After Sundown tweaks/house rules

[Lokathor]

As with Character Level in DnD, the Potency within a group shouldn't ever split up by more than a single point, and ideally never be split up at all.

I mean it's fancy, but as long as everyone in the group is staying together it's totally a campaign style thing as to if people are gonna be able to improve it or not. Unlike the rest of the stats that you can get via Karmic Advancement, characters within a group shouldn't have diverse values for Potency.

[Chamomile]

Okay, yes. So?

[Lokathor]

So since it's already "everyone in the group has to have the same potency", it doesn't much matter if everyone has 1 or everyone has 23. It's just a stylistic choice as long as everyone in the group has the same amount.

[Chamomile]

NPCs have Potence scores, too.

[Grek]

Persona non Grata Writeup question:

Would it be more beneficial to make full and specific backgrounds for sample NPCs such as "Classical Music 3, European History 4, Race Cars 3" or to note any backgrounds that don't relate to their entry as "10 points of Personal Interests" that the MC fills in?

[DSMatticus]

If you list specific backgrounds that are just fluff fill-ins, put them at the end with some obvious separator or something, so that when people want to customize your NPC picking out the backgrounds that are mostly pointless anyway is easy. Alternatively, just do "10 points of Personal Interests (Sample: Classical Music 3, European History 4, Race Cars 3)".

[Lokathor]

If you're making specific characters include specific backgrounds, possibly some that you wouldn't expect. Characters in shows always have that one weird thing that the audience doesn't expect.

If you're doing the "template" characters like "street thug" or "cop" then just give one or two and a number of extra points the MC can use if they need to.

[echoVanguard]

Devastation says that "[the character] can strike a single opponent [in Close Combat] as if they outnumbered them", but I can't find where it says what this actually does. Under melee combat, there is an entry about "a victim can only resist one more enemy than they have actual combat skill" but it's not clear what this actually does either. Does it remove the base (Combat+Agility/2) threshold required to strike them, or disallow their soak roll entirely? Furthermore, how many "characters" does the character with Devastation count as? I'm assuming that the "identical friends" listing from the first paragraph of Devastation is meant to be used, but it doesn't explicitly say to do so (and it's very unclear what benefit you gain even using those numbers).

The best guess I can make out of all this is that a character with Devastation and no Elder Clout powers cannot be resisted in Close Combat by any character with 3 or fewer Combat skill, while a character with Devastation an at least 1 Elder Clout power cannot be resisted in Close Combat by any character with 7 or fewer combat skill. For both of these instances, I would guess that "resisting" means having a base threshold of (Combat+Agility/2) to strike in melee combat and/or benefitting from the Dodge combat maneuver - the ability to turn off soak entirely seems too strong. Either way, though, it's *really* unclear what it's actually supposed to do.

Lastly, there don't seem to be any rules for throwing, punting or knocking opponents back. If a Strength-10 creature uses a car to smack a medium-sized opponent, I would imagine they should fly a goodly distance (possibly through some intervening scenery), but there are no rules for such that I can find.

echo

[Lokathor]

Yes, since they can't resist the attack they have a defensive Threshold of 0 instead of (Combat+Agillity)/2. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to use the "identical friends" count. Honestly, that's a weird part of the power.

It's not that unclear, the section on attacking already talks about creatures resisting melee attacks or not:

The Threshold to hit something that is Adjacent to you is zero. Seriously, it’s right next to you. However, if the target is aware and able to resist the attack, the threshold is increased to half the target’s Agility+Combat total. Yes, against skilled opposition it is much easier to shoot an opponent from 3 meters away where they can’t interfere with the shot than it is to shoot them from within arm’s reach where they can.

So yes, you need Combat 3 to resist Devastation at the Advanced level, and Combat 7 if they've got an Elder Clout, and then if you can't resist your defensive threshold drops to 0.

Note that if you yourself also have Devastation you should probably be able to counteract those additional attacks with your own additional attacks, negating them 1 for 1. This isn't spelled out anywhere though I guess.

Lastly, there don't seem to be any rules for throwing, punting or knocking opponents back. If a Strength-10 creature uses a car to smack a medium-sized opponent, I would imagine they should fly a goodly distance (possibly through some intervening scenery), but there are no rules for such that I can find.

Using human-scale strength people are assumed to be knocking each other around and falling over and getting up and fighting more all within the 12 second combat round. Using super-human strength people should probably have a thing where they can knock each other great distances, yeah.

[Whipstitch]

I thought it was 5 and 9 friends, so you outnumber like 6 and 10 attackers (counting yourself) for Devastation and Elder Devastation respectively. That would require skills of 5 and 9 to set a threshold against, right?

[echoVanguard]

I thought it was 5 and 9 friends, so you outnumber like 6 and 10 attackers (counting yourself) for Devastation and Elder Devastation respectively. That would require skills of 5 and 9 to set a threshold against, right?

I believe you are right.

echo

[echoVanguard]

Whoops! Double post.

echo

[CatharzGodfoot]

What is the rationale for giving skill bonuses with powers?

It seems reasonable to...

[*] limit skill bonuses to 1/2/3, or +1 or a specialty at basic (and minor abilities at higher levels), and
[*] limit skill bonuses with the normal skill cap (or normal skill cap + potency).

That said, the range of effectiveness may still be so large that it hardly matters.

[Kaelik]

Echo, still the best double posts.

[Judging__Eagle]

I'm also tremendously confused what happens if your Baali witch becomes a Vampire or Revenant. Do you lose your old powers, or just stack them on? Similarly, how might a mundane Luminary in an Origin Story become an Android? Not how might such a transformation be explained, but how might it actually occur in terms of advancement?

echo

Lokathor's post, and what Frank wrote in the section on how "turning into a ghost" is not an excuse to add "laundry lists of powers" to your character sheet are how I've explained to players who want to be "Cyborg Werewolf" or "Dryad Baali".

Your story is that you got a conversion from one creature type to an other; but you have to pick which of the two you are "more" of, and that's the type you are.

In the end, I'm perfectly fine with player characters continually transforming their character from type to type as they attempt to become a monster that they want to become. This sort of goal fits very well with the "Change" Driving Passion; as well as meshing along the lines of Transhumans concept.

[Username17]

What is the rationale for giving skill bonuses with powers?

Basically, it's so that supernatural creatures can end up with dice pools in the range of augmented specialists in Shadowrun, which is a design space I happened to be comfortable in. I mean, I've playtested a lot of Shadowrun before I even started this project, so having dicepools go up to 18 or so for really focused characters was something I was familiar with.

By the way, do people prefer "dice pools" or "dicepools"? I figure I should use one or the other consistently through the book.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

"Dice pools" looks better to me.

EDIT: It has recently come up that the way Bitter Fruit works is actually really vague. The power promises that learning Advanced and Elder Coil of Thorns grants more recipes to the power, but does not say exactly what those recipes are or how many hits you would need to brew them. Some clarification as to exactly how this is supposed to work would be nice.

[Prak]

Also, whether Bitter Fruit can brew up street drugs, or if someone should just buy the Pusher background or something.

[Grek]

The interaction between Bitter Fruit and the DoT rules are well defined. This is probably because Bitter Fruit was written before the DoT rules were. (you can tell because it still talks about Poison Strength as if that still existed) I would recommend replacing the list of things you can make with this:

Basic:
Antitoxin: Increases the Delay on any poisons in you by hits.
Mundane Poison: A non-magical but deadly poison with Delay 6, Timer 20m. Hits can be spent to increase the Timer by one stage or decrease the Delay by 1 point.
Magical Poison: Any of the poisons from Tongue of the Serpent can be reproduced for 3 Hits.

Advanced:
Magical Potion: A magic potion can be made for 3 hits that causes any of the following with a delay of 6º: Addiction, Agony, Amnesia, Aesthetic, Delusions, Fatigue, Overstimulation, Paralysis, Stimulation, Sleep or Infatuation. This has whatever Timer the Brewer wants, but can be dispelled with salt before then and, unlike most sorceries, if the recipient is exposed to the weakness of the creation (Alcohol, Water or Sunlight), then the potion is suppressed. Unlike most DoT effects, this does one box right away and you start to feel the effects right away. Net hits let you add more effects.
Explosive: For 3 hits, you can make explosives. A standard bitter fruit explosive has a baseline Damage equal to Hits, 1m Radius and a Small Size. Every stage the size increases also raises the Damage by 2 and the doubles Radius. Optionally, you can create explosives that deal Normal or Fire damage.
Sickness: Any of the diseases from Abyss of the Body can be reproduced for 3 Hits.

Elder:
Hypnotic: For 5 hits, you can make a potion that makes someone susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Anyone with Authority powers can use them on the victim without making eye contact or even being nearby, as long as the victim can hear the user. Furthermore, the threshold to convince that character to do something is reduced by 3.
Dryad Seed: For 6 hits, a seed that turns someone into a Dryad.

[Chamomile]

So, I've been thinking about how various Destiny items actually work. I'd like to use these in my PbP game which will probably be up and running within three or four days, so immediate feedback would be appreciated, especially if something is badly unbalanced.

An enchanted weapon (sword or otherwise) is a weapon that simultaneously counts as wood, iron, and silver, and therefore deals aggravated damage to everything magic. You can have an enchanted arrow or even an enchanted bullet (though that's non-recoverable and probably a bad idea), but you can't have an enchanted bow or gun. Actually, you can, but it'll only take effect if you use it like a club, so it's just a really bad idea. You can also make magic defenses (shield, armor, whatever) which allows you to make an Agility + Athletics test and decrease any incoming sorcery by the number of net hits, as though you had simultaneously thrown salt, sand, and seeds at the thing (you cannot make an Intuition+Rigging test with a magic shield or armor, though, because I just can't think of any way that makes sense).

And I have just realized I'm going to be late for something. So more later.

[Grek]

A sword that deals 3A damage is problematic, in that it is pretty much superior to Touch of Darkness in all respects for any character that doesn't have Swarm Song. A rating 1 Destiny should not be comparable to any discipline like that. Furthermore, saying that "enchanted guns" are off the table as something a character can have is really sad when "the Masterpiece of Daniel Colt" is specifically called out as a thing you could obtain.

Looking at the ratings, we have:

Rating One: The two listed examples here are Magic Tomes (which lets you turn people into Witches/Witch Spawn and gives you access to three sorcerous paths) and Bane Weapons (which ignores magical soak bonuses and lets you use a limited version of Touch of Darkness or Summons against the thing it's bane to). This says to me that the minimum powers for something to be a Rating 1 Destiny are: "Turns a character into a Supernatural Creature in their Origin Story" OR "Gives a character a single scene's worth of MC-defined access to one or two Basic/Advanced Disciplines are needed to advance the plot"

Rating Two: We have a Magical Library (which is like a Magic Tome, except with 5 paths and you can use it to do research as well) and the Wings of Needless Sorrow (which gives the wearer the ability to "find trouble" at will). Another thing that needs to be noted here is that having either implies that you also have some Rating One stuff, either explicitly (in the way that a Magical Library has lots of Magical Tomes in it) or implicitly (in the way that owning the Wings of Needless Sorrow means that you'll probably end up running into other minor magical artifacts). The standard here is that it lets a character with an otherwise mundane skill (like Research or Driving) apply that skill in a supernatural setting.

Rating Three: Here we have a True Prophesy (which lets even people who don't have any applicable skills find out about supernatural goings on) and a Magic Gate (which lets you easily travel between dimensions but not between places within a single dimension). These don't really seem to have much in common, so I'm going to just say that Rating Three is anything stronger than Rating Two but not strong enough to cause a geopolitical hubbub when you use it.

Rating Four: This one has three examples: A Planar Nexus (which lets you rapidly travel across the world through magic portals), a Scrying Pool (which isn't given a full writeup, but presumably lets you scry on people to find out what they're doing) and Preah Khan. The key point here is that each one something that even a Syndicate or Mortal Government would be interested in having, and that using it lets you disrupt existing power structures, be it in a subtle way (where you drive the rival gang out of business due to the fact that your drugs don't cross earthly borders at all) or in an unsubtle way (where you show up with Preah Khan, make the Mekong River flood Myanmar and then declare yourself King of Cambodia).

Rating Five: You have a Sack of Weather (which would let you Hurricane a city of your choice to death) and the Charts of the Stellar Oracles (which are vital to a cult and have prophesies about pretty much everything). Rating Five objects are enough for you to found a Cult around or to hold a small country for ransom and thereby obtain real political power.

Rating Six: This has Yggdrasil (which lets you go to any city in the world at will, in addition to other effects) and the Library of Alexandria (which has every book ever, including magical ones). Each one is both unique and powerful in a way that most governments or syndicates cannot match. Having access to one of these at all means that you're in a Power Fantasy campaign.

[Chamomile]

The point about the enchanted weapon being better than Touch of Darkness is a good one. That said, I do want there to be such a thing as enchanted weapons which are just generally enchanted, like how in Angel people will grab swords and axes out of the weapons cabinet and only one member of the team actually uses firearms regularly. Buffy picks up an arsenal of her own beyond stakes and crossbow towards the end, and while each individual weapon in Buffy's chest probably does have a name and a history and some wizard who forged it, Buffy doesn't actually know or remember what most of those things actually are. Possibly Angel doesn't really know the details of his, either. He just picks the one he likes best and hacks things up with it. Some kind of enchanted weapon that works like that would be good.

Alternative suggestions: Weapons that work as two out of the three kryptonite substances, weapons that are made of one substance in particular but ignore the Edge attribute when used against creatures vulnerable to that substance, weapons that ignore the Edge attribute just generally, weapons that deal aggravated damage to everything but don't ignore magical defenses, or weapons that are calibrated against a specific type of monster (strigoi, baali, whatever) somehow.

Also, when I say that it wouldn't work for guns, I'm only talking about your Destiny 1 stuff that fills out a weapons cabinet, because I want it to be the case that enchanted weapons are, as a general rule, swords and stuff. A specific and particularly awesome enchanted weapon could be a firearm or a slingshot or a plasma ray or whatever, they're particularly awesome.

Also, talking about the sorcerous tomes: I really don't like how they work in vanilla flavor After Sundown. If I draw the Magician, High Priestess, Death, Temperance, or the Devil, it should be assumed that I just get my goddamn powers unless there is some reason why I couldn't reasonably learn a new sorcery of the type. Sure, if I'm in Limbo longterm it may be the case that I can't learn Astral Sorceries unless someone else in the party knows the same sorcery and could teach me, but barring these kinds of unusual circumstances if there is a major arcana that can be used for nothing else but learning Orphic Sorceries, then the default assumption should be that learning Orphic Sorceries is a thing you can just do (every other Major and Minor Arcana works this way). It's true that getting your hands on a relevant spellbook is not especially difficult, but it still takes effort and plus their cheapness actually kind of lame in and of itself when spellbooks are specifically things like the King in Yellow and the Necronomicon. It's really exactly the wrong amount of importance: Wimpy enough to seem underwhelming, but unique enough that it will typically not be assumed that a supernatural will just have this stuff lying around and doesn't need to worry about it.

I would rather these manuscripts be harder to obtain and have a larger game impact. For example: Your bog standard Destiny 1 spellbook covers only a single sorcerous path, but allows you to trade in any Major Arcana for a Basic or Advanced power from that path (alternatively, something which allows you to trade in any major Arcana that grants any kind of power for a power in the paths covered, even if ordinarily that Arcana covers only Universal powers or powers of a different power source). Greater spellbooks and/or collections would naturally cover more paths.

[Grek]

I would honestly recommend not having swords that have the primary effect of making you better at killing people. If you let people pick weapons that do that, it will end up being the only sort of sword they pick. How about any one these effects for your magical weapon:

-The weapon does something obvious and notable if held by the right/wrong person. Examples include: Turning into a snake and biting non-Strigori; glowing faintly in the hands of the reincarnation of Napoleon; weeping blood if held by a murderer; allowing itself to be pulled from a stone only by Luminaries; screaming when held by a user of Infernal Sorcery; fuming with smoke if held by a Covenant Saint. This lets you determine if a given person meets whatever the weapon's criteria is and possibly stops "unworthy" people from using it.
-The weapon counts as being [Wood|Iron|Silver] even if it is not. Anyone hit with it counts as if they were exposed to [Alcohol|Water|Sunlight] for the rest of the scene.
-The weapon is attuned to a given dimension. It lets a Luminary bearer see into the shallows of that realm and both dowse and dispel sorcery drawn from that realm.
-The weapon is made of literal fire. It casts light like a torch, does 3F damage and burns anyone that tries to hold it as if they were holding their hand in a campfire.
-The weapon makes the bearer subject to an additional Master Passion (often Rage or Hunger, but others work as well) and the appropriate Frenzy.
-The weapon can be used to turn someone into a supernatural creature. Maybe people slain with it contract Lycanthropy, or maybe it steals souls and turns people into Fallen.

[Chamomile]

I would honestly recommend not having swords that have the primary effect of making you better at killing people. If you let people pick weapons that do that, it will end up being the only sort of sword they pick.

First of all, I should mention that I am pretty consistently satisfied with your work in this thread, and that the list of interesting effects is appreciated and will probably see use. With that said, being arbitrarily better than regular swords at killing people is actually exactly what I am looking for from your bog-standard 1-Destiny magic weapons (or your 2-Destiny magic weapon arsenals), because the question of "why the Hell are you bringing a sword to a fight in Los Angeles" (or wherever) needs answering. Unless I'm misunderstanding how the combat system works (which is possible and also a good reason to add in a example combat in 2e), there is very little reason to ever take anything other than a shotgun or an assault rifle to a fight except for problems with availability or concealment, both of which hit swords as hard as long guns, or if what you really need is some other type of gun like an MG or a sniper rifle.

[Grek]

The primary advantage of melee weapons like sword is that you get to use Clout with them. Even if you just have Vigor, you're throwing down a minimum of 5 extra dice for being super strong. Advanced powers can bring that up to like 12 dice and base damages of 5 or 6 depending on if you're using Giant Size to make your sword huge or if you're using Devastation to lift a sword that's already huge.