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Froghammer posted:This is a fine line that Pacific Rim of all things nails really well? The Kaiju aren't framed (at least initially) as an unknowable malevolent invaders but as quasi-sentient forces of nature, ranked identically to the way we categorize hurricanes. The Jaeger program is explicitly not a military outfit, with very the few members that actively outrank others having names based off of specialized and niche federal enforcement programs (pilots are rangers, their handler is a marshal). At the other extreme of the spectrum you have Salvation War (web fiction where God abandons Earth and Satan declares himself the new ruler. Humans fight back against both with extreme force), which is 90% reactionary military wank by volume, 9% terrible characterization, and 1% genuinely cool moments. I wanted to like it so much, the premise is 100% my jam, but drat is it poorly written and filled with way too much reactionary military fetishization.
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Apr 19, 2021 17:14
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Halloween Jack posted:Chapter 1 is a million pages of setting history, starting with the Primeval War of the Ancient Wizard Gods that has nothing to do with your PCs. A good setting document should be triangle-shaped. - A little information about the Ancient Past. Namedrop an ancient wizard war, give something to reference when you sprinkle in ruins or whatnot - A moderate information about the Medium Past. How did the current world come about, who founded the kingdom maybe. Names to attach to statues and/or curses, people to be descended from. - A lot of information about the Current World. This is where the players are actually playing, so put a ton of plot hooks in. Name all the big and medium npcs, and explain what their deal is. Unfortunately, a lot of these games are triangle-shaped in the wrong direction. With fifty pages of Ancient Wizard War, a couple pages about What Happened Next, and then "Sexy Dystopia???" scribbled in the margins for the present day
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Apr 20, 2021 01:22
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Zereth posted:If we compare humans to other animals on earth, IIRC we have crazy endurance and ability to recover from injury. Extreme long-term endurance, hyperactive scar tissue and recovery, precision throwing skills (even compared to other primates), great sense of balance, and a bonding instinct on overdrive. There's a few others like innate empathy beyond most animals and intelligence, but those can be safely assumed to be prerequisites for any spacefaring species
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Apr 20, 2021 23:11
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Epicurius posted:So, as somebody who's doing a read along of Animorphs in the Book Barn (Stop by, we have fun), I think it does. It's a series about a guerilla war against alien invaders, and some common themes in the series are the physical and psychological cost of war on the combatants and the the question of what actions are morally permissible to stop the enemy. Yeah, it's probably milsf, but it's the good kind. That actually considers the cost of war, and the moral weight of the enemy. It's definitely not a gunporn military wank, and the resistance movement is a nightmare not a dream
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Apr 21, 2021 16:49
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Ya gotta turn into a giant snake, I'm telling you. No, that was the Taxxons
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Apr 21, 2021 20:36
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Leraika posted:oh no, it's the AdEva GM advice again What was wrong with the AdEva advice? I glanced over it again, and it's mostly decent. Keep players interested, scale story focus to what the players are comfortable with, don't permanently remove characters from the game lightly, offer players OOC assurance when things are looking dark that they will recover, pace the campaign so that characters whose arc is to die or go insane only do so at the end of the game. Is there something I'm missing?
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May 14, 2021 23:55
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kommy5 posted:I'm still trying trying to figure out what Degenesis thinks memes are. They keep using that word and I don't think it means what Degenesis thinks it means. The original meaning of meme, as far as I know, is used in sociology to study the spread of ideas. It's supposed to be treating ideas like genes, subject to similar evolutionary pressures and the need to reproduce. It's a genuinely fascinating field, offering insights into such things as religions and government forms. It's not magic, and it doesn't explain everything, but it's a useful lens through which you can study and explain real world phenomena. One interesting case study I read was looking at the shift in dominant world religions from being mostly polytheist to mostly monotheist, using a memetic framework to show how the religions that spread reflect the meme-evolutionary pressures of the world they are in. What memes are not: mind control powers and/or reprogramming tools
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Jun 1, 2021 02:28
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Do you have a link for that study? It would be very interesting to see: my understanding has been that many people outside the "monotheist core" have often had no problem with imagining a common spiritual source of all gods of spirits, but that they usually rarely specifically worship it. Not off hand, I'll try and find it though. It largely focused on European and near-Eastern religions, since like genes the evolutionary pressure on memes is very localized. IIRC one thing it argued is that monotheist religions are better at exclusion* which leads to them being able to reach a critical mass where they can act as a... I don't remember how they put it in the case study. But basically, the "meme" equivalent of a state. Even if it's spread across multiple political states, a religious bloc can act as a stable state-like entity for its followers. Compare the relatively loose control religious authorities had over the subjects of the Roman Empire to the control the Church(es) had over the same area after Christianity rose into power**. * Monotheistic religions syncretize aspects of other religions, most famously (to a Western audience) the habit of early Christianity to take over holidays. However, this pales in comparison to the level of syncretization and even outright combination that could result from polytheistic religions interacting ** Naturally, for most of its history Church power hasn't been absolute (and there isn't just a single Church authority), but on the whole it has had a larger controlling role than polytheistic faiths. I'm simplifying a lot here And, as Joe Slowboat pointed out, Memes aren't really a dominant idea in the field. It's more interesting than useful in most cases. But I've found that framing things in memetic terms can help step back to look at ideas as systems. It can provide some insight even when it fails to grasp the whole picture
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Jun 1, 2021 07:02
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Is there a thread or discord server for Flying Circus? The review here inspired me to buy it, and I was wondering if there was a place for questions/discussion
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Jun 8, 2021 17:06
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SkyeAuroline posted:Has there ever been a game where the new GM term actually improved the game? Trying to think of any, at all. (Besides whoever first proposed GM instead of DM, assuming the chronology went that way.) I was jokingly going to say Hollyhock God too, but Mors beat me to it. But seriously, I like "Storyteller" as an alternate term for GM. It frames the role as less adversarial (Game Master just sounds like the one who is supposed to be In Charge and Show You Your Place to me).
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Jun 14, 2021 15:56
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a game about real people (not literally. Fictional characters who feel real) in a lived-in world. The heroes aren't divine beings or millenia-old murder elves or masters of every arcane art. They don't carry weapons made of whatever impossibly strong material your faction uses. They're normal people who got swept up into great events. But they're still heroes. They still rise up and overcome. People look at the starting careers in WHFP and assume it's a game about shitfarmers shitfarming and dying miserable deaths. It's not. If you actually play WHFRP, the characters are tough and difficult to kill, and every career (mostly) gets the tools needed to contribute. AoS is a game about faceless supermen fighting in barely-defined spaces for stakes that don't matter. WHFRP is a game about people fighting for their homes and lives and people they care about, against enormous odds that they ultimately win against
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Jul 2, 2021 19:25
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open_sketchbook posted:that erica chapman sounds like a brilliant and extremely hot lady Not to be confused with Erika Chapel, who made a game about hybrid churches/airplanes 
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Jul 10, 2021 22:23
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Nessus posted:That's genuinely novel. As an amateur AI-interested person who is... adjacent to adjacent to Yudkowsky? That's not really an accurate assessment of the current state of AI writing and thought. Roko's basilisk was a kind of interesting thought experiment showing a possible flaw in timeless decision theory, more akin to Pascal's Mugging than a serious Here's What Is Real story, and only connects to AI by using one as an example. And Yudkowsky is barely relevant anymore, even in the circles where he used to dominate. There's still a debate about whether an AGI will arise from a hard takeoff (a rapidly-compounding event where as soon as an AI reaches a tipping point where it is smarter than a human it can self-modify to be slightly smarter, which then lets its self-modify to be slightly smarter, repeating and compounding at superhuman speeds and resulting in the AI going from "smart but not incomprehensible" to "superintelligence" in a matter of hours or days) or a soft takeoff (Where that doesn't happen, and any superintelligent AI is a result of slow deliberate development), but most of the writing is around how to frame problems in a way that it is possible to program. In terms of vocabulary, it exists but none of it has really reached the mainstream yet. NHPs seem to have some in common with Robin Hanson's Ems, which are an interesting (though far from universally accepted) conception of the future of AI
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Jul 14, 2021 17:48
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wiegieman posted:Infinite, or even extremely large computing capacity demands commensurate power supply and heat management. Lancer at least has the dignity to tell us "yeah this is all happening in an unobservable metafold space, it's magic." Actual footage of an NHP's processor setup 
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Jul 14, 2021 18:12
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Homunculi touch on the Chinese Room argument as applied to AI. Imagine a very advanced but not magical version of a chatbot. When you type in some message, it responds with a natural response, advanced enough to pass the Turing test (i.e. someone using the chat is unable to tell if they are talking to the bot or a person). There is a natural tendency to describe this bot as "understanding" language and as "thinking" or "communicating". The Chinese Room argument places someone who doesn't speak Chinese in a room with a printout of a Chinese version of the program in their native language (English in the original thought experiment, but the language doesn't really matter. Just that the program is written in a language the person in the room understands and is chatting in a language they don't). By manually following the printed out program, the person in the room would be able to carry on an equally convincing chat conversation (albeit much slower) despite not speaking a word of Chinese. As applied to AI, this argument demonstrates how it is possible to have a non-understanding object acting in a way that is indistinguishable from consciousness to a simple outside observer. Homunculi are this idea taken to an extreme: reproducing a person's entire behavior rather than a chat program. While NHPs are people, Homunculi are not. But this is a debate with a lot of background and disagreement to it, and Lancer's Homunculi vs NHP split doesn't really do it justice. This is a very basic summary of an interesting debate in the AI field that I suspect the authors were aware of. For more information, read up on the various responses to the Chinese Room argument as well as the concept of P-Zombies. It's an interesting concept philosophically, but it's not always clear that we should meaningfully make a distinction between "system or entity that understands X" and "system or entity that acts exactly the same as though it understood X, but actually does not"
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Jul 15, 2021 18:53
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The Soldier has one of the most thematically perfect Moves in the game: Trigger Discipline. Soldiers are broken people, who only know how to interact with others through violence. Trigger Discipline is a move that sees you pull a gun on someone as part of negotiation. It gives you a huge bonus, but if you fail, you pull the trigger. It's a short, simple move that is incredibly evocative. Escalation without knowing how to de-escalate
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Sep 2, 2021 20:47
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I'm pretty sure Education is meant to apply that total amount spread out among stats, as a means of customizing or fleshing out a character
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Nov 1, 2021 03:57
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For reference, Avoirdupois is basically the Imperial system of weights, based on pounds and ounces, or rather is kinda the ancestor of it depending on where you draw the line of a system being different
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Dec 17, 2021 21:36
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Avatar is a uniquely difficult show to emulate, because its fights are both gorgeously choreographed and animated as well as being character studies where the emotional beats mirror the physical ones. The Last Agni Kai is both one of the best looking fights I've ever seen, it's also a master class in showcasing personality through combat, and is the culmination of three seasons of character arcs and growth. You can't make an Avatar game that treats combat as either a character-driven narrative piece or as a tactical kung-fu battle. It has to be both, and that's very hard to pull off.
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Jan 25, 2022 19:46
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Games in general have a sort of "Weird Term" budget where if they go over my eyes just glaze over and I make dismissive wanking gestures in their general direction. WoD werewolf is bad about it too, it's far from just an AoS problem. But that combined with the other issues people have mentioned and residual grudge from WHF dying to give birth to AoS and I just cannot bring myself to care about it
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Feb 17, 2022 18:18
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Voting strike force
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Feb 19, 2022 19:23
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neonchameleon posted:Do they even worry about throwing down US vs US or UK vs UK? The game does not. Some players don't like blue on blue matches and so bring two lists to casual game nights in order to be Axis/Allies and avoid mirrors, but it's really not a big deal
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Feb 23, 2022 18:34
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I remember seeing a demo of a game called Hive Queen and Country (bug aliens invade victorian england) at a convention years ago that used a very similar ruleset to TSATF. At the time it just felt old school and weird, but now I can see where its lineage came from
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Mar 4, 2022 21:32
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Xiahou Dun posted:Is there a specific reason to discard a weapon or shield card after you've used it victoriously? Just general trickery reasons? (I'm slightly unclear on if you reveal the cards to the whole table or just your opponent in a battle. Since there's a finite number of weapons of each type, maybe you'd discard a shield or snooper after victory if every other card it can block is discarded/in your hand
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Mar 24, 2022 20:29
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Quackles posted:Also, would it be possible to use the Truthtrance card and logical paradoxes to finagle out a win for yourself somehow? If I asked you to surrender after resolving this card, would the boolean value of your response be the same as your response to this question, given that yes=true and no=false, and treating any ambiguous responses as no?
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Mar 24, 2022 21:50
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I'm just glad this card says "About this game". The same general effect has appeared other places without that, and it leads to some funny RAW*. * of course, nobody should ACTUALLY abuse a game in this way, and it should stay purely in the realm of hypothetical murphy rules
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Mar 24, 2022 22:32
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I've been loving the review and am interested in trying the game and I have never read or watched anything Dune related. I know basically nothing about the setting other than "The Spice Must Flow" and "Fremen are deeply unrealistic and probably wouldn't be militarily successful on average", but I'm not having any difficulty following and thinking about the strategy of the game
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Mar 30, 2022 18:10
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Quackles posted:Ooh! Ooh! I got this. It's this. As I said, I know nothing about Dune except a small amount of osmosis via other interests. I remember the Fremen from the Fremen Mirage series, but know 0 about them other than that. Wasn't intending to make an actual statement about the books, just sharing the tiny amount I've heard
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Mar 30, 2022 21:28
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Siivola posted:How are these two things not the same? The odds of success are the same, no matter how much the die "swings", and the difficulty of the fight depends on the actual odds and not at all on "swing". In a die pool system, the success or failure of a given roll could be reduced to a flat d100 odds. The point of discussing "swing" odds is as it applies to progression. Take a basic d20 system. If you get a +5 to the roll, and you need to hit a 15 your odds are 55%. If you need to hit a 20 your odds are 30%. If you need to hit a 10 your odds are 80%. If your modifier increases to +8, you just get +15% success chance in every case. Compare with a 2d6 system. If you get a +5 to the roll, and you need to hit a 12 your odds are 58.33%. If you need to hit an 16, your odds are 8.33%. If you need to hit a 10 your odds are 83.33%. But if your modifier increases to +7, the odds change much more dramatically. You go from 58.33->83.33% chance to succeed at a 12 (+25%). You go from 8.33->27.78% (+19%) to succeed at a 16. And you go from an 83.33%->97.22% to succeed at a 10 (14%). This means you need larger increases to make very difficult odds more approachable, but even small increases can turn medium difficulty rolls into nearly guaranteed. A flat probability system like d100 or d20 can't do that
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Apr 7, 2022 16:44
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Dawgstar posted:W*nd*g* Wait, is that a slur? Genuinely confused, hadn't seen it censored before
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Apr 10, 2022 20:03
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Well mellonbread, I hope you're happy. I now have a group that wants to try out Dune, and we're looking to schedule our first group game. I've also read the book now, because I found the game writeup so interesting. It was okay
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Apr 21, 2022 19:28
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Sure but the Fremen went last in storm order and caught him and his ally on a bad spot with a lucky family atomics. He was doing pretty good other than that
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May 5, 2022 01:25
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I like to see how well licensed RPGs handle the main characters. Make Paul
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Jun 25, 2022 01:58
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I've had a Believer player use that revolution move once. They were in a fairly prosperous town run by a robber baron using clockwork to maintain his wealth and position. The believer views clockworks as people and holding their keys as slavery, so decided to overthrow the town. He rolled poorly and only picked "the revolution succeeds" They wake up the next morning to a town split between three new barons and the streets burning with violence. Was a great story moment, although horrifying from an IC perspective
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Jul 10, 2022 18:24
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Everyone posted:So he rolled badly on his move and that's what happened? I mean, that seems like a lot to hang on a single die roll. I'd have figured that something like a revolution would be its own mini-campaign or something. The move is a single roll that determines the outcome, and I get the impression that "my god what have I done" is the expected ic response to it. But I also talked with the players, and the rest of the party wasnt really interested in playing out a revolution, and the believer himself mostly just wanted to rp the fallout rather than the event itself. So I did a cheap "the next morning, your heads are pounding and you dont remember much" to give them the desired rp opportunities. They all loved it. Had the party been more interested in playing out the revolution itself, I would have of course spent more screen time on it. The moves roll still stands, that's how the power works, but I'd treat it as a rp prompt for people to improv through to reach a preset conclusion rather than a roll and done
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Jul 10, 2022 18:41
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Excited for this Dragonlance review. I used to (might still) have this book, and loved it when I was young
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Sep 6, 2022 03:05
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At the start of most battles in fft, everyone's initiative is a multiple of 5. And you can cast super spells like Holy. And you get a sword through the story that gives immunity to holy. And if you win the battle before the death timer runs out, your characters are fine, but the battle stays won. Calculators in fft were overpowered gods, basically
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Sep 7, 2022 20:54
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Xcom chimera squad has a good approach to it. During the invasion, the various aliens were mind controlled to attack and kill people as near mindless weapons. Then the humans killed the elders and stopped the mind control. And that left the former monstrous occupiers free willed for the first time. And they turned out to be people. Sometimes people with anger issues, or weird dietary restrictions or whatever, but fundamentally people who were just as much victims as the humans. The games not perfect, but it's a good attempt at setting up a scenario where people have to coexist with what they see as monsters (for good reasons)
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Sep 24, 2022 00:00
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I've also been reading Advanced 5e, and have Some Thoughts on it. Are you planning on doing a full review, or is this just a quick check-in on the fighter?
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Nov 15, 2022 19:47
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 Level Up: Advanced 5th edition Adventurer’s Guide Part 1 Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (LU from here on) is an attempt by En World to create a semi-backwards compatible “new edition” for D&D 5e, filling the same role that Pathfinder did to 3.5e. I’m going to be reviewing it in that light, as a replacement for 5e. This means I will be grading it on somewhat of a heavy curve, given the many issues with 5e. I will try to focus on highlighting areas it does better or worse than 5e, rather than issues that bring it down relative to the field of RPGs. System To start with, I want to mention some system differences. I’m going to assume most people are familiar with D&D 5e at this point and focus on what it does differently. A few important concepts: Expertise Dice: When you gain Expertise on a roll, you add 1d4 to the total. If you already had Expertise, you instead upgrade the die size, from 1d4->1d6->1d8. Any additional expertise once you have a d8 is lost, unless you have an ability that says otherwise. Combat Maneuvers: Basically martial spells, special abilities you can use to Do Cool Things in combat. They are almost entirely combat focused, with only a few utility options, and are powered by Exertion, a pool that martial characters get. Combat Maneuvers are broken into 5 degrees (basically spell levels), and 11 Traditions. Classes will give access to a finite selection of Maneuvers across a limited number of Traditions. Each Tradition has 4 1st degree, 3 2nd-4th degree, and 2 5th degree options. Supply: A unified system for tracking if you have enough food/water. A typical person requires 1 supply per day. If you don’t have enough Supply, you start taking Fatigue until you get to eat or you die. Many class abilities and spells will interact with this system. Bloodied: Taken from 4e, this means you’re at or below half health. So without further ado, I will start us off in the Adventurer’s Guide Introduction What is an RPG, etc. etc. basics of how to roll etc. Two things stand out in this chapter. First, it claims that the game is built on three pillars, each of which have equal priority: Combat, Exploration, Social Interaction. This is a lie, since like every D&D game the rules for Combat are much more in depth than the others. But they do put in some work to making Exploration not trivial in another book (Trials & Treasures) Second, it has a section on Safety and Accessibility. While standard in most non-awful RPGs at this point, the game does have some built in elements to address this, which we’ll discuss later. Chapter 1: Character Creation & Chapter 2: Origins Chapter 1 is mostly just serving as an overview for how you will be making your character, presenting few of the options you’ll be selecting. Ability scores and proficiency bonus and level will all work as expected from 5e, but where it differs significantly is the Origins system. Rather than a Race and Background, you now have a Heritage (species), Culture (where and how you were raised), and Background (What you did before becoming a murderhobo). Most notably, Background is where you find all of the ability score modifiers. Heritage abilities and traits are mostly things that would genuinely be innate to a species (such as darkvision or size or dragonbreath), with Culture and Background providing most of your proficiencies. I’ll start us off with the Heritages today, and cover Cultures and Backgrounds in the next part. All Heritages give a set of innate traits, and then usually let you pick between 1-3 other traits (called Gifts). Then, at level 10 you get an upgraded Paragon Gift. You can represent mixed-blood characters by choosing a Gift from a species other than your base one, with Narrator approval. So a Half-Elf could either have Human traits and an Elf Gift, or Elf traits and a Human gift.  Dragonborn were created by ancient dragons as servants, soldiers and sometimes even as children. Their coloration and appearance is based on the type of dragon their creator/ancestor was. LU has four types of dragons, adding Essence and Gem dragons to the mix. Your basic traits are being Medium, movement 30ft, and a scaling breath attack. The options for Gifts are either draconic scales/claws that give bonus armor, elemental resistance and a basic unarmed attack; fins that give you swim speed and longer holding-breath, slightly worse armor than the scales, and darkvision that gets better underwater; or wings that let you fly while not wearing medium or heavy armor, at the cost of fatigue. At Paragon, you can get better claws and armor, better flying, or be able to breathe, swim faster, and see further underwater. You also gain resistance (or upgrade resistance to immunity) to the element your breath attack deals. While the Wings stand out as a powerful pick, the other two aren’t bad. Elemental resistance is great to have, and the underwater option at least comes with darkvision and decent natural armor. I think Dragonborn are one of the better designed Heritages.  Dwarves are Medium, 25 foot speed, darkvision, +1 hp per level. More interesting is that they count time spent crafting as rest. Not super important for an adventurer, but says fascinating things about the implied setting. Their choices are an expertise die against being knocked prone or shoved, or a bonus action for 1d10+level health and expertise and resistance against poison. At Paragon, you either get the ability to slam the ground to make difficult terrain, knock prone and break concentration in an aoe (hits friendlies), or the ability to spend a hit die to regain 1 health after passing a death saving throw. The poison option for dwarves feels like a clear winner, and the earthquake hitting allies (and yourself, RAW) means the death ability feels stronger. But the options aren’t exactly weak, even if there’s a winner. Dwarves also get approval.  While the art in this game isn’t always the best, I give them props for good representation. Elves are Medium, 30 foot speed, darkvision, expertise against charm and can’t be put to sleep, trance instead of sleep. But the elf Gifts are all wild. Either proficiency in arcana and 30 foot telepathy, proficiency in perception and +wisdom to initiative AND immunity to being surprised while conscious, or the ability to roll a d20 once per rest (short or long) and use your reaction to replace someone’s d20 with that result after they roll. At Paragon, they either ignore half cover, light obscure, and long range penalties, gain infinite range darkvision, or the ability to cast Detect Thoughts. ALL of these gifts are stronger than the other Heritages we’ve seen so far, and their Paragon bonuses are also great. The d20 manipulation is the strongest though, as anyone who has played with a Diviner will know. Overall, elves are definitely overpowered.  Gnomes are small, 25 foot speed, have darkvision, expertise on mental saves against magic, and know minor illusion as a cantrip. They can either gain +1AC against larger creatures or the ability to turn invisible once per rest for one turn (either as a bonus action or a reaction to taking damage). At Paragon, they gain expertise on one physical save against magic. Gnomes are pretty underwhelming, except for the invisibility. And I guess most things are bigger, so an untyped +1AC is nothing to sneeze at if you’re going melee.  Halflings are small, 25 foot speed, immune to fear, can move through the spaces of larger creatures, and get to reroll 1s on d20s. Their gifts let them either burrow (burrow speed 10, claw attack), get expertise against prone and immunity to damage and difficult terrain caused by sharp things (like caltrops or spikes), or gain darkvision and telepathy. At Paragon, their luck lets them reroll 1-3 instead of just 1. I like halflings overall. The Twilight-Touched darkvision and telepathy option is kinda weird, but they’re nice and flavorful and not overpowered.  Humans are not boring jack of all trades! While they are medium, 30 foot move, with a bonus skill proficiency, they also have actual traits beyond “pick 1 more thing”. They get to gain expertise on one roll per rest, and for their Gifts can choose between: Can go longer without Supply and only die after 4 failed death saves instead of 3, get to reroll Concentration checks up to Intelligence times per long rest and get two bonus tool proficiencies or a knowledge proficiency, which you can never roll less than a 10 on, or the ability to Dash (still taking an Action) that ignores opportunity attacks and gives you expertise on Acrobatics and Dexterity saves and the ability to ignore fatigue once per long rest (not counting fatigue from lack of supply) and expertise against fatigue from forced march. At Paragon, you either get the ability to auto roll a 20 on an attack once per rest while bloodied, +10 speed and ignore difficult terrain while dashing and creatures you hit can’t make opportunity attacks against you, or permanent expertise in three different skills/tools. I love these humans. They have flavor and a wide range of options. They don’t feel too powerful either, unlike 5e Variant Human and its free feat.  I am here for badass naval officer orcs, yes please. Orcs are medium, 30 foot speed, darkvision havers who count as Large for carrying/moving things and get a bonus die on critical hits. For Gifts, they can either choose a terrain type (arctic, desert, mountain, swamp) and gain expertise to navigate it and resistance to an element common to it, or gain resistance to radiant and the resistance cantrip and Shield spell once per long rest, or a wizard cantrip of their choice and at 3rd level the ability to learn one 1st or 2nd level wizard spell they can cast once per long rest as though from a 2nd level slot. At Paragon, they can choose to stay at 1hp when they would drop to 0 once per long rest. Orcs are pretty cool. Having two Gifts that both give a cantrip and a spell is a bit odd, lot of overlap there. But overall, I like them.  Aasimar and Tieflings are grouped together into Planetouched, with their Gifts determining their ancestry. They are Medium, move 30 feet, have Darkvision, and can choose to stay at 1hp when they would drop to 0 once per long rest (which is a Paragon level ability for Orcs). Aasimar know Guidance, can restore their level health with a touch once per long rest, resistance to radiant, and know Celestial. Tieflings have resistance to Fire and the Produce Flame cantrip. At 3rd level, they learn Arcane Riposte (fire damage only) and at 5th they learn Heat Metal. Both spells are once per long rest. At Paragon, they gain immunity in place of their Resistance, and can choose to have either fire or radiant damage they deal ignore resistance and deal half damage to immune targets. Planetouched are strong. I’m not sure about overpowered, but are at the upper end of the curve. Interestingly, their Paragon damage gift doesn’t care if they are a Tiefling or Aasimar, so you could get a Tiefling who is really good at radiant damage. Conclusion I really like the Heritages. I think this is one area that LU did very well. I’m leery of Elves, and think they’re too powerful, but the rest of them do a good job of capturing flavor. In most cases, Origin traits are all things that are actually innate to a given species, rather than "All elves are nimble and fragile. All dwarves know a lot about stone" or even worse, assigning Int penalties. Splitting Heritage and Culture was a good idea, and I’ll cover Cultures in more detail next time
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Nov 17, 2022 19:13
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