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The real issue I have with the magic item requirement is that magic items are another weaker part of the system. There's no real standardization or guidance on what makes for a good magic item, and a lot of the ones that exist are crazy powerful and extremely unbalancing.
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Aug 30, 2019 16:37
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Night10194 posted:The real issue I have with the magic item requirement is that magic items are another weaker part of the system. There's no real standardization or guidance on what makes for a good magic item, and a lot of the ones that exist are crazy powerful and extremely unbalancing. This is a little curious since the setting tends to depict wizards as surrounded by weird one-off experimental magic ephemeria. Perhaps what's needed here is a bunch of low-level magic trinkets that do small but dubiously useful things. Magical compasses (like normal compasses but way more expensive), magical pens, animated bird automata, magic music boxes, Rings of +1 Fabulousness for selling to the next passing noble, animated cutlery, self-focusing telescopes... ...that sort of Disney stuff but given a Warhams tone and a touch of farce.
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Aug 30, 2019 17:38
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A lot of it was because they were trying to adapt wargame items that were literally supposed to be worth like half a regiment.
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Aug 30, 2019 17:41
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I suspect one of the reasons Magic Items keep getting crazy is A: They tend to be left out of the core books, so they're not really factored into the game's base design and B: They're usually drawing from the Wargame's items, which are meant to be hyper-artifacts wielded by national champions and stuff like that. When part of your design was 'I want to keep damage on a fairly low scale' adding in an item that does '+d10+5 unsaveable damage' (One of the Chaos Weapon traits) or whatever is a problem. Same for all the amulets of +2 DR or whatever. It also doesn't help that the two core book examples are both big number items: A spear that does +4 damage against demons and a ring that straight gives +20% Fellowship. Add to that the core book emphasizing over and over that getting even one magical item is unusual for a PC, and you leave players and GMs with the impression that magic items are a big deal. Especially when they outright say almost no character should ever own more than 3. I suspect 4e will run into the same problem. Magic items are in a weird place where they probably shouldn't take up much room in a Hams game's core since they aren't a huge part of an adventurer's life like in D&D, but by not factoring them into the normal game math and with how the fluff treats them it leaves you open to accidentally making them weird as hell down the line. E: Also I realize now that a character could cheat the RAW requirements by having a pair of Maiden's Charms, since they're one of the few items easily manufactured (made by both Jade Wizards and the Cult of Rhya, as well as many hedge mages and witches) and fairly easily available. 'I passed the technicalities to get my doctorate by getting two perfect contraceptive amulets from a local witch!' Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 17:43
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Isn't it possible that they represent gods of obscure or forgotten concepts? I know the idigam represent concepts from before the world was fully formed, I wouldn't put it past some of the hosts being things from prehistoric/pre-fall times. Most of the Pangaean gods (the ones cast down by the Exarchs) represented concepts and entities from the natural world, pre-human society. The hunt, prey, the river, hunger, plague, etc. Mages suspect that the casting down of the old gods moved humanity from a hunter-gather society and fully at the whim of nature like all other animals to sedentary, agrarian tool makers. Also, you can totes 'kill' a god if you rip out its heart and make it into an omphalos stone. The god is effectively gone at that point, but you may be able to bring it back if you gather whatever pieces of the stone are missing and return it to the god's corpse. Or it might not. Mages never really cared to try because they'd have given up a source of power by doing so.
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Aug 30, 2019 19:17
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Night10194 posted:I've always preferred promoting a character to Master Wizard if that's the direction they want to go in advancement when they hit the EXP level they need, but not actually giving them tenure in setting until they finish doing ridiculous and dangerous things for it. Could also take the real-world grad route of having to find something suitably-specific to base a thesis on; “Oh no you misunderstood, the problem isn’t presenting the magic items, it’s finding ones the Masters haven’t seen already. A first year knows how a +1 sword works, that’s not going to wow anyone.”
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Aug 30, 2019 20:15
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AmiYumi posted:Sounds right, who gets tenure right out the gate?
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Aug 30, 2019 20:37
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Mors Rattus posted:Gods torn apart by Wolf. However, they do have Mage ties - the Neolithic shard in Dark Eras predates the raising of the Gauntlet and the death of these ancient gods, and they're basically half spirit, half Supernal entity. It is heavily implied that the ones Wolf didn't tear apart were the old gods cast down and defeated by the Exarchs in the prior timeline, and part of why even the ones he didn't tear apart aren't really around any more is they're either imprisoned or were depowered by the Exarchs. Thanks, following nWoD cosmology can be exhausting at times.
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Aug 30, 2019 20:38
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Career Compendium Frau Facesmash I've talked before about what makes a useful warrior class in WHFRP. The things that distinguish a primary hand-to-hand fighter on a team are having access to Dodge, +1 Attacks, a decent starting WS advance, and Strike Mighty Blow. If you have at least 2 or 3 of those things, you can handle defending your team in early combats. Some classes get all those things! Diestro, Soldier, Knight Errant, Protagonist, Squire, Troll Slayer, Norse Reaver, Mercenary, Dwarf Shieldbreaker...all those can do everything you want from a primary fighter right out of the gate. There are lots of less fully optimized but still useful fighters, though. And most importantly, only Slayers are really truly 'single class fighter' types the way you imagine them from D&D. Yes, Soldier-Veteran-Champion is going to lack for non-combat utility a bit, but they still have Heal from Soldier, at least. Why do Warriors often start off with a second attack? Because the system math means hitting and doing damage is reasonably low-chance early on. Having two swings is one of your best ways to raise your odds. Not only that, remember that in an average party, you're probably only going to have one or two dedicated warriors to start with. Lots of other classes are good enough at fighting to pitch in, and the team's Warrior will depend on that, but if this person's going to do the heavy lifting when the team's in a fight, they'd better be pretty good at it. That said, low level warriors generally lack for armor, which makes combat much more dicey. That first Career is the most dangerous part of a Warrior's life. Why don't we take a look at one of the worst dedicated warrior starts in the game, and talk about why they suck? Especially since they have very cool fluff. The Norscan Berserker is a miserably bad class. They get very good stat advances (+15 WS, +10 S, +10 T, +10 WP, +2 Wounds) but you'll note they're missing +1 Attacks in there. Their overall skills and what they can do outside of combat aren't great; they have Intimidate, they can tell stories with performer, and they can swim. They're good at being Intimidating since they get Menacing as a Talent (+10 Intimidate) and they get Quick Draw and Specialist Weapons (Two Handed). Then they get Frenzy. They also do not learn Dodge. You will note that outside the +15 WS they have literally nothing that makes a character a good warrior. The only redeeming part of the class is their decent Exits, but the good ones are the same as Soldier. Meanwhile a Soldier's coming in with Dodge, 2 attacks, the option to choose between ranged or melee, Strike Mighty, etc. The thing is, the extra +10 S doesn't really matter early on. By the time the Berserk has access to Strike Mighty, the Soldier is also in Veteran or Sergeant and can just buy +10 Str themselves. The Berserk gets a lot better as they promote, yeah, but the key is they're weak at Career 1 and Career 1 is where you're going to die if things go wrong. And the Berserk doesn't get better in ways that a normal Soldier or Mercenary does; they just end up about the same but with a weaker start point and the lovely Frenzy Talent. Their fluff is great, though! The Empire actually has no idea that there's no such thing as organized Berserk Lodges and things up in Norsca. The Berserks make up all kinds of stories about the epic deeds of their homeland (because Norscans already love exaggerated tall tales and boasting) and Imperials just believe them, which gives them a reputation well beyond their abilities. The majority of Norse Berserks weren't even Berserks back up in Norsca. They just played the part when they came down to the Empire because Imperials pay you more as a mercenary if you're an exotic, frothing norse warrior with rippling abs. Most find it comes pretty easy to them once they get started. They're very fashionable bodyguards in Marienburg, where the buff, savage Norscan image is also very in vogue among the city's elite. The Norse are quite happy to take jobs where they get paid to stand around and look good, too. Especially since it's led to a lot of Marienburger kids with Norscan features. The Norse also worry about a darker rumor: Some Berserks are supposedly encoded with secret orders from Chaos, without realizing it. Dark sorcerers are said to implant code-phrases into them, phrases that will cause their Frenzy to trigger the moment they're heard, making the Berserk kill everyone around them in a suicidal rage. The warriors so programmed are (assuming any of these rumors are true) completely unaware of this. Almost every Berserk laughs off these silly rumors. Almost all of them are afraid they might be one of these suicide warriors. See all that cool fluff? It's all attached to a terrible class. Just take the Norse Reaver class instead since they're mechanically great and have the same sorts of Exits and attach the flavor to being a viking. I've mentioned the Champion before, but the Champion is really the measuring stick against which other 3rd tier Warriors are judged. If you just want to kill poo poo, becoming a Champion will make you awesome at it (and nothing else). They have tremendous fighting ability, agility, and talent access. They don't get anything else and they're a very long class by virtue of how much they pick up. Still, any character that's finished Champion is about as strong as a human (or elf, or dwarf, or somehow, halfling) character gets in this combat system without using the weird add-on stuff. Thus, they're a good benchmark for 'can a combat-optimized PC win a fight?' Their added fluff in this book is about how soldiers who reach this level almost uniformly feel a calling to the martial arts. You simply don't get this good without being fairly passionate about what you do. Regiments have to keep their Champion occupied, because these soldiers are valuable as instructors and living emblems for the unit, but they also need constant challenges to keep on this level. The example of what a Champion can aspire to do tells of Dagmar Nachtgeben (Dagmar Nightgiver, in lovely Warhams German? Really?), a Champion of a unit of Middenheimer Greatswords. When his unit was dying or falling back and the walls of Middenheim were breached by a Hellcannon shot, this one Greatswordsman stood in the way and plugged the gap single-handed. In the process of dueling anything that came his way, he killed over twenty Marauders and Beastmen, three Aspiring Champions of Chaos, and finally crossed swords with an actual Chaos Lord before hurling himself and the Lord over the battlements with his last breath. That is absolutely something a Champion PC could do in a single battle. That's really not the normal Warhams exaggerated deed; if you've finished this Career, you could win that fight provided they couldn't come at you all at once (say if you were holding a small breach in a wall). That's the level of strength a PC in this career actually gets to, and that's why I say they make a good benchmark for 'can a PC reasonably kill it by themselves'. Knights also deserve some note: Knights mix being social and being a very skilled fighter. They're not quite as good as a Champion (Especially as a Champion and the Veteran before them masters Ranged and Melee both) but they're still damned tough as warriors, while having the most important of the social and political skills in their track. They're also really unusual for having a 4th tier introduced in Tome of Salvation. Grandmaster isn't really much stronger than other 3rd Tier fighting classes; you never get above say +40 to WS, and +30 to S or T is the absolute cap for PC Careers, which they don't even reach. I'm really not sure what the Grandmaster is meant to do, mechanically, besides finish out the Knight track with slightly better combat abilities and the opportunity to +10 a shitload of social and political skills. Still, a Knight knowing how to maneuver through high society can be even more helpful to a team than a pure combatant; a fight you avoid by talking your way through is a fight that doesn't kill any of your PCs. Mercs also get a huge mechanical and flavor boost in Career Compendium, and they were already very good 1st tier starting fighters. Mercs are notable for having a ton of choices among their starting skills and talents, but for some reason the Compendium bit adds an extra pair of talents (choose one or the other) to Merc based on what country you came from, and gives you a little extra starting gear. Tileans come with pikes or crossbows and know how to use both. Imperials might know how to use a buckler or might be better shots. Kislevites are extra brave or very good with their fists. Arabians are amazing riders or experts with fencing weapons. Norscan Mercs get...Frenzy or Menacing, but on a much better class than Berserk so uh, Berserk goes even further out the window. So just out of nowhere, instead of any extra fluff on the career in general, Mercenary gets an extra talent and more gear for using this book. And again: They were already good. It's baffling, and helps speak to this book being one with a lot of different authors; some don't seem to have realized they weren't really meant to add any more mechanical stuff. Fighters in general are specialized, useful party members. Almost everyone in WHFRP will learn to fight at least a little as they level up. Most characters get some degree of WS and BS advance, after all. And a fair number of Career paths will pick up a second attack, or even learn Dodge. But only the dedicated warrior types will have everything they need to optimize Use Zweihander On Goatman as a puzzle solving solution. What's always been interesting to me is how quickly they get the core of what they need. I suppose it's the same principle as a Thief knowing what they need to know to steal poo poo, or the Student being a learned and useful PC right off the bat. Whatever flavor of warrior your team has, they know their business. Unless they're a Norse Berserk, in which case you should ask the GM to let you take Reaver or Merc (Norscan) instead so you don't suck. Seriously, no idea why that class is so bad. Exhibit 1 in the many exhibits of 'This System Massively Overvalues Frenzy For Some Reason'. Next Time: Peasants!
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Aug 30, 2019 21:05
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Ithle01 posted:Thanks, following nWoD cosmology can be exhausting at times. Eh, kinda. Some writers are keen on implying that Pangeans were exiled Supernal Gods that wound up in Pangea, making any that have survived double-Exiles now. So, a piece of cosmological obscura of the nWoD / CofD - the Gauntlet, the barrier between the physical and spirit worlds, isn't actually a barrier. It's a whole other world, albeit one that's crushed and ruined. When werewolves cross between worlds, they experience the inside of the Gauntlet for a few seconds, unable to move and sometimes aware of spooky phenomena going on just out of peripheral vision. Mages can summon weird not-quite spirits out of it, Beshilu (Rat Hosts) can make webway-like tunnels in it. In ancient prehistory, it was a proper realm called the Pangaea or the Border Marches. Its native beings were kinda like spirits, but physical beings instead of ephemera - the biggest of them were great big totemic animal-gods like Spider, Rat, Lamprey, and - yes - Wolf. When the Uratha's ancestors killed Wolf, their whole world collapsed. Some Pangeans escaped in either direction and slowly lost either their spiritual or physical aspects. The Firstborn (the spirits that serve as tribal totems) are former Pangaens that turned into spirits millenia ago. Some of the great big fleshy monstrosities lurking at the edges of Forsaken's game line (there's a whole selection of them in Predators) are ex-Pangeans that got trapped in the material world. Hosts are different because the Pangean god they're pieces of was torn apart by Wolf pre-Sundering, leaving them as scattered clumps of semi-ephemeral stuff that latches onto the nearest appropriate flesh and constantly tries to rejoin the whole. Obviously, it way predates the TV show (I developed the pre-Sundering Dark Era about four, five years ago now), but the easiest analogy I have to Host's deal is Stranger Things.
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Aug 30, 2019 21:24
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Kobolds Ate My Baby!: Part VII – Victory Points Earning VPs KAMB: In Color! does a poor job of explaining it, but your kobolds earn VP in all sorts of ways. These are mostly adventure-specific, like “King Torg has a runny nose and demands chicken noodle soup” could assign VP for bringing back chickens, making soup, finding herbs & spices, stealing the tavern’s recipe book, or just convincing that blind old grandma you’re her very hairy great-grandchild and you need a cup of her famous soup to-go. Problem is, the book doesn’t actually say any of this, or give examples other than the VP line in the monster/townsfolk entries and one or two other scattered sources like drinking a bottle of tequila down to the worm. You can get a feel for it based on how many VPs things cost, or if you played previous editions, but it’s a shame the book itself is missing the advice to hand out VP for doing kobold-ey* things. *stupid and life-threatening What are VPs, and how to spend them? VPs aren’t a tangible thing, but they do exist in-universe to an extent. Kobolds don’t know their or other kobold’s VP count, the various establishments in the caves just hand out rewards based on some kind of instinctive feeling. Kobolds can spend VPs while back in the caves to gain/replace equipment, get new stuff even better than they could on the Dangerous! charts (like a magic ring that forces its targets to vomit up and un-chew the last thing they ate, or scale mail undies that give +Fish Telepathy), All-You-Can-Eat Buffet their way back up to full health (or more), learn spells, gamble, pray away KHDCs, or if they’re really rolling in it and have 9 VP, gain a new Outfit. If your kobold dies, the next kobold you make inherits their unused VPs unless one of the House Rules in use says otherwise.  Outfits! Another point IMO where the game really shines, Outfits are the closest this game comes to character classes, and enough of a “thing” that the first supplement (and a number of the adventures) recommends just handing one out for free after your players get the hang of the game. Outfits work by the kobold in question deciding something like “that was a good scrambled egg, I’m a chef now”, putting on a hat, and then the universe acknowledges “of course that kobold is a chef, they’re wearing a hat.” It’s 40k Orc logic, roll with it. Each outfit has a requirement (which might be a skill, an in-game achievement of some kind, an out-of-game “achievement”, or just finding the right hat), a piece of flair representing the Outfit (which may or may not count as gear or clothing), and one or more bonus effects. The core book of KAMB: In Color!!! has eight outfits, but they became the PrCs or Feats of the game line; every supplement has at least one, and the biggest one is at least 50% outfits by volume. Next Time: let’s look at some outfits
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Aug 30, 2019 21:25
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What level of detail do people want, here? Should I run down all eight like I did magic, or go back and edit in some representative examples and move on?
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Aug 30, 2019 21:29
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i think one of the only things the Cypher system does well is the titular cyphers. giving players a big pool of one-use weird effect items is fun, and very classic fantasy.
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Aug 30, 2019 23:17
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon A Literal Sack of poo poo  People mistake this for human. Ranger Lovegrove works in a national park. Every year, dozens of people manage to get lost in it, and he was appointed to his job because visitors need a guide to help them enjoy all the park has to offer. And now, he needs those people, too. He's quick to help lost people, appearing out of nowhere from the landscape to those that most need guidance. He loves to talk about the park and learn about the places his visitors are from, especially their architecture, buildings and so on. Victims from heavily urban areas he likes best, and if he seems weird or uncomfortably interested, he explains that he is a man of nature and yearns to visit the city. He's led many to their doom at the hands of the Termite Hosts, the Zundilu, of which he is a member. His victims do not realize that accepting his help fulfills the pact he is bound to. He leads them through the park, showing off his pride in his knowledge of it. He always educates them - that's important. They have to know these things. He knows the area and its landmarks well, and by the end, so do they. At that point he brings them into the artificial cave network his siblings have constructed under the park, removing them partially from the world of Flesh. He smiles his rictus of satisfaction as he listens to his siblings tear them apart. A sidebar notes that the Termites are pretty much designed with crossover in mind for Demon. They are deeply interested in occult architecture and infrastructure, and that is deliberately lined up with God-Machine Infrastructure. They find it to be the most delicious food available to them. The God-Machine has known about them for a long time because they keep infesting it when it puts stuff in the forests they sleep in most of the time. This has ruined several of its plans, as the Termites nested in the Infrastructure and consumed all power within it, preventing its use. So far, it has not discovered a good way to get rid of them - its angels can't really eradicate them easily, and the best it can do is quarantine them and work to avoid their nests. Werewolves tend to neither know nor care about any of this, being more interested in hunting the Termites for their effects on the Shadow, but it could end up with them working with or against local Demons. (With 'them' being either the Termites or the werewolves, depending on the situation.) The Termite Host, also known as the Zerdilu, the Decaying Host or the Children of Termite, are unlike other Hosts. They don't eat flesh, but rather structures. They do need human bodies for the Joining still, and to help expand their nests, so they are still dangerous on a personal level. They are also dedicated to service and order, but suffer heavily from poor memories. When outside a Joined body, they rapidly lose their selves - their minds and memories. They rely heavily on their human puppets to make sense of the world and remember the purpose they were called to serve. Within a human, they feel the hunger for reunion with themselves that all Hosts feel and the need to infest, expand and grow. Outside humans, they just...wait. They find interstitial areas hidden in the world, wooded areas nestled among lost and ancient cogs and gears. They don't care or even think about the purpose of the gears. They just infest them and wait. The existence of Termite Hosts is the twofold urges of service and infestation. They find purpose through obedience and they wish to expand their nests. The rites used to summon the Zerdilu are fairly simple for mortal cults to perform if they can find them. Few of the records of the rite reveal the true nature of the Termites or their needs; rather, they are described as minor, easily commanded demons that excel at assembly, production and excavation. A few do note that they smell bad, though, from the least form (fat, twitchy termites) to their monstrous hybrids used to tunnel and dig out their chambers. When bound to a task, the Termites perform it with mechanical endurance, serving their pact to the letter, though they will need periodic reminders of what their task actually is due to their innate senility. If they are not reminded, they are essentially released from service once they forget. Unless commanded not to, they will also fellow their instincts and create "retch gates" to link wherever they are to their nest that runs in the cracks between worlds. With a retch, they can offer their services as guides to those around them. Inevitably, accepting their guidance services leads to them trying to draw their victim back into the retch. Once the deal is made, which requires only verbal agreement, the victim's desires stop mattering. Second thoughts or reneging on the deal just mean they will be forced into the nest, even if it means mutilatin them to prevent escape. Once the victim is delivered, the Hosts feel the euphoria of a job well done. Entering the nest reveals a labyrinth of tunnels, folded impossibly through space and whatever structure the retch lies under, overlapping its physical location somehow while being separate from it. The horrible smell of Essence, offal and poo poo that follows the Termites everywhere is only worse there. Quickly, the tunnels become filled with Zurdilu Shards eagerly eating away at their colocated structure, consuming the Essence and ideas that make it up until it is a dead shell. The physical location remains, but supernatural senses say it is dead - it doesn't exist. All but the most spiritually blind human will refuse to enter or stay in it very long, and those who do suffer a spiritual malaise and loss of vitality that leads to death for no clear medical reason. In Shadow, the associated area is drained of resonance and Essence, becoming a Shoal that spirits avoid completely. When the area is utterly dead, the Termites abandon their dig and head back into the spaces between, waiting for the nest to expand once more. Ranger Lovegrave - always Ranger, never just the name - is unrefined compared to most people who come to the park. He's got serviceable manners but often forgets minor details, stares too long or starts a conversation mid-thought. He also tends to talk over people to ensure he gets it said before he forgets. His disguise is barely serviceable, with sickly skin reliant more on his uniform to keep people calm. The real Ranger Adam Lovegrove died long ago, and he was the only ranger assigned to the park. He was a loner before he stumbled into a strange place of trees that had pipes leaking sappy oil, disturbing the waiting Termites there. Now, his ribs jitter and move due to the Termites inside them, and he smells of rot and poo poo. The Shards have packed his paper-thin skin full of mulch, pulp and poop around the bones to maintain its physical structure, and he moves like a marionette, his every inch full of termites. The Host has done his best to maintain what is left of the ranger's official existence, but it's forgetting more each day. It no longer recalls the body's first name or any of his life story. Only the facts about the park, which it recites so often, and its repetitive daily tasks stick in the mind. Anyone doing any real investigation would quickly discover a lot of discrepancies between his appearance and records, as well as his age. Werewolves that encounter the Termites tend to be confused about why their nests are so rare. Most have immense Host populations, but their infestations are rarely encountered and seem to appear or vanish without warning. They arrive, and not long after, their tunnels are empty and dead. Some Hunters in Darkness theorize that they crave wood and quickly leave urban areas for lack of food once they eat it all. They are wrong; Termite Hosts crave the Essence of construction and structures, but the ancient hearts of their massive nests remain in the forests. Their intense lack of self-identity without a host body and their need for outside direction to do anything but obey their instinct to tunnel towards near retches and eat what they find means they aren't often noticed. In the cold places between, legions of them wait to be called, reeking of rot and poo poo. Only a few cults and human sorcerers are aware of the vile rites that call them through single-use tunnels, and when their tasks are over, the main issue is getting rid of them. They linger around, working to make a retch for their nest to head to, secure more bodies for their siblings and fight to remember what they're doing and who they are. The Termite inside Ranger Lovegrove knows he's really not supposed to be around any more. He had no original purpose, and was almost uniquely bold in taking on the ranger's face and form without orders to do so. The ranger had no purpose to give the Termites but maintain the park, guide visitors and get them home, and that is the only guidance that the Host has been following for years. However, that one bold action has given him a tiny bit of creativity, letting him understand that he has a way to expand his nest and feed his siblings without directions. He's working towards that, and it's all he can really remember. It is, for a Termite, an amazing rebellion against his instincts, which tell him to give up and wait, to let his mind fade. He does not understand why he feels so obstinately that this is wrong, but it's caused an exponential increase in Termite Host infestation in the region and has made his nest expand hugely. The retch at the heart of Lovegrove's cave, however, is growing unstable. Originally, it was usable only by the Termites, but now Rat Shards, Spider Shards and more are coming through, along with other monsters that aren't shartha at all. Lovegrove has no idea where they're coming from, but it's likely that a new retch or two were opened up near where they lived. However, without knowing where, the Termites can't seal those up or isolate the tunnels they're using. The Ranger needs more bodies to have enough Termites with minds to figure it out, bodies with strong will and strong flesh so they can remember and survive the job. Wolf-Blooded families would be perfect. He's also drawn the attention of local occultist Amanda Ingersson, who has established a cover story as an entomologist studying the local termite population. She finds the Termite Hosts fascinating and would like to bind their nest to her service. This would allow her to get them to build retch gates for her use, allowing her to harvest Essence, travel great distances and explore the Shadow more easily. To do it, however, she will need a lot of sacrifices, for the pact must be sealed in blood. Besides, she'll need to feed Ranger Lovegrove's need to drag people into the nest, and sacrifices are in general useful to offer as bargaining chips with spirits. Ranger Lovegrove is not super impressive as a combatant. He's not really superhuman in any capacity, though he knows a lot about surviving in nature and running around. Also how to make things, especially out of poop. He is, however, possessed of several useful powers - he can burrow through the earth, control earth and stone, trap people in mazes or lock them in place, and like any Termite Host, he can turn a ton of rotting organic matter underground into a retch gate with enough Essence. Retch gates can exit into Flesh or Shadow, and can be used by anyone the Termites allow. They tend to attract dangerous spirits and creatures that use them to hide, which the Termites will usually ignore if they stick to side tunnels, though they can collapse tunnels if they feel threatened, isolating them in Flesh and Spirit and creating dangerous Shoals or abandoned tunnel networks. They can also easily damage buildings, physically or metaphysically, by consuming their basic reality. It doesn't take long, renders the buildings dangerous and prone to crumbling if you enter, and drains the life out of anyone that stays in them even if they remain intact. Don't stay in places that have had their reality eaten! They can use this power to destroy smaller objects instantly in order to heal themselves or gain Essence. Next time: Erika Stanich and the Wasp Hosts
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Aug 31, 2019 03:15
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If you demolish an Eaten building down to its foundations and build a new one, does the effort and thought involved in the construction mean that the new building is okay? Or does the spiritual deadness remain until it slowly heals from the outside in?
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Aug 31, 2019 05:05
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Doesn’t say. What’s more interesting for your game?
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Aug 31, 2019 14:03
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After reading about the video-game boss-fight nature of taking down a Void Leviathan I want a spectacle fighter (in the vein of DMC etc) of Forsaken. Gauru is your devil-trigger equivalent. Preferably with fluid character switching and combo attacks so you're 'playing' an entire pack.
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Aug 31, 2019 15:01
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Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon BEES  WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE BEES Erika Stanich, queen of the Wasp Hosts, can always be found atop Achilles Tower. It hums with electricity, yet its windows remain dark and silent. The huge skyscraper always seems sinister as it gazes down at the run-down neighborhood around it. The city it lies within is corrupt, its law enforcement barely active, and most fhe area's frequent disappearances have gone unnoticed. It is all Erika's doing. For three years she has ruled the tower, using its electrical currents to feed the Hidaglu, the Wasps. She has nurtured them on it, grown them strong. All other inhabitants of the tower are dead, fled or met even worse fates. Any who enter, whether it was the old folks that once lived there, the janitors, the maintenance techs sent in to see what the source of the electrical faults and blackouts were, or even those seeking their missing family - they are all taken to feed the hive, either as meat or bodies to be used to build Erika's hybrids of wasp, human and dream. These live only to kill, eat and worship Erika as the god she will become. The dreaming songs of her servants, strengthened by the Essence of their victims and the power of the city electrical grid, flows through the Gauntlet as a droning hum. It invades the dreams and minds of some in the district. Some of these gather in mad cults, worshipping the vespid shapes of their dreams and filling their shrines with staticky radios, seeking out the frequency of the Wasp song. Others merely gaze up at Achilles Tower and pretend nothing is wrong. Something is coming, resonating with the hum that breaches worlds. In Erika's dreams, she has begun to hear the response to her song. Dreams and nightmares are part of the nature of the Wasp Hosts. Their awareness is consumed by a droning prayer that is all-encompassing, a sort of hypnotic buzz produced by their wings that resonates through the Gauntlet. They crave the crackling of electricity from any source. In past times, they would fly out into the storms and drink the static charge of the air. Now, however, they can gorge on meat and lightning in the concrete hives built by modern humans. Their least form is a fat black wasp with delicate wings. Once Joined, however, they rapidly transform into a grotesque hybrid with no need to consume each other. The Wasp hybrids are monstrous things, insectile legs punching through their flesh at odd angles and wings tearing from their skin. Their wrecked human bodies are filled with invasive growths that hold them in place, and they remain conscious and alive - the Hidaglu do not kill their victims or consume their minds, leaving them trapped in eternal torment with brief, awful flashes of lucidity. These hybrids are slightly out of sync with reality, sometimes stuttering, flickering out of vision briefly or twitching oddly, sometimes moving in ways that fit dream logic more than physics. Once enough Wasps gather together, the Gauntlet carries their buzzing prayer into the collective unconscious of nearby humanity. This makes the humans suggestible, instigates the formation of cults and eventually births a new Shard. The Shard's conceptual venom congeals inside a human dream full of frustrated ambition and grand plans, Joining them in total harmony. The victim is infested, but rather than the normal Joining, it is a unity of the human's mind with the Shard's urges. These dream-born Wasps are stagnant, can never become full hybrids. However, unlike normal Wasp Hosts, they possess a clarity of purpose and thought. Their dreams grow into visions of vespid godhead, reborn through flesh. Their own flesh. When these queens call out, the Wasps answer. They obey their queens with religious ecstasy. Erika's right ear canal and empty right eye socket crawl with black wasps. She hides her monstrosity as best she can beneath large amounts of long black hair and expensive suits. Beneath these, however, her flesh has been eaten away entirely, her organs hollowed out. Her spine is invisible beneath its layers and layers of wasps, and they crawl up and down and through her form. In her skull are hundreds of wasps ready to hunt for her. Despite being little more than a hollpw puppet of the dreaming echoes of a dead god, she clings to the remnants of her mortal life as a lawyer, and her demeanor is still human, if not her body. She dreamed of fame and fortune in the legal world, but it never panned out. Her Wasp heart still burns with resentment and frustration, and it's easy to goad her into a screaming frenzy of rage when her plans are foiled or her authority questioned. The Wasp hybrids obey her, but they don't understand her feelings, being far too caught up in the ecstasy of the prayer-drone. Erika wants to bring the presence in her dreams into the world. God, she knows, is coming. She will birth God into reality. To do so, she must have more. More electricity, more meat, all to feed her hive, more minds to pray and resonate with her dreams. The God that Erika believes in is no human one, of course, but the ancient unity of the Wasps. They are not the whole of that ancient god; a fragment of it exists beyond Flesh and Spirit, in the world of human dreams - the last amputated remnant of the divine soul of the Wasp progenitor. When enough Hidaglu gather together, they can draw its attention to the surface of the collective unconscious to harmonize with their droning song. In theory, if the hymn to Wasp grows strong enough, a natural storm of sufficient power would allow it to attempt to manifest itself physically. However, the attempt will destroy Erika completely, tearing her apart and spawning countless new Shards from her corpse, along with a power surge that will shut down the city's electrical grid...for no good result. The dream-titan is simply incapable of physically manifesting. It is lobotomized and broken, unable to exist in Flesh or Spirit. The divine rebirth that Erika envisions for the Wasps is impossible, moreso than any other Host. It's just the broken remnant programming of a divine urge that cannot be fulfilled. The attempt to do it is catastrophic, of course - it can't be ignored even if it fails, because the side effects are that bad. It just can't succeed, either. The Wasps that survived the attempt would go on rampage, terrified, and then flee far and wide, starting the cycle again wherever they gathered in force. Erika's legal work still brings in occasional meals for the Wasps due to ads she maintains in various publications to draw in customers. They're not great ads, primarily focusing on divorce cases which she gets to come to the tower. Once they're in the elevator, she cuts power to it. Those that manage to force the doors open or get out the ceiling hatch find themselves surrounded by Wasps clinging to the sides of the elevator shaft, buzzing endlessly. Her old clientele have, to some degree, started to notice the change. The district's property values have collapsed - liquor stores stocking expensive wines can no longer shift them, and a local businessman that sought Erika's aid has gone into hiding. He believes her solitude and reclusiveness now have something to do with a criminal organization he owes money to - specifically, a criminal organization run by some local Ivory Claws. Soon, he's going to head into the Tower to try to find Erika, and the Pure will be on his trail. Erika does not control the local human cults her dreams have created. They're convenient, of course, as their work hides hers and they're all too willing to offer human sacrifices to the wasps that haunt their dreams. However, there's some problems. Some of the cults have started to pick up a different dream-frequency. Someone or something is emitting electrical dreams as well, and some of the wasp-cults have turned to worship the "Lord of Mount Pe'or" or the "Unity of Flesh," whatever those are. (I don't get the references, myself.) They now violate their own bodies as an unholy sacrament. Erika is enraged that she has a rival faith despite her lack of direct control of the one she made. Soon, she will use the dreams to set the cults at war with each other. Erika is extremely smart, but physically unimpressive, particularly by Host standards. She can't really fight at all. It's her command of bees and other animals nearby as well as her powers of electricity that render her truly dangerous. Well, that and her ability to do minor mind control and teleportation. She, like all Wasp Hosts, is able to resonate the Gauntlet with the beating of her wings, causing horrific nightmares about wasps in anyone that sleeps nearby. The more Wasps that use this power, the further the nightmare region extends. Erika and other dream-queens have greater control of this ability and can actually enter these nightmares to visit human minds and control them to a certain extent. Wasp Hosts are also able to match their humming to the Gauntlet's frequency, thinning it and forcing anyone nearby across it. However, this Gauntlet schism cannot be done in heavy rain or if the Wasp is in any water deeper than a puddle. Next time: Human problems.
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Aug 31, 2019 20:13
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Well, that one's not exactly going to be hard for the woofs to find. "Hey, so, everyone in this entire skyscraper is apparently dead and the lights are never on, you think something's up? Also I think the entire universe is screaming about some kind of colossal pillar of wasps."
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Aug 31, 2019 20:19
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Even by World of Darkness standards this one seems a bit unsubtle. The thing about preying on divorce cases is pretty funny because you bet your rear end that if you're getting a divorce and your soon-to-be-ex goes missing under suspicious circumstances the police or a different set of lawyers are probably going to look into that. Seriously, how has no one noticed this one?
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Aug 31, 2019 20:34
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Ithle01 posted:Even by World of Darkness standards this one seems a bit unsubtle. The thing about preying on divorce cases is pretty funny because you bet your rear end that if you're getting a divorce and your soon-to-be-ex goes missing under suspicious circumstances the police or a different set of lawyers are probably going to look into that. Seriously, how has no one noticed this one? I picture this Host living in the It Follows version of Detroit, where everybody's either dying, desperate, or gone already, and the buildings are the same.
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Aug 31, 2019 20:47
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As much as I love wasps for being cool, this feels like the least interesting of the Host writeups so far. Very one-note. Plus the whole "lol even if they succeed they just cause a disaster"-bit feels a bit lame. Are all the Host gods crippled in such a way that they can never be revived/rebuilt? Or is that specifically just the Wasps?
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Aug 31, 2019 20:50
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That one is fairly specifically the Wasps. Any other Host is in 'we actually have no idea if they can succeed or what would happen if they did' areas.
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Aug 31, 2019 20:57
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I appreciate that some apocalyptic plans are explicitly never going to work but would still be awful, for a change, but I agree that the writeup for the wasp hosts generally lacks punch.
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Aug 31, 2019 21:03
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Well, the write-up does say that the cops are largely inactive and the city is lovely and corrupt, so it's more like "who's going to notice if people in this specific spot are going missing, compared to everywhere else?" At some point this just gets ridiculous. If the wasps hosts were preying upon people whose disappearance weren't unusual maybe I could buy it, but this is just straight up nonsense. I would expect agents of the God Machine or Seers of the Throne to take notice at this one if only because someone operating such out-in-open occult shenanigans fucks up their job to keep things hidden so people don't wake up. There's also a trend of many of these cults involving the wealthy and well-to-do which makes sense until you realize that almost all of the people involved in these are bat-poo poo crazy to a degree that you have to wonder how they're able to maintain the jobs that enable their wealth. If I'm supposed to show up in court, but it turns out I'm a wasp monster possessing a corpse filled with bees and my consciousness is filtered through a multi-dimensional lens you'd think that would be a problem from a professional perspective. I actually appreciate that the grand scheme cannot succeed here because there are so many grand schemes floating around that really most of them shouldn't be capable of success or the world would've been eaten by monsters long ago. Aside from the ridiculous out-in-open conspiracy stuff I really do like this write-up, but I would change one or two things to make it not as dumb.
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Aug 31, 2019 21:36
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Ithle01 posted:At some point this just gets ridiculous. If the wasps hosts were preying upon people whose disappearance weren't unusual maybe I could buy it, but this is just straight up nonsense. I would expect agents of the God Machine or Seers of the Throne to take notice at this one if only because someone operating such out-in-open occult shenanigans fucks up their job to keep things hidden so people don't wake up. 2. CoD is a toolbox approach, which means there's no default assumption that the God Machine or Seers of the Throne exist in your home game unless (like the termites) it's explicit that they're there to function in the first place. This is to prevent the general oWoD feeling of every mortal being outnumbered by supernaturals like 8:1 overall, and so you can say "oh no one noticed this until the PCs because who else is going to, but the PCs" as a basic conceit of why the party is doing anything at all. Also as opposed to metaplot where they've written you out of having any plot hooks worth following (see also Aberrant 1e and Aberrant d20 recently in this very thread). quote:There's also a trend of many of these cults involving the wealthy and well-to-do which makes sense until you realize that almost all of the people involved in these are bat-poo poo crazy to a degree that you have to wonder how they're able to maintain the jobs that enable their wealth.
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Aug 31, 2019 21:45
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"Your honor, I'd like to request a new attorney." "Why?" "They're chewing on my cell phone battery and darkly chuckling about meat." "No cellphones in my courtroom! I hold you in contempt!"
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Aug 31, 2019 21:49
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There's a strong difference between the rich and powerful and the merely wealthy, though. A doctor or other mere professional who isn't heavily connected or just practicing their profession to have something to do besides count their massive inheritance doesn't necessarily have 'immune to law and all censure' money, even if they're wealthy by standards of most people. E: More to the point, though, those are also the class of people where if they're sitting around sacrificing one another to En'Gah, Lord of the Pillar of Eggs, their disappearances or deaths will be noted, and quickly. Even if the actual eccentricity would have passed by easily. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Aug 31, 2019 |
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Aug 31, 2019 21:50
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I should note, Wasp Lady isn't practicing any more. She gets wandering pairs of people looking to get divorced to visit, then has them eaten by wasps. It's still kind of nonsense, but she doesn't go to court at all. (The cult of the King of Honey, on the other hand, is some straight up Epstein poo poo and intended as such, except with eating things instead of pedophilia.)
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Aug 31, 2019 22:02
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I think it depends a lot on the particular flavor of Host or spirit involved. Toad Hosts basically blend in, and the locust nectar wouldn't interfere in any of the addicted cultist's lives beyond practical questions. They're not dying or failing to do their jobs, they just also provide the resources for the cult and 'dinner club.' Most of these infestations don't kill off rich people, they cultivate them as tools.
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Aug 31, 2019 22:02
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Still, there's also the dead skyscraper full of extremely dead people, that kills anyone who goes into it for the wasp hive of dead people. That's a little obvious, too.
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Aug 31, 2019 22:07
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Like Mors said, it's a tool kit. It's not like all these things are necessarily happening at once. While widespread murder of elites would probably draw notice fairly quickly, you can get away with a lot: y'all read about that NXIVM thing?
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Aug 31, 2019 22:29
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Nessus posted:Like Mors said, it's a tool kit. It's not like all these things are necessarily happening at once. While widespread murder of elites would probably draw notice fairly quickly, you can get away with a lot: y'all read about that NXIVM thing? Which also, in thinking on it, highlights another reason Beast was a dumb idea. Because Beast really was the game about 'all of this is definitely happening at once, and it all loves Beasts'.
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Aug 31, 2019 22:33
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I feel like they're falling back on the decadent rich people cult trope a bit too often, but maybe that's just me. I buy the locust and toad ones because they're not obviously malicious or openly murderous so that's easy to fly under the radar. I cannot imagine how hosed up the WoD YouTube conspiracy channels must be. Chernobyl Peace Prize, good point on the current state of politics, but it should be noted that if these morons were actually involved in an occult conspiracy that poo poo would have been discovered because these idiots suck at keeping secrets. Even if they are monstrous in nature, they are not in fact, actual monsters wearing human flesh who exude an aura of brain-warping spirit magic.
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Aug 31, 2019 22:41
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Ithle01 posted:Chernobyl Peace Prize, good point on the current state of politics, but it should be noted that if these morons were actually involved in an occult conspiracy that poo poo would have been discovered because these idiots suck at keeping secrets. Even if they are monstrous in nature, they are not in fact, actual monsters wearing human flesh who exude an aura of brain-warping spirit magic.
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Aug 31, 2019 22:58
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Night10194 posted:Well, that one's not exactly going to be hard for the woofs to find. "Hey, so, everyone in this entire skyscraper is apparently dead and the lights are never on, you think something's up? Also I think the entire universe is screaming about some kind of colossal pillar of wasps." I don't know, it could be something like early '80s Miami, where they had a bunch of high-rises built on laundered cocaine money but no one living in them.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:14
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Ithle01 posted:I feel like they're falling back on the decadent rich people cult trope a bit too often, but maybe that's just me. I buy the locust and toad ones because they're not obviously malicious or openly murderous so that's easy to fly under the radar. I cannot imagine how hosed up the WoD YouTube conspiracy channels must be. Young Freud posted:I don't know, it could be something like early '80s Miami, where they had a bunch of high-rises built on laundered cocaine money but no one living in them.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:16
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megane posted:Yet another unfortunate side effect of the supplement treadmill is that every splat has roughly 15 eeeevil mirror versions running around. You can't swing a cat without hitting an angsty pseudo-vampire with a CORRUPTED SOUL and DARK REFLECTIONS of the normal vampire powers. Well, one thing that felt more emphasized in the original nWoD books was the toolkit nature of their books, where there are all sorts of antagonists that may or may not exist or be relevant to a given chronicle. I feel like the trimmed-down nature of the 2e books - and their focus on a singular antagonist for each line - undercuts that somewhat. We do get more focused games overall, which is probably for the best, but the mythology feels a little more fixed. All the same, it's not like you're going to use every antagonist any more than you're likely to go through every monster in the Monster Manual.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:18
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The real magic in CoD is that they don't get found out because at least one person or non-person in there is competent Fair enough. Young Freud posted:That's a really cool idea, I like the cocaine high-rises thing. The more we talk it the more I like the wasp host thing and have made my peace with the things I was grousing about. Live your best life you crazy bug-lady.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:23
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Alternately, you let your woofs relax from all the intractable problems they can't solve with murder by allowing them a nice, relaxing dungeon crawl through a skyscraper infested with hideous wasp-men and aberrations until they fight a failed radio wasp god on the roof. Really let them get a little R&R before the next time they have to save the city arts council and figure out how to run an opera house instead of getting huge and smashing things.
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Aug 31, 2019 23:31
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