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Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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It absolutely is. The trick is taking repurchases of the combat Talents, because those add directly to SLs on successful rolls, and that matters. Also, a lot of big foes have low armor and just massive HP pools instead.

e: The other trick is most enemies won't have Talents..

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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Also it seems like once you have enough SL boosting stuff Damaging becomes a vestigial trait on a weapon.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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I'm not sure if it does; it's unclear if Damaging's swap is applied before or after the SL-boosters are applied. To make it still useful I'd probably say before.

e: that is to say, I'd say that Damaging takes your raw, unboosted SLs and swaps them rather than your SLs after the bonus SLs are added.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

So in WFRP, basically only humans have any access to divine magic? Does the game ever dig into whether that's a consequence of something special about humans, their gods, or their method of worship?

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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The Elves are absolutely certain it's a stupid back-asswards way of using arcane magic.

One of the theories about it is that it's part of why Humans are so easily corrupted by Chaos - they're just super easily influenced by spiritual beings, and in the positive that takes the form of gods granting divine power.

e: that said, the Lizardmen seem to have the same sort of thing going on with Sotek, and the Orcs will say their magic comes from Gork and Mork, so.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

PurpleXVI posted:

So in WFRP, basically only humans have any access to divine magic? Does the game ever dig into whether that's a consequence of something special about humans, their gods, or their method of worship?

There are hints here and there, but it's left to be the kind of thing that you can run with in your own campaigns if you want or leave as a curiosity if you prefer.

It is important, though, that the Bret book specifically points out that it's curious how the Lady's Damsels are ostensibly human priestesses, but are only ever seen using Arcane magic and that the Lady grants no miracles nor inspires any human Priests.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Elves are too stuck up to truly bow to another being which fits IC. You could consider Dwarven Loremasters a form of priests albeit dwarves already have barely any connection with the winds in the first place, although they can still do runesmithing so a priest isn't too far out honestly.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation

An enemy God approaches!

Plenty of peoples and places have mistaken powerful spirits and monsters for Gods. This is most common in Norsca, where individual tribes will add Demon Princes and Greater Demons to their pantheons, rather than worshiping the creature's master more directly, after particularly profitable or terrifying encounters. It wouldn't be uncommon to find a tribe that venerates Valkia the Bloody Handed, Khorne's Demon Princess wife, rather than Khorne directly. The table of Enemy Gods mentions Hashut of the Chaos Dwarfs, but sadly he doesn't get more of a write-up here. Our first actual enemy god is Gork and Mork, the Biggest of all orcs. The orcs worship Gork and Mork as something for all orcs to aspire to: They're big, they get in lots of big fights, they fight each other all the time, they fight other Gods, and they fight orcs that get big and bad enough to give 'em a proper scrap. Gettin' stomped by Gork n' Mork would be an honor. They worship them by building giant shrines of orc poo poo in places they've conquered, to show the orcs have conquered it, and by sacrificing 'cowards, prisoners, and allies who don't get out of the way fast enough'.

Ogres have a God called the Great Maw. They won't explain what the Great Maw is, just that it can eat anything, and by eating anything it can gain the power of anything. The Ogres worship it with grand displays of competitive eating and showing off how fat they are (often by having belly-ramming wrestling contests), but as much of Ogre society revolves around grand displays of competitive eating and showing off how fat they are, uh, it can be really hard to tell when it's religious and when it's just what they want to do all the time.

Beastmen and Marauders all worship the Dark Gods, obviously.

Most scholars who admit (or who are permitted to know) Skaven exist believe the Skaven are just normal Chaos Worshipers; the common theory is that they're just unusually smart rat beastmen. Usually, they're just assumed to be Nurglites (which is actually probably true of Clan Pestilens, and would likely cause another immense rat civil war if it came to light) Others claim they have their own God, a God who demands they conquer the world rather than blow it up and melt it into evil Chaos mush. This is the Horned Rat, and his commandment to his squeaking minions is INHERIT-INHERIT! Some humans turn to worshiping the Horned Rat because they are very, very stupid and think the insane nazi rats will make them preening pawleader over their own human communities, rather than realizing the ratmen known for constant betrayal and racism will just eat them and then resume enslaving their people.

In addition to these outright Enemy Gods, there are the outlawed Gods. The most prominent among these is Khaine. Khaine is not quite Kaela-Mensha-Khaine, the Elf God of Totally Not Being Khorne We Swear. He is more of a human re-imagining, a God of Murder and Assassins. His cults are pretty bog standard thrill kill cults, except part of the thrill is leaving marks of your God on the body before ritualistically dumping it in the bay or a dark alley behind a house of ill repute. Khaine is unusual in that he is actually a legitimate deity, and part of the Classical Pantheon; it's just that his worship is totally illegal because it can't be done without, you know, murdering people with a ritualistic knife across the throat. So even though he's known as non-Chaos and acknowledged in myth as Morr's lovely brother (which must tick off elves), if his cultists are caught they go to the pyre or the headsman's axe.

Most of those who worship Khaine don't really do it for the thrill, but rather because they are actually professional murderers. Assassination is hardly that uncommon in setting. The problem is that once you're an actual Priest or Cultist of Khaine, he demands you keep killing people. You aren't to rush, and you aren't to get caught, but you need to kill, and enjoy killing. A cultists of Khaine is permitted to take satisfaction in causing what looks like an accident, as opposed to a Khornate who wants to do it loud and messy. They like setting up intricate pattern-killings and challenging investigators to catch them. So yes, Khaine is not just the God of Assassins but also the God of Serial Killers, for your Verenan Investigator to hunt down and solve; the adventure seeds for Khaine are all 'man do your players like murder mysteries, because these guys love causing murder mysteries.'

We also get a really interesting side-note saying that while the High Elves would find the crazed murder-cults of human Khainites really weird and abhorrent, they're actually very close to the sorts of insanity and corruption the Druchii have gotten up to over in Canada. Implying that both the humans and Druchii have misinterpreted Khaine in their desire to be massive edgelords, and managed to do so in the same way. I'm pretty sure if you told a Dark Elf their religious ceremonies were very human, they'd be extremely cross with you.

Khaine isn't the only outlawed God, though he is the only one who will be getting a full spell list and ways to play (or make as a villain) a Khainite priest later in the book. We already has mention of Stromfels, the evil shark God aspect that Manaan's cult fights all the time. But we get two more interesting, if brief, descriptions of outlawed Gods. One of them is Vylmar, the Party God. The Empire used to have a totally legit party god of drinking, celebration, and having a good time. However, the Sigmarites felt uncomfortable with the Party God, and eventually decided he must just be Slaanesh (wrongly). They outlawed his worship, killed his people, etc many centuries ago. This has greatly strengthened cults of Slaanesh throughout the Empire, because it left people with no legitimate God of parties, and people are not going to stop having parties. Even worse, Slaaneshi will now pose as underground Vylmar worshipers to lure people in with the promise of fun and normal parties, before getting them crazy drunk or hopped up on mushrooms and getting them into Slaaneshi stuff instead. There is also Solden, the God of Tyranny, who is mostly a God of being a massive dick to everyone. Some scholars believe he may be a weird Law God opposite of Chaos, but his worship is incompatible with living in normal society as it generally forms crazy personality cults around a powerful cult leader who can do whatever they wish with their followers. I think Solden is a reference to the old and long-ago dropped 'Order' Gods who were supposed to be Moorcockian Law God dicks to match Chaos, which were thankfully dropped from the setting.

Next Time: Heresies and Chaos Cults.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Vylmar is not mentioned at all in 4e, I suspect because Rhya kind of absorbed the idea of a non-Chaos god of pleasure and partying and making Sigmarites intensely uncomfortable.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I really, really like that change with Rhya in 4e. It was a great idea. It was already there a little in 2e, but it was a great thing to expand on.

E: I'd still keep Vylmar around as a pre-Imperial god that got dropped, though. I like him as a good, concrete example of the Sigmarites going 'CHAOS!? IS THIS CHAOS!?' and then inadvertently making things worse.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Sep 26, 2018

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Night10194 posted:

I really, really like that change with Rhya in 4e. It was a great idea. It was already there a little in 2e, but it was a great thing to expand on.

E: I'd still keep Vylmar around as a pre-Imperial god that got dropped, though. I like him as a good, concrete example of the Sigmarites going 'CHAOS!? IS THIS CHAOS!?' and then inadvertently making things worse.

Personally, I'd say Vylmar got displaced by Esmerelda via cultural bleedover. The halflings have a perfectly serviceable party goddess, and her origins as a halfling goddess could make Sigmarites very uncomfortable about trying to persecute her and those partying in her name. Who wants to be the Witch Hunter hunting halflings of all things?

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Mors Rattus posted:

Vylmar is not mentioned at all in 4e, I suspect because Rhya kind of absorbed the idea of a non-Chaos god of pleasure and partying and making Sigmarites intensely uncomfortable.

They must also drive Ulricans up the wall. At least the priesthood.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

I think the only thing I ever really disliked about the WFRP cosmology/divinity stuff was the idea/possibility that if you managed to shut the door to Chaos, you'd also be slamming the door on the benevolent/natural deities. It just feels like making things pointlessly more meaningless.

"Ha ha! You can't have this nice thing unless you also have an all-consuming force attempting to melt your entire planet into chaos sludge!"

That's the sort of meaningless/fatalistic poo poo that's at home in 40k, not Fantasy.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Dawgstar posted:

They must also drive Ulricans up the wall. At least the priesthood.

And the thing of it is, no one can say anything, because Rhya was there first. No matter who you are, Rhya was there first.

(It has quietly also made gay marriage totally acceptable in the Empire because is anyone really going to argue with the Rhyans when they say it's not only okay but questioning it is going against the explicit expressed will of the Goddess of Fertility?)

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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PurpleXVI posted:

I think the only thing I ever really disliked about the WFRP cosmology/divinity stuff was the idea/possibility that if you managed to shut the door to Chaos, you'd also be slamming the door on the benevolent/natural deities. It just feels like making things pointlessly more meaningless.

"Ha ha! You can't have this nice thing unless you also have an all-consuming force attempting to melt your entire planet into chaos sludge!"

That's the sort of meaningless/fatalistic poo poo that's at home in 40k, not Fantasy.

It's more that Sigmarites are uptight and overzealous, and while they hunt Chaos they also hunt things that are vaguely similar to Choas but not actually bad. You can have the nice thing! It'd be totally fine!

The Witch Hunters just don't believe you.

E: and are explicitly wrong about it; the Empire, for all the good it does, is led by a bunch puritanical prudes who think all fun is dangerous.

Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Sep 26, 2018

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Mors Rattus posted:

And the thing of it is, no one can say anything, because Rhya was there first. No matter who you are, Rhya was there first.

(It has quietly also made gay marriage totally acceptable in the Empire because is anyone really going to argue with the Rhyans when they say it's not only okay but questioning it is going against the explicit expressed will of the Goddess of Fertility?)

The more I think about a goddess of fertility being just dandy with homosexuality and providing free and 100% effective birth control no questions asked, the more I like it. Easy to imagine a Rhyan priestess explaining that nothing makes Rhya more sad than an unwanted child, or happier than a couple who want to have children and are ready for it. Infertility, injuries, and homosexuality be damned, if you want children and are ready to give them a good home, Rhya is here for you.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
The Orlanthi approach!

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cythereal posted:

The more I think about a goddess of fertility being just dandy with homosexuality and providing free and 100% effective birth control no questions asked, the more I like it. Easy to imagine a Rhyan priestess explaining that nothing makes Rhya more sad than an unwanted child, or happier than a couple who want to have children and are ready for it. Infertility, injuries, and homosexuality be damned, if you want children and are ready to give them a good home, Rhya is here for you.

They were already going this direction in 2e, after all, with the Daughters of Rhya sect and the fact that the Rhyans can make Maiden's Charms (according to Realms of Sorcery), which are just a 100% safe side-effect free birth control method a woman can wear. It's not a sudden change in fluff, just emphasizing something that was there more, and in a good way.

E: Also, I would probably still keep Vylmar's outlawing as part of the history specifically because it adds some bite to the Sigmarites always running around accusing everything of being Chaos. It isn't always an idle threat; there was that one time they executed most of the priesthood of a legitimate, non-Chaos God for looking too much like a Chaos God and wiped out his worship.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Sep 26, 2018

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

Mors Rattus posted:

If the creature is smaller than its target, it gets +10 to hit. I'm not sure if this applies to PCs - it'd mean that most PCs can wipe the floor with small foes, but there aren't that many of those. Halflings are like triple hosed against most creatures, though, in melee! Because this isn't the only rules. Those defending against attacks from larger targets get -2 SLs per step smaller they are when using Melee to oppose.


Think you misunderstood here. A creature smaller then it's target gets +10 to hit their targets. So smaller creatures can more easily hit bigger creatures.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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2014-2018

MonsterEnvy posted:

Think you misunderstood here. A creature smaller then it's target gets +10 to hit their targets. So smaller creatures can more easily hit bigger creatures.

Oh no, I know what that meant. I just probably phrased it poorly - halflings are triple hosed because they're smaller than everything, and two sizes smaller than poo poo like, uh, horses.

+10 to hit doesn't really make up for Terror 2 from any mounted foe.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Who ever actually played halflings, anyway?

WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.
Returner Games-FFRPG 3e
FFRRPG Part 1: Standard poo poo

I was going to do BESM 3e, but eh never played it and i'll need time to digest it. Let's go with something I know, Something I know all too well. As I helped develop it for far too long, and I can tell you inside secrets of why it's a broken pile.

I'm going to rush my way a bit through chapters 0, 1, 2, 3 Because bluntly, none of this is the fun stuff.

Chapter 0- Introduction

This is your standard introductory chapter plus some stuff on final fantasy games as well, as well as a history of the franchise up to when the game was made and a chapter list, which you've seen if you've been here because of the games online lay out.
Nothing fancy, it's serviceable and functionable and I can't mock it. We will begin mocking soon.

Chapter 1- Playguide

Oh good, terrible mechanics FINALLY.
Not a lot sadly, but some.

Skills are percentile and range from 1 to 100.
There's a lovely difficulty chart which places heroic, you know the poo poo you should be doing, at -60. So enjoy a max 40% chance of success at mastery.
Since I'm mentioning skills and I never want to mention their abortion of a half assed skill system again. I'll note that your base chance of success is Attribute*3+10%, but if you put even one point in a skill you use that, you start at said 1%.

The skill system is so tacked on and weird because we get a much better system that fits the games blatantly combat priorities immediatly after.

Intuitive magic, if you want to use magic the GM looks at what you want to do, checks some keywords based on your class to see if it makes sense, then slaps an mp cost on it and it works.
This is good, it resolves instantly no muss, no fuss.

Great we are done.

Chapter 2- Giant Piles of Numers, I mean Character Creation

At this point you get to assign 40 stat points(though you don't know what they do or what your class needs) but here let me group the stats for you.

Vit is hp and magic armor.
Spd is initiative and dodge.
Spr is mp magic armor and magic dodge.
Str/Agi/Mag are all the same thing, they multiply your damage by your stat, if your class needs more than one ignore it right now and pick another.

These are limited by racial limits which are recovered in the races chapter but why explain that? All the rules for races are right here.
So instead of races being anything interesting they SOLELY determine stat caps starting and end game, maybe it'd be somewhat if they affected starting and everyone was human for end game stats but nope! There are no unique bonuses, no anything except stat caps. Here let me just chop down the race list to what matters.
Human- 10s in everything, absolutely worthless.
Mithra- 12 Agi, 12 Spd, If you are an AGI using class this is the best you get.
Qu- Remember quina from FFIX? Nor do I! But she has one of the few relevant races, 13Mag, 13Spr, 11Vit.
Tarutaru- 12 Mag, 15 Spr, 11 spd, generally better than Qu, but Qu offer more bulk if you want to be a bit tankier these two are the only time you get a meaningful choice.
Yeti- 13 Str, 15 Vit, the perfect race for every fighter build! You might say "But clearly if my fighter type uses mp Yeti are bad right?" Nope! Yeti have 10 spirit so they even make the perfect paladins.

Great now that your party is tiny midgits giant yeti's and a giant cartoon mouth, we can go to the giant pile of derived stats.
Oh but before that advantages and disadvantages.
I don't generally consider the disadvantages worth taking as they are all combat based and a giant opening for the GM to screw you, and that's what it will feel like getting screwed a disadvantage that is only relevant when the GM decides you should take double damage. However a few disadvantages are absolutely worth it because they don't materially affect you, 1 free point for making your mage blind? Weapon inability tanks your weapon skills and makes it so you can't crit, but only two classes care about that(it's 3 points too!).

Then is the combat modifiers aka giant pile of derived stats.
Mind/Dex- Same thing diffrent stat, these are your status hit chances modified by target evasion. Mind is modified by mag, Dex by Agi, hope your fighter type's statuses are flat %.
Accuracy- Uses Weapon skill(ewwww skills) and Agi with a class bonus, the AGI isn't relevant here because your fighter will have 130% before anything or just 30% because you took weapon inability and spammed your specials.
Magic Accuracy- It's accuracy, but for magic, and starts at 100. Why magic doesn't auto hit outside statuses, I don't know, why accuracy needs weapon skills and doesn't start at 100% I don't know. Why Accuracy is not just base 100% and evade can make you miss, I REALLY don't know.
Evade/M.Evade- Reduce the chance of success of anything that might miss, oh by the way there is no level bonus to these unlike accuracy, and if you aren't the right attack stat these tank further.
Hp/Mp- These do what you think, except the +1 per 2 points of vit/spr per level ISN'T retroactive, but IS retroactive on characters made at higher levels. So make sure to kill your character off mid campaign to get back your hp/mp. Did I mention most of the playtesting was at high levels?
Arm/M.Arm- So I saved these for last because they are dumb, they subtract flat amounts of damage from attacks(already dumb) and are % modified by vit/spr yes %modified, so you might think "Man I'm taking a lot of mag damage i could use some spirit", don't your heavy armor has no base M.Arm to speak of that spirit can modify.

Then there's rules on leveling up i'll ignore the numbers and tell you they assumed people would level about once a session, in a system where end game is 70ish level system. Where almost all playtesting went into the 60+ range.

Chapter 3- Races

I covered this, it has a bunch of useless flavor text but the only relevant poo poo was covered.
Yets, Mithra, Qu and Tarutaru only need apply.

Am I done rushing through the standard or fiddly bits, good time to get to the classes. Remember how I said they playtested mostly high level end game stuff? It's going to show, it's going to show SO HARD.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Oct 3, 2018

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

JcDent posted:

Blue Peacock starved the chicken to death.

Pigeon Cruise Missile let the pigeon go down in a blaze of glory.

Only if the mine didn’t get detonated. Doesn’t get much more blaze of glory than a 10kt nuclear fireball.

WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.
FFRRPG Part 2: Warrior Jobs, Part 1

So first off, I'm going to be talking about these jobs some what in depth. Secondly I'm going to at the end of my review give each job a Playable Level rating, That is to say at which the job can be called complete and new abilities are expanding the tool kit rather than giving you the basics.

I also should explain how warrior abilities WORK instead of having mp costs, they have initiative penalties. This means their costs actually matter, this means there's some variance in what you can use since you never want to pay more init than you have(taking multiple turns), and it means you can ignore SPR entirely. But your GM can drop a status on you while your attacks are charging.
God this is such a better system than MP.
Oh they also completely ignore accuracy and your weapons properties except damage, so ignore that death touch and go for the stat stick.

Archer
Our first off is the archer, the stat line is a little disappointing(these class stats are added to your race stats to determine your actual caps as you level.)
15 Str and 15 Agi, That strength is solely because bows are strength weapons, boomerangs, crossbows and guns aren't.

Level 1- Take Aim, This auto hits for 100% damage and while normally attacks don't apply weapon abilities this does with a +30% chance of any status effects except ranged weapons use ammo not weapon abilities.
Level 8- Charge Shot, This is kind of awesome it does 125% damage and you can at higher levels pay more initiative to deal more damage, most classes waste multiple slots for this privilege.
Level 15- Leg Aim, this inflicts immobilize which drops evade to 0 and disables reactions it's useful at low levels(where evade can be relevant) and for enemies with reactions.
Level 22- Arm Aim, this inflicts disable which disables the attack, guard, and item commands. Ie by this level nothing relevant.
Level 29- Mind Blow, For a whopping -10 init you attack their MP rather than hp, yeah skip it.
Level 36- Table Turner, This is neat in that it ADDS their armor to their damage, it's not neat in that it only does 100% damage for -12 init.
Level 43- Arrow Guard, Add your level to evasion against ranged attacks, considering you have shields this isn't AWFUL.
Level 50- Barrage, This lets you do 100% weapon damage to all enemies for -16 init(crap), but it applies weapon abilities AND ammo(amazing).
Level 57- Triple Foul, Applies confuse, disable and silence this would be amazing if it wasn't single target and -18 init.
Level 64- Unlimited Shot, your first shot has a 100% hit rate, second 90%, third 80% etc. They strike randomly but it's pretty great as a capstone.

Playable Level: 8/50
It's clear what the archer WANTS to be, a status based fighter who uses weapon abilities and ammo for utility, but the statuses they inflict in class can be rather situational. If your GM rules you can use ammo with take aim, then this class is great at lvl8 having a wide variety of statuses on a 60% success rate for only -2 init and charge shot for damage, if you can't use ammo it's not till you get barrage that you really make use of your class.

Dragoon
Next up the dragoon, I think you know what they do.

Level 1- Jump, You become invincible for a turn then land for 200% damage. This is amazing because the damage is multiplied before armor so 2 turns for double damage and a turn of invincibility(dodging pesky group attacks) is well worth it.
Level 8- Cherry Blossom, for -4 init you hit a group for 75% damage, You aren't really getting more damage for a long time, don't worry you don't need it.
Level 15- Ancient Circle, This gives your party Dragon Killer(x2 damage vs. dragons) if you are beating the snot out of dragons it's great, if you aren't it's arse.
Level 22- Lancet, hits for 125% damage and half that to mp, look every time MP damage comes up i'm not going to respect it, it's usually lower than hp damage and totals aren't lower.
Level 29- Reis Wind, gives your party regen this is loving amazing.
Level 36- Dragon Heart, a 30% chance on taking damage to get reraise but only 1/battle, why it's not just reraise the first time you drop I don't know.
Level 43- White Draw, Continuing the trend of dragoon's having random rear end poo poo because Jump&Cherry blossom are the best This does more MP damage(Meh) BUT it's an MP drain that divides the stolen MP among the MP users in your party. Congrats with Reis wind you have infinite sustain.
Level 50- Power Jump, This is a 3 turn jump giving 2 turns of invincibility, the second turn you hit for 150% damage to a group, the downside is all three actions have -16 charge time, it's not a straight upgrade over jump or cherry blossom but it's certainly serviceable.
Level 57- Dragon Breath, does 999 damage for -18 charge time, well ok it does damage equal to their (max-current hp) so if they've taken 999 or more you will damage cap, it's basically your boss attack if you want to push out more damage.
Level 64- Dragon Horn, This is a jump with a -20 charge time on both "turns", after landing you hit 1-4 random targets for 75% damage. Dragon breath is a better boss killer turn by turn but this let's you get that turn of invincibility.

Playable Level: 8
The dragoon is without a doubt one of the best designed classes, it's early levels give it two strong and reliable attack abilities, and the mid levels giving it ever increasing utility with a focus on sustain and mp damage, it's top end gives it new attack options but they are just that options, not really straight upgrades. If you are going to play a warrior dragoon has my blessing.

Fencer
Well from the heights of the heavenly, to the pits of hell.

Level 1- Swarm strike, inflicts poison.
Level 8- Reflex, Adds half level to evasion I'd say "so evade becomes worthless at half the rate" but you have the evade stats and shields.
Level 15- Feather Blow, your first attack ability for -6 init does 10 * Agi damage....oh boy i'm just going to get to this in the ending analysis. But suffice to say this ability is ok when you get it and falls off rapidly the other fencer abilities like it do not fare so well.
Level 22- Greased Lightning, Your attack actions ignore reactions, ummmm ok, that would require me to want to auto attack. Then again I might have to considering this class.
Level 29- Shadow Stitch, -10 init for 14 * Agi shadow damage and agility break.
Level 35- Checkmate, Inflicts Condemned and Slow. It's okish.
Level 43- Swallow Strike, -14 init for 16 * Agi damage to a group.
Level 50- Mana Strike, Look it attacks mana, my opinion is known.
Level 57- Nighthawk, -18 Init 27 * Agi shadow damage.
Level 64- Piercethrough, This is it the ultimate fencer ability......32 *Agi damage, IGNORING ARMOR!!!!!

Playable Level: Never
So the fencer is first off at war with itself it's trying to do a viable thing and a really pointless thing. The viable thing is it's attempt at an auto attack and passive focused AGI attacker, and there is a good auto attack and passive focused warrior, the fighter, they are next. It's other thing is using initiative penalties to do flat unscaling damage with no weapon component, it has 5 of these, 3 of which do nothing but damage! and you have to use the high init versions because feather blow and shadow stich do less than your weapon at high levels.
Give the fencer a pass.

Fighter
Oh finally, let's look at the class BUILT around auto attacks.

Level 1- Battlefield genius, weapon abilities and crits apply to this classes attacks, neat.
Level 1- Mighty Blow, halve your attack Chance to hit including evasion, add any +crit chance bonuses, this is your chance to hit with this ability which auto crits. At low levels it's risky, by mid levels you'll have Chances of success of 150+ and this becomes better than auto attack. Those legendary weapons that you go "Meh They have Crit+10% and triple critical" become a Beast in a Fighter's hands.
Level 8- Third Eye, Automatically evade the next evable attack against you.
Level 15- Scream, Gain Power Up and Agility Up, This is amazing. 25% more damage, +2 iniative, and +25 evade.
Level 22- Quick Hit, Does 75% damage but gives +8 initiative next round, this is an incredibly strong ability but it's just on the wrong class. The Fighter doesn't need to set up long charge times.
Level 29- Double Cut, -10 Charge time to attack twice, explicitly attack these can crit, miss, and weapon abilities apply.
Level 36- First Strike, ALWAYS act during the surprise round.
Level 43- Bone Crusher, Lvl/3+Agi% chance to use the attack action for 150% damage when you take physical damage.
Level 50- Slash All, -16 Charge to attack everyone, again attack.
Level 57- Final Attack, Gain an immediate action when dropped to zero hp, this action ignores charge time. You can't use a potion on yourself(as you have 0hp), but you can use a phoenix down.
Level 64- Finishing Touch, Inflicts Death, Stone, and Stop. Cute but the only things I want to use this on are bosses who have Immunity to those.

Playable level: 15
The fighter is very different from other warriors in that is mostly stacks passives and actually cares about weapon's as more than stat sticks. As stated he does the passives and auto attacks thing better than the fencer by actually doing that. All his abilities stand out as useful except finishing touch and to a much lesser extent third eye. But his playable level is 15 as by that point you have Scream and Mighty Blow is hitting at the 60-70% range that it always wanted.

Next time
The Knight, Monk, Samurai and Sword Master finish up the warriors.
Two of these are fencer tier, can you guess which?
Also playable levels in the 20s.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Oct 3, 2018

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Night10194 posted:

Who ever actually played halflings, anyway?

I actually have one in my group, but she's pretty pure noncombatant.

Vox Valentine
May 30, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Halfling Merchant. I knew I was in a prime position to never have to actually fight anyone.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Night10194 posted:

Elf Hephaestus is a hero and a good dude, though.

Which, you know, so was normal Hephaestus. Elf Hephaestus lacks the bitchin' magic robots, though.

E: Also, it was always intentional that there are parallels between the Druchii and Sparta, and the Asur and Athens, especially as the Asur are actually still pretty huge dicks a lot of the time but put a nicer face on it. Though I also like to imagine the Asur as the Warhams First World, being the British Empire/US, living in their magic paradise while messing around with everyone else. While the Druchii are evil fascist Canada. They really should've had war-moose.

This metaphor also makes the Athel Loren crazy isolationist elf Alabama.
Please, fair goon, please: Elphasteus.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Night10194 posted:

Elf Hephaestus is a hero and a good dude, though.

Which, you know, so was normal Hephaestus. Elf Hephaestus lacks the bitchin' magic robots, though.

E: Also, it was always intentional that there are parallels between the Druchii and Sparta, and the Asur and Athens, especially as the Asur are actually still pretty huge dicks a lot of the time but put a nicer face on it. Though I also like to imagine the Asur as the Warhams First World, being the British Empire/US, living in their magic paradise while messing around with everyone else. While the Druchii are evil fascist Canada. They really should've had war-moose.

This metaphor also makes the Athel Loren crazy isolationist elf Alabama.

TW: Warhammer II missed the opportunity to give the Dark Elf characters Canadian accents

"Ulthuan will be mine, eh!"

Ronwayne
Nov 20, 2007

That warm and fuzzy feeling.

Night10194 posted:

Who ever actually played halflings, anyway?

I got a lot of mileage out of playing halfling fieldwardens in 2nd, especially if the game goes long enough to get into vampire hunter.

"I AM THURBOOT TUMBLEBOTTOM, DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD." etc

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ronwayne posted:

I got a lot of mileage out of playing halfling fieldwardens in 2nd, especially if the game goes long enough to get into vampire hunter.

"I AM THURBOOT TUMBLEBOTTOM, DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD." etc

This is a legitimate reason, true.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Ronwayne posted:

I got a lot of mileage out of playing halfling fieldwardens in 2nd, especially if the game goes long enough to get into vampire hunter.

"I AM THURBOOT TUMBLEBOTTOM, DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD." etc

BLOOD IS FOR SAUSAGE, NOT FOR DRINKING!

thatbastardken
Apr 23, 2010

A contract signed by a minor is not binding!
halfling litigant, in a tragically short-lived pbp.

WhitemageofDOOM
Sep 13, 2010

... It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit.
FFRRPG Part 3: Warrior jobs, part 2

Nothing to do, so i'll finish up warriors.
The first batch of warriors was pretty ok, classes were playable by around 8-15(wait no, that's NOT ok.), and besides fencer were pretty decent. The back half of the warriors really are the back half.

Knight
There's a distinct lack of witty openers to the knight.

Level 1- Life Break, It deals damage equal to your Max-Current hp this would be fine as a "Mid level" utility power, but it's your opener and has nothing to do with what knights DO.
Level 8- Armor AND Mental Break, you get both of these, they reduce Arm or M.Arm by 50% which is not bad but not amazing but it shows where the knight is going.
Level 15- Speed Break, This deals 125% damage and inflicts agility break(-2 init, -25 Evade/Acc) for -6 init, it's pretty good.
Level 22- Power AND Magic Break, FINALLY these reduce physical or magical damage the target deals by 50% these are an order of magnitude better than their offensive counterparts.
Level 29- Spirit Break, This is the same as speed break except it inflicts spirit break(-25 M.Acc/M.Evade) instead, why this isn't at the same level I have no idea.
Level 36- Thunder Slash, this does 150% weapon damage as lightning damage and hits M.Arm, that's cute but you are taking an extra -6 init penalty over Speed or Spirit Break for it.
Level 43- Climhazzard, Does 125% weapon to all enemies this is the first more than than 100% AoE we've seen and it has a similar init penalty to it's 100% contemporaries in fighter and archer.
Level 50- Lai Strike, 30% chance of causing death, if it fails it does 100% damage. For -16 init it's not worth it.
Level 57- Shock, 150% weapon damage to all enemies, it's a strict upgrade over climmhazzard for -4 init.
Level 64- This hits all enemies with Armor, Mental, Power and Magic break. It's -20 init but who cares even over 2 turns it's worth using over your old breaks. No better capstone there could be for the knight.

Playable level- 22
The Knight Is great for enabling boss killing, but takes 22 levels to get it's most important tools. It also starts transitioning into some decent AoE damage but that's at 43. A lvl1 knight just sounds painful.

Monk
Oh great, fencer mark 2.0 except your flat damage attacks use mag which you are awful at. Mind the monk is BETTER than the fencer, but still.

Level 1- Martial Arts, you can attack twice when using the monk weapons, explicitly the monk weapons.
Level 1- Punch Rush, auto hit for 150% damage for -2 init this would be broken if you had the really good weapons....
Level 8- Meteor Impact, for another -2 init also inflict confuse basically a straight upgrade to punch rush.
Level 15- Earth Slash, It does mag based damage to all enemies...oh boy.
Level 22- Counter, Chance to counter for 100% damage.
Level 29- Aura Cannon, Flat single target holy damage.
Level 36- Fire Dance, Flat fire based damage to all enemies.
Level 43- Soul Spiral, This ability is unique, you give up a certain amount of hp and multiply that by your vit/4(round up) and all OTHER allies regain that much. Giving up 100 hp to group heal for 500 sounds a good trade.
Level 50- Razor Gale, Flat wind damage to all enemies.
Level 57- Demi Shock, Reduces a target by 50% of it's MAX hp, capped at 999. Man this sounds awesome, and it would be, except it's classed as a gravity effect, which falls under fatal, which bosses are immune to. So go ahead and ignore it.
Level 64- Phantom Rush, Hit for 300% damage, this can break the 999 damage cap but with your puny won'ts won't....

Playable Level- Never
Look at least the fencer's lovely flat damage abilities did AGI based damage like his weapons, these are MAG based, also while those damage %s may look impressive you use weapons that at end game do 14*Str damage vs. the fighter doing 21*Str with a great sword
Hmmmmmm 21*Str well there's this advantage for 5 points that let's you become proficient with ANY weapon. Now you can take weapon disability, scrounge up 2 points and voila A great sword wielding monk slapping people around for 150% damage at lvl1. Now you'll be doing gob smacking levels of damage that will make everyone's jaws drop, but that's it besides Soul Spiral that's your character. It's cheesy but it's never really PLAYABLE.

Samurai
And We thought the monk and fencer had it rough, ooooo boy.

First we need to talk about "Exhausting the blade" whenever a samurai uses an ability they have a chance to exhaust their weapon inflicting them with curse for the next 3 rounds, which seals non-magic abilities. This goes down by -1 per level but never less than 10%.
This would be sort of fine(no it wouldn't, 3 turn stuns randomly suck) except IN ADDITION you have charge times.
Lastly the samurai ONLY uses mag for damage but gets no mag bonuses to their stat line, only Str/Vit.

Level 1- Iaido, A large collection of scaling effects that can do just about anything if you have the right katana equipped.
Level 1- Soul Blade, See the above but inflicts a status effect on a single target.
Level 8- Mineuchi, This skips the target's next action THIS ROUND sadly it doesn't break charges. Also it can fail, then curse you, skip it.
Level 15- Meatbone slash, If you take physical damage, while at 25% or lower hp, you have a 50% chance to trigger this. What happens if it goes off? You deal damage equal to your max hp, which sounds like a much better pay off than it is.
Level 22- Dragon Flame, deals flat AoE fire damage and has a chance to halve targets initiative, again no charge break.
Level 29- Double Handed, If you go without a shield you deal 25% more damage with one handed weapons. But....you have no weapon attacks.
Level 36- Shooting star, attempts to eject target and deals 18*Mag damage on a miss.
Level 43- Shirahadori, Adds your level to evasion against melee attacks, which you have a shield so not bad.
Level 50- Banishing Blade, Deals 28*Mag damage and Armor/Mental/Power/Magic break to one target.
Level 57- Tornado, Deals 14*Mag fire and 14*Mag wind damage to all enemies ignoring arm.
Level 64- Meikyo Shisui, Ignore your CT to auto curse yourself. I mean I guess as a finisher.

Playable at: 1/Never
The samurai is....interesting, If they didn't have charge times I'd call them a legit attempt at a damage code fighter, with lower level abilities eventually becoming free use...But they do. Which kills them dead in the water, so any interesting dies with the simple fact they are reliant on a stat they are bad at for everything and need CT to do it with their lower abilities just becoming weaker and weaker. Looking at banishing blade for instance, it does only 28*Mag damage about 125% damage for a CT-14 ability. It's just awful.

Sword Master
Yeah this class was broke in the previous edition, let's see how it holds up.

Level 1- Delay Attack, Deals 100% damage and halves the target's initiative also BREAKS CHARGES. Boss doing something with -12? Delay attack turn skipped.
Level 8- Dispatch, Deals 125% damage nothing fancy.
Level 15- Fated Circle, This is exactly like Cherry Blossoms doing 75% damage to a group but has a higher init penalty. Man Cherry blossoms is amazing.
Level 22- Provoke, It does what you think it does, why isn't this on the fighter?
Level 29- Cross Slash, Inflicts 150% damage and disable.
Level 36- Spiral Cut, Inflicts 150% damage ignoring armor, this is extremely niche over the quicker cross slash or the next ability.
Level 43- Blade Beam, Inflicts 150% damage to the primary enemy and 75% to everyone else, This is amazing.
Level 50- Strikeback, Has a 30% chance when attacked to just evade and hit them.
Level 57- Flurry, Hit four times at random for 100% damage, this is your real capstone.
Level 64- Cleave, Mass Instant death, better than finishing touch because it's an AoE.

Playable at: 15
Swordmaster isn't a god class but it isn't bad, a number of it's abilities are lacking and it severely lacks utility, but if it's straightforward brute force from a warrior class the swordmaster beats everything but Great Sword Monk, and has enough tricks to be worth playing. Delay Attack/Dispatch/Fated Circle is probably the best -2/-4/-6 set any warrior class gets, blade beam and flurry are the big upgrades from that basic tool kit sure they are "more damage" but that's what you came for and Cross Slash and Spiral Cut are hardly worthless just somewhat useful utility.

WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Oct 3, 2018

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation

HERESY!

The Imperial Cults struggle with the fact that a lack of modern communication and a large land area mean there are going to be plenty of divergent beliefs throughout the Empire. Regional variations on a faith that would be considered heresy elsewhere are common. There is simply no way to enforce a total orthodoxy, and sometimes a divergent idea will become popular enough that the main branch of the cult needs to judge if it's heresy or not. Each cult deals with these divergent beliefs differently.

Manaan doesn't give a poo poo as long as you keep worshiping the ocean and pay him his protection money due honors and tithes. In fact, as Manaanites tend to be extremely well traveled (since sea travel is much safer and faster than land travel, giant Chaos Whales aside) the cult actually seems to encourage a vast variety of superstitions and rituals, incorporating exotic beliefs from other lands. The only real sin you could commit is cutting the ocean out of the deal to worship other sorts of bodies of water exclusively, or trying to worship Manaan as a land god for some fool reason. The punishment for this is drowning, in seawater, to remind a heretic there ain't no beatin' the sea.

The Cult of Morr has regular religious arguments based on dreams and messages from God, but without a firm structure and hierarchy these mostly result in debates, rather than heresy trials. The real heresy risk comes from all the exposure to necromancy in the process of destroying necromancers. Necromancy holds the constant temptation to live longer, or to let one's loved ones live longer. Fighting it long enough and being around death and the dying all the time can tempt someone into turning their back on Morr. There is also a temptation to make a lot of money by selling the bodies entrusted to a temple of Morr; this is a grave heresy and leads to execution just as quickly as getting seduced by Dark Magic would.

Myrmidians are almost as zealous about rooting out heresy as Sigmarites, though their doctrine is a little more open and participatory so there are fewer ways to accidentally become a heretic. They like big, showy military tribunals for suspected heretics, with a big jury and religious lawyers to increase the pomp and public nature of the trial. These trials are usually not fair, something that annoys the cult of Myrmidia's mother, Verena, as all the flash and show is designed to ensure the people bringing the trial get the outcome they want. There's a weird detail about how imprisonment is much more common than death for Myrmidian trials.

Ranald doesn't really 'do' heresy outside of violating the strictures or worse, snitching on your crew. That last one is one of the few things Ranaldans come down on the way other people go after heretics. However, they have an exception for this rule: Since they're often working with others in the shadier parts of the Empire, Ranaldans are the first ones to trip over many Chaos cults, vampires in hiding, or conspiracies. The most pious will take the law into their own hands and enact what vigilante justice they can, but sometimes they need more help than they can muster, in which case this is one of the few times it's religiously permitted to snitch (quietly and anonymously) to the authorities. If someone does violate the strictures, the usual punishment is to get them drunk, steal their pants and money, and dump them on the road to trust to Ranald to let them make it home.

Shallyans don't have many truly heretical sects or beliefs they consider dangerous, because most of the religious variation among Shallyans is how much they should hug people and what degree of self care they're permitted to do. The main heresy among Shallyans is refusing to help people, and this leads to the most common actual heresy: going into business with your skills. Shallyans are skilled doctors even if they aren't miracle workers, and actual miracle workers are in high demand because they can just stick a guy's guts back into his belly and seal the wound, or curse someone of plague with a touch and a short ritual. The temptation to start rationing your skills by 'donation' to 'personal upkeep' is always there, and always a great sin. Shallyans don't burn or beat their heretics, they simply cast them out of the cult.

The cult of Sigmar is extremely zealous in trying to prevent any form of divergent religious thought. Everything could be Chaos. Everything! The cult thrives on the status quo and dislikes change, and so it tends to crush both legitimate threats and reformers alike in its desire to stop anyone speaking ill of itself. Anyone who challenges the status quo enough without enough backup is going to be accused of being a servant of Chaos. Priests are told to keep a constant eye on their flock for deviant religious ideas or grumblings about religious reform, even as the cult exalts past successful religious reformers as obviously having been right all along. Sigmarites also believe retribution should be swift and public, in order to warn the flock of what will happen if they stray. Sigmarites always feel weirdly insecure.

Taal and Rhya don't really care about heresy so long as you don't burn down any of the sacred places and maintain a general respect for nature. The one thing they really hate is mutation, as it's a perversion of nature. I get the sense that 4e Rhya would probably change this some, but as it stands they are both extremely intolerant of any sort of physical mutation. This is actually one of the reasons many important ceremonies are performed without clothes: It makes it impossible to hide mutations from your fellow cultists.

Ulricans try to be as zealous as Sigmarites as the two compete to be more insecurely masculine than one another. Cultists will live up to the code of honor set by Ulric or they'll be dropped in a pit with a variable number of wolves (depending on the crime) and a time limit. If they beat the wolves or are still standing at the end, their punishment is complete. The Ulricans also like exposure or nailing someone to the ground out in the cold for wolves to eat them, if they want to make sure you're dead. Ulricans tend to be law and order types the same way Sigmarites are, but primarily because working together and keeping to codes of honesty make it easier to survive in the rougher parts of the Empire.

Verenans are actually encouraged to come up with new religious doctrine and ideas, which are then debated in large academic settings. However, as they are as vicious as any other academic, those whose ideas fail to gain any traction will see their reputations ruined and may find themselves cast out of academia as hacks and frauds. This is considered a worse punishment than merely burning someone. Otherwise, criminals should be punished according to justice, generally decided by a mixture of religious doctrine and some of local laws. Sadly, there's no fancy owl-based execution method, unlike Ulric and his wolves.

We also get a brief description of the Dark Gods but the whole thing is explicitly an advert for the Tome of Corruption (telling the reader to go buy it for more THRILLING information on CHAOS, the best part of WARHAMMER!), despite Tome of Corruption not really having much more than a couple pages devoted to the Gods themselves in like Chapter 15. You know the drill, Khorne likes killing, Nurgle is a shitlord, Slaanesh tries to lure people in with sexy parties, and Tzeentch is still a cardboard cutout with 'CLEVER!!!!' written on it.

Next Time: Oh god how are there this many words about the calender

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

I've always wondered whether assisted suicide/purely palliative care is heretical for Shallyans. There seems to be no solid answer on it, though.

4e Rhya would probably be a lot more merciful to Mutants; Taal likely wouldn't. Taal is the awesome and terrible might of nature, after all, and has very, very little patience for humans in general.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

I've always wondered whether assisted suicide/purely palliative care is heretical for Shallyans. There seems to be no solid answer on it, though.

4e Rhya would probably be a lot more merciful to Mutants; Taal likely wouldn't. Taal is the awesome and terrible might of nature, after all, and has very, very little patience for humans in general.

Palliative care is explicitly moral and one of the things they do often. Assisted suicide would not be. But transitioning to 'trying to treat as much pain as possible and keep someone comfortable at the end' is a normal thing for Shallyans.

That said I'm also pretty sure given the focus on 'removing pain' that assisted suicide would be something that would see regular debate at Shallyan conclaves.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Night10194 posted:


The Cult of Morr ... this is a grave heresy .


:v:

I hope that was intentional.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

PurpleXVI posted:

:v:

I hope that was intentional.

Warhammer is at least 10% terrible puns.

OvermanXAN
Nov 14, 2014
The Chaos Gods are just so... uninteresting in comparison to all the other deities in the setting, even the rear end in a top hat elf ones. And yet GW is so obsessed with them but not in a way that makes them interesting. I get that they really want them to be cosmic-horror-y, but the problem is that they don't do that well either.

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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

OvermanXAN posted:

The Chaos Gods are just so... uninteresting in comparison to all the other deities in the setting, even the rear end in a top hat elf ones. And yet GW is so obsessed with them but not in a way that makes them interesting. I get that they really want them to be cosmic-horror-y, but the problem is that they don't do that well either.

The problem with the Chaos Gods is that they are neither seductive or scary. Like... to be seductive, they'd need some nuance to their preachings/goals, something that would make a right-thinking person occasionally go: "Hmmm, maybe Tzeentch has a point this one time..." slip up and end up rear end-deep in a chaos cult. But the problem is that they're blatantly all horrible ideas to engage with on even the shallowest level. Nor are they really scary, because their final goal seems to just be to paint everything red(or green, in case of Nurgle) and laugh as demons pointlessly hit each other over the head for all eternity. It'd be scarier if they were an invasive force that, for instance, caused and promoted heresies among the benevolent religions, promoted fascist thought or just... did anything except send screaming hordes of lunatics at the Empire every few decades.

They fail at cosmic horror because they aren't particularly alien or disturbing, they fail at general horror because their ultimate goals are less inventive and terrifying than what humans can get up to without their help, and they fail at being interesting to engage with in general because they have no nuance.

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