aWoD: Continued

[Username17]

Rules Question: With Technical skill uses, if you don't have an appropriate specialization you take a -1 defaulting penalty, but do your ranks still apply? Example: If you have Logic 3 and Medicine 3 (Veterinary), and then you need to make a First Aid check, do you roll 5 dice or 2 dice?

5 dice.

-Username17

[virgil]

With the Withering power, is it resisted at all? Is it against anyone you can see, or is it a touch or ranged attack?

[virgil]

I'm a having a bit of trouble with Learn the Heart's Pain. It's unresistable and once you get 5+ hits (not uncommon with specialization), you subsume the need of even having to talk to someone, let alone interrogate or negotiate for important information; instead of negotiating/stealthing with an android archeologist for their secret research, vaguely walk by and get all the translations and map of the ruins.

[virgil]

Final question for the day: Does Feint turn off both Agility and Combat, or is it an either/or scenario?

[Orion]

Rules Issues that have come up recently in my campaign:

What is the dicepool for the Gauntlet?

Can you use a portal from the Shallows to the Deeps if you got to the Shallows by Aura Perception? If you do, does your body disappear?

A Bagheera with Nimble Feet wants to run across the room and melee a dude. Does she get the "fast moving" defense bonus against people shooting her that round? Or does stopping to eat a guy make her vulnerable? Vulnerable even to him, or only to survivors?

Statting some street drugs as poisons would be a good thing.

Does Deep Limbo have a sun and moon, night and day? Does the sun suppress vampires? Does the moon refresh werewolves? Personally I like the idea that there are no heavenly bodies visible through the ash, that a faint twilight-level illumination constantly filters through, and that it is too evil to suppress vamps.

Can a ghost go to Limbo?

EDIT: Death Note, Fire Starter, and Hand Aflame need to specify that they don't stage up damage for net hits.

Also, what's with rain of obsidian? I *think* it was written before the explosions rules were written, but as it presently stands it looks like it does nothing. Any Luminary is going to be immune to it, and while you could set it off in a crowd as a terrorist weapon... it would only maim, not even knock out. Finally, Call the Lamprey needs to be clarified. It looks like it deals damage BOXES equal to the net hits rather than POSIT damage, is that correct?

[Orion]

Bigger problem: Bind the Name makes it impossible to run an adventure with antagonists from hell.

Plot Hook: There's an Asura named Xerxes planning to infiltrate a powerful corporation.

PC: Name Binding!

Adventure over.

Seriously, does this power does away with the need to ever see or interact with any enemy whose base is in hell unless they have a true name that nobody knows.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Bigger problem: Bind the Name makes it impossible to run an adventure with antagonists from hell.

Plot Hook: There's an Asura named Xerxes planning to infiltrate a powerful corporation.

PC: Name Binding!

Adventure over.

Seriously, does this power does away with the need to ever see or interact with any enemy whose base is in hell unless they have a true name that nobody knows.

If you want to have one out infiltrating without being immediately banishable, have them stay out of TDR or know one of the basic Names of the Blasphemies. In the second case, the players have the option of making it more of a research adventure.

[Username17]

What is the dicepool for the Gauntlet?

Leaving the Dark Reflection is difficult for magical creatures. Whether traveling by sorcery or through a gateway, moving from the Deep to the Shallow or from the Shallow to the Mortal World requires one to make a make a Resistance Test (Social if attempting to traverse a summoning, Mental if attempting to pass through a mirror gate, or Physical if attempting to navigate a burnt rend in space) with a Threshold equal to their own Potency. If returning to a known place, the storyteller may award a bonus of 1-5 dice to the escape attempt depending upon how familiar one is with the location. Summoning rituals and special gate preparations can add additional bonus dice in addition to allowing for an Escape Test at all.

A resistance test is generally Strength + Edge (Physical), Intuition + Edge (Mental), or Willpower + Edge (Social).

Can you use a portal from the Shallows to the Deeps if you got to the Shallows by Aura Perception? If you do, does your body disappear?

You're already in the physical world, so most portals would be completely useless. You could travel out of a mirror nexus though, and then your body would vanish I suppose. But that's probably not going to happen, because the Mirror Nexus itself is not something you're normally going to be able to walk into without portalling in in the first place.

A Bagheera with Nimble Feet wants to run across the room and melee a dude. Does she get the "fast moving" defense bonus against people shooting her that round? Or does stopping to eat a guy make her vulnerable? Vulnerable even to him, or only to survivors?

She could get the fast moving bonus, yes.

Statting some street drugs as poisons would be a good thing.

That is a good idea.

Does Deep Limbo have a sun and moon, night and day? Does the sun suppress vampires? Does the moon refresh werewolves? Personally I like the idea that there are no heavenly bodies visible through the ash, that a faint twilight-level illumination constantly filters through, and that it is too evil to suppress vamps.

Through the ash, you can't see any stars or moons. However, you are still in an equivalent location on Earth, so moon rise still has a time. You don't see the moon, but power points still refresh for the moon rising out of sight.

Can a ghost go to Limbo?

They are intangible, but they can still walk through gateways, so sure.

Also, what's with rain of obsidian? I *think* it was written before the explosions rules were written, but as it presently stands it looks like it does nothing. Any Luminary is going to be immune to it, and while you could set it off in a crowd as a terrorist weapon... it would only maim, not even knock out.

Rain of Glass does monstrously titanic damage. Damage 3 + Hits, with a defined area of coverage. It is resisted like an Explosion, it doesn't actually have an explosion spread. So you can avoid death pretty damn well by having cover, but in most cases not otherwise.

Finally, Call the Lamprey needs to be clarified. It looks like it deals damage BOXES equal to the net hits rather than POSIT damage, is that correct?

Yeah, Call the Lamprey needs to be rewritten.

With the Withering power, is it resisted at all? Is it against anyone you can see, or is it a touch or ranged attack?

Withering is not resisted. Also, it does need a range. That range will be Near.

Final question for the day: Does Feint turn off both Agility and Combat, or is it an either/or scenario?

That's an inclusive or. They lose both for your next attack.

-Username17

[Orion]

But if Rain of Glass is "like an explosion" it doesn't gain damage from net hits. Furthermore, Rain of Glass doesn't say it makes attack rolls, just an "activation" roll. If you wanted damage to stage up, you need to specify that somewhere.

[Username17]

But if Rain of Glass is "like an explosion" it doesn't gain damage from net hits. Furthermore, Rain of Glass doesn't say it makes attack rolls, just an "activation" roll. If you wanted damage to stage up, you need to specify that somewhere.

It's resisted like an explosion. It is not an explosion. Also, it doesn't have a series of onion shells of progressively less damage, it just has an area (which may be a cone) that it fills, subject to cover.

-Username17

[Orion]

so you're making individual ranged attack rolls against the range-based TN to be hits of each target, then staging up damage like you'd plugged them with a heavy pistol?

[Lokathor]

Game Design/Playing Question: I want the possibility to play as an animate skeleton or something like that. Could more promethian types just be added onto the side? It seems like, of all the types, adding more kinda of Promethian would do the least harm to the idea of trying to allow for people to remember all the types of stuff. Similarly, if I wanted to play a "real robot" with metal and lights and wires and such (or maybe like Robo from Chrono Trigger), it seems like that should be a kind of promethian.

Any thoughts on that kind of thing?

---

A million little edits, mostly punctuation and crap, because I have time and I like precision.

Index and Intro:
[*]The "Getting What You Need" link doesn't capitalize the "y" in "you".
[*]The "The World at Night" link doesn't capitalize the "w" in "world".
[*]The "The World at Night" listing puts an extra newline between the link line and the section list.
[*]Ultra-technical nit-pick I only noticed when extracting the BBcode for examples to convert into LaTeX code, the two tags on the words "Index" (size and bold) aren't actually nested properly.

The Worlds of Darkness:
[*]The first list here has a period after "The Police are no help after all", but the second and third items don't have periods. This isn't technically an error, but it's inconsistant style.
[*]You list off the four worlds in one order, and then the long descriptions of them are in another order. Again, not technically an error, but you might want to change that.
[*]The Dark Reflection is home to what the unenlightened would call demons, ifrit and shinma. ;; Missing the serial comma. Again, not an actual error, but you've got it in other places.
[*]Some say that it is space itself and the big bang created the human world as a tiny mote within the gloom ;; "gloom" appears to need capitalization, based on sourrounding sentences you're never using it as an adjective, but always as the place name.
[*]Phantom of the Opera has no underline.
[*]Hunchback of Notre Dame has no underline.
[*]Which leaves Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Gillman, the Mummy, and the Wolfman – who all appear in the classic The Monster Squad, and the Evil Wizard, the Invisible Man and the Mole Man who don't. ;; In the first clause you seperate with a hypen, and in the second you don't. Also, serial comma after Invisible Man, if you're doing that.
[*]Also-ran to the beast from Nosferatu ;; This sentence should end with a period.
[*]Lycanthropes ;; The line break in this section doesn't seem to be needed, but if you do keep it you should put in two so that there are actually separate paragraphs.
[*]Lycanthropes - Exemplars ;; Either this list shouldn't end with a period (because it has no sentences), or all the other lists along with all the lists of NPC Type examples should end with periods. I'm guessing the former.

I could also go through the other posts with a fine toothed comb as well if you like, but that's it for tonight.

[Orion]

A Shiny, metallic robot would be a Golem-- something obviously inhuman that functioned as a tool, not a person.

An Animate Skeleton... is more of a problem. I'm of the belief that anything inanimate can be a golem, but bones might be an exception; astral magic shouldn't have power over them. You could maybe call a skeleton a Frankenstein (since franks are already obviously sick), or a variant-Revenant.

[schpeelah]

I was under impression that the clan of a Promehean in determined more by creation method and what kind of nature the creator (and player) was going for than the materials used. Hence, anything created to imitate a human will be a Frankenstein, an attempt at Homo superior will be an Android and a worker golem will be, well, a Golem. Also, Androids tend to be created using Science!/Alchemy!/Natural Philosophy! depending on time period and making a Golem requires lots of chanting and runes.

So really Lokathor, everything is dependant more on how you want the PC in question to play and what'll be its backstory than on the use of wires and lights or bones.

[Prak]

That's actually how I thought about it too, more or less, a robot is a golem (or possible an android, if it's a "synth-droid") and a skeleton is a Frankie.

On the other hand, there are some groups where conceptual space isn't as much of a concern because they can keep track of 31 flavours of supernatural, and still other groups will be ok with the 6x3 set up, but will want different types.

and for your own game, go for it. I've been considering making changes to the children of aether so as to appease a friend who thinks they're not appropriately science!-y

[Username17]

Game Design/Playing Question: I want the possibility to play as an animate skeleton or something like that. Could more promethian types just be added onto the side? It seems like, of all the types, adding more kinda of Promethian would do the least harm to the idea of trying to allow for people to remember all the types of stuff. Similarly, if I wanted to play a "real robot" with metal and lights and wires and such (or maybe like Robo from Chrono Trigger), it seems like that should be a kind of promethian.

Any thoughts on that kind of thing?

I can't actually stop people from adding stuff to the aWoD if that is what they want to do. It's their home games, and if they want to put stuff in, that's their business. Some additions would be pretty cool and I might even do myself if I had limitless time and word count to deal with - like writing up more history on the now-defunct Bumen Horde of Ergenekon. Maybe even surviving members who want to bring it back. Other things would I think be fairly neutral to modestly negative. Writing up three extra flavors of vampires, for example, would add complexity and coolness in probably somewhat equal amounts. And other things would be just plain negative - like bringing back the racist and jaw droppingly stupid magical Gypsies from World of Darkness: Gypsie. But in any case, there is flat no way that I even could stop people from adding things they personally wanted to add to their home games.

On Prometheans specifically, they are categorized by why they exist more than what they are made out of. They are a Frankenstein if the creator wanted a Child, they are a Golem if the creator wanted a Servant, and an Android if the creator wanted a Lover. The materials used to create such things (body parts, clay, wires) are standardized, but there is little overall harm to the setting in having a specific Promethean who is made from non-standard materials. Maybe an Android who was made of velveteen or a Golem made from steam filled brass.

However, even then I suggest caution. Every time you introduce a character who has non standard abilities or appearance, you unmoor the players from the world somewhat.

A million little edits, mostly punctuation and crap, because I have time and I like precision.

Index and Intro:
[*]The "Getting What You Need" link doesn't capitalize the "y" in "you".
[*]The "The World at Night" link doesn't capitalize the "w" in "world".
[*]The "The World at Night" listing puts an extra newline between the link line and the section list.
[*]Ultra-technical nit-pick I only noticed when extracting the BBcode for examples to convert into LaTeX code, the two tags on the words "Index" (size and bold) aren't actually nested properly.

The Worlds of Darkness:
[*]The first list here has a period after "The Police are no help after all", but the second and third items don't have periods. This isn't technically an error, but it's inconsistant style.
[*]You list off the four worlds in one order, and then the long descriptions of them are in another order. Again, not technically an error, but you might want to change that.
[*]The Dark Reflection is home to what the unenlightened would call demons, ifrit and shinma. ;; Missing the serial comma. Again, not an actual error, but you've got it in other places.
[*]Some say that it is space itself and the big bang created the human world as a tiny mote within the gloom ;; "gloom" appears to need capitalization, based on sourrounding sentences you're never using it as an adjective, but always as the place name.
[*]Phantom of the Opera has no underline.
[*]Hunchback of Notre Dame has no underline.
[*]Which leaves Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Gillman, the Mummy, and the Wolfman – who all appear in the classic The Monster Squad, and the Evil Wizard, the Invisible Man and the Mole Man who don't. ;; In the first clause you seperate with a hypen, and in the second you don't. Also, serial comma after Invisible Man, if you're doing that.
[*]Also-ran to the beast from Nosferatu ;; This sentence should end with a period.
[*]Lycanthropes ;; The line break in this section doesn't seem to be needed, but if you do keep it you should put in two so that there are actually separate paragraphs.
[*]Lycanthropes - Exemplars ;; Either this list shouldn't end with a period (because it has no sentences), or all the other lists along with all the lists of NPC Type examples should end with periods. I'm guessing the former.

I could also go through the other posts with a fine toothed comb as well if you like, but that's it for tonight.

Thank you. I think you meant promethean exemplars but yes, standardizing formats is a good thing.

-Username17

[Orion]

Wait, Deep Limo corresponds to a location on Earth? I thought only the Shallows did, and that the Deeps were accessed by portal and had no spatial relationship with either earth or the shallows.

[Username17]

Wait, Deep Limo corresponds to a location on Earth? I thought only the Shallows did, and that the Deeps were accessed by portal and had no spatial relationship with either earth or the shallows.

The Shallow Limbo has a correspondence with a location in the Deep Limbo and a location on Earth. If you use Astral Projection to go to the Deep Dreamlands through the Shallow Dreamlands, you go to the same place in Maya every time you activate it from the same place on Earth.

Direct travel between the Deeps and Earth is a little fuzzier than that, in that there are portals that don't necessarily go to the "same place" on the other side. So if someone opens a portal with The Truest Name, it won't necessarily go to a place that is anywhere "close" to the corresponding location in the other world.

-Username17

[Orion]

So, do all luminaries gain 2 bonus disciplines when they get vamped, as per the "transformative advancement" rules? The Bloodline/School rules imply yes.

What, then, about the unplayables? It seems pretty clear that shamblers and soulless don't, because... yeah. So I'm gonna say that none of the Tier 1 monsters do.

But Wraiths actually are transformed luminaries, and Sidhe are player-tier. Does that mean the "minimum" wraith or Sidhe is actually baselist+2? What about a Chimera?

You should probably include a "+2" dsiciplines in every writeup that gets them, or, better yet, put up an "advancement" section for each nonplayable and leave the PC writeups as is.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, do all luminaries gain 2 bonus disciplines when they get vamped, as per the "transformative advancement" rules? The Bloodline/School rules imply yes.

What, then, about the unplayables? It seems pretty clear that shamblers and soulless don't, because... yeah. So I'm gonna say that none of the Tier 1 monsters do.

But Wraiths actually are transformed luminaries, and Sidhe are player-tier. Does that mean the "minimum" wraith or Sidhe is actually baselist+2? What about a Chimera?

You should probably include a "+2" dsiciplines in every writeup that gets them, or, better yet, put up an "advancement" section for each nonplayable and leave the PC writeups as is.

Characters in an In Media Res game have been supernatural for some time and have developed some tricks that are their own in addition to having a mastery of their form and the basic powers that come with it. The character has the 6 Basic and 2 Advanced disciplines common to their type, and have developed 2 Basic Disciplines and an Advanced Discipline that are theirs. In addition, the character knows one Basic or Advanced Discipline that must be from a Universal Discipline or the Sorcery that their Cult (if any) specializes in. The character has a Potency of 1 and therefore a Power Reserve of 13.

I take that to mean that upon transformation, a character only necessarily knows the basic 6 & 2. The additional 2 & 2 are usually the result of further learning &or exploration of the supernatural's powers. Certainly in some cases it makes sense for a character with a certain bloodline to manifest hints of additional powers, but in other cases anything special is hard-earned.

[Orion]

Regardless of the type of supernatural creature that the character is becoming (or discovering that they have always been), the character gains certain things when they stop being a human Luminary and start being a Supernatural Creature:
A Potency of 1.
A Power reserve of 10 (13 after Potency Modifier).
A Master Passion appropriate to the character's transformation story.
The 6 Basic and 2 Advanced Disciplines common to their supernatural type.
1 additional Basic Discipline.
1 additional Advanced Discipline

--aWoD

so it looks like all werewolves and vampires have at least 10 disciplines. With the exception of wraiths, none of the unplayables used to be luminaries, but several of them are supposed to be luminary-level. The question is, since Asuras have 8 mandatroy disciplines are are explicitly PC-level, does that mean that every asura has at least 10 disciplines?

Then there are the elders. It would be kinda weird for them not to get a benefit that the luminary-level ones do, but then they also come with outrageous numbers of disciplines already.

In the case of the ifrit, they're all supposed to be ancient and individual, so I can't imagine that anyone WOULD put a "vanilla" ifrit into their game. But Pods are replicable and presumably not part of a literate society, so there's no particular reason to think a random pod would have extra disciplines unless it's required.

[Lokathor]

Some additions would be pretty cool and I might even do myself if I had limitless time and word count to deal with

Of any additions, I think I'd personally like to see some more information written about the three non-mortal worlds. I'm not sure I'd give them a whole chapter to themselves (though possibly), but maybe give them each a moderate section in the Danger chapter so players and GMs have a little better idea of the kinds of things that are common there. Or give the creatures of those realms some writeups in the Persona non Grata chapter.

[Orion]

Lokathor, I can't find the post you're quoting.

[Lokathor]

Orion: The second most recent post that Frank made. The one where he replied to my question about other kinds of promethian.

Frank: Your link to the AWoD PDF is messed up, probably because you have a space after the URL before the closing ]. Also, it's not google docs, it's google code, which makes a difference because if you view a google doc while logged in it'll list it later in your doc list as a thing you've looked at, whereas with google code that's not the case, you've gotta bookmark the project in your browser or star it.

---

I hate to go back to the same section for more editing, but I noted some things.

[*]The Four Worlds ;; Here you put the titles of works in italics, but later on you switch to using underline all the time.
[*]Limbo: The Dark Reflection ;; for Maya and Mictlan you have "Getting to [place]" and then "Things to do in [place subtitle]", with Limbo it's reversed. Given that Limbo is a "dark reflection", this might have been intentional as some sort of clever play on formatting, but I actually don't think so.
[*]Being In Between Worlds ;; "don't" is (most likely) misspelled.
[*]Things to do in the Gloom ;; "The" should be capitalized. Or, alternately, the "The" in "Things to do in The Dreamlands" shouldn't be, but I like the first.

First post: "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman" officially includes "the" as part of the title, and so it should be underlined and capitalized.

[Username17]

Yeah, the space is what caused that problem with the link, it's fixed. I seriously hadn't noticed that about the Getting To / Things to Do sections, but it is kind of cool.

As for expansion, if nWoD has shown us anything, it is that you can write a 60-100,000 word piece on anything. And I do mean literally anything. They have over one hundred books for the nWoD. Some on such dubious subjects as driving around aimlessly. Seriously, that gets a book that is nearly 90k long. I think that were aWoD to be expanded, it would want books that were way more compact than that. So a book about Mictlan would also be a book about The Shattered Empire and also about Wraiths and also about Zombies. The book about the Carthians would have expanded city writeups in addition to history and NPCs and plot points and stories.

Anyway, yeah Nonplayables are not guaranteed any disciplines other than what they are written up with. A lot of Trolls and just scary brutes and don't have anything else they can do. An Asura could play at a player character level (an indeed is probably the most playable thing on the whole list), but it could also just walk in a few disciplines short compared to a starting character.

-Username17