Mutants = Leviathans too, or is that just referencing their Spawn only? I'll assume you meant all of em since no Levis got a replacement ability otherwise.
Instead of "Inanimacy" which implies they no longer move, how about "Persistence of Body", "Undying", "Eternal Unlife" or even "Interminable"
Regarding Revive the Flesh undoing a year of aging... can they become children? I'd rather just state that it halts aging period. Becoming children is creepy, which is good, but maybe a bit too far out there.
Chasing the Storm should give water breathing (Deep Ones, Dryads) to get that back in the play.
After Sundown tweaks/house rules
Moderator: Moderators
Yes.erik wrote:Mutants = Leviathans too?
No objections to giving it a better name.Instead of "Inanimacy" which implies they no longer move, how about "Persistence of Body", "Undying", "Eternal Unlife" or even "Interminable"
The actual rules text should probably include the clause "as far as the age when the creature was when it first manifested this power." in it. So Leviathans can go back to when they first sprouted gills, Icarids/Fallen/Vampires back to the age they were at conversion, and everything else to another appropriate age.Regarding Revive the Flesh undoing a year of aging... can they become children? I'd rather just state that it halts aging period. Becoming children is creepy, which is good, but maybe a bit too far out there.
Definitely.Chasing the Storm should give water breathing (Deep Ones, Dryads) to get that back in the play.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
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I think In Nomine had a clarification about a similar power that aging does not mean growth, so spamming it on an adult human would get a really fresh-faced adult human rather than a child.erik wrote:Regarding Revive the Flesh undoing a year of aging... can they become children? I'd rather just state that it halts aging period. Becoming children is creepy, which is good, but maybe a bit too far out there.
What I find more amusing is that it's movie immortality for non-ridiculously-paranoid lycanthropes - most people probably have one day a year they don't need to burn more than 3 PP to not die.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Thu Oct 10, 2013 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.
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Brief section from my upcoming mini-sourcebook/campaign guide to playing Wraith Chronicles in AS. Corrections and comments are highly welcome.
Life as a Wisp
While wisps are not playable characters, they are some of the most common denizens of Mictlan and easily the least dangerous of otherworldly creatures a player might claim as an Asset. So a brief discussion of their perspective and capabilities is warranted:
When you become a wisp, a number of significant changes occur. Perhaps the most obvious is that you wake up in the Deep Gloom with hazy memories of dying. The world looks very different, but still recognizable. Because the wisp is in the Deep Gloom everything is universally dark, cold and still. The sky is black and stays like that all the time. The Shallow Gloom is visible through Aura Perception (which is activate from the moment the wisp first "wakes up" to their afterlife) as a ghostly outline that is mostly identical to the real world, except more awful and bloody. Ghostly trees and ethereal buildings can be seen all around, with leaves being tossed by intangible winds and soaked by translucent rain. A transparent moon and a transparent sun are visible, but fail to illuminate the surroundings. Sites of murders, suicides and tragic accidents appear as they did during the final moments of those that died there, rather than as they do during the present.
If a wisp looks at themselves (generally in a pool of water, which is the only natural reflective surface in the Deep Gloom), they will discover that their appearance has changed dramatically. They are no longer recognizable as being the same person they were before, and instead look like a humanoid shadow cast by a flickering ball of light. Their personality remains the same (at first) and most backgrounds, skills, languages and other attributes are retained. They remember how they should look, and will often reject the image they see in the reflection, convincing themselves into thinking they aren't really dead. Even if they accept their new state, the discovery of their own death is usually incredibly traumatic. Many wisps never recover from the shock of dying before they pass on entirely. A lucky few may remain ignorant of their deaths for their entire time as a ghost, but mostly these cases end up eaten by zombies.
Given that a wisp is based on a living human, you may be tempted to stat up a random wisp by taking a random bystander and applying the wisp template. Don't. Most wisps that are still kicking around the Gloom are old and have backgrounds and skills suitable from whatever time period they died in, not modern day. Most speak only dead languages and think that horses are still used to get around in the mortal world. While you can probably get away with this in a normal campaign, having a Ghost Chronicle where all the wisps behave like modern day humans leaves all sorts of stories out in the cold.
While a wisp is nominally an Orphic creature with a Lunar Power Schedule, 10 Power Points and a Weakness to Sunlight, none of that really matters. Wisps don't have anything to spend power points on and have no need to replenish them. Their Aura Perception is activated exactly once (when they first come into existence at the sunset following their death) and is typically left active until they fade away. So, while new wisps cannot form during the day and the creation of a new wisp can be detected in the Deep Gloom as Orphic Magic as far out as a hundred meters, once a wisp exists, they don't care about sunlight weakening them so much a they do about sunrise sending them back to the land of the dead.
While in the Deep Gloom, wisps (and other ghosts) are fully solid. This means that zombies, other ghosts and anyone else that happens to be in the Deep Gloom can kill a wisp without needing to go find some wood or do anything special. Shamblers and Soulless will almost always try to do so. Revenants may attack if they feel cruel, but generally won't bother eating something that doesn't have a brain for them to feed on. Poltergeists will almost always attempt to crush a wisp and absorb its essence. Necromancers, wraiths and other wisps generally range from abrupt to oblivious, if only because if someone stopped to examine (let alone converse with or attack) every wisp they encountered in the Gloom, they'd never get anything else done. Even so, newly created wisps tend to be skittish as they do not have Restoration to save them from death and are by definition very much aware of their own mortality. Ancestor Cities have tall walls and armed guards to keep zombies out, making a safe haven for a wisp. Wisps living in one who manage not to go insane and some of the longest lived.
The Shallow Gloom is fairly unsatisfying to a wisp. Although they can float around and won't be eaten by rampaging zombies, being in the Shallow Gloom means passing through most objects and not still being able to interact with the Mortal World in a meaningful fashion. Unlike the Deep Gloom, necromancers can see and hear a wisp in the Shallows without doing anything special, the wisp has no special ability to perceive the necromancer. It knows that it is being watched and may plead with the necromancer to summon it to the Mortal World, but cannot see or hear the necromancer until he or she does so.
If a wisp isn't in the Deep Gloom, they probably want to be in the Mortal World. And if they want to be in the Mortal World, they probably want to be haunting someone or someplace. All wisps have a Strength of One and thus the most a wisp can lift over head is 30kg. That's 30 liters of water, a large dog or a piece of marble the size of a large brick. It can carry 10kg home. That's about as much as a chubby cat, a sack of 200 golf balls or a single bar of gold. This is mostly useful in the Deep Gloom, where wisps congregate in the Ancestor Cities, but it can come up during hauntings as well. A wisp can easily hit people with a hammer or a wooden spoon, levitate wooden blocks and knock on doors and walls all night long. With difficulty, one could rustle the branches of a tree, slam doors or even load and fire a wooden crossbow if it knew how in life. When in a frenzy, a wisp's Strength increases to Two allowing such slightly more impressive hauntings as levitating an entire wooden chair, clumsily swinging an hatchet or toppling a bookshelf.
And yes, just like spawn monsters, wisps do have Master Passions and can go into Frenzy. While ghosts have some of the most varied passions of supernatural creatures, the most common are Despair at being unable to interact with the world, Rage at their killers (real or imagined) and simple Loneliness. Greed and Hunger are somewhat more rare, but can often be seen in wisps who died of neglect or starvation. Wisps who are in a frenzy almost always respond to it by haunting mortals they feel have wronged them, by self-destructively seeking out zombies to fight or by joining into a poltergeist.
Life as a Wisp
While wisps are not playable characters, they are some of the most common denizens of Mictlan and easily the least dangerous of otherworldly creatures a player might claim as an Asset. So a brief discussion of their perspective and capabilities is warranted:
When you become a wisp, a number of significant changes occur. Perhaps the most obvious is that you wake up in the Deep Gloom with hazy memories of dying. The world looks very different, but still recognizable. Because the wisp is in the Deep Gloom everything is universally dark, cold and still. The sky is black and stays like that all the time. The Shallow Gloom is visible through Aura Perception (which is activate from the moment the wisp first "wakes up" to their afterlife) as a ghostly outline that is mostly identical to the real world, except more awful and bloody. Ghostly trees and ethereal buildings can be seen all around, with leaves being tossed by intangible winds and soaked by translucent rain. A transparent moon and a transparent sun are visible, but fail to illuminate the surroundings. Sites of murders, suicides and tragic accidents appear as they did during the final moments of those that died there, rather than as they do during the present.
If a wisp looks at themselves (generally in a pool of water, which is the only natural reflective surface in the Deep Gloom), they will discover that their appearance has changed dramatically. They are no longer recognizable as being the same person they were before, and instead look like a humanoid shadow cast by a flickering ball of light. Their personality remains the same (at first) and most backgrounds, skills, languages and other attributes are retained. They remember how they should look, and will often reject the image they see in the reflection, convincing themselves into thinking they aren't really dead. Even if they accept their new state, the discovery of their own death is usually incredibly traumatic. Many wisps never recover from the shock of dying before they pass on entirely. A lucky few may remain ignorant of their deaths for their entire time as a ghost, but mostly these cases end up eaten by zombies.
Given that a wisp is based on a living human, you may be tempted to stat up a random wisp by taking a random bystander and applying the wisp template. Don't. Most wisps that are still kicking around the Gloom are old and have backgrounds and skills suitable from whatever time period they died in, not modern day. Most speak only dead languages and think that horses are still used to get around in the mortal world. While you can probably get away with this in a normal campaign, having a Ghost Chronicle where all the wisps behave like modern day humans leaves all sorts of stories out in the cold.
While a wisp is nominally an Orphic creature with a Lunar Power Schedule, 10 Power Points and a Weakness to Sunlight, none of that really matters. Wisps don't have anything to spend power points on and have no need to replenish them. Their Aura Perception is activated exactly once (when they first come into existence at the sunset following their death) and is typically left active until they fade away. So, while new wisps cannot form during the day and the creation of a new wisp can be detected in the Deep Gloom as Orphic Magic as far out as a hundred meters, once a wisp exists, they don't care about sunlight weakening them so much a they do about sunrise sending them back to the land of the dead.
While in the Deep Gloom, wisps (and other ghosts) are fully solid. This means that zombies, other ghosts and anyone else that happens to be in the Deep Gloom can kill a wisp without needing to go find some wood or do anything special. Shamblers and Soulless will almost always try to do so. Revenants may attack if they feel cruel, but generally won't bother eating something that doesn't have a brain for them to feed on. Poltergeists will almost always attempt to crush a wisp and absorb its essence. Necromancers, wraiths and other wisps generally range from abrupt to oblivious, if only because if someone stopped to examine (let alone converse with or attack) every wisp they encountered in the Gloom, they'd never get anything else done. Even so, newly created wisps tend to be skittish as they do not have Restoration to save them from death and are by definition very much aware of their own mortality. Ancestor Cities have tall walls and armed guards to keep zombies out, making a safe haven for a wisp. Wisps living in one who manage not to go insane and some of the longest lived.
The Shallow Gloom is fairly unsatisfying to a wisp. Although they can float around and won't be eaten by rampaging zombies, being in the Shallow Gloom means passing through most objects and not still being able to interact with the Mortal World in a meaningful fashion. Unlike the Deep Gloom, necromancers can see and hear a wisp in the Shallows without doing anything special, the wisp has no special ability to perceive the necromancer. It knows that it is being watched and may plead with the necromancer to summon it to the Mortal World, but cannot see or hear the necromancer until he or she does so.
If a wisp isn't in the Deep Gloom, they probably want to be in the Mortal World. And if they want to be in the Mortal World, they probably want to be haunting someone or someplace. All wisps have a Strength of One and thus the most a wisp can lift over head is 30kg. That's 30 liters of water, a large dog or a piece of marble the size of a large brick. It can carry 10kg home. That's about as much as a chubby cat, a sack of 200 golf balls or a single bar of gold. This is mostly useful in the Deep Gloom, where wisps congregate in the Ancestor Cities, but it can come up during hauntings as well. A wisp can easily hit people with a hammer or a wooden spoon, levitate wooden blocks and knock on doors and walls all night long. With difficulty, one could rustle the branches of a tree, slam doors or even load and fire a wooden crossbow if it knew how in life. When in a frenzy, a wisp's Strength increases to Two allowing such slightly more impressive hauntings as levitating an entire wooden chair, clumsily swinging an hatchet or toppling a bookshelf.
And yes, just like spawn monsters, wisps do have Master Passions and can go into Frenzy. While ghosts have some of the most varied passions of supernatural creatures, the most common are Despair at being unable to interact with the world, Rage at their killers (real or imagined) and simple Loneliness. Greed and Hunger are somewhat more rare, but can often be seen in wisps who died of neglect or starvation. Wisps who are in a frenzy almost always respond to it by haunting mortals they feel have wronged them, by self-destructively seeking out zombies to fight or by joining into a poltergeist.
Last edited by Grek on Wed Oct 16, 2013 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
Duty-3 includes being an FBI agent.Lokathor wrote:Question: How does the game handle things like "having a legitimate medical license" or "being a cop for real".
The first is kinda like a science, the second is kinda like an asset. Should "qualifications" be a resource category you can invest in?
Duty-2 fits an on-call Firefighter. So unless you are a rural Sheriff who doesn't have much to do, I'd peg being a cop to a level 3 Duty.
For the upside being a cop probably nets you Asset-2 and Science-2. You can run background checks off your laptop and call in a pack of gang banger equivalents (with badges) when shit hits the fan. Likely to have a Contact-1 as an informant.
Just having a medical license gets you a lot less.
Science-1 for access to some nice things not available to the lay public, and Finance-1 because you do get perks. Less of a package than a cop, but you don't have the saddle of obligations either really. Your big kicks for being a doctor come in background flavors.
Now, if you are a well known doctor with your own practice and staff, that ought be ratcheted up a bit. I know doctors who get meetings with Governors, Congressmen, local TV media, etc.
Lazytown's Sheriff: Asset-1 (Deputy Jim), Science-2, Duty-2
Cop package: Asset-2 (I need backup!), Science-2, Duty-3, Contact-1
Federal Field Agent: Asset-2 (I need backup!), Science-3, Duty-3, Contact-2
MD package: Finance-1, Science-1
MD owning practice: Finance-3, Science-2, Contact-2
[edit: I should add the obvious. One character's duties can restrict the entire party so people may want to have collaborative control over choosing them. Like if you have a job that keeps you in one town, then you're probably not going to have a lot of adventures far outside of that town. That's the biggest impact I can think of to consider how the game handles jobs.]
Last edited by erik on Thu Oct 17, 2013 1:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
Having a medical license is just a Background. You can talk to people and play the "Trust me, I'm a Doctor" card to get them to listen to what you have to say.
Being employed as a medical/police professional means that you get some combination of Finances (pay), Contacts (coworkers), Sciences (lab equipment) and Assets (coworkers) at the cost of having a Duty of rating 2 to 4 depending on how dedicated you are to your job.
Being employed as a medical/police professional means that you get some combination of Finances (pay), Contacts (coworkers), Sciences (lab equipment) and Assets (coworkers) at the cost of having a Duty of rating 2 to 4 depending on how dedicated you are to your job.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
All solid.
What's a good rule for running out of ammo? I mean "you never run out of ammo" is one style of game, but even in non-survival situations people run out of ammo suddenly in movies and shows all the time, so there should probably be a Winds Of Fate roll or a check result that triggers it like a Critical Glitch in SR4 or something. Some way of having ammo run out unexpectedly without the MC picking when it happens.
What's a good rule for running out of ammo? I mean "you never run out of ammo" is one style of game, but even in non-survival situations people run out of ammo suddenly in movies and shows all the time, so there should probably be a Winds Of Fate roll or a check result that triggers it like a Critical Glitch in SR4 or something. Some way of having ammo run out unexpectedly without the MC picking when it happens.
It's a horror game. You run out of ammo when it is dramatically appropriate and don't run out of ammo if it isn't. Dramatically appropriate times to stop having bullets include:
- Immediately after someone who doesn't normally use guns murders someone in cold blood. Example: Husband gets drunk, buys a saturday night special and shoots his family. Next scene (when the family rises from the dead to get revenge) the gun goes *click* when he tries to shoot it.
- During a chase, when someone wipes out with a stunt that involves using the gun.
- If someone is fighting a seriously huge number of enemies (enough that the camera pans out to show the faceless hordes circling the hero and then attacking her one at a time) then you might consider having the gun run out half way through.
- If you establish that a weapon has X shots (where X is some small number established in the scene where the character gets the weapon), then it should be used no more than X times. If you have an RPG with three rockets, you aren't going to fire a fourth rocket at King Kong.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
I totally get that normally the game has you run out at only "dramatically appropriate" moments, but I also get that systematization of things can lead to unexpected outcomes that are often just as memorable as "and then the MC decided ____" outcomes. Any time at all that anyone has ever told you a d20 story about "And he practically couldn't fail, but then he rolled a 1" that's what you're hearing about. None of this has anything at all to do with the game being a "Horror" game instead of a "Fantasy" game or an "Action" game. It has more to do with how narrative driven it is as compared to how much it relies on an emergent narrative.
Example 1: In Star Trek: First Contact, they're stalking the halls of the Enterprise-E with ray guns that will get "six shots, at most". Instead of everyone simply having however many shots, the MC has 6 dice. Every time someone fires a shot at the cyber-zombies a dice gets taken out of the pool and that pool is rolled. If no hits are rolled, then the cyber-zombies have adapted and the ray guns are now useless. Obviously it's a very specific kind of example, but the tension of not knowing if your guns are going to work or not after you use them adds to the tension of the scene. I would say that it improves the game.
Example 2: In Dracula 3000, around 45 minutes in, the captain and the muscle come back to the professor (who's hiding). The professor is scared, and has a gun ready. He makes an attack roll against them as they open the door, pulling the trigger over and over until he's out. He's fired all his bullets in a single attack, even though he had 12 bullets and should have been able to make probably from 6 to 12 attacks.
So it would be totally cool to have an optional rule for how to handle ammo and shots. It doesn't even have to be super if it's an optional rule. It just has to be an okay rule that you might wanna use sometime.
Example 1: In Star Trek: First Contact, they're stalking the halls of the Enterprise-E with ray guns that will get "six shots, at most". Instead of everyone simply having however many shots, the MC has 6 dice. Every time someone fires a shot at the cyber-zombies a dice gets taken out of the pool and that pool is rolled. If no hits are rolled, then the cyber-zombies have adapted and the ray guns are now useless. Obviously it's a very specific kind of example, but the tension of not knowing if your guns are going to work or not after you use them adds to the tension of the scene. I would say that it improves the game.
Example 2: In Dracula 3000, around 45 minutes in, the captain and the muscle come back to the professor (who's hiding). The professor is scared, and has a gun ready. He makes an attack roll against them as they open the door, pulling the trigger over and over until he's out. He's fired all his bullets in a single attack, even though he had 12 bullets and should have been able to make probably from 6 to 12 attacks.
So it would be totally cool to have an optional rule for how to handle ammo and shots. It doesn't even have to be super if it's an optional rule. It just has to be an okay rule that you might wanna use sometime.
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That is a good point. Running out of ammo at unexpected times is a staple of the "zombies and/or dinosaurs come through the window" genre of horror. Which is more euphemistically called "Survival Horror."
Not really a thing that happens to the more action-hero type characters, but certainly a thing there could be a side bar for.
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Not really a thing that happens to the more action-hero type characters, but certainly a thing there could be a side bar for.
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CatharzGodfoot
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The inclusion of specializations, and the inclusion of skill bonuses from discipline levels, were mistakes.
Specialization works better as a function of backgrounds : the background represents the knowledge, and the skill the ability to apply it.
Adding the background rank creates too much distortion (as much as bonuses from powers), so the bonus should come at breakpoints.
The disciplines that provide powers are much more satisfying than those with skill bonuses. Even disciplines that provide reductions to DCs or bonuses to specific tasks are more interesting.
Something to (re)consider going into the next edition.
Specialization works better as a function of backgrounds : the background represents the knowledge, and the skill the ability to apply it.
Adding the background rank creates too much distortion (as much as bonuses from powers), so the bonus should come at breakpoints.
The disciplines that provide powers are much more satisfying than those with skill bonuses. Even disciplines that provide reductions to DCs or bonuses to specific tasks are more interesting.
Something to (re)consider going into the next edition.
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Mount Flamethrower on rear
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Username17
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That is an interesting idea. But people really like Specializations. Not a day goes by when some gamer doesn't look at the combat skill and say "But I want to be a fencer" and specializations let people do that without dice pools getting out of hand. I guess I'm just not certain what you could replace specializations with that would satisfy peoples' desire to "go to eleven."
Replacing all the skill bonuses with interesting abilities would almost by definition be a plus. Although to be honest, I'm not sure that there are that many interesting abilities close to hand. Also, I think magical Strength making you Stronger and magical Toughness making you Tougher are things that pretty much have to happen. I could imagine something like Shadowrun Initiation effects, where getting the scaling Strength bonus was dependent on you picking up a Clout effect that gave it to you though.
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Replacing all the skill bonuses with interesting abilities would almost by definition be a plus. Although to be honest, I'm not sure that there are that many interesting abilities close to hand. Also, I think magical Strength making you Stronger and magical Toughness making you Tougher are things that pretty much have to happen. I could imagine something like Shadowrun Initiation effects, where getting the scaling Strength bonus was dependent on you picking up a Clout effect that gave it to you though.
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CatharzGodfoot
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FrankTrollman wrote:That is an interesting idea. But people really like Specializations. Not a day goes by when some gamer doesn't look at the combat skill and say "But I want to be a fencer" and specializations let people do that without dice pools getting out of hand. I guess I'm just not certain what you could replace specializations with that would satisfy peoples' desire to "go to eleven."
You say "I have a Combat skill of 6 and I'm a master (background 6) musketeer. So don't fuck with me when I'm holding a rapier or a blunderbuss. Also, I know a lot about French court politics and fashion.
I'm basically with you on all that. I don't think that players need always-on strength boosts just for having Clout, though. Adversaries can get constant bonuses if they have the right power schedule. Both can get high attributes with high Potency. Otherwise I think Devastation is a better model.FrankT wrote: Replacing all the skill bonuses with interesting abilities would almost by definition be a plus. Although to be honest, I'm not sure that there are that many interesting abilities close to hand. Also, I think magical Strength making you Stronger and magical Toughness making you Tougher are things that pretty much have to happen. I could imagine something like Shadowrun Initiation effects, where getting the scaling Strength bonus was dependent on you picking up a Clout effect that gave it to you though.
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The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
So Catharz, a Background is a knowledge skill, and exposition skill, a qualification rating of sorts... but compared to a well defined "active" skill like Combat, when, if ever, does it take the place of an Agility+Combat roll?
What specifically are you doing or not doing if you have JUST Combat 6 or Musketeer 6 as compared to having both of them?
What specifically are you doing or not doing if you have JUST Combat 6 or Musketeer 6 as compared to having both of them?
Last edited by Lokathor on Sun Oct 20, 2013 11:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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CatharzGodfoot
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You're getting a bonus to combat checks from the background. Say, +3 from having at least 5 ranks. It's about as nebulous as a specialization, but serves an extra purpose.Lokathor wrote:So Catharz, a Background is a knowledge skill, and exposition skill, a qualification rating of sorts... but compared to a well defined "active" skill like Combat, when, if ever, does it take the place of an Agility+Combat roll?
What specifically are you doing or not doing if you have JUST Combat 6 or Musketeer 6 as compared to having both of them?
More specifically, you would roll Agility + Combat + Background Bonus instead of Agility + Combat + Specialization.
Last edited by CatharzGodfoot on Mon Oct 21, 2013 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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CatharzGodfoot
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For the 'Patience' issue:
[*] Add 'doesn't get sick' to basic Fortitude or Clout.
[*] Add 'doesn't eat or breathe' to advanced Fortitude (or just Indomitability).
[*] Move Sensory Damper to Fortitude, replacing Patience.
[*] Chasing Storms basic level comes with water breathing.
[*] Add methods of living forever to Path of Blood (or Lure of Destruction), Veil of Morpheus, Descent of Entropy, and possibly Resurrection.
Yielding:
[*] Vampires, Animates, and Ifriti already have or easily can be given all the relevant powers for amortality.
[*] Zombies and ghosts have the same except living forever.
[*] Leviathans get the 'live forever' part, plus water breathing or not getting sick as appropriate.
[*] Add 'doesn't get sick' to basic Fortitude or Clout.
[*] Add 'doesn't eat or breathe' to advanced Fortitude (or just Indomitability).
[*] Move Sensory Damper to Fortitude, replacing Patience.
[*] Chasing Storms basic level comes with water breathing.
[*] Add methods of living forever to Path of Blood (or Lure of Destruction), Veil of Morpheus, Descent of Entropy, and possibly Resurrection.
Yielding:
[*] Vampires, Animates, and Ifriti already have or easily can be given all the relevant powers for amortality.
[*] Zombies and ghosts have the same except living forever.
[*] Leviathans get the 'live forever' part, plus water breathing or not getting sick as appropriate.
Last edited by CatharzGodfoot on Mon Oct 21, 2013 3:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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DSMatticus
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If you let people pay backgrounds to buy bonuses to their skills, then backgrounds are no longer free picks you use to personalize your character and get info about the setting, they're those things you use to buy bonuses to your skills and having the wrong ones means you suck.Catharz wrote: Say, +3 from having at least 5 ranks. It's about as nebulous as a specialization, but serves an extra purpose.
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Username17
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If there were to be a connection between specializations and backgrounds, I would want it to run from specializations to backgrounds. I don't have a problem with every jungle recon specialist being able to talk about the jungle with other people, but I do have a problem with people getting boned on ever being good at shooting lightning bolts because they spent background points on cake decorating or ballet instead of putting it all in meteorology.
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DSMatticus
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This is actually not a bad addition. If you have a specialization in [whatever], you can use the skill it's attached to in place of a background for [whatever]. There are very few instances where someone should be good at something without being able to carry a conversation on the topic, and it would give a good excuse to cut the buttload of backgrounds people get down a bit (since they no longer have to spend background points towards learning what the hell fencing is alongside their specialization in 'snobby european swordsmanship').FrankTrollman wrote:If there were to be a connection between specializations and backgrounds, I would want it to run from specializations to backgrounds.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Mon Oct 21, 2013 6:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CatharzGodfoot
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If you don't want people to be boned because their marksman chose to put those last 3 points in 'stamp collector' or 'truck driver' instead of 'army sniper' or 'weekend hunter', just give them enough extra background ranks to get the same benefit as they would have had from free specializations.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
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Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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Whipstitch
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That wouldn't fix it. Right now, my character in a PbP game is spread thin between relatively specific social and knowledge skills like "Nightlife," "LA Crime and "Undeath." You know, because he's a reincarnated necromancer mafioso who enjoys tipping back a few with the boys after a long day of legbreaking. There's no way his picks would survive the change you're talking about because I know what an opportunity cost looks like and the power gamer in me would desperately want to swap that shit out for Stuntman or Private Eye. Which, would be a shame, both because that's not the character I envisioned and because my group already seriously has a Stuntman and a Private Eye in it.
bears fall, everyone dies
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Username17
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