The Gaming Den

Endovior wrote:Ahem:

FrankTrollman wrote:Characters in horror die from time to time. Sometimes a character will end up dying several times, because After Sundown posits ghastly life after death and even has magical ways to restore life to the living. When a character dies, all of their powers that cost Power Points to activate or which otherwise last for a scene end. In addition, anything they have going that could be dispelled is dispelled with their death. A character's Power pool is also emptied at the moment the character actually dies. Very importantly, a character's power schedule (if any) does not change just because they are dead. A Strigoi can still be fed blood to regain Power Points and a Frankenstein can still be recharged while a corpse. This usually only matters if they have the Restoration Power, but there are other ways to raise the dead, and it might be important that they rise up with a power reserve on hand.

So, uh... fairly explicitly, Rituals can be done to the dead without much trouble. The mind-control thing I don't even care about; it's a triviality compared to being able to self-sufficiently rez (by which I mean, not needing to involve any other PCs in the process). Again, the mind-control is not the issue, I can reflavour my minions no problem... but if they aren't actually able to rez me, because I'm the one supernatural type that actually doesn't work that way, then the whole character concept I've been working on is worthless, and I may as well wipe my character sheet and make a vampire or something.

So let's try some logic:

1) Frankenstein recharge is a ritual that recharges.
2) Frankenstein recharge can be done after death.
Therefore all recharges can be done after death.

1) Frankenstein is a type of supernatural that has power points.
2) Frankenstein can recharge it's power points with a ritual.
Therefore all supernaturals can recharge with a ritual.

See the problem with your logic yet?

Frankensteins can be recharged while dead. But that doesn't mean that every Kaibit ritual can be performed while dead. That doesn't mean that Dryads can absorb water when dead. (Hell, it even says, they must water themselves, so no one else can water them.) Golems cannot repeat words while dead. So you are not the only one, get over yourself.

*sigh*

There was a reason why I asked. I asked because it's much more convenient to find out 'fuck you, your character concept is invalid' before the game starts then after it.

Since your response actually was 'fuck you, your character concept is invalid', I obviously won't be playing it. Maybe I'll make a vampire or something.

Nothing about your character not being able to have people cut themselves to come back to life invalidates your character. Being brought back from the dead by people cutting themselves is not an essential part of your character.

By that logic, if I never killed your character your character concept would have been invalidated, and that is balls stupid. You can make something else, but don't blow it out of proportion here.

If anything it might explain why your character would actually have to trust someone he can't easily control. Otherwise I was kind of at a loss when it came to understanding why he would stick his neck out for anyone and vice versa.


But anyway, if you do make a new sheet entirely is there any chance it would get along better with the Daziban? I still like that cult better.

Kaelik, would it be okay if I changed my contact in the cartels to being specifically the guy in charge of that cartel's operation in the barrio JC runs?

Kaelik wrote:

Endovior wrote:Ahem:

FrankTrollman wrote:Characters in horror die from time to time. Sometimes a character will end up dying several times, because After Sundown posits ghastly life after death and even has magical ways to restore life to the living. When a character dies, all of their powers that cost Power Points to activate or which otherwise last for a scene end. In addition, anything they have going that could be dispelled is dispelled with their death. A character's Power pool is also emptied at the moment the character actually dies. Very importantly, a character's power schedule (if any) does not change just because they are dead. A Strigoi can still be fed blood to regain Power Points and a Frankenstein can still be recharged while a corpse. This usually only matters if they have the Restoration Power, but there are other ways to raise the dead, and it might be important that they rise up with a power reserve on hand.

So, uh... fairly explicitly, Rituals can be done to the dead without much trouble. The mind-control thing I don't even care about; it's a triviality compared to being able to self-sufficiently rez (by which I mean, not needing to involve any other PCs in the process). Again, the mind-control is not the issue, I can reflavour my minions no problem... but if they aren't actually able to rez me, because I'm the one supernatural type that actually doesn't work that way, then the whole character concept I've been working on is worthless, and I may as well wipe my character sheet and make a vampire or something.

So let's try some logic:

1) Frankenstein recharge is a ritual that recharges.
2) Frankenstein recharge can be done after death.
Therefore all recharges can be done after death.

1) Frankenstein is a type of supernatural that has power points.
2) Frankenstein can recharge it's power points with a ritual.
Therefore all supernaturals can recharge with a ritual.

See the problem with your logic yet?

Here, let's try another one:

1) Striogi recharge by drinking the blood of humans.
2) Striogi recharge can be done after death.
3) The example covers 2 of the 3 power schedules: Ritual and Feeding.
3b) The 3rd power schedule, Lunar, regains power with no actions whatsoever.
Therefore, all types of power schedules can recharge after death.

That was the logic I was working on, yeah.

The 'big deal' issue here is a question of methodology. If random mortal henchmen are capable of bringing you back from the dead, it is totally a reasonable and sensible thing to do to ensure that you've got lots of them all over the place, ready to enact schemes to ensure your return should you ever die. If they aren't, then that's not a useful thing to do; and doing so will actually tend to make it less likely that you'd be revived, as you'll probably make enemies in the process of incorporating lots of people into a minion horde. The specific character-defining bit isn't in any specific ritual; it's in the fact that I was making an immortal who collects mortals wholesale because doing so increases the odds that his immortality will continue to work. If collecting mortals does not actually have that effect, then my character concept is invalid.

Endovior wrote:That was the logic I was working on, yeah.

???? The point you were supposed to get is that that is a fallacy.

Just because a ritual power source can recharge when dead does not mean all ritual power sources can recharge when dead.

Golems, and Dyads definitely can't. Some Kaibits and Icarids can't.

Just because one member of a subset can doesn't mean every member of that subset can.

I shrug.

If I was actually playing a Dryad, I'd argue that not letting them recharge PP from planting themselves like a tree and getting rained on naturally is some serious dickery.

It's clear that you don't agree, though, so I'm going to avoid the issue entirely.

I'd argue that "Water themselves" in the Dryad description doesn't imply that they have to be the ones doing it, and taking your dead dryad buddy, sticking them in the ground, and watering them would recharge them. However, I'm not playing a dryad, so it doesn't matter, and it's Kaelik's game.

I would, however, like to state for the record that Dres' recharge ritual is to soak in a vat/tub/whatever of anti-septic solution, so she should be rechargeable without Gift of Health.

For reference; currently looking at a Daeva who's essentially a superhero... super-strong (lift and throw cars), super-fast (three actions per round), and can fly (indeed, can break Mach 1 while flying, if he needs to go all-out). This being horror, he works for the Black Hand, so instead of going around righting wrongs, he murders people for shadowy political purposes and such.

You counting on nimble feet shenanigans or something?

Breaking Mach 1 is fairly straightforward. Basic sprinting is 100 meters/round (a round being 12 seconds, of course). Flight is 5 times as fast as ground movement, and Nimble Feet (at the Advanced level) makes you 6 times faster. Additionally, if you're not doing anything but focusing on moving quickly, you can make a Strength+Agility check, each hit of which improves your move speed by 10%. Given that I'm a strength-focused character, I can drop 16 dice on the check, and thus phone in 40%. That works out to 4200 meters/round, which equates to 350 meters/second; Mach 1 is 340 meters/second.

That said, it's not especially useful to go that fast; not only is it a huge Vow of Silence violation (and, y'know... noisy), but it costs WAY too much PP for what it's worth (since I need to drop Vigor to ensure that my strength is high enough to phone in the speed, unless I'm trying to just break Mach 1 for a round or so). It is, however, quite relevant that I can go that fast in the narrow situations that I need to, and even more relevant that I can attain lesser speeds with ease. For normal long-range travel, I'd just use Celerity and Flight together, at a modest 4 PP per scene; that'd still leave me at 325 meters per second, be much stealthier, and let me travel for 3 scenes before needing to feed, which is probably enough time to fly to New York from Mexico City non-stop (just under three hours; which I assume works out, since the actual length of scenes isn't really specified).

Oh, and since it bears mentioning; as a Vampire, I have Patience of the Mountains, so it's not even a problem to sprint for hours.

Endovior wrote:Breaking Mach 1 is fairly straightforward. Basic sprinting is 100 meters/round (a round being 12 seconds, of course). Flight is 5 times as fast as ground movement, and Nimble Feet (at the Advanced level) makes you 6 times faster.

Yeah, I didn't think it was OP or anything, I was just away from a pc with the PDF and had it in my head that the Nimble Feet progression went 2/4/6 instead of 4/6/8.

Anyway, Kaelik, can I have permission to pretty drastically overhaul my sheet? Because if we no longer have a Baali w/ a portable library and a beef against the Daziban that frees up a lot of conceptual space I was shunning before in the name of avoiding redundancy.

Yes.

Here's the sheet. I am very happy with this one.

I took Edge, Skill and Attributes as his freebies again. The skills and points of emphasis are quite a bit different but background wise he is pretty much the same except instead of being a theater nerd he wanted to do either research or teach in the structural engineering fields. Then, you know, ratshifter variant Z-Virus. It happens.

Is the previous link at the end of page 4 to this sheet? If not, make it so, because I want all the sheets in one part of this thread.

Done.

Mostly done, just dithering over resources.

Specifically, I think my most notable resource will be Secrets, in this case, a sizeable collection of cursed items. Mostly, it's stuff that you don't actually want to have, use, or keep on your person, like gems that curse their bearer with misfortune, weapons that fail their wielder in battle, books that drive the reader to madness without actually imparting useful knowledge... that sort of thing. Not stuff that's actually useful, except perhaps in the sense that if you can trick someone into accepting it, you've inflicted material harm while seeming to be generous. For that reason, known cursed items have a Secrets value, as there are people who want to buy them for just that reason (and/or use them in Rituals).

That said, some of it's NOT useless; one specific item of Destiny that I want is an idol of the god Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli; Aztec god of Venus and shooting people with arrows.

The idol may be presented with a relic (an item that unambiguously indicates a given individual... it can be as simple as a crude drawing, made with that person as a reference, though better effects are to be had with an item owned by the person, or better yet, something that was a part of them, like a lock of hair or nail clipping) and a blood sacrifice; if done properly, the relic, blood, and the corpse of the sacrificial victim (if the sacrifice was lethal) all burst into flames and burn to ash. Following this, the target will be shot with an arrow upon the following dawn, provided that they are somewhere in the real world... or 'sometime this week', if they happen to be in Limbo (the god has no access to the other realms; attacks sent against anyone hiding in those fail). The arrows are not infallible (Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli is known to have shot at the sun, missed, and hit himself), nor is a hit necessarily lethal... but it is observed that the attack is generally more effective with a better quality relic, more sacrificial blood, and proper adherence to Aztec sacrificial practices (ie: each of these things, including hits on a Willpower+[Appropriate Occult Background] check, adds to the dicepool of the attack). Arrows are made of Wood, which makes this form of attack particularly dangerous to vampires and the like; and though arrows could be tipped with Iron or Silver, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli typically uses obsidian arrowheads, which aren't especially dangerous to anyone.

Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli doesn't have a lot of power beyond shooting things with arrows; though he can shoot at clouds to stop rain. If you make a sacrifice without a relic, the sacrifice is treated as a dispel check against the nearest active sorcery from the Chasing the Storm path; and will generally make it less likely to rain in the area, in the absence of other considerations. Like all Aztec gods, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli is bloodthirsty. If he hasn't received any sacrifices in some arbitrary length of time, he'll take potshots at the owner of his idol... more to inspire that person to get on with the blood sacrificing then to kill, but he's not above murdering lazy or reluctant priests. Generally, he'll be most happy with lethal sacrifices; the more often, the better.

I'm thinking that works out to Destiny 3 or 4.

When writing up my character I had assumed we get Spanish for free since it's a Mexico campaign and the 10.3 Languages table says you get a foreign language per rating point. But after a quick glance at everyone else's sheets (I got bored) I notice that not everyone leaped to the same conclusion. Who needs to adjust? I want to be merely bilingual so it's an easy fix on my end.

Whipstitch wrote:When writing up my character I had assumed we get Spanish for free since it's a Mexico campaign and the 10.3 Languages table says you get a foreign language per rating point. But after a quick glance at everyone else's sheets (I got bored) I notice that not everyone leaped to the same conclusion. Who needs to adjust? I want to be merely bilingual so it's an easy fix on my end.

Languages are like drugs. Your first one is free.

Like I said, I figured that, but I thought I'd bring it up because if I'm wrong I gave myself a freebie language and if I'm right Prak and Korgan might be hosing themselves unless I read their sheets wrong.

I typically work from the assumption that characters speak English/other general language shared by players/the majority of people in the local the game is set in. Technically, Dres' native language is German, and she picked up English, French and Spanish.

JC's native language is French, and he also knows English and Spanish. I probably should have put in his native language, but whatever.

Personally, I'd figured that you should probably split your languages between those that are useful for conversation, and those that are useful for magic (very few ancient mystical tomes are written in English, after all).

Accordingly, Diego (under the Daeva revision) has native Spanish, learned English because it's more widely useful, and learned Nahuatl to better employ Aztec blood magic and thereby appease his new demon-god.