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JcDent posted:and then get the realm version of a rilfe. That would be a rifle.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:12
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I mean there are regular shooty bang bang rifles around. The main character in Spear of Shadows has that and a bunch of pistols.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:26
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The Ark of Sotek is really more of a shotgun, anyway.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:35
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Mors Rattus posted:The Ark of Sotek is really more of a shotgun, anyway. A snake shotgun.
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Dec 5, 2021 23:10
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A snake shotgun... that shoots friendly snakes. They won't chomp your allies! Extremely cool. Soulbound is the first time I got legit hyped to run something in the warhammer setting.
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Dec 6, 2021 01:12
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[E1M1 but it's snake noises]
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Dec 6, 2021 06:51
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Soulbound: Artefacts of Power A Spell What Eats People Endless Spells were released onto the world by the Necroquake. They can be quite powerful, so the PCs and their foes might try to harness them - or might cause them by accident with a bad spellcasting roll. The final chapter of the book provides guides to use them in game and an explanation of how they work, plus all kinds of new ones to use. So, what is an Endless Spell and why do they only exist now? Normally, when magic is shaped into a spell by mortal will, it has a defined structure and purpose that it is forced to follow temporarily. However, the Necroquake unleashed so much hostile magic into the Realms that it changed the nature of magic itself, allowing spells to last longer and grow in power, even gaining a will of their own. Some scholars believe that the Endless Spell exists as a liminal state of magic, between the deliberate power of spellcasting and the natural expression of the Realms. Some Nagashian sects believe they are divine messengers, foretelling death, while some Sigmarite preachers have begun using them as parables for Nagash's hubris. The Order of Azyr fears that Tzeentch may have had some role in their creation and some members consider them inherently unholy as a result. Some radicals in the Collegiate Arcane argue that an Endless Spell is simply the result of a spellcaster lacking in discipline, tainting their magic by their undirected and uncontrolled willpower, though for the most part this idea has generally not been accepted. It is unclear who's right, but no one can deny that Endless Spells are exceptionally powerful and able to tear apart lives, transmuting even entire towns that they wander too close to. Stories about the dark curses of the Endless Spells are now common in the Free Cities, urban legends and cautionary tales that often have a fair bit of truth to them. Still, there's plenty of people that want to harness and tame them, as their power is always tempting. Some deliberately summon the things, others seek out wild ones and try to bind them to service. Scholars disagree on whether an Endless Spell can be perfectly controlled, but most trying don't want perfect control - they want to point it in the right direction, and most often will be simply working to herd their spell to a battlefield and then minimize casualties on their own side. Besides their obvious use in war, though, there's little call for most Endless Spells. Only those consumed by hubris or megalomania see much reason to try, often in pursuit of their own power, though a rare few people think they can make actually prosocial use of the unique properties of the things. There are some Endless Spells that seem more benign, such as the Emerald Lifeswarm, but the wise realize they're only benevolent by comparison to the more immediately fatal kind. It takes great power to control an Endless Spell and keep it safe, and they will easily destroy those who cannot command them. Often, when they are harnessed, they are still terrifying - just because you turn a Purple Sun against your foes doesn't make it not a horrible thing, after all. Even in the best circumstances and with the best motives, Endless Spells are indiscriminate weapons that will, at the last, ruin the environment around them. Where they pass, it may take generations to grow food once more, thanks to the sheer concentrations of magic. They provide a danger where they linger, just as realmstone can, and must be treated with extreme respect. Fortunately, there are groups of people who actively attempt to stop the Endless Spells, sometimes through magical battle, sometimes through other methods. Some even make a point of hunting down those Endless Spells made infamous by their deeds, though many spell hunters end up dying when they go up against the most powerful spells. The Lumineth theorize that their geomantic practices are able to suppress and calm the Endless Spells, while some in the Order of Azyr or in the Sigmarite priesthoods believe that sufficient faith in Sigmar can be a shield against them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Spell hunters range from similar idealists to vengeful warriors to simple mercenaries, and they rarely have much in common with each other besides their favored targets. Some use magic or divine power to fight the Endless Spells, others simple swords. There are a few shared traits, however. First, regardless of where you come from, you don't become a spell hunter without a strong motivation driving you. It takes more than just a willingness to brave danger, not if you want to last more than one or two fights. Spell hunters must be far braver than most, willing to risk horrific death. There aren't many mercenaries who can get themselves into the mindset just for pay (though the ones that can are often Kharadron). More commonly, spell hunters are driven by vengeance or self-sacrifice, trying to prevent or reverse the harms they have seen done to others or themselves. Last, all spell hunters must have some means of dispelling their prey, though they are not all equal methods. Some use complex aetheric machines, some specially trained fighting styles, others their own magic, others the power of the gods, but it is obvious to all of them that going in without a plan just means death, for magic cannot be killed like beasts can. Most factions do maintain their own spell hunting corps. The Kharadron, for example, use the Grundstok Black Marines, who specialize in aetheric devices that give them an edge against magic, while the Free Cities rely on the Order of Azyr and their spell-piercing, blessed blades, or the Collegiate Arcane and their magical skill. Indeed, the Collegiate is willing to offer their services to most Order-aligned groups, sponsoring all manner of spell hunters to pursue their own academic interests. The Lumineth use the Scinari Calligraves, who perform geomantic magic to protect the land against Endless Spells. The book notes that the main thing a GM wants to focus on with Endless Spells, since they can happen randomly due to bad rolls, is to ensure their threat doesn't overwhelnm the actual narrative. They are powerful and dangerous, and in some cases they can be a great focus for an adventure, but that doesn't mean existing threats should vanish just because one appears. The GM needs to balance the new threat with the old, making sure that existing antagonists remain important. They might seek to control the new spell or make their own efforts to get rid of it, and if necessary, the book says that it can be a good idea to take a brief break in a session when an Endless Spell is summoned to figure out how to handle it, or to use that as a good place for a cliffhanger. Obviously, you can also just introduce Endless Spells deliberately to plan adventures or campaigns, too. An adventure involving an Endless Spell will usually end in a bossfight against the spell itself, but like any bossfight, it's going to need support from other plot elements and antagonists, a reason for people to do things besides the spell itself, and so on. An Endless Spell is not inherently an adventure, but rather should be treated similarly to a big weapon or monster - it's a threat that you incorporate into an adventure. Obviously, some PCs will want to actually use Endless Spells to their own advantage. This is very risky, and it can go very wrong, so players should discuss it amongst themselves and come to an accord before trying it. Assuming everyone is comfortable, an Endless Spell can in fact be a powerful solution to a problem. They are often extremely difficult to cast or control for a single spellcaster, however. A party will be better served by making use of things like the Shared Spellcasting rules to get numbers that high, along with being willing to use Soulfire. (Similarly, antagonists controlling Endless Spells will probably want to have multiple casters on the job, making their encounters even more dangerous.) An Endless Spell that's under control can kill huge numbers of enemies all by itself - but it's also going to inflict a ton of collateral damage if you aren't very careful, and control is a constant battle as long as the spell is active. You can't take a break - the Endless Spell won't be going away quickly, and will need to be dispelled when you're done with it. They are best thought of as climactic megaweapons or tools of last resort, and while the GM should never punish the party for trying to harness one, they should be quite clear that positive use is not easy for endless spells. Endless spells are divided into two types by scholars: predatory and territorial. A predatory spell is one that seeks out and destroys whatever creatures they can find. They are not true predators, mind, as they don't seem to get anything out of their hunting - they don't need to do it to exist, they just...do it. No one is sure what causes the magic to go on an unending rampage, though there's theories. Some argue that it is reflective of Nagash's own nature, granting all predatory spells a bit of his malice. Others say that the spells have a sort of basic self-awareness that makes them try to interact with others, and that interaction is simply inherently destructive because of how volatile they are. Others believe it's just that life energy serves as a beacon for the remnants of the Necroquake. Whatever the case, they don't really have complex motivations - or motivations at all, according to some theories. Rather, they are interesting to use in an adventure because of the way they affect people around them, from those threatened by them to those that want to control them. Dealing with them requires the work of the entire party together. Obviously, spellcasters and others with access to unbinding have an obvious place in facing them, but what about those that don't? They can do things like boldly use themselves as bait to draw the spell's attention, luring it into traps or away from those in danger...but there should also be other jobs for them. Any encounter with a predatory spell should be more than just spell on empty field - the GM should design an environment in which PCs without magic can help, possibly by helping deal with dangerous terrain hazards or secondary antagonists or threats present, or by saving innocents trapped in the rampage. An Endless Spell doesn't exist in a vacuum, but as part of a larger encounter, and that means no one should feel useless. Territorial spells differ from predatory ones in that they generally don't move around. They are usually stuck in one spot, either by their nature or the will of their original caster. Their nature is highly variable, and they can have a ton of different effects. The one uniting factor besides 'does not move' is that they tend to have long-term warping effects on the local terrain, often quite strange ones. It is unclear why, with theories ranging from arcane leakage of their energy to attempting to create a microcosm of the Shyish Nadir. Territorial spells are exceptionally dangerous to approach, often requiring custom protections or enchantments to deal with. They might crystallize the local landscape, turning it into a maze that helps empower the spell, and it may be helpful to think of a Territorial Endless Spell as more of a puzzle than a strict battle. GMs can even come up with custom environmental effects to play into this, like unique hazards bypassed by special prepwork. Even once the spell is gone, the effects may linger on the environment, creating lasting difficulties for travellers even if they are no longer immediately lethal. This provides GMs with a lot of tools for coming up with whatever weird poo poo they want. But how do you fight an endless spell? Well, good news! We have new rules for that! Endless spells now exist in either a Controlled or Wild state. A Controlled spell is a spell - it doesn't have a statblock of its own, but instead operates as described in its spell listing. While this happens, you can try to unbind the spell as normal, though given how hard they are to cast, it's unlikely you'll pull it off. The problems really start when the spell escapes control, becoming Wild. An Endless Spell becomes Wild if the caster fails their control roll at the start of a turn, if the caster becomes Incapacitated, Unconscious or dead, if the caster is more than Long range from the spell, if the caster casts a second Endless Spell, or if the Endless Spell is summoned by accident due to a failed casting. Wild Endless Spells are treated as creatures. By default, they all share a statblock, which is then modified by the specific spell in question. Endless Spells are Large Chosen Constructs (Wild Endless Spell), and they have absolutely phenomenal Melee and Defence, but bad Accuracy - they are close range threats most of the time. Their Armor increases with the Doom, they have absurdly high Body and terrible Mind and Soul, they're Nigh Unkillable, and they fly. Fortunately, they're not very fast or quick to act. However, they have Mettle, and they are also immune to all conditions not explicitly stated in their unique weaknesses, which vary by spell, and they are Ethereal. Their attack is Arcane Assault, which wouldn't hit very hard if they didn't have a gigantic dicepool behind it and a great Melee score, but they have both those things. Once an Endless Spell becomes Wild, it can no longer be dispelled simply. Trying to use Unbind against one normally just won't work. However, because they are made of magic, people who can use Unbind have a number of tools, called Unbinding Actions. They can be performed by anyone with the Unbind Talent or similar Talents that allow use of Unbinds, by default with Channelling but most of those Talents will specify if you use something else instead. All Unbinding Actions can only be performed against Wild Endless Spells, and can only be done out to Long range. They are: Hold: You aetherically anchor yourself in place, trying to do the same to the spell. This requires a fairly difficult roll, but if you succeed, neither you nor the Endless Spell can Move or spend Mettle for extra actions until the start of your next turn. Rend: You pierce the spell's form with aetheric blades, trying to open a weakness in its arcane structure. This is a relatively easy roll, and each success reduces the Endless Spell's Armor by 1 until the start of your next turn. Hinder: You bleed off some of the spell's power, trying to destabilize and weaken it. Again, a relatively easy roll, with each success reducing your choice of the spell's Melee or Defence by one step until the start of your next turn. Strike: You pierce the spell core with an aetheric lance to fight it directly. Relatively easy roll, each success does 1 damage, which ignores the spell's Armor and is Magical. Crystalize: You hurl energy at the spell, compressing it and solidifying its form. Fairly difficult roll, but if you succeed, the spell loses Ethereal until the start of your next turn. The game then moves into Endless Spells - which you can choose to learn as normal spells, though the GM may require some additional narrative requirement to do so, since they aren't usually taught. The rules for them include what they do when Controlled, and then what alterations to the Wild Endless Spell block they apply, how they act when they become Wild, and what special weaknesses the spell has. A sidebar notes that GMs can use these as inspiration to create Wild statblocks for the Endless Spells presented in Champions of Death or other books, or to invent entirely new ones. We'll be getting at least one spell for each Lore in the core, one for the Lore of the High Peaks, and two castable by literally anyone with magic. Next time: Aethervoid Pendulum and Balewind Vortex
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Dec 6, 2021 16:12
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Soulbound: Artefacts of Power The Nothing  The Aethervoid Pendulum can be cast with any Lore. It's rather unusual that way, but it's because it is actually drawing its power from the aetheric void, and thus is equally close to all forms of magic. It's a Predatory spell, quite hard to cast, which can target a Zone withing Long range. Basically, it's an impossibly sharp doom blade made of void, which you fire across the field. You pick a point in Long range for it to manifest, and any creature that starts turn in or enters the Zone containing it has to make a very diffficult Reflexes roll to avoid it. If they succeed, they become Prone as they leap out of the way. If they fail, they take 10 Armor-ignoring damage, and if this would cause them to become Mortally Wounded, they instantly die as the Pendulum cuts them in half. At the start of its controller's turn, the Pendulum moves in a straight line to an adjacent Zone in whatever direction it was heading already. You can spend a Free Action to change its direction if you control it, however. When the thing becomes Wild, its Arcane Assault has Rend, and any Cover it travels through is instantly destroyed. It will move in whatever direction it was heading when it broke free, but will divert from its path to enter the adjacent Zone with either multiple living creatures or at least one Large creature. Fortunately, it does have weaknesses inherent to its void nature. Much as the realmspheres halt the sapping void, realmstone can halt the pendulum in its tracks or even break it. Any time the Aethervoid Pendulum strikes a realmstone object at least as large as a weapon or shield, including any natural deposits it runs into, it will immediately cease all movement and drop to Poor Defence until the realmstone is moved out of its way. If the realmstone is being wielded by someone, they are now the sole target of the Pendulum as long as they are alive. Also, realmstone weapons do double damage to the Pendulum.  The Balewind Vortex is another one that can be cast with any Lore, because it is created from raw aetheric energy. It is a Territorial spell, anchored where it is cast, but its power can shape the magic around for immense distances. It's hard to cast, targeting the Zone the caster is in. You collect the aetheric wind beneath you, forming a raging tornado with a platform on top. While you stand on the Vortex, you can't Move, but also can't be attacked by any creature in melee unless they can fly. You get a large bonus to Defence due to the magic tornado's weird movements, too. More importantly the Vortex also empowers your spells. You get +1 max Mettle and regain an extra Mettle each round, but this extra Mettle can only be used on actions that involve Channelling rolls - you can spend it to cast or unbind as an extra action, double Training or Focus on such rolls, and so on, but it has to be used solely for magic. To stay on top of the Vortex, you have to make a difficult Channelling or Reflexes roll each round to stay in control. If you fail, you are hurled off, taking 5 damage and becoming Prone. Any caster can try to seize control of an unridden Vortex with a Channelling roll, but if they fail, it hurls them away for the same consequences. As long as an unmounted Balewind Vortex exists, it causes massive disturbance in the aether, making all Channelling rolls within Long range harder based on the Doom. When a Balewind Vortex goes Wild, it still can't move, but it can use its Arcane Assault out to Long range, and it ignores Armor. Any time someone casts a spell within Long range of it, it can immediately spend a Mettle as a Free Action to automatically unbind the spell and deal damage to the caster based on the Doom, which ignores Armor. The Balewind Vortex will first shoot at its summoner until they are Mortally Wounded or killed, after which it will preferentially target any spellcasters, then anyone that damages it. Its weakness is that it is powered purely by control of magic, and it cannot touch divine power. It does not "understand" miracles at all, and if it becomes the target ofa Miracle, its uncertainty causes instability, making it lose Ethereal until the end of its next turn.  Ravenak's Gnashing Jaws is a Predatory Amber spell, named for the godbeast Ravenak that is said to be trapped underneath Ghur. Some believe those it kills are transported into Ravenak's own throat, so the beast can eat them. It's very hard to cast, targeting a Zone in Medium range. You call forth Ravenak's power, unleashing a simulacrum of its massive jaws, made from bone wrapped in Amber magic. Any creature that enters or starts turn in the target Zone is attacked by the Jaws, forcing a very hard Reflexes roll. On a failure, they are bitten, taking 5 Armor-ignoring damage and becoming Restrained as the jaws clamp down. If this would Mortally Wound them, they are instantly swallowed whole and die, never to be seen again. Escaping the Jaws requires a very hard Might or Reflexes roll. At the start of the controller's turn, they can move it to any point in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or may have it remain in place. It seems as if the Jaws can bite down on multiple people at once, I think? When the Jaws go Wild, they at least cannot fly - they can only move along the ground. Any Cover or objects in the same Zone as the Jaws are destroyed, however, because it eats them. The Jaws move towards the Zone nearby that has the largest number of creatures, preferring Zones containing Swarms or Large (or bigger) targets if they have a choice. While the Jaws are exceptionally hungry and attack constantly, they are not well-defended from their interior. Any attacks made by characters Restrained by the Jaws ignore its Armor and do double damage. It also has trouble with explosions - any attack from a weapon or explosive with the Blast trait causes the Jaws to become Stunned until the end of their next turn, provided the blast goes off inside them.  The Purple Sun of Shyish has a rework from its appearance in the core. It's a Predatory Amethyst spell, an all-consuming, hellish weapon that exists only to end life. It's exceptionally hard to cast, and you summon it into a Zone in Medium range, where it begins to do its terrible work. Any creature that starts turn in or enters its Zone must make a very hard Fortitude roll. On a success, they take 10 damage and are Frightened while they remain in the Purple Sun's Zone. On a failure, they instantly die, their body transforming into amethyst crystal and their soul tearing out of them and flying screaming to Shyish. If the target has Wounds, they don't instadie, but instead drop to Toughness 0 and become Mortally Wounded, filling all spaces on their Wound track and having a more difficult Death Test than normal at the start of their next turn. While you control the spell, at the start of your turn you can move it to any point in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or have it hold in place. When the Purple Sun becomes Wild, its Arcane Assault can attack out to Medium range. It will always move towards the Zone with the largest number of living creatures nearby. It is still terrifyingly powerful, but it does have weaknesses. Most notably, its killing rays can be deflected by enchanted mirrors. Anyone with a shield or polished metal mirror that has the Magical or Sigmarite trait can spend a Mettle to make a Reflexes roll when they enter the Sun's Zone or become targeted by its Arcane Assault. If they succeed, they deflect the ray and may ignore the effects of it, giving a chance to attack. Good luck!  The Burning Head is a Predatory Bright spell, one of the generally shorter-lived Endless Spells unless provided with plenty of magic as fuel. It is exceptionally difficult to cast, more than even most Endless Spells, and targets a Zone in Medium range, where you summon the giant burning skull. Any creature in the Zone when it's cast must immediately make a very difficult Fortitude roll; if they succeed, they take 5 Damage, +1 if in Aqshy. On a failure, they immediately burn to death, unless they have Wounds. If they have Wounds, they instead drop to 0 Toughness and become Mortally Wounded, fill all Wounds on their track, and have to make a more difficult Death Test than normal at the start of their next turn. Also, the Zone containing the Skull is a Deadly Hazard, and all adjacent Zones are Major Hazards. At the start of your turn while you control it, you can move it to any point in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or hold it still. When the Burning Head goes Wild, its Arcane Assault is able to target every creature in its Zone because it's a burning explosion. It will always move towards the Zone with the greatest amount of flammable objects nearby, which could mean trees, buildings or people. In theory, it's weak to large bodies of water, but that's not usually practical. Still, if it is somehow doused in a waterfall or other large amount of water, has an amount of Aqua Ghyranis hurled on it that increases with Doom, or suffers sufficient damage (based on the Doom) from an Ethersea spell, it drops to 0 Armor and becomes Stunned until the end of its next turn. (Fun fact, literally all of these are much scarier than their wargame incarnations, where they're...well, some of them are decent???) Next time: Chronomantic Cogs, Quicksilver Swords, the Umbral Spellportal, the Emerald Lifeswarm, and the Prismatic Palisade Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Dec 7, 2021 |
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Dec 7, 2021 14:18
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Hey. I was supposed to keep doing the BrikWars F&F! But then my house's meter box caught fire so I've had no power and been in various accommodations for a while. So, naturally there's been a delay.  I will do my best to get a part 6 up soon as I've been ruminating on some things with it, and trying to cajole these into a coherent thesis about a game that's not actually terribly notable is difficult even at the best of times.
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Dec 7, 2021 16:49
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On the Balewind, I am pretty sure it counts as unmounted while Wild.
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Dec 7, 2021 19:11
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It probably does, that’d make sense.
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Dec 7, 2021 19:19
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Not gonna lie the Protoss Lizardmen have been my favorite thing about AoS and the fact that they have a black mamba blunderbuss that scales from derringer to flak cannon is so loving adorable 
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Dec 7, 2021 20:40
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 Icon part 3: Gameplay Loop and Tactical Combat So we’ve covered one of the games that Icon is. This entry we’ll get into the way it expects to be played in narrative and how the tactical combat works. The way the game is intended to work is a combination of Expeditions, Quests (basically a series of Expeditions), and Interludes. The Expedition is “Whenever you leave a place of safety with a goal in mind.” So this includes dungeon dives, transporting a relic cross country, fighting a campaign. “An expedition should always have a defined goal” is important here: the question is “do the heroes succeed at ___?” and you play to find out. At the start of the expedition you define the number of Camps. Camps are basically long rests, you reset a lot (HP, Strain, etc get fixed, Burdens stay) and are fresh for a new day. Camps are also when you spend your XP to level up, which I think is just to keep people from getting analysis paralysis in the flow of the game. At the start of every adventuring day you get a couple Elixirs - basically Estus - which heal half of your HP, which you can drink between combats (in combat healing is limited to Vigor, which oh boy, will we get to).  This is one of my favorite illustrations from the book. Camps canonically are just a couple of hours and a safe place. You’re supposed to have 3 combats or major narrative challenges per camp, which, considering how much time the tactical combat can take if you’re running a normal difficulty encounter, means the game is balanced on a lot of attrition. I have a hard time running this way. Lancer, btw, also has this expectation. Camps also have a ton of upgrades. I won’t go into detail, but they’re basically lair upgrades. They range from things like “get more healing potions every adventuring day” or “automatically generate a little currency from ambient magic” to “a fishing pole with a table of magic fish you can catch and use as potions” and “an altar that summons a simplified character for a guest star to play.” They’re cute and one of basically two things to spend money on (the game’s currency is magical residue called Dust) on, the other being Relics (magic items). This game doesn’t have Blade’s Heat mechanics or Upkeep, so you are kinda hurting for stuff to spend money on. The other side of this loop is Interludes, the time between Expeditions. This is Downtime in other FitDs. You get an action to heal burdens, an action to roll on your Ambitions (either group or party) which are clocks that pay off in XP, and you get to spend your XP and currency to level up and buy new powers. You might also get rewards for in Dust or XP for stuff you did on the expedition, which can both be freeform or structured - certain monsters give you Dust for destroying them, some XP rewards are codified by the system. Which brings us to the advancement system! Rewards in this game are explicit. To recap, every player gets 2 xp per tactical combat, 3 xp for finishing an Expedition, or 6 for finishing a Quest (basically a series of expeditions daisychained for a larger goal). XP is valuable: it’s 4 to unlock an ability, 12 to level up, and there are 12 levels total. So most sessions players are going to unlock something. By default this enforces a pretty steady pace of empowerment. Personally I think the pace is a good thing - most games either imply that they are to be played forever, or else give up entirely on control of pacing and just say “let your DM decide when you level up.” Codifying this makes a statement. So that’s the loop: Pick a goal, make an Expedition, come back home and spend XP and Dust. It’s nowhere near as structured or as abstract as most FitDs, which is kind of inherent to the system: if you’re doing adventurer poo poo, structuring that as just “a score” in the abstract kind of loses all the details you play to get. It’s fast, it’s free-handed, and it has a lot of built in expectations about attrition. Which I don't like, but hey, I'm just some dude. Last thing: the overarching structure of the game is three Chapters, as mentioned in the first post. Each one is 4 levels and your stats all go up based on chapter. So do your enemies. A class that does 1d8 damage at chapter 1 does 3d8 at level three, and monster powers are roughly similarly scaled, although not quite so heavy (player multipliers are usually just pluses in monster statblocks). Currently, your power selection is open from the jump, but this is going to change with 1.3 and certain abilities will be tier 2 and tier 3 instead - this might also change the advancement math since now lower levels are less desirable than higher ones. We’ll see. And that brings us naturally to: Tactical Combat Tactical combat in Icon is clearly a descendant of Lancer, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and DnD4e. It’s anticipated you will play on a grid. There are a poo poo ton of vocabulary terms, and it steepens the learning curve considerably. It uses popcorn initiative (players decide who goes, then dm picks a monster to go, alternating until everyone has gone, then a new round starts) and players go first always unless otherwise established as a consequence. You get two Actions and a Move every turn. You can’t do the same thing twice in a round unless you have an ability that specifically states you can - that’s mostly a monster thing, though. The game has a couple strong tonal statements at the jump. First, it says that combat happens when “the tension and the stakes of the story can’t be resolved except through battle.” It also says that you should start by determining the stakes and making sure it’s clear that both sides have something they want. These can be simple (“I don’t want to get stabbed by these guys”) but there should be a goal and a way to achieve it. There are also alternatives to knock down drag out fights suggested, like in Lancer - escort, defend a position, get in and get out, etc. The game also makes a strong distinction between Monsters, which are horrors, undead, and demons, and Kin, who are people.  This could be an Icon enemy. It's not, it's a Lancer mech, but it could be. Kin are never monsters, and monsters are never Kin. This rule is intended to make a clear distinction between morally unambiguous fighting, like killing an undead hegemonizing swarm, and fighting as the ultimate form of disagreement between two groups. The various enemy factions are divided into Kin and monsters, and they are supposed to fight very differently - Kin will very rarely fight to the death, and will usually retreat if their goal is out of reach or if they are outclassed, Monsters will just try to kill you and maybe eat you if they’re feeling feisty. I like this a lot - establishing this distinction sets out at least an intent that combat be intentional and never “just because,” and that fighting real people should be meaningful and impactful. It’s not on par with Unknown Armies’ unilateral disavowal of violence, and the fact that around half the book is explicitly about combat means that if it did try to play that card it would be ridiculous. But it’s good and in line with the tone. The Jobs are your combat identity. There is explicitly almost no overlap between tactical combat and narrative play. You can combine any Bond with any Job. The Jobs are divided into Classes, which is a superficially logical choice that makes talking about this book much harder. The four Classes are: Stalwarts: Tanks. Area deniers, armored hulks, attacks of opportunity. Vagabonds: Strikers. Fast moving, hard hitting, hard to hit. Mendicant: Leaders. Tons of abilities, buff/debuff, healing. Wrights: Controllers. Explode a fool. Explode a lot of fools. The Class determines just about everything about you in tactical combat. Health, HP, Armor (damage mitigation, hit damage, miss damage, Defense (AC), to-hit-bonus, movement speed. This increases with the Chapter as mentioned above. Astute readers will note that Health is listed separately from HP. That’s because HP is a derived stat! It’s 4 times your Health and all classes have 6 Health. Health is also used to derive other things - your temporary hit points, for example, when you get them, or your reduction in hitpoints after taking a wound. Wounds are basically what it sounds like: when you take enough HP damage to go to 0, you get Defeated (can’t do anything, need help, immune to damage) and you take a Wound, which sticks around until the next Interlude (not camp!). Wounds =/= Burdens, and you’re not obligated to characterize it or do anything with it except have it. When you get Rescued (an action any player can take), you get back up but with 25% x Wounds less HP and one less Health. Yes, it’s very much like Structure in Lancer: your character has four progressively shorter health bars, and when they lose the last one, they die. Atypically for the book it directly states “you die” at four Wounds, which I think is meant to encourage people to surrender short of that point rather than fighting to the last drop of blood. This is more of that attrition I was talking about. Other relevant stats that need explaining: Speed is expressed as three set numbers, usually like this: 3 Run 3 Dash 5. Your base speed is your free move per round. The second number is taking one of your Actions to Run, the third is if you Dash, which is a special kind of move that ignores engagements and interrupts (attacks of opportunity, basically) but it takes up both your actions. Only certain characters (PCs and monsters alike) can make diagonal moves, everyone else has to use two squares of movement. This is a rule people haaaated, but I’ve gotten used to it now.  I'm hurtin for art still so hey, have some more Lancer. Attacks are made with a d20+job bonus roll and come in Light (1 action), Heavy (2 actions), or Superheavy (2 actions and a move) flavors. Your attack damage for each comes from your Class. When you crit or miss, you move up or down the damage chart - a Crit on a Light attack does heavy damage, a miss on a Heavy does Light. Attacks are subject to Boons and Curses -a plus or minus d6 - depending on circumstances, like having height disadvantage or making a ranged attack with someone else adjacent to you. Damage currently comes in Physical or Magical forms, but I think this is getting removed. Damage can also be Piercing, which remove Armor, or Godly, which ignores armor and temp hit points to go straight to the real deal. Godly is a feature of some abilities or a consequence of crits. Damage can be Boosted, which moves it to the next level up (light goes to heavy, heavy becomes critical), or given a Bonus, which means you roll an extra die and take the highest of all of them. The two major forms of battlefield manipulation come with either costing extra squares of movement - this is how height changes and difficult terrain is handled, also moving from one square adjacent to a character to another costs +1 square of movement - or with Boons and Curses. There’s a cover system that cuts damage in half if you’re behind something or someone of an appropriate bulk. The game does allow for Flying, but it just does away with these movement penalties, and explicitly the combat rules say “if someone’s in a combat, even if they’re flying, you can reach them.” The worst consequence enforced is a -d6 on attacks. On the discord Abbadon has said that this is “gamey but it’s a game” and essentially he doesn’t want to deal with monsters or players who can just obviate each other or certain classes that just can’t engage with certain enemies. I think this is fine, personally: I’ve played a lot of games where flying became just another power that was mandatory above a certain level (Pathfinder is bad for this) and didn’t really add anything except making all the characters into discount MCU characters. The other big thing in here inevitably is Saves against statuses/sucks. Players save on a 10+ on a D20 roll. NPCs save on a 12+. At the end of every turn you get to save again against any status effect, and it goes away if you win.  This chart really pretty much covers it. There’s also a whole section about AoEs, but I think it can be more or less elided when you have this chart, most of us know what an AoE is. I found this stuff irritating in Lancer and in Icon it’s really no different. In its defense I will say that AoEs are not a magic user only thing so it still gets some use, but interactions between powers, changing AoEs, some powers have more than one AoE, leads to a lot of second guessing at the table and a surprising amount of friendly fire. There are also Blights. I strongly dislike Blights. Basically its a mark some abilities inflict on a character that’s elemental (frostbite, burning, poison, etc) and at the start of that characters turn it does 1 point of damage per type of blight that ignores armor, but which cannot reduce the sufferer below one HP, and it lasts until the end of combat unless they have an ability that specifically removes them. These are, I think, designed to encourage players to spread the pain around instead of focus firing to get ticking down going on as many monsters as possible, but the main way of doing them is AoEs and those don’t need to be any strong, and most monsters have between 24 and 48 hit points. Also some abilities get amplified when used on somebody with the right blight, and others consume it for increased effect. I think this is intended to act something like the Momentum die in 13th Age, something to make combat more deadly as it goes on and to ensure a constant progress towards somebody winning, but I find it tedious and rarely a significant source of damage, and the big heavily armored monsters that you might really value a constant armor piercing tickdown often have abilities that let them clear blights every round.  These are all the Healers. Three of these we'll get to soon, one of them, way the gently caress later. Let’s talk about healing. We've talked about Camps and Elixirs before, the last one is Vigor. Almost all in-combat healing takes this form which is an overshield equal to a multiple of your Health value (so it decreases as you take wounds), and damage goes to it first (except Godly, which goes straight to your real HP). Vigors don’t stack but replace each other as they come in. Vigors are good for players, I think, but they can drag a combat way down if a monster keeps getting vigors dropped on it and they can’t get past it to do real damage, and monsters don't take Wounds so their vigors are full power all the time. That said, it’s a good idea to limit in combat healing, I just don’t know if this is limited enough. The last thing to get to here is Resolve and Limit Breaks. Resolve is a resource that is generated at a rate of 1 in the party pool per tactical combat and one per player in personal pools. You can spend any combination of your pool and the party pool of Resolve - usually 2-4, depending on your job - to do a Limit Break (implicitly this is with everyone in the party agreeing) which is your Big Special Superattack. Party Resolve sets to 0 when you camp and personal Resolve goes to 0 after every combat, so you’re encouraged to keep pushing on to the next fight instead of resting. Examples of limt breaks include “suplex a fucker into the earth for half of their maximum health” and “you can set any d6 that gets rolled to a 1 or a 6 until the end of your next turn” or “everyone (and I mean everyone) is struck blind and can only attack adjacent characters until they take damage or save.” There are two obvious issues here. First of all, spending of party resources is always potentially fraught especially when it’s your opportunity to do something huge and cool and potentially fight-defining. Second, the way it ticks up means that some players will be able to do it every other round and others might not see a combat long enough to do theirs more than once or twice an expedition. That’s not inherently bad because more resolve = stronger Limit Break but it would be frustrating. That said, I actually like the fact that it encourages parties to press their luck. So, these are the two games of Icon. A FitD that is pretty serviceably adapted to serve an adventurous Dungeon World/DnD style campaign structure and a tactical combat engine that is crunchy as poo poo, and never the twain shall meet. This is probably one of the more unintuitive but interesting curveballs this game throws, but I like it, it’s very cool to have two separate systems so that you can have a super dramatic and meaningful narrative sequence and then slide right into combat and be at full strength and vice versa. Tone continues to be reinforced by the distinction between Monsters and Kin, which is essentially begging DMs to care about stakes and the meaning of violence between thinking beings. To the extent this resonates with you, it’s a good thing, there’s not really a mechanical enforcement for it, but it leads with this and prominently distinguishes every faction as one or the other - it’s meant to feel important. It’s leaning into a nicer, less murder hobo kind of fantasy, one where people don’t kill lightly and where life has meaning, and that’s a novelty in a world where more or less by default elfgames tend to boil down to “kill a dude, eat his heart.” Not that this doesn’t carry that legacy in some ways - it’s in the lineage of Shadow of the Demon Lord, after all - but that it’s another way to conceive of an adventure. That does it for tactical combat. There’s a second section on it later because this book is -absolutely- still under development but I don’t think we need them to understand things. After this we’ll be getting into the Classes and Jobs, which is where the best art in the game is, and where things really start to get weird!
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Dec 7, 2021 22:39
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Wow, these Endless Spells are pretty wild. Most of the legit summoning spells in Soulbound are just a decent straightforward goon that lasts a round or so, but if you go all in on collateral damage you can now throw some absolutely devastating effects that will probably outlast a normal fight. Seems like Soulfire can now turn a party into basically a nuclear bomber, if you have a mage with one of these known. Get into the Chaos stronghold, drop 3 amethyst doom suns, and you might just be able to surf the lower-case-C chaos and reclaim a territory without an army at your back. As long as they don't have a big enough pile of mages to hijack all three of them, of course. If I recall correctly, Tzeentch cultists can roll a LOT of channeling dice working as a team. It's nice to have a summoning option that is high stakes, likely to cause trouble well after you finish using it, but not an explicit Chaos demon summon. As for Icon, I bounced off it about the same way I did Lancer. Way too much fiddly detail in the combat for my personal tastes, even though the art is amazing. I'd probably try out an Icon videogame, but as a tabletop RPG I got bored with Lancer combat really fast, and Icon seems very similar. That said, I do like the look of those blast templates! Having a bunch of weird shaped AoEs in a tactical combat game with an emphasis on positioning could make for more engaging encounters. If someone used the Icon combat for a tactical RPG on Switch where you could do a whole combat in 10-20 minutes, I'd probably really like messing around with their toolbox of battlefield control and warband-wide Resolve options.
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Dec 8, 2021 03:15
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avoraciopoctules posted:Wow, these Endless Spells are pretty wild. Most of the legit summoning spells in Soulbound are just a decent straightforward goon that lasts a round or so, but if you go all in on collateral damage you can now throw some absolutely devastating effects that will probably outlast a normal fight. The issue with summoning something like the Purple Sun is that along with being hard to summon and control is that even if summoned in a Chaos stronghold it’s going to kill everything even the land. Like you would wipe out the Chaos forces, but the area they controlled could be unsalvageable for a generation or more. Plus it does not go away on its own and will try to kill the summoner as well once they lose control. Before moving on to destroy more and more. It’s super risky to summon one unless you are fairly certain you can dispel it before it becomes a problem.
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Dec 8, 2021 03:55
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You say that like there aren't Chaos areas which are already FUBAR and might as well be burned to cinders. 1 weird trick to sterilize a whole region, Nurgle hates it!
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Dec 8, 2021 04:01
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By popular demand posted:You say that like there aren't Chaos areas which are already FUBAR and might as well be burned to cinders. Yeah, exactly what I was thinking. If there's some horrible chaos well full of Varanite that you probably won't be able to attack for generations anyway, why not drop a magic nuke to keep Chaos from getting more cool magic swords? If the land is only unlivable for a couple generations, that's better than an actual nuclear strike (my google for "how long before chernobyl is safe" indicates ~20,000 years). If you are up against opposition with Kharadron spell-bottling or Tzeentch team channeling, it can go VERY bad, but barring that it seems like a pretty solid option if you've already committed to doing deep strike terrorism for Sigmar.
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Dec 8, 2021 04:14
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Yeah I probably will not let a PC have these solely for the fact that they reap so much destruction I think one popping off would be, like, basically a campaign-ender.
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Dec 8, 2021 10:05
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Of course actually getting deep enough into enemy territory and escaping afterwards can make a hell of a campaign. Subterfuge, stealthy movement and extremely quick battles to silence any obstacles.
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Dec 8, 2021 10:26
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One Realmgate too far, Soulbound bastards, Grungsson heroes, Mortek Crawlers of Navarone
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Dec 8, 2021 12:11
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Soulbound: Artefacts of Power Clockspinning  Chronomantic Cogs are a Territorial Celestial spell, though that they come from Azyr originally makes them no less dangerous. They're quite hard to cast, but if you pull it off, you have a tool to alter the flow of time. When summoned, the Cogs appear in Close range of you. You can spend an Action to set them to speed up or slow down time. If they slow time, all foes in Medium range have to make a very hard Determination roll or become Stunned, drop to Slow speed and get -1 max Mettle until the start of your next turn. If they speed time up, all allies in Medium range get a free Action on their turn and get boosted to Fast speed until the start of your next turn. At the start of your turn while the spell is controlled, you can move it to any spot in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or keep it still. When the Cogs go Wild, every point of damage they deal also ages the victim by a full year. This is magical aging, bypassing even the Binding Ritual and other forms of immortality. Anyone that becomes Mortally Wounded this way instantly dies as they are reduced to dust. Once wild, the Cogs stop moving, and at the start of its turn, the GM rolls a d6. On an odd result, the Cogs speed time as above for all creatures in Medium range. On an even result, they slow time as above for all creatures in Medium range. If the Cogs are damaged or someone enters their Zone, they will pursue and attack the intruder relentlessly, despite being Territorial. Fortunately for everyone, the Cogs are still a precision machine despite being a spell, and they can be jammed. Whenever a melee attack would damage the Cogs, the attacker may choose not to deal damage and to sacrifice their weapon to jam the Cogs. This prevents the Cogs from altering timeflow, removes the aging effect from its attacks and reduces it to Poor Defence for turns based on the damage that the attack would have dealt. However, it destroys the weapon permanently, which can't be resisted by anything short of an ancient relic.  The Quicksilver Swords are a Predatory Gold spell, first invented by the banshee-smith Celemnis. They are as perfect as any of her blades in life, and they move very unpredictably. You summon raw Gold magic into a Zone in Medium range, transmuting it into blades. Any creature that starts turn in or enters the Zonemust make a very hard Reflexes roll. If they succeed, they take 1d6+Doom damage. If they fail, it's 1d6*Doom instead. Anyone that becomes Mortally Wounded by this instantly dies as the swords cut them to bits. At the start of your turn, if you control the spell, you can move it to anywhere in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or hold it in place. When they go Wild, the Swords can counterattack in melee. Any time someone makes a melee attack against them, the attacker takes damage based on how badly they roll. The Swords will actively move to seek out the target nearby with the highest (Body+Weapon Skill Training). However, the Blades function best only when they are acting in unison. If one or more swords are separated from the rest of the pack, they are extremely limited. Whenever the Swords are hit by a weapon or effect they causes the Restrained Condition, they get a large penalty to Melee until they break free.  An Umbral Spellportal is a Territorial Grey spell split into two halves. It transports spells and magic from one half to the other, and also lets off magical bursts. It's slightly easier to cast than most Endless Spells, but only slightly. You pick two points within Long range when you summon the portal, and half of the spell forms at each point. Any spells cast within the same Zone as a Spellportal half or targeting a creature in the same Zone is sucked through the near portal and spat out the far one. The caster must make a Channelling roll to either resist this or retarget the spell at a valid target on the other end. If they fail, the new target is chosen at random. At the start of your turn while you control the spell, you can move one of the halves to any point in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action. Should the Spellportal become Wild, it can no longer move at all. Its Arcane Assault can attack out to Long range, however, and can attack from either half. The two portals act separately but share Toughness, Wounds and Mettle. The Spellportal feeds on the energy of the realm it is in, and each half can spend an Action to cast a spell of the same Lore as the realm affinity. The spell is unrolled, casts automatically, and has free Overcast value based on the Doom. It cannot cast the same spell twice in a row. The Spellportal's tunnel moves through the Umbral Web, and if it is sufficiently destabilized, it will collapse on itself by eating its own energy. At the start of any turn in which it has 0 Armor, the Spellportal deals a Minor Wound to itself. If this makes it Mortally Wounded, it implodes. When it does this, all creatures in its Zone must make a Might or Reflexes roll to avoid getting sucked into the Umbral Web and set adrift there.  The Emerald Lifeswarm is a Predatory Jade spell, quite difficult to cast. Many see it as a very powerful healing spell, but it should not be understood as benevolent or safe. When you cast it, you summon a swarm of glowing green bugs into a Zone in Medium range. Any living Mortal or Beast that starts turn in or enters the Zone heals 1d6 Toughness and removes all Conditions. However, if they are already at max Toughness, they have to make a hard Fortitude roll. On a failure, the rampaging life energy within them makes them Stunned until the end of their next turn. As a side benefit, any Zone the Lifeswarm enters for any reason is instantly purified of Chaos taint. At the start of your turn while you control the spell, you can move the Lifeswarm to any point in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or hold it still. If the Lifeswarm becomes Wild, its Arcane Assault heals Toughness rather than dealing damage. However, any time this would take a target over their max Toughness, it causes the victim to suffer a Minor Wound and become Stunned until the end of their next turn as flowers, vines and other natural life explodes out of their body. If this would Mortally Wound the victim, they immediately die and are consumed by the new life. The Lifeswarm will always move to the Zone nearby that has the most injured beings or is the most Chaos-corrupted. The main weakness of the swarm is that it's a network of very small insects connected by Jade magic, and swarms are still vulnerable to fire and explosions. The Lifeswarm takes double damage from all AOE effects, whether they are Zone-target spells, Talents that hit multiple people or weapon traits like Cleave or Blast.  The Prismatic Palisade is a Territorial Light spell, a crystal barrier of Hyshian magic that glows with terrible light. It's quite hard to cast, but if you do, you summon the Palisade into a Zone in Long range. It forms a wall of geometrically perfect crystal across the length of the Zone, oriented as you choose. The Zone becomes two Zones, one on either side of the wall, and the wall blocks all ground travel and line of sight. The Palisade cannot be damaged, and it glows brightly, lighting up all Zones in Medium range, removing any Obscured traits. Anyone that tries to look at the Palisde or who enters or starts turn in a Zone adjacent to it must make a very hard Reflexes roll or become Blinded until the end of their next turn. Anyone that is Blinded this way for more turns consecutively than their Mind becomes Blinded for (Doom) days. Should the Palisade go Wild, it is entirely immune to non-Magical damage. Anyone Blinded by it for more consecutive turns than their Mind now has their mind rewritten by the perfect geometry of the Palisade, turning into an emotionless slave. Such thralls exist only to bask in the light of the Palisade and force others to do so, and the effect can only be lifted by destroying the spell. The Prismatic Palisade does not move or attack for any reason. Instead, it alters minds, and the thralls attempt to protect it and force others to become thralls. Fortunately, it relies almost entirely on sight to control minds. Anyone that is already Blinded (such as by thick blindfolds or similar eye protection or by injury) has a much easier roll to resist being enthralled. Next time: Tide of Souls, Rune of Petrification, the Geminids of Uhl-Gysh.
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Dec 8, 2021 18:11
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I'm enjoying this ICON writeup. I gotta agree that 3 crunchy tactical combats between rests seems... ambitious. Does anyone run sessions (in this or D&D) with that much combat? I usually have one big setpiece fight per session (in crunchy systems), since any more means you're spending basically the entire time in combat. I think Into the Odd is the only system I've played where having a bunch of fights per session isn't a massive time sink.
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Dec 8, 2021 19:33
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I run Lancer and I'm sticking close to 3 combats between full repairs. That translates to one combat per session, of course, given how crunchy everything is.
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Dec 8, 2021 19:45
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Serf posted:I run Lancer and I'm sticking close to 3 combats between full repairs. That translates to one combat per session, of course, given how crunchy everything is. I'm in exactly the same situation and honestly one big battle per weekly session is just right for my group. It does mean that every battle has to be meaningful somehow because spending an entire evening on a trash fight would feel real lovely for everyone but I much prefer that to, say, 5e's recommended 6-8 encounters per literal 24-hour day.
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Dec 8, 2021 20:38
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BinaryDoubts posted:I'm enjoying this ICON writeup. I gotta agree that 3 crunchy tactical combats between rests seems... ambitious. Does anyone run sessions (in this or D&D) with that much combat? I usually have one big setpiece fight per session (in crunchy systems), since any more means you're spending basically the entire time in combat. I think Into the Odd is the only system I've played where having a bunch of fights per session isn't a massive time sink. 13th Age is pretty good at running a lot of combat, mostly because its stacked so heavily in the players favor
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Dec 8, 2021 21:06
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BinaryDoubts posted:I'm enjoying this ICON writeup. I gotta agree that 3 crunchy tactical combats between rests seems... ambitious. Does anyone run sessions (in this or D&D) with that much combat? I usually have one big setpiece fight per session (in crunchy systems), since any more means you're spending basically the entire time in combat. I think Into the Odd is the only system I've played where having a bunch of fights per session isn't a massive time sink. I understand the design decisions behind this thinking, especially once we get to the encounter costing and monster builder you'll see how the size of "a combat" is also pretty linearly dictated RAW. The intention is to be able to use attrition to make drama happen, obviously, and more fights means you can more carefully titrate how much the characters get hosed up, rather than gambling on one big battle that might be either underwhelming or overwhelming. The thing is, there are ways to alter the 'whelm status of a fight, from bringing in reinforcements to letting the players know who they can ice to shake the morale of the others, but a fight that feels rote and uninteresting which in systems can easily mean 2-4 hours of time with your friends wasted. I ran a Monstrosity (Icon's superheavy solo enemy class, gets one turn per player, uses almost your entire encounter budget) fight with four players who are both committed to the system and very familiar with the Massif style and it took over three hours to get it done. Another thing counting against this - there's also the tight XP budget. Three tactical combats is half of a level automatically. If it takes place over three sessions and people are hitting all their xp triggers or invoking burdens, that is a whole level, of which there are twelve in the game. That's before you factor in expedition rewards or ambitions. The game handles this by limiting XP spends to Interludes and making a character's overflow XP go to another party member or else just not let them accumulate any more past a certain point until they can Interlude and level up, which I think is just a bad rule (in a game that, I hope it's coming across despite my efforts to be even-handed, I think is generally really good.). All of this is going in here now because this review is meant to be partly for ludoarchaeological purposes but Abbadon has stated that its all changing in 1.3, which is supposed to come out next Spring. spider bethlehem fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 23:05
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Vadun posted:13th Age is pretty good at running a lot of combat, mostly because its stacked so heavily in the players favor 13th Age fights lasting only a few rounds has really helped this for my campaign, but as the characters have entered Epic tier (levels 8-10) I've had to cut the number of fights per session down since each combat has started to last an extra round or two more than in lower tiers. It's inspired me to swing extremely hard in the other direction for a game I'm working on, trying to keep fights more complicated than a single roll but take less than fifteen minutes real-time so they don't eat up session time nearly as much.
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Dec 9, 2021 04:19
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Soulbound: Artefacts of Power The Sea's Depths  The Tide of Souls is a Predatory Deeps spell, a monstrous wave of Ethersea that can tear souls out of bodies. You call forth a tidal wave into a Zone in Medium range. All creatures in that Zone must make a Fortitude roll; on a success, they take Armor-ignoring damage based on their Soul. On a failure, their soul is torn out of their body, dropping their Soul rating to 0, causing a Minor Wound and blocking all use and recovery of Mettle. If the victim has no Wounds, they just die immediately. As long as someone's soul is within the Tide, they take another Minor Wound at the start of each of their turns. They may spend an Action on their turn to dive into the Tide and attempt a Fortitude roll to recover their soul, and if they succeed, their Soul stat returns to its normal value and they can use and recover Mettle again, but if they fail, they take a Serious Wound. At the start of your turn while you control it, as a Free Action you must move it to an adjacent Zone - the Tide cannot stay in one place. (It is unclear if the Tide continues to steal souls when it enters Zones; I'd assume yes.) When a Tide of Souls becomes Wild, it is much harder to pin down than most spells. The difficulty of Hold Unbinding Actions is increased against them. Further, as a soul-based weapon, when dealing with attacks against or by the Tide, Melee, Accuracy and Defence are calculated based on Soul instead of Body. The Tide of Souls will always move into an adjacent Zone on its turn, and it prioritizes the Zone with the most living beings in it. Fortunately, the Tide of Souls is not accustomed to dealing with Soulbound, whose spiritual nature is linked to others and also able to be set on fire. If any member of a Binding has their soul trapped in the Tide, any member of the Binding can spend an Action and a point of Soulfire to ignite the Tide from within, causing damage based on the combined Soul of the Binding, which ignores Armor.  The Rune of Petrification actually doesn't come from the Necroquake. The Lumineth invented it artificially as a weapon, well before the Necroquake was a thing. It was never intended to be used - which of course does mean it did get deployed during the Spirefall, and has ended up littered across Hysh in small pockets as a result. It is a Territorial High Peaks spell, extremely hard to cast even by Endless Spell standards. You summon the giant stone rune into a Zone within Long range. Anyone that starts turn in or enters the Zone must make a very hard Fortitude roll. On a success, they take 6 Damage and become Stunned while in the Zone. On a failure, they just loving die, transformed into solid stone. If the victim has Wounds, they instead drop to Toughness 0 and become Mortally Wounded, filling their entire Wound track and making a more difficult Death Test than normal at the start of their next turn. While the Rune is strongest in that Zone, it has extended power as well. While within Long range of the Rune, no one can move above Slow speed, and anyone that spends a full round in Long range has to make rolls to avoid petrification as if they were in the Rune's Zone. At the start of your turn while you control the Rune, you can move it to any point in an adjacent Zone as a Free Action or hold it still. As a Wild spell, the Rune's Arcane Assault can attack out to Medium range. It operates on preprogrammed weapon protocols, always moving towards the nearby Zone with the creature with greatest Armor value or, if that's a tie, the one with the most visible weapons. It will not approach or attack anyone that has no weapons or armor unless attacked first. The good news is that the Rune, while an insubstantial spell, has a shell of brittle stone. 6s rolled on Crushing attacks permanently reduce the spell's Armor by 1.  The Geminids of Uhl-Gysh are a very unique spell, connecting two opposed Lores. It is both a Grey spell and a Light spell, and so can only be cast by gods, mortals who have both lores at once, or a group of casters that have at least one Light caster and one Grey caster. It's Predatory and extremely hard to cast. You call forth twin orbs of light and dark into one Zone within Long range or two adjacent Zones in Long range. The Shadow orb is made of despair, doom and darkness, while the Light orb is searingly bright and spews forth mind-bending truths and paradoxes. Anyone that enters or starts turn in a Zone containing an orb must make a Fortitude roll, which is harder if both are in the Zone. If they succeed, they become Frightened (if in the Shadow orb Zone) and/or Blinded (if in the Light orb Zone) while in the Zone. On a failure, the target is Blinded, Frightened and Stunned while in the same Zone as an orb. (A Blinded and Frightened target can't see the shadow orb but can still mentally sense it and will try to move away from it.) At the start of your turn while you control the Geminids, you can move either or both orbs to any point in their adjacent Zones as a Free Action or hold them still. If the Geminids go Wild, their Arcane Assault can strike out to Medium range. The Shadow orb's attacks cause Frightened and the Light orb's cause Blinded. Both last until the end of the target's next turn. The Orbs are independent creatures with shared Toughness, Wounds and Mettle. The Light orb seeks to bring light to dark places, always moving towards the darkest Zone in Long range, favoring those with Obscured or Cover. The Shadow orb seeks to darken bright places, seeking out the brightest Zone in Long range, favoring those with neither Obscured nor Cover. If either cannot find a suitable Zone in range, it will move towards the Zone containing the other orb and orbit it once it gets there; the two orbs are never within Close range of each other. This is their weakness - they cannot inhabit the same space. If both orbs are forced into Close range of each other at the start of their turn, they become Stunned as long as they are and take 5 Armor-ignoring damage. We also get reprints and a handful of new creature stats for the various monsters that appear in the book. This includes stats for sentient armor, automata bodyguards, various Idoneth beasts and so on. The End! Next up, the 3e Stormcast update.
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Dec 9, 2021 18:10
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Mors Rattus posted:
Honestly, this one seems like it would be the easiest Endless Spell to defeat. Just have an unarmed/unarmored wizard and an also unarmed/unarmored really strong person/creature walk up to it and just smash it or dispel it. Mors Rattus posted:Next up, the 3e Stormcast update. Cool. Any plans after that?
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Dec 9, 2021 18:50
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Well, the new Nurgle book comes soon, but I'm not sure beyond that. I've been getting into the Infinity RPG lately but hoo boy that's a lot of setting text even for me.
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Dec 9, 2021 18:54
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Everyone posted:Honestly, this one seems like it would be the easiest Endless Spell to defeat. Just have an unarmed/unarmored wizard and an also unarmed/unarmored really strong person/creature walk up to it and just smash it or dispel it. It will attack if it's attacked first. Also getting close to it will result in someone starting to turn to stone.
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Dec 9, 2021 19:56
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, the new Nurgle book comes soon, but I'm not sure beyond that. I've been getting into the Infinity RPG lately but hoo boy that's a lot of setting text even for me. Do it, release me from my failure. There's just so many words.
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Dec 10, 2021 03:02
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Tsilkani posted:Do it, release me from my failure. There really are. I like a lot of the setting material, even! But I have actually still not managed to read the timeline in the core book.
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Dec 10, 2021 03:12
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Mors Rattus posted:(Fun fact, literally all of these are much scarier than their wargame incarnations, where they're...well, some of them are decent???) This makes a lot of sense to me. In the wargame, predatory endless spells will maybe kill a couple of dudes. In Soulbound, you are those dudes.
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Dec 10, 2021 03:47
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Mors Rattus posted:There really are. I like a lot of the setting material, even! I feel like trying to do the whole timeline is a fool's errand; you're better off going real big picture, then picking a faction and doing their history, noting where it ties into the big picture, and then repeating.
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Dec 10, 2021 04:16
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spider bethlehem posted:I understand the design decisions behind this thinking, especially once we get to the encounter costing and monster builder you'll see how the size of "a combat" is also pretty linearly dictated RAW. The intention is to be able to use attrition to make drama happen, obviously, and more fights means you can more carefully titrate how much the characters get hosed up, rather than gambling on one big battle that might be either underwhelming or overwhelming. The thing is, there are ways to alter the 'whelm status of a fight, from bringing in reinforcements to letting the players know who they can ice to shake the morale of the others, but a fight that feels rote and uninteresting which in systems can easily mean 2-4 hours of time with your friends wasted. I ran a Monstrosity (Icon's superheavy solo enemy class, gets one turn per player, uses almost your entire encounter budget) fight with four players who are both committed to the system and very familiar with the Massif style and it took over three hours to get it done. Yeah, the XP cap is an issue at the moment for sure, there's almost no way you're not going to hit cap on a one-camp expedition, and so you'd be wasting a ton of XP on any multi-camp expedition. I know Abbadon has talked about wanting the system to be able to handle stuff like hexcrawls and megadungeons and stuff, and while the camp system is neat for that, the XP cap definitely gets in the way. I feel like an easy peasy fix would be to simply allow levelups at camp instead of just at interludes, but I'd have to test that before I'm sure. e: Also seconding that despite myself and others focusing a lot on the pain points where things could stand to be improved, I think it's a really solid game with a lot of potential.
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Dec 10, 2021 07:43
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Age of Sigmar: Stormcast Eternals (3rd Edition Update The new book is more heavily rewritten than many older edition shifts! We get the note that Sigmar didn't spend the Age of Chaos doing nothing - much of it was spent training the Stormcast by having them hunt down monsters in Azyr to get them used to actual combat as well as their normal Gladitorium training. It's what makes most of Azyr as safe as it is now - the Stormcast have, at this point, largely exhausted it of anything that threatens normal people, and any monsters that remain do so in remote regions. (He was also working to identify and repair the flaw in the Reforging process that slowly dehumanizes the Stormcast, but as we know, he wasn't able to fix it before he decided he had to act or the world would be lost.) We also get explicit callouts of the Knights Excelsior, the Celestial Vindicators and the Sons of Mallus being the coldest and most uncompromising Stormhosts, the ones who pose the greatest threat to everyone near them. Most others are far kinder and far vetter at dealing with civilians, and the Tempest Lords and Hammers of Sigmar are called out as specifically being noted as just defenders of their cities and, if not necessarily social, dedicated to protection. The problem, of course, is that the nice or protective Stormhosts can't be everywhere...and the clashes caused by the harsh ones have caused massive problems. Part of the reason Nagash was able to make so many strides so quickly is because of the violent purges initiated by these more volatile and heartless Stormcast. Their callous handling of the people led to the formation of rebel movements within several Free Cities, and all efforts to rehabilitate the damaged Stormcast of these Hosts, many of whom have died several times over and lost even more humanity, proved fruitless. Riots spread, and in Excelsis, the Lord-Veritant now referred to only as the White Reaper arrested anyone suspected of disloyalty, while in Vindicarum, the Celestial Vindicators slaughtered much of the city, condemning any person who felt hate. (Except themselves.) This kind of purging was never widespread or common among the Free Cities, but it has become a stain on the Stormcast as a whole, one that the kinder Stormhosts fear they can never be rid of, and the dark deeds committed by the Knights, Vindicators and Sons of Mallus have influenced many mortals to fear the Stormcast. Who can blame them? The Necroquake and the ensuing Soul Wars against Nagash proved difficult in this climate of fear and anger. It was all that could be done to maintain the line and keep most of the Free Cities safe as the forces of Death expanded their rule massively. It was the Lumineth who brought an end to Nagash's advance, too, not the Stormcast. Things seemed to be getting worse and worse - especially as Archaon began to move again. Morathi came to Azyr personally to warn Sigmar that his ancient enemy was moving to secure varanite for a new offensive against Azyr, hoping he could use the mutative realmstone to force open Azyr's sealed Arcway. The Khainites and Stormcast came together for a joint assault of the Varanthax's Maw mining facility. What happened there will never be forgotten by any Sigmarite. Morathi's forces betrayed the Stormcast, stealing huge amounts of varanite and leaving their allies to face the hordes of Chaos alone. Morathi used the stolen power to fuel her own ascension, and the Stormcast army she abandoned was almost entirely annihilated, their souls trapped inside Chaos warshrines to be fed on by daemons. Only a tiny number of them were able to escape through the Ghyranite Arcway. Shortly after, Morathi-Khaine annexed the city of Anvilgard into her empire, killing many of the population or giving them souls to the Idoneth that supported her sudden attack, ensuring the Stormcast guardians of the city would remain captive and unable to report her actions. She'd have succeeded entirely had it not been for the aid of a mysterious figure, who helped Lord-Veritant Kaiser Ven Brecht escape the city and return to warn Azyr. And yet, this was not the worst of things. It turned out the benefactor who aided Ven Brecht was Be'lakor, First among Princes, who hoped to spread discord among the ranks of his foes before making his big move. He succeeded, unleashing upon the realms a ruinstorm of unprecedented proportions. With the skies over much of the Mortal Realms now filled with tumultuous Chaos energies, the Stormcast were prevented from returning to Azyr, ending forever any rumors of their immortality being perfect. The daemon utterly destroyed the Sigmarite Brotherhood, and he'd have sacked the city Vindicarum if not for the intervention of Gardus Steelsoul and the Hallowed Knights, backed by a massive Kharadron fleet. The Celestial Vindicators suffered heavy losses even so, though their city was saved from destruction. The ruinstorms spread from Chamon, and the Stormcast found their ability to retreat to be less and less reliable. In Ghur, even more trouble was brewing. The orruks, ogors, grots and gargants were drawn to their ancient lands by a force they could not explain - the reawakening of the ancient deity Kragnos, personal destroyer of the Draconith people. It was only by the united power of the Draconith royals, Karazis and Krondys, that he was stopped - and that only with the support of the godbeast Dracothion and the Seraphon, who sealed Kragnos under a mountain. Free once more, Kragnos gathered the forces of Destruction to attack Excelsis. The Knights Excelsior and the Astral Templars did their best to stop him, but all seemed lost...at least until Morathi-Khaine showed up, offering to help if Sigmar would end his declaration of war on her over Anvilgard. Between her and the appearance of Lord Kroak, Kragnos was pushed back - at least for a time...though the Kruleboyz took advantage of the chaos to harass the Free Peoples of Ghur and haven't stopped. Fortunately, there was some good news in all this. The duardin god Grungni, whose work in the early development of the Stormcast was vital, returned from his self-imposed exile to rejoin the gods of Order. He had long been seeking a means to fix the problems of the Reforging, and while that still seemed out of reach, he had developed a countermeasure against Be'lakor's ruinstorms: thunderstrike armor. It was expensive and hard to make, given only to those Stormcast who showed greatest courage and conviction, but it was able to channel Azyrite energy better than any material short of celestite itself. Each suit bears a divine mark, a mix of the Face of Sigmar and the diamond rune of Grungni, to symbolize their alliance being rekindled, and each suit allows the soul of the wearer to resonate and channel the power of the storm. On descent, the Stormcast arrive in blasts of deadly lightning, larger than ever before. In death, the energies they built up over the course of battle are unleashed, exploding once more to tear into the enemy and open a path through the ruinstorm back to Azyr. Grungni then set about to forging new weapons to rearm the Stormhosts against the forces of Destruction. Sigmar realized that the orruks and their allies could not be stopped without an equally aggressive strategy - and for that, he would need more outposts, forward bases and strongholds to keep up with the ability of most Destruction armies to ignore the needs of logistics. Now, the Free Cities send out near-constant expeditions to identify new locuses of magical power that might be harnessed to speed construction and empower defense. These groups are the Dawnbringer Crusades, dragging along flying, prefabricated city cores to rebuild the land faster and more efficiently than ever before. The Stormcast ride with them, aided by the Draconith who have been revived from eggs protected for centuries by the Seraphon. Dragons fly from Azyr now, ready to protect the people. It is the Era of the Beast, and Sigmar hopes that it will become one of hope, not destruction. We also get an explanation for why Stormkeeps are so important to the Stormcast, not just as defensive bastions and cores for a Free City, but for their own logistics. Each is home to a Star Bridge, a magical beacon that serves as a direct link to the Sigmarabulum for magical energies. These are even more vital than ever, with the ruinstorms so widespread. While thunderstrike armor can punch holes in the storm, it's relatively rare. A Star Bridge, on the other hand, is a vacuum that pulls in the souls of Stormcast for miles around. It cannons them directly into Azyr for Reforging, and so a Stormhost that is near a Star Bridge takes far fewer permanent casualties than those away from them, especially if they don't have a lot of thunderstrike armor on hand. These are just as vital as the realmgates that the Stormhosts get built around, which form the more mundane logistical network of Sigmar's forces. We get perhaps the first detailed description ever of the Perspicarum, the main Stormkeep of the Hammers of Sigmar and the defensive bastion of Hammerhal Aqsha. It isn't the first Stormkeep - that'd be Fort Ignis - but it's probably the biggest. It's built atop the Basalarach, a massive stone platform housing the Stormrift Realmgate, and it actually contains the Realmgate within it now. Massive rivers of lava have been rechannelled to form a permanent moat around the Basalarach, and this remains its most significant defense - though not its only one, as the duardin engineers and Stormcast architects are always devising new tricks. The fortress is an island of calm in the center of a giant city, closed away behind golden buttresses and gates. The Stormcast that serve there spend most of their time drilling in gladiatorial arenas or working to hgelp craft the prefab structures used in the Dawnbringer expeditions. The fort is about three times larger than most Stormkeeps, traversed by a set of towers connected by statue-lined streets. The towers sereve as meeting halls for the Stormcast and the Hammerhal military, coordinating the city's Dawnbringers. In theory, the Perspicarum could host up to 20 full chambers of Stormcast, but it rarely uses even a tenth of its barracks space, as the Hammers of Sigmar prefer to spend their time in the field. In fact, most of its defenses are handled not by Stormcast but by the Freeugild of Hammerhal, most of whom have grown up in the shadow of the Perspicarum and would die before they saw it breached. The fortress has the most powerful Star Bridge known to exist at present, largely because the Hammers of Sigmar have worked to make it so - they die more than any other Stormcast, and they need to ensure their numbers do not dwindle. It links directly to their Temple of the First Striking in Azyr, allowing reinforcements to be called down nearly instantly. Indeed, the Lord-Commander of the entire host, Bastian Carthalos, has been known to appear to defend Hammerhal without warning, appearing from the Bridge in a burst of lightning whenever he is needed. Few mortals ever go into Perspicarum's core areas, outside of the Freeguild officers. This is the sacred home of the Hammers of Sigmar, and is considered to be best left to them so they can recover in peace. They prefer private cloisters and shrines, though they aren't opposed to a little boisterous partying - they keep their feast halls lined with trophies from their past battles and mark their halls with the standards of the mortal forces that have died alongside them, so that the fallen can always feast with them. The interior of the Basalarach has recently been hollowed out and expanded to serve as monasteries-slash-lairs for the Draconith and their Stormdrake Guard riders. Most of the Hammers' dragons grew to maturity in Aqshy and now adore the warmth of the land's depths. Under the dragon quarters are entrances to the catacombs under Hammerhal, kept guarded at all times and opened only with strict and express permission of the Stormhost's commanders. The Stormrift Realmgate is accessible from a series of bridges leading out into the city proper, which are the closest most mortals ever get to the fortress interior. The Hammers and Freeguild maintain a heavy guard on the bridges to protect the traders coming through and to ensure that the magma pipes heading into the Realmgate to help burn out the jungles around Hammerhal Ghyra remain safe. A permanent detachment of Hallowed Knights assist in this and are given quarters w ithin the Perspicarum, where they have often worked alongside Hammerhal's forces. Likewise, the Knights maintain a space for a permanent Hammer detachment in the Argent Sanctum, Stormkeep of Hammerhal Ghyra. (The Ghyran Hammer detachment is often called on when the Hallowed Knights feel they cannot act without angering someone in their city, so they need an obviously neutral and unconcerned party.) As yet, neither the realmgate nor the Perspicarum has ever been seriously threatened - no army has gotten closer to them since the city was founded. However, the growing gap between rich and poor in Hammerhal Aqsha is leading to resentment against an army of warriors clad in what looks like literal gold, and some agitators seek to take advantage of this. Next time: Dawnbringers and the Chambers
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Dec 10, 2021 19:40
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For those interested in Soulbound and online play. Foundry just got official modules for it. https://www.cubicle7games.com/product/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-soulbound-foundry-module/
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Dec 10, 2021 21:07
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It's kinda hilarious to me that the writers finally had to admit 'Okay, fine, these guys can die after all in some circumstances.' because the And then negate it with another stupidly named magic item right after introducing it.
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Dec 10, 2021 22:00
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Oh, it can still happen - the thunderstrike armor is related to new mechanics they have where they cause damage on death, and they can't all die because, again, mechanics rely on them not all dying.
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Dec 10, 2021 22:03
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