresh grave before rising at full power (like a murder Jesus!). They have two distinct personalities: a goofy, evil idiot and a cold-bloodeded serial killer type. These guys are too unstable to be used for anything other than assassination and it’s largely pointless to stick them in a Husk as their behavior is too bizarre to pass for human. They fight with a hook and rope (which they can conjure at will). If they hit with the hook then they can try and noose a victim, which allows them to hang them from any nearby object or building that is suitable. Thritch Kalvarr (Pain Mothers)  Your standard S&M cyborgs. They lurk in areas of civilization’s decline and can sometimes Awaken upon seeing a crime of passion and drinking the victim’s blood. They are notable in being able to Husk themselves through means of a technique called the Promethean Experiment which gives them a perfectly human Vessel. Their default Vessel is eyeless with translucent flesh. They serve as your standard femme fatales for Unbidden. They have a unique armor mechanic (subtracting 12 from damage before comparing it to fortitude) and a weapon which does minor damage at first but increases the more the victim is struck. If the Pain Mother wounds a Stalker they suffer a reluctance to attack them (2 die penalty) and mortals are almost incapable of it. Stalkers with the Savage Discipline can knock off points of armor. Sanguinalin (Lurkers)  Subway grabiods. These are creatures that are attracted to underground structures (so they’re quite common in modern times) and Awaken spontaneously with no pattern, at which point they start eating people. Considering their Awakening seems inevitable and they’re so drat common you’d think people would have noticed the subway krakens. Lurkers have an entirely optional size, going from as small as a mouse to as large as a whale. Lurkers are popular “heavies” for Unbidden but they’ll burst their Husks every 2d6 days. Despite being able to apparently attain whale-size Lurkers are not really impressive combatants (especially compared to the Behemoth). They have a lot of Vitality but really crappy Fortitude meaning that they’ll be shredded by a party of Stalkers in short order. Offensively they have two tentacle attacks which inflict only middling damage (although they may go berserk getting an extra attack and a bonus damage die which can make them nasty...if it didn’t inflict a major attack penalty). Their size-changing ability isn’t actually mentioned in their stats, although they can apparently turn into liquid and they’re weakened in bright light. Zelun Vhori (Ogyrs)  What is the point in spelling Ogre with a “y” if you’re already giving them a gibberish name? Ogyrs are drawn to mortals and enjoying listening to them but are utterly terrified of being discovered by them, believing that they will die if discovered. This can lead them to panic and Awaken in an attempt to defend themselves. Awakened they are nasty on several levels with iron bones and pores that ooze infectious fluid. They normally decay within a few days unless sustained by specially prepared meals (a technique known by some Mortal Enlightened). Left to their own they’ll flee and hide somewhere until they rot to pieces. They are too stupid to be reasoned with but music may soothe or enrage them...so that’s helpful. Ogyrs are the best muscle out there for Unbidden other than Behemoths but they don’t take to Husks well and scratch them off in 1d6 hours. They aren’t that tough but they’ve got lots of damage potential and have the ability to stun anyone they hit, making them lose their next action...meaning that one-on-one they’re practically unbeatable except for dedicated combat monsters. Especially since the Savage Discipline does no bonus damage to them (because reasons).  Unique Shadows The previous example shadows are “races” or “breeds” of similar beings but many Shadows are unique entities formed from the...whatever...in the Rift. Unique Shadows have an interesting role as the only characters who aren’t pigeonholed by the game in some way. Stalkers hunt the Unbidden, the Unbidden try and remain free and mortals are largely inconsequential except as obstacles. Unique Shadows can have their own goals and, like Stalkers, exist outside of the normal timeline so they can be encountered in multiple Hunts for long term roleplaying. Theoretically they might be able to visit in the Realm of Essence (this aspect of Shadows is never addressed). The book provides a few examples: Shriekblack and Guzz These two Shadow-bros have been together throughout the universe’s history. They’ve learned secrets from the Navigators about traveling the Chronosphere and apparently have a grudge against the Unbidden from a past bit of nastiness. As a result they’re happy to help Stalkers take them down. Shriekblack is an urbane, intelligent and versed in the occult. Guzz kills things. Neither are quite on the level of one of the Unbidden in terms of danger but together they’re a decent challenge but likely they’d be smart enough to avoid the situation in the first place. Abballor the Butcher of Baker Street While Shriekblack and Guzz are meant to be weirdo allies or observers, Abballor is a recurring antagonist, a Shadow serial killer who can appear in any time period and is exceptionally difficult to kill permanently and re-Awakens very easily when defeated. Aballor is a combat brute with a drat impressive Vitality and lots of damage (not quite Behemoth level, but more than enough to gently caress up a Stalker or two), plus the ability to regenerate Vitality at the cost of Resolve (which is a very high 21 to begin with). Main problem with someone like Abballor is that since Stalkers only ever come to the Realm of Flesh for a Hunt they’re going to be in a very tough position if they have to take down Abballor and an Unbidden (remember, Stalkers can’t really heal). Abballor isn’t unbeatable but it will inflict heavy damage to a team’s Vitality and Karma supplies. oriongates fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 20:48
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Fight! - Round 2 Chapter 3: Special Moves (Gear: The Guilty) Special Moves are heart and soul of every Fighter. Built from the same baseline and customized with Elements and Liabilities, they shape your entire fighting style. So it's always nice to have more customization options. There are quite a lot here, so this will probably be the longest entry. The chapter starts of with a little options for Moves for which you can't seem to fill out all slots, which can happen if you're converting a pure support Move that doesn't deal. You can either fill out the slots with stuff like the Increased Glory Element for some extra XP, or reduce the overall cost of the Move. Again, mostly for converting stuff 'cause you can just decrease the Level of the Move for your original creations. New Special Move Liabilities This wonderful section starts off with what might be my favorite Liability: Cheap. This metagame Liability causes the campaign's fictional fighting game community to consider the Move broken and cheesy. As such, you gain no Glory from using it the first time, and additional uses will actually cause you to lose Glory, because only cheaters spam that stuff. The GM can also force the usage of this Liability for Elements or Element combinations that have gotten a bit too overused during the campaign. This could qualify as antagonistic GM behavior, but it seems to be a rather mild case - unless you're that one guy who adds Easy to Combo and Fast Recovery to every single Special Move you make. No Defense and No Movement apply either to all Moves in a Style or a Move with the Buff Element (more on that one later). They do exactly what they sound like and limit your options while you'r under the effect of the Buff or in that Style. Inspirations for these two are probably Hotaru Futaba in her post-Garou appearances, and a lot of characters from Virtua Fighter. Another modifer to a Style is Modified Defense. This lets you have a different distribution of your defensive Skills in a Style, reducing Defense (blocking stuff) in favor of Evasion (avoiding stuff) or Tactics (countering stuff). This lets you make a Fighter who has a Drunken Master Kung-Fu stance that causes him to move unpredictably (Evasion), or a very focused counter stance (Tactics). Could also work for a couple Kamen Riders. Requires Environment Hazard, as you might guess, forces you to be close to a specific type of Environmental Hazard. This pretty much solely exists for wrestling moves that require ropes and corners and stuff. Sidestep Setup is very common for 3D fighting games. You can naturally only use the Move after having sidestepped before, aka evades without moving away form the opponent. Slow Startup is for those Moves that have a slow startup, but you can't quite bring yourself to just reducing the Accuracy. The Move requires more Control to use, and it can't be used at all if your opponent's Iniative is too close to your own. On the one hand these drawbacks are kinda hefty compared to just buying a Move that's one Level higher, but if you have the Control to spare, and there's a consitent gap in Initiative between you and your opponent, you might barely notice this Liability. I like that. Specific Range is for those annoying Moves that will just plain miss the opponent if you're too close to him. Can probably be pretty fun to make a "puzzle boss" that can do completely different stuff depending on the distance. Vulnerability is a pretty nice risk-reward deal: You basically enjoy a free slot for your Move - unless the opponent has higher iniative and decides to wait with his action to interrupt you, in which case you suffer increased damage from that attack. A more severe version turns this extra damage into a short debuff, encouraging both opponents to mess around with the timer. New Special Move Elements Here we get completely new stuff, as well as modifications to existing Elements. The Bomb Element, which creates a bomb that detonates after a while, gets some new options. You can have multiple bombs out at the same time, make it so they only detonate on command, have to shoot at an opponent, or have them not explode at all so shooting is all they do, like Dizzy's floaty bit thingies. Temporary Invulnerability from the corebook is a nice and pricy Element that heavily discourages opponents from trying to interrupt or counter you. If you want a Fighter that is all about that stuff and fear getting curbstomped, you can now get the Breaker Element, which ignores those pesky invincibility frames. This Element is pretty much for those moves in Street Fighter 4 that just power through Focus Attacks. The main downside of Throws has always been their short range. You can build a Special Move with more range that has all the effects of a Throw, but the Throw Element has all of that at a discount. For an alternative option, you can get the Cancel Throw Element. When using a Move with this Element just out of Throw range, you can try a Tactics check to instead cancel into any Throw you have. I think that's a wrestling thing? Not really an Element but more of an optional rule, the GM can decide that counters can be countered, so you can counter while you counter. Create Environmental Hazard is pretty much like the Bomb Element, except you create stuff like pits or walls. If you want, those walls can also be on fire or electrified, or you can use them to reflect projectiles back at the attacker. Before you decide to go crazy with this or the Bomb Element, you should know that these Environmental Hazards can take a bit to wrap your head around, as the abstract map causes each of them to have a different distance from every Fighter. It's best to visualize this as each Hazard adding another lane to the battlefield. On the plus side, if you own Reiner Knizia's wonderful Lord of the Rings board game, you can use the boards from that game to play Fight!.  Not sure if Soul Calibur, or Samurai Shodown. The Evades Ranged Element from the corebook is sort of a newbie trap. Used to not get hit by a ranged attack, one could get the idea that it allows you to get closer to the opponent. Defensive actions however don't let you move around unless they specifically say so, so this is less like Cammy's "duck under projectile and punch the Shoto in the face" move, and more like Zangief's "Spin in place and let the projectile somehow pass through you" moves (I'm terrible at remembering these). It can hit the opponent, but only if he was already within range. But fear not! With Move Before Attack, you can finally be like Cammy. You can now also improve Knock Downs to disallow the downed opponent from doing fancy stuff like Breakfalls and Tech Rolls. If you want them to stay down, you can now make sure of it. The Mobile Element, your go-to element to keep the action close and personal, also gets some new toys to play with. If your Fighter can Wall Spring (either because he bought the ability to do so or everyone in the campaign can do it), you can get a version of Mobile that only works if you can Wall Spring as part of it, though you get extra Accuracy as a compensation. If you really need to cover lots of distance, you can add the Full Screen Element. Though note that the opponent gets a defense bonus if you have to cover the full range (because he can see you coming from a mile away), unless you add another Element to so you can go faster. Multi Hit is an alternative to Increased Damage. Instead of increasing your potential maximum damage, you instead increase your minimum damage. This is obviously meant for Moves that hit several times as part of their animation, but you're not required to use it. Power Dash on the other hand increases your damage when you've just dashed. Power Enhancer from the corebook is an Element meant for Jam Kuradoberi, who has utility Moves that boost some of her actual attack Moves. In Round 2, you can customize this further by not only boosting the damage, but adding new Elements to those moves. So you could boost a Move to knock the enemy away and down. Power Up also from the corebook let you boost damage by either paying more Control (charging up the move) or damaging yourself. Just like with Power Enhancer, you can use the former option to also add specific Elements. This is for characters like Yuri from Art of Fighting and King of Fighters, who in some game appearances can turn her short-range ki blast into a full-range projectile by charging up for a bit. Since Power Up is a bit more dynamic than Power Enhancer, you have to write down what the Move does dependin on how much Control you throw at it. Pursuit is the Element for Moves meant to hit downed opponents, like say Geese Howard's electrifying grab. An interesting modifier to this is the Pursuit Bounce, which hits the downed foe so hard he bounces up for a possible juggle. The Ranged Element from the corebook already featured the Draw Closer Element for all your "Get over here!" needs. Round 2 features an Element that prevents the move from drawing the opponent closer if you don't want to. You can also add an Element that causes your Fighter to get cloesr to the target instead. This doesn't actually change anything in a simple 1-on-1 duel, but has its uses if multiple Fighters and Environmental Hazards are involved. Wall Bounce causes the projectile to bounce off walls to make it harder to avoid. Set Up is for Moves that need to be prepared in order to be used. The Move doesn't do anything when used once, but a second use later will add extra Accuracy to the attack. This is pretty much for characters like Testament who are big into setting up traps, without having to worry about Environmental Hazard rules. This Element can be further modified by limiting access to the rest of your move set while the Move has been set up, but not used. You can even have Moves that are only usable during the Set Up. Basically this is an alternative to giving your character different styles. You can for example build a swordfighter who can ram his sword into the ground, beat people up with Kung Fu and then cause the sword to boomerang back to you. Triggered Interrupt is the defensive cousin of set Up. Instead of setting up an attack in advance, you instead set up a counter in advance to act as an extra layer of defense. These are basically the spiderwebs Testament likes to create. Sidestep Counter is just that, a counter that involves sidestepping. Best used for ring-outs and similar environment shenanigans. Skips Knock Down causes the Move to deal no damage. Why would you want to use it, then? Well, it can cancel out Knock Down effects, allowing you to use a Knock Down Move in the middle of a combo. Holy crap, this actually is a Reset. Summon is Zappa and Zato-1/Eddie, the Element: you summon a tag buddy that moves with you and hangs around for a while or until you're hit. This summon can't be attacked by an opponent and essentially acts as an enhancer to your normal attacks. If you use a Basic Move, the summon will do so, too. Further Elements to the Summon Move don't do anything for the Move itself, but instead provide a pool of Elements the summon can slap onto its Basic Move, one at a time. If you can avoid getting hit and keep the time count low, this is a pretty scary rushdown tool.  True martial artists find a balance between badass and whimsy. Super Counter is a bit like the Throw Element in that it is a cost-efficient package of other Elements. In this case, it's a Move that can only be used as a counter, costs Super Energy to be used and knocks the opponent down without a chance to Breakfall or Tech Roll. If you've played Street Fighter Alpha 1-3, this is pretty much an Alpha Counter. Super Energy is a nifty Element for flashy fighters in that it generates more Super Energy than other Moves on a hit. Suppression from the corebook is a pretty scary Element that can cause the opponent to temporary become immobile or unable to use Special Moves. Round 2 lets you throw additional Element slots to further boost the latter effect. Want the opponent to also be unable to user Super Moves, or even Basic Moves? You can do that. Want to have the opponent be temporarily incapable of doing anything aside from dodging your attacks (like say after polymorphing them into a small animal)? You can do that, too. Pretty costly, but just as lulzy. Weapon Break is a very specific Element meant to evoke Samurai Shodown (specifically the 2nd game): It can only be added to Super Moves and is only allowed in campaigns where everyone has a weapon, aka just the right kind of campaign to benefit from more weapon-specific rules. This nasty Element - as you might've already guessed - breaks the opponent's weapon, forcing him to rely on Basic Moves (which now deal less damage) for a while until a replacement weapon is thrown into the ring for him to pick up. Wind Up is for characters like Balrog who can keep a Move buffered in the background by just holding down a button. Instead of using the move directly, you can decide to delay it. The longer you wait before actually using it, the more damage it will deal. As a downside, any Move you do in the meantime costs additional Control (it's awkward to keep fighting while one finger and button are on lockdown). Buffs This one's so big it gets an entire section on its own. It's what happens if you pick the Power Enhancer and Style Changer and crank it up to 11. Best suited as a Super Move because of all the slots it can take up, the Buff Element lets you radically alter your Fighter. You can not only alter your defense like the Modified Defense, but you can also alter your Basic Qualities, switching points around or just straight up increasing all of them. And not only can you add Elements to Moves, but you can also switch them out for new ones, which lets you essentially replace a Special Move. This is pretty much the Element of choice to make something like Sol Badguy's Dragon Install, or other cases of going Super Saiyan. There's also a bunch of different modifiers to Buff to get just the right kind of Buff you want: Normally the Buff is only temporary. You can make it last for the rest of the fight if you throw enough additional Elements at it, but this will cause you to constantly lose Fighting Spirit, which can get you into trouble if your opponent survives long enough. Alternatives to the normal duration tie the Buff to either your Super Bar or a dedicated buff Gauge. You can also make the whole thing cheaper by adding stuff like "You lose Life Bar each turn" or "You become stunned at the end of the Buff". And if you want Super Saiyan 2 or even 3, you can make a cumulative stat booster Move. Can't be stacked up more than 3 times (no Super Saiyan 4 for you) and there's a hard cap as to how high your Basic Qualities can get, though you'll still be very scary. This is the only way to increase those Basic Qualities, after all. If that wasn't enough, you can add an Element to a Special Move that lets it end a specific Buff early, which would be most helpful for Buffs that drain your Super Energy or Life Bar. Adding Liabilities to Attack Strings Attack Strings are Fight!'s way to emulate 3D fighting game's love for huge list of combos with unique effects without actually having to bother with the huge list. You instead can make combos consisting of Basic Moves where you can trade in hits for Elements. Also you can make combos out of combos, which is always fun. With this optional rule, you can cancel out these Elements by choosing from a small list of Liabilities. So you could make an Attack String that causes the opponent to bounce, but has Slow Recovery as a result. Or one that ends with the opponent getting knocked down, but causes you do go down as well. Next Time: Super Moves. I'm gonna take you for a ride, and then finish you. Doresh fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 23:04
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 Double Cross: What Are These Dice Even Doing I got Double Cross entirely because of this thread, and I've been doing a few preparations to play and/or run it (depending on my luck). Among those preparations was simulating use of the check system—I wanted to know what kind of results a character could expect to get when rolling something they're good at, and how valuable each of the three types of roll bonus present in Double Cross (dice bonuses, flat bonuses, and critical value reduction) would be in various situations. So what I'm going to do is start out by talking about something completely different to introduce the sort of graphs I'll be using (made with AnyDice) and provide a point of comparison. For this digression, I'll use what I consider a much more typical check system, that of the  In the Chronicles of Darkness, you roll a pool consisting of your stat + skill + any other modifiers. The result is described in terms of the number of successes. 8s, 9s, and 10s all count as one success each, and with 10s you count them as a success then get to reroll them (a rule known as 10-again). The results of that are shown above. In all, it gives a fairly smooth distribution. It's not a bell curve, but for the most part the mode (most common value) is pretty close to the average. That average itself is extremely predictable, too. As shown on the graph legend, the average increases by exactly 1/3rd of a success per die.  Failure is quite common with 1 or 2 dice, with reliability increasing as your dice pool goes up. It's easy to see the exact chance of failure (0 successes) on the normal graph, but there will often be circumstances where you want to check your chances of getting, say, at least 3 successes. I use this viewing mode all the time, because it makes it simple to see that 3 or more successes happen a bit less than 25% of the time on 5 dice, or a bit more than 50% of the time on 8 dice.  Chronicles of Darkness dice have a slight complicating factor, which is that the 10-again rule I mentioned can be modified so that 9s, or even 8s can be rerolled. Fortunately, Chronicles of Darkness lacks many of the dice tricks that other games like Exalted might feature, and also eschews the old World of Darkness's variable target numbers, so the benefit of N-again is known exactly. With 10-again, each die is worth 1/3rd of a success (~0.333). With 9-again each is 3/8ths of a success (0.375), and with 8-again each is 3/7ths of a success (~0.429). As seen above, the benefit certainly exists, but is not huge. Also, it only affects the chances of getting more than one success, because all dice that can be rerolled are already worth 1 success under any of the roll-again rules. Alright. Let's get into Double Cross. For an example, we'll roll sample character Speeding Bullets using her "Blinding Bullets" combo, she can use after making some guns out of cosmic sand with Hundred Guns. The combo consists of Concentrate (a power that makes her power use better), Miniscule Dust (a power that boosts ranged attacks by improving her perception), Penetrate (a power that makes the attack ignore armor), and Multi-Weapons (a power that lets her use shoot several weapons at once for a damage boost). Mechanically, this attack is quite straightforward, especially since her character sheet has a "Combo" entry adding the bonuses, attack effects, and costs together. The relevant part for us is that for her accuracy check, she rolls 8 dice with a critical value of 8.  Wait, what? Double Cross's roll system was included in Cyphoderus's writeup, but in the unlikely event that you don't remember the mechanics from a Japanese RPG that had its roll system described in a FATAL & Friends post more than 3 years ago, I'll generously recapitulate. Explanation time: In Double Cross, you roll a number of d10s determined by your stat, and then add your skill; the result of this calculation is called your "score". Dice bonuses will increase the number of d10s you roll, and score bonuses are simply added at the end along with skill. I'm totally ignoring the existence of flat bonuses for all of these graphs, because they don't change the score distribution, they just shift it to the right; +1 score bonus is always worth exactly +1 score. Much like in CofD, there's a system by which dice at or above a certain number (by default 10) are rerolled. Also like in CofD, the number at which rerolls occur can be reduced. Unlike in CofD, it's totally batshit. When at least one of your dice pool is showing at or above the critical value (default 10), take all those dice and reroll them as a new pool, except you give your final result a +10 bonus. This can happen multiple times, and all of the non-critical dice from the previous pool are ignored. That's what leads to the discontinuity in the above graph. It's not because Speeding Bullets has a crazy power combo, it's just a consequence of how the critical hit system works. With a critical value of 8, all 8s, 9s, and 10s are rerolled. It adds 10 every time, so the ones digit of the final result cannot be 8, 9, or 0. The dot at 50 score on the above graph is not actually a possible roll, AnyDice just stops rolling there because of the function depth limit I've imposed, so the "chance of a result of 50" on the above graph is really the sum of all chances of >50 results. (When a crit is rolled, the entire previous pool ceases to matter aside from how many crits it got. Using that to dramatically reduce the number of possibilities AnyDice was searching is the only reason my program executes fast enough to avoid the 5 second timeout limit that site has. Jasper Flick, the maker of AnyDice, helped me with fix that—my original attempt at simulating Double Cross rolls was much more computationally expensive and suffered a timeout failure if I let it reroll more than once.)  Here's the "at least" version of the same graph. I much prefer this, especially with a distribution as wonky as Double Cross's. The legend on the previous graph listed the mean, but here I can actually see that Speeding Bullets rolls single digits on her attack only very rarely. She gets >15 around 75% of the time, and >21 about 50% of the time. Now that I've mostly finished my explanations, it's time to post more graphs, with a few short summaries of what I think the important points are for players.  Above is a graph with varying dice pools. Increasing the number of dice improves the reliability with which you can hit at least 1 crit substantially, but suffers diminishing returns. At critical value 10, the default (which you'll probably be rolling on most of the time), adding dice improves your average score more until you hit 3 dice. After that, flat score bonuses are equal or better for your average result.  Above is a graph with 8 dice and varying critical values. Decreasing the critical value increases your average score a lot, gives you a much better chance of double crits and above, and each point of critical value reduction is worth more than the last. The Concentrate power, which reduces your critical value by its level when combined with other powers, is very good. I can see why the simplified character generation method forces you to buy it.  As the previous graph, but with 6 dice instead of 8. Those two missing dice are worth more the lower the CV is, and the CV isn't worth as much score with fewer dice.  Using extremely low pool sizes here to demonstrate something, which is that CV gives a greater average score improvement than adding an extra die here, but the extra die is much better for reliably hitting <10 score targets. Score targets in this system for average tasks are around 8, and go up to 14 for very difficult tasks. Anything above that, I suspect you're only likely to see in opposed checks vs other Overeds.  There are a number of powers in Double Cross that give people a +1 critical value penalty. I initially thought they were tres lame, but this graph shows exactly why they aren't. Yeah, critical value can go to 11. And if it does, you straight-up cannot crit. No matter how lucky you are, your roll can't go above 10. Flat bonuses still exist, and your enemies can always roll poorly, but it's a very substantial malus.  Lastly, once you've made your attack using the above weirdo math, you roll damage dice. One d10, plus another for every 10 in your attack score. This results in some rather reasonable and pretty predictable-looking damage values. (Which is very good. Encounter tuning would be literal hell if the damage curves looked like Speeding Bullets's combo attack roll up there.) Emy fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Feb 12, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 23:39
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I really want to know what they were called in Japanese to translate it into 'overed'. Double Cross is a cool game and statistical analysis of its rolling system can only help.
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Feb 11, 2017 23:45
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I love funky dice mechanics where the writer actually knew what he was doing (for the most part, at least). I might "borrow" the DX rules with some tinkering, like using d6s.
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Feb 11, 2017 23:50
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Night10194 posted:I really want to know what they were called in Japanese to translate it into 'overed'. Not knowing anything about the Japanese version, I am totally willing to bet that every silly bit of weird terminology was in English.
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Feb 11, 2017 23:53
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Ratoslov posted:Not knowing anything about the Japanese version, I am totally willing to bet that every silly bit of weird terminology was in English. They have had more English terminology because the Gjaum were called "Germ".
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Feb 11, 2017 23:56
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I am totally in favour of a series that reveals how many games (in particularly in the 90s/early 00s) were just making an original system for the sake of having an original house system and had no loving idea what they were actually trying to achieve mechanically. I'm looking at you, White Wolf, LUG, Eden, DP9, and like 6 other companies.
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Feb 12, 2017 00:04
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Halloween Jack posted:I am totally in favour of a series that reveals how many games (in particularly in the 90s/early 00s) were just making an original system for the sake of having an original house system and had no loving idea what they were actually trying to achieve mechanically. I'm going to say nearly all of them.
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Feb 12, 2017 00:06
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Hey Doresh, that throw element feature you discussed is the Street Fighter feature of option select. You press a combination of attack buttons and a direction, so if you dont have the distance for a throw it tosses out the punch but if you do it does the throw. It can also be used defensively to tech against throws which helped make SFIV defense feel extra stout.
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Feb 12, 2017 00:14
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It turns out I totally forgot something, which I've also edited into my prior post. There are a number of powers in Double Cross that give people a +1 critical value penalty. I initially thought they were tres lame, but this graph shows exactly why they aren't. Yeah, critical value can go to 11. And if it does, you straight-up cannot crit. No matter how lucky you are, your roll can't go above 10. Flat bonuses still exist, and your enemies can always roll poorly, but it's a very substantial malus. Night10194 posted:I really want to know what they were called in Japanese to translate it into 'overed'. It turns out it's just "オーヴァード", the English not-quite-word "Overed" transliterated into Japanese.
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Feb 12, 2017 00:20
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Halloween Jack posted:I am totally in favour of a series that reveals how many games (in particularly in the 90s/early 00s) were just making an original system for the sake of having an original house system and had no loving idea what they were actually trying to achieve mechanically. Whispering Vault is especially bad about that because I find the rolling system almost completely opaque probability-wise and while I can manage some basic functions with anydice I have no idea how to translate "roll Xd6, take the highest single roll or the highest sum of matching dice" into something that it would understand I'm actually not commenting on a lot of stats just because I have no freaking idea what is "high" or "low" for most characters, and I don't think the designers actually did either.
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Feb 12, 2017 02:03
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Whispering Vaults feels like it's an incomplete game
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Feb 12, 2017 03:01
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i don't know who thought "an rpg where you play as the cenobites from hellraiser" was a niche crying out to be filled
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Feb 12, 2017 03:09
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oriongates posted:Whispering Vault is especially bad about that because I find the rolling system almost completely opaque probability-wise and while I can manage some basic functions with anydice I have no idea how to translate "roll Xd6, take the highest single roll or the highest sum of matching dice" into something that it would understand So, I assume it's something like this?  "At least" mode graph of highest single-or-sum-of-matching-dice on 1d6 through 6d6. IDK what normal ability scores are like in Whispering Vault. AnyDice link. edit: the normal mode graph of that is also a treat. 
Emy fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Feb 12, 2017 |
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Feb 12, 2017 03:14
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The probability curves for Cthulhutech are similarly hosed but since it's using d10s instead of d6s the variance is all over the loving place. It also lets you use poker straights.
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Feb 12, 2017 03:30
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Kurieg posted:The probability curves for Cthulhutech are similarly hosed but since it's using d10s instead of d6s the variance is all over the loving place. It also lets you use poker straights. The vast majority of complex die rolling mechanics are because the author thought they sounded clever or cool, and no other reason.
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Feb 12, 2017 03:32
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it also makes it borderline impossible to adjudicate task difficulty, since 36 isn't that much harder to achieve than 37, which is to say that they're both basically impossible.
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Feb 12, 2017 03:37
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This is basically how Greg Stolze's ORE came about, isn't it?
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Feb 12, 2017 03:37
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Cassa posted:This is basically how Greg Stolze's ORE came about, isn't it? Yes, anecdotally it developed as a result of him going around to various WoD writers, asking "what's the difference between raising the target number and penalizing the dice pool, and when should I do either?" and not really getting more than a "well just, like, use your discretion, man" as a response.
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Feb 12, 2017 04:03
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 03:01 |
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Any chance we can see a chart of the new 7th Sea's dice probabilities?
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Feb 12, 2017 04:23
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