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For the Attacks side, the reason I've been working this out is that I'm creating a character whose primary "power" is that he has two genetically enhanced attack dogs that he commands via an ultrasonic wave emitter. They basically have two attack options: they can either attack lightly for Shock, or go for the kill to inflict Killing, plus they can choose to Bite Down, adding Duration and Penetration to either attack, essentially giving them a doggy version of Lockjaw from Reign's Path of the Serpent's Fangs. As a support ability, they have a variation on the Multiple Actions power that lets them each use a Set without losing a die for Multiple Actions. This improved knowledge of Variable Effect will indeed be useful for the main villain of the campaign, a guy who can control gravity. As now he has a bunch of different Useful powers that I could easily just bind into one Useful Power with Variable Effect.
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Oct 28, 2016 15:09
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I intend to start a Reign campaign soon, and am trying to realy *get* Company rules in the meantime. I'm doing this by imagining scenarios and picturing how they'd be handled rules-wise. I was wondering if you folks might give advice on the subject. First, a couple of questions about conquering other companies. Can it only be done by arms? If a conspiracy wants to control the throne, or put a puppet of theirs on it, can they find blackmail material enough to get the king to do what they please? Or stage a revolution? Since I expect the latter to be a feature in the game, I am particularly interested in that Now, a more practical example: imagine the players' army is set to conquer an enemy fortress. That is clearly a Might+Treasure attack aimed at stealing enemy Territory. A rogue PC could sneak in there and open the gates as the army, which could be an adventure all and of itself, and presumably give a huge bonus to the invading army (how huge? +2d? +MD?). But I caught myself thinking: what if a warrior PC wants to lead the troops from the front? They can either roll to Inspire the troops, roll Strategy to see if they come up with something advantageous... and that's pretty much it, isn't it? There should presumably be an advantage to having such a mighty combatant as a PC on your side, but short of giving a Might bonus when said PC intervenes directly, how do you represent that?
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Nov 1, 2016 13:15
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Run a couple of lynchpin battle set pieces. For each one that goes well add +1 die. You spot an exposed enemy general! Capture, kill, or seriously injure him before he gets away. Your soldiers are struggling to take a key piece of staging ground, help secure it before enemy reinforcements arrive. A siege engine is on danger, hold off the enemy until your reinforcements arrive.
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Nov 1, 2016 15:28
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paradoxGentleman posted:I intend to start a Reign campaign soon, and am trying to realy *get* Company rules in the meantime. I'm doing this by imagining scenarios and picturing how they'd be handled rules-wise. I was wondering if you folks might give advice on the subject. To completely take out a company (143, 148) you want to either drop their sovereignty or sovereignty/territory+another quality to 0 in a month. If you just did sovereignty the company just falls apart, if you did sovereignty/territory and another quality then you're in charge now. Maybe you don't need to completely crush them though, depending on your players. Perhaps winning a big symbolic fight followed by them playing out envoys at a character level to convince the other company to capitulate is how they want to do it. If they want to avoid warfare completely, focus on company actions like espionage and unconventional warfare to seed dissent or assassinate poo poo, etc, lowering the other companies qualities that way. The goal of "conquer an enemy fortress" isn't always a straight territory grab. Yea if that is their goal then it could be, but maybe it is fantasy ft.knox (treasure), or a famous defensive bastion (influence/sovereignty), or a staging ground for their military (might), etc. Look at each quality involved for examples of temporary boosts. Might examples are defenses, surprise tactics, killing enemy commanders in a raid, scare tactics (ie mongols), roll against enemy commander for a general bonus. Check page 142 for a table with example actions and what sort of bonus they should generate. Don't restrict the players to just the example ways to give temporary boosts and stuff, but encourage them to come up with stuff to do more. Maybe they want to do a mission to get a bonus to unconventional warfare to steal money from the enemy to get a treasure bonus before they roll the dice, or forge orders sending the defenders reinforcements away for a might penalty for the other side. Perhaps they spend some time training their troops for this specific battle, or do something to raise their troops morale or willingness to fight. Challenge their commander to a one-on-one dual at noon (if the other company has some sort of honor code)! Also they don't have to just do these things themselves, they could conduct a company level information gathering espionage action to give them bonuses to the fighting that they're wanting to directly be involved with, or vice versa. If they really don't like a certain type of gameplay then having their company able to do that can be pretty useful. If your PCs just want to lead from the front and gung-ho it, Splicer's suggestion is solid. In general that is a good plan for structuring play, where you switch between levels of play to give bonuses (either way!) and have goals that the players want to do drive the actions done on the other layer. So they want to capture the fortress. If they want, just straight roll it, but if they want to improve their chances, there are all sorts of things at either layer to do. If they really only care to do one thing then take a minute to decide how you want the game to be going. If them just focusing on one thing is fine for how you want to play the game then figure out a bunch of things for them to do that give bonuses (scaled to the challenge) and sort of let them go after the ones they want. Maybe you come up with 2-3 scenes that give 1d, a scene that gives a penalty die to the other side, and a scene that can give an ED/2d/MD depending on how successful they are. On the other hand, if you all want the campaign to rely more on a variety of tactics (info+sabatoge+positioning+spec ops) then you'll want to restrict the max bonus that any one activity is going to be dishing out. Maybe take those 4-5 scenes and break them into different types of tasks like info gathering or sneaking the gate open, or make them time sensitive limiting the number they can do (or getting them to split the party!). It might help a bit to think of company qualities as a descriptive way for how they're accomplishing the goal. Read the intro blurb paragraph for each quality, the flip over to the standard actions bit, and you should be able to see how they've got things hooked together. Chances are things your players want to do will already be covered, but that is sort of how it is put together. Might is more open conflict, influence is social/knowledge, territory your resiliance, treasure your ability to pay (sending people off to attack someone costs money, but getting people to defend their homes is a lot different), sovereignty their loyalty. If they're wanting to do something and it really doesn't fit into the normal actions, pick 2 qualities that feel like that is what they're relying on mostly to get the job done.
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Nov 2, 2016 16:15
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Is Wild Talents good? What is its strengths and weaknesses, in y'alls opinion?
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Nov 2, 2016 18:38
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I've been playing Wild Talents weekly for the better part of two years now. It's amazing and the best tabletop experience I've ever had. Strengths WT's primary strength is in the One Roll Engine itself. It's super fast, easy to learn and fun to use. It resolves multi-combatant brawls quicker and with more excitement than any other system I've personally experienced. Once you get a few sessions under your belt it becomes easy to adjudicate even the most chaotic melees with its rules. A close second is its flexibility. You can literally create any power you could possibly want using its rule-set. The Hyperstat, Hyperskill and Miracles System, once you develop an understanding of how the pieces fit together, is not only functional but actually fun to work with. I've had as much fun figuring out how to make a really weird power work than I've had actually playing with it. Weaknesses The ORE, by its nature, is really attack-centric until you have a strong grasp of how combat works. There's no passive defense (unless you give someone a power with that effect, which I've done before), which means a successful attack roll WILL hit unless something else intervenes to stop it. It can also be quite lethal-- even a mook can land a lucky shot that will kill a hero in one blow unless you take steps to minimize the damage. There are rules to work around that, but ultimately it's intended. The default atmosphere of WT is supposed to be grittier, street level stuff, where severe damage hurts and takes a long time to heal. That can be hard to deal with for some people. The power creation system, while extremely flexible, may take a while for new players to grasp. Simple powers are easy to work with but anything more than "You can fly!" and "You can shoot laserbeams from your eyes!" can get a little complicated. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the book itself isn't as clear as it could be in some areas. I'd love a 3rd Edition with more editing and streamlining, but that's not terribly likely. Oh and the game is very easy to break because there's nothing in the rules preventing someone from creating a power that can shut off the sun forever. There's even instructions about how to do that. That's not exactly a problem per say if you and your group can have a conversation about stuff, but for a new GM or Player it can be hard to work out exactly how strong or weak a power is purely by the numbers.
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Nov 2, 2016 19:41
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Wild Talents' highest virtue is that it is the system for the Progenitor setting
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Nov 2, 2016 19:49
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Thank you for the useful suggestions. In the meantime, my Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor lurches back to life, and some considerations on which Creepy skills are OP are surfacing. Basically, putting a point of Tough on your Guts shields you from a whole lot of damage; most attacks only do 1 damage, after all, and applying a resistance of 1 to the biggest hit location parries a whole lot. Not only that, but by putting the emphasis on how Creepy skills are, well, creepy and upsetting for normies to see, I've indirectly punished those that didn't pick Tough, because that features protects passively, without need to be activated, unlike Gnarly or Awesome. Is this a known bug of the system, or am I misunderstanding something?
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Nov 2, 2016 20:18
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As a player in said Candlewick game (and a newbie to the system), I find it weird that Tough is something that gives you passive benefit, when such focus is put on Creepy skills being real gud but in return normies look at you weird if you use them while being seen. A Tough skill on Guts letting you dodge a majority of all damage without ever showing your Creepy side kinda sidesteps that I think. I mean, Gnarly clawhands only give the Gnarly bonus to attacks done with said clawhands, but a Tough chitin plate gives the Tough bonus to ALL hits on the body part, not just those attacks that were defended with said Creepy skill. The best defensive maneuver in the game seems to be to take a Creepy skill with Defense, a bunch of Tough and minimum dice that you'll never even roll because what's the point since the bonus is passive. Tough is basically the only thing in the game that lets you have the benefits of being Creepy without any of the downside. Strikes me as odd. Theantero fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Nov 2, 2016 |
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Nov 2, 2016 20:30
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If you've got a Tough Creepy skill, that's going to be something that's always visible. They actually use that as an example in the book somewhere, making a turtle boy, and he has a visible shell. EDIT: It's a Creepy Skill example, actually, and it's listed as Turtle Shell, so I'd assume there's an actual shell, so they either have to wear bulky clothes and look hunchbacked and weird, or have a visible shell. Tsilkani fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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Nov 3, 2016 00:02
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Strange covered WT pretty well, I'd say that how strong/weak the system is sort of depends on your players. If they're willing to learn a new system (or have someone else make their stuff with them), and you don't have the super rules lawyer sort of guy around, then it can be a ton of fun. The ORE system itself is really nice once you start to get used to it, not only because it gets pretty fast once everyone has it figured out but that your single roll gives you a bunch of things all at once. I found that even when we were new to it each round of combat still was pretty fast, and the breakup of declaring/rolling seemed to keep our group involved in the combat more compared to turn-based stuff where some people do their turn and their sort of zone out/etc. Once you have a basic handle on how to make powers you can do a lot of stuff, once you have a better grasp you can do some crazy things. If you are trying to pick it up feel free to ask us questions, unlike stuff like D&D it can be hard to go find the exact answer to your question already answered. As to MoaCT I think Tsilkani has the right idea. A passive effect is always on, so unless there is something that makes it subtle/invisible (don't know the system well enough to say if those exist!) then there is some sort of visible effect. If the power type is supposed to be giving NPC penalties than that power should be ALWAYS giving those (outside of a bunch of effort to conceal it). Maybe think ninja turtles to keep the shell idea, where people freak out when they see them and they go around in trenchcoats and stuff and still look "off" to people.
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Nov 3, 2016 01:41
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I decided that I wanted a bee-themed villian. So a bee-based attack, some sort of ablative bee defensive screen, and something useful. Makes his goons dress up kind of like that simpsons character. Sort of the running intro campaign is more or less themed around a bunch of low level criminals getting access to an abandoned super villian base. Thing is, he was a bit of a old school nerd, so powers recovered tend to be based on older cartoons or some of that cartoon logic. I'm building the enemies at 200 points (players are at 250), giving them a sort of base "lovely criminal" stat/skill layout. Being able to cover poo poo in bees gives him some good hyperdice in intimidation and stability. Just need to come up with a terrible name for his gang. I didn't feel like messing around with focus stuff for him, but an implanted beehive on his back that all his bee powers are based from would be a solid addition (I'll flavor it that way anyways, but I think he is strong enough as is and I'm feeling lazy). Beemaster 200 pts Source: Genetic Permission: Power Theme (Bees!) Base Will: 10 (12 points spent) Stats: 60 + 8 (command hyperdice) Body: 2d Coor: 2d Sense: 2d Mind: 2d Charm: 2d Command: 4d Skills: 28 + 9 (intimidation + stability hyperdice) Driving[Car]: 2d Lockpick: 2d Stealth: 1d Empathy: 3d Security Systems: 1d Streetwise: 1d Lie: 3d Persuasion: 1d Intimidation: 5d Stability: 4d Powers: 83 Covered in Bees! [2/4/8] 10d (A) Burn (+2) Engulf (+2) Slow (-2) Obvious (-1) Go Last (-1) Hits all locations and covers them in bees (burn effect), but is only usable every other round and goes last. Ablative Bees! [3/6/9] 8d+1wd (D) Added Capacity: Range (+2) Spray (+1) Interference (+3) Obvious (-1) Slow (-2) Limited Width (-1) Reduced Capacities (-1) Rolls 9 dice (8+spray) and sets a wiggle, covering target up to 256 yards away in ablative bees. Interference means it reduces their set right away, limited width means it reduces at most 1 per set, spray lets him use as many sets as he gets either on multiple targets or stacked up on one. A custom extra or duration+if/then combo to let the bees stick until they're used up would be a solid addition. Go Forth, Bees! [3/6/9] 10d (U) Radius (+2) Duration (+2) Obvious (-1) Delayed Effect (-2) Sends a 10-meter sphere of bees to scout and report back. Tells him rough layouts of areas and locations of people, but the bees have to report back which takes a bit longer.
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Nov 4, 2016 21:08
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The UA3 pdfs look pretty sweet. Time to get busy never playing it!
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Nov 5, 2016 23:13
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Lichtenstein posted:The UA3 pdfs look pretty sweet. Time to get busy never playing it! Emptyquotin'
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Nov 5, 2016 23:25
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ZypherIM posted:Go Forth, Bees! [3/6/9] 10d Also, I thought I'd post this bit for Wild Talents. My group doesn't really like the Rules-As-Written for how First Aid works, so we came up with an alternate system that has been working extremely well. First Aid Healing Shock: A First Aid roll can always remove Width in Shock from a person. The shock can come from any location or combination of locations. Healing Killing: If you have at least 3d in First aid, you can heal Killing if you roll a Width of 3 or higher. • Width of 3: Convert 1 Killing to Shock • Width of 4: Remove 1 Killing You can combine these actions if you have enough Width Multiple Actions: If you perform Multiple Actions with First Aid, you can combine the Widths of your Sets together. Healing Yourself: You can perform First Aid on yourself at a -1d penalty, unless you have a Command of 4d or more, in which case you have no penalty. Healing with Friends: If two or more people perform First Aid on the same patient, they can combine their Widths together. HEALING LIMIT: Each Body die you have equals one First Aid roll that you can receive within a 24 hour period. Beyond that you simply don't have the physical resilience to tolerate more stitching and mending. So a character with 4d in Body can be treated with First Aid 4 times in one day.
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Nov 6, 2016 02:17
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Thank god, I have the PDFs with a content page and bookmarks! This is going to make actually trying to run this thing so much easier!
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Nov 6, 2016 07:04
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Yea healing rules by default are really on the "gritty" side of the setup, especially if you restrict healing powers. The 10-meter sphere was because I wanted them to cover an area quickly, and a swarm of bees roving around made more sense in my head for seeing an area in 3d than any other options I thought of.
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Nov 6, 2016 08:03
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I actually thought you meant enough bees to fill a sphere ten meters wide. Which is frankly alarming.
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Nov 6, 2016 09:15
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palecur posted:I actually thought you meant enough bees to fill a sphere ten meters wide. I think that if that sphere's packed tight enough, that might be enough bees to immediately burst into flames from sheer body-heat.
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Nov 6, 2016 09:45
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I was thinking of it as just a swarm, but the idea of it being a big orb made from bees is terrifying. Having the bees be literally on fire is a whole other step to it to be amazing. I was thinking about throwing on the horrifying extra on some of these, but stability checks are.. rather drastic in wild talents. It is pretty much the only skill that if you don't have a bunch of (or special dice) that it can completely take you out. I'm thinking about how I want to adjust it, might just be a certain number of willpower based on the effect. He can use his bee swarm at the start of whatever job and it lets him have a layout of the area and know where all people/big objects in an area are. Sends his goons to corral anyone he needs to, uses his ablative bees to protect them from anyone who tries to fight them, and sprays bees onto the first guy who looks like he wants to fight back. I also wrote up a rocksteady+bebop analog. Strong brawlers, one with armor and one with extra boxes/regen. Really lovely mental stats, we'll see if my players end up just tricking them instead. Stone Rhino 200 points Source: Genetic Permissions: Mutant Base Will: 9 Stats (74) Body: 5d+wd (2d of hyperdice) Coor: 2d Sense: 2d Mind: 1d Charm: 1d Command: 1d Skills (40) Athletics: 4d (3d hyper) Brawl: 8d (6d h) Endurance: 3d (1d h) Perception: 3d (1d h) Intimidation: 5d (3d h) Stability: 1d+wd leadership: 4d (3d h) Powers (58) Stone Skin (Self) [12/24/48] 2hd [D+2] Permanent (+4) Always On (-1) Armored Defense (-2) [D+1] Permanent (+4) Always On (-1) Armored Defense (-2) Interference (+3) Charge! (Mass, Speed) [1/2/4] 10d [A] Power Cap: Speed (+2) High Cap: Mass (+1) Obvious (-1) Go Last (-1) Scattered Damage (-1) Reduced Capacity: Speed (-1) Stone skin removes 3 dice from sets targeting him, and acts like 4 light armor (reduce shock to 1, convert 4 killing to shock). Vulnerable to penetration. Charge! always acts like 10 dice for mass, covers a distance of up to 128 yards, but each point of damage goes to a random location. Knockback distance is (total damage)+8 yards. Impact damage is 2 shock to all locations, then (total distance)-(distance traveled) and check the chart on pg 89. Go last gives the players a good chance to knock the sets down, as this can be really dangerous (8 yards of hard impact is 4 killing to all locations).
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Nov 6, 2016 14:14
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In other Greg Stolze news UA3 pdfs went out to backers yesterday. I really like the layout and art style they went with, particularly in the third book - its structured as an encyclopedia of the Occult Underground, and the art's mainly photos, kid's drawings, and postcards scrawled over by madmen. Very much looking forward to getting the physical copies!
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Nov 6, 2016 14:25
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Flavivirus posted:In other Greg Stolze news UA3 pdfs went out to backers yesterday. I really like the layout and art style they went with, particularly in the third book - its structured as an encyclopedia of the Occult Underground, and the art's mainly photos, kid's drawings, and postcards scrawled over by madmen. Very much looking forward to getting the physical copies! I just went for the pdfs as I'll likely never get a chance to play the game in person, but they are pretty and I'm kind of regretting it.
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Nov 6, 2016 14:32
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Why do some powers like Dark Ritual, Oracle, and Soulless Materialism use the virtue states, no the vice stats, despite being Devil Powers in the Better Angels supplement, No Souls Left Behind? Seems like its game unbalancing. Any reason why they would be that way and not use the vice stats? To explain, the game gives every power (sans Angel NPC only powers) a vice stat to create a balancing act. Players want to be stronger so they sin. Sinning increases their vice stats. Increase them too much and the demon wins. So, players repent to lower their vice stats and increase their virtue stats. Which makes the player weaker. So, they sin. And it goes on and on until the demon wins or is exorcised. And that's before the fact that damage lowers your stats is considered, too. If you instead took two (or three, with a grand demon) of the virtue powers, you need to sin less and lowers your incentive to do so. Thus, while not completely removing it due to aspects which none have virtue activation, lowers the need for the balancing act and weakens the central mechanical conflict of the title. Covok fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Nov 6, 2016 |
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Nov 6, 2016 20:57
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All the powers in No Soul Left Behind use at least one sinful stat. Some of them do also involve a virtuous stat, but if you look back at the base book, some of those also involve one virtuous stat, so it's not doing anything unprecedented.
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Nov 7, 2016 00:11
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malkav11 posted:All the powers in No Soul Left Behind use at least one sinful stat. Some of them do also involve a virtuous stat, but if you look back at the base book, some of those also involve one virtuous stat, so it's not doing anything unprecedented. Well, I guess upon further examination, you are right, but it does seem off. Like, Dark Ritual is noted as "Dark Ritual (Knowledge)" and it does key off the virtue stat. BUT, upon further examination, all these powers use a virtue tactic with a vice strategy. Which, I suppose, works out.
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Nov 7, 2016 00:28
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ZypherIM posted:Go last gives the players a good chance to knock the sets down, as this can be really dangerous (8 yards of hard impact is 4 killing to all locations). Question: when you play, do you play so that every hit a character takes knocks a die off their Set? I recall the book being somewhat unclear so the way I run the game, only the first hit knocks a die off, that fights tend to be a lot more back-and-forth.
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Nov 7, 2016 02:02
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Yea the rules state that every time you take damage you lose 1 die from your tallest set (resolving combat pg 60). Not completely sure if this is in the rules per say, but we let you use a lower set if damage/gobble dice eat up your higher set all the way. Two things you miss out on by only the first hit rule is that you can't focus fire to suppress a big threat, and there is no benefit for trying to go for multiple hits. Like if I try to punch someone twice, my payoff is using 2 sets and knocking up to 2 dice out of the other guys sets if I'm fast enough. If I can only knock 1 die out I'm better off just going for a +1 speed/dmg move unless I need to hit 2 different targets. Go last is a really neat flaw to give the players a chance to stop your pseudo bullshit setup. Make sure that the guy also has lower sense than one or more of the players, or make an if/then (is declared at the start of the declaration phase). Another similar strategy is to use the locational flaw, which lets you set a weak point so if they take damage to the spot the power fails. On the better angels question, remember that the only way to improve any stat involves sinning. Improving virtue stats is a slide off a sinful, while improving sinful creates a new point. Moving points out of sinful stats doesn't really make you weaker overall, but it does change how strong you are at certain approaches. One of the hard things about the system is figuring out an approach to a situation that lets you use your strong dice (if you're willing to make a play in the way that requires). When the player hits that situation where she goes "man I really want to just be nice to solve this but that only gives me 2 dice" you bust out a reminder about redemption rules, and let them try to figure out ways to be better people while you keep the plot moving forward anyways.
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Nov 7, 2016 08:47
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The set that hits needs to be the same height or better to knock off dice if its a physical fight though, right?
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Nov 7, 2016 08:50
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Matching height and width at the same time is for when you're doing opposed rolls (actively interfering with someone), while something like a contest (foot race, iron chef) might just rely on width or height. Defending (dodge/block/powers) is the biggest time you see opposed rolls. Once you meet the width/height conditions you use your success as gobble dice. You can generate a lot of gobble dice in wild talents (and a good amount in reign) so this helps a bit to keep defensive stuff from bogging down combat. Getting hit doesn't require them to match your height, it is a side effect of you taking damage and having that disrupt your action. This only knocks off 1 die though, so even if you take 8 damage to the chest or something you still only lose 1 die from your highest (unused) set.
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Nov 7, 2016 11:47
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It's actually one of the neater elements of the System because of how it encourages fast-paced action and rewards large dice pools. It's not just that a large dice pool is more likely to get a really strong set, but it's a lot harder to stop because even if you're getting thoroughly beaten down you probably still have at least one Set left-over that will remain untarnished. I've not played Kerberos Club or Progenitor (to my great shame); do either of those games do anything to broaden the list of Charm Skills? It's kind of an hilarious oversight to me that in vanilla WT, Charm only has 2 "useful" Skills, with the third being a largely for-flavor Perform skill. It means there's no reason to ever acquire a Wiggle Die in Charm, since you can just buy WD in Lie and Persuasion for 4 less points. For my group I'm actually strongly considering just replacing the WT Charm skills with Corruption, Purity, Honesty and Deceit from A Dirty World. They fit the tone of our game really well and should work just fine without the continuum rules from ADW.
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Nov 7, 2016 14:20
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Kerberos Club does...things to skills. Basically you start with the usual Wild Talents list of fairly narrow skills, but can increase the cost of them to broaden them, make them applicable to more things, know people related to the skill or use them with different stats. So while Bob might have a 'rifles' skill to reflect his time in Afghanistan, Calamity Sue could have a "Guns, Guns, Guns" skill that lets her use any firearm she can pick up, repair guns with intelligence and scare people by pointing a gun at them, and know who's who in the gun-haver community. Bob's rifles skill costs one point/die. Sue's Guns costs 8. So technically yes, in that you could design a bunch of new charm skills that do different things.
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Nov 7, 2016 19:08
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You could make charm hyperskills too, and do similar things. A lot of it is coming up with what you want it to do, though just looking through skill lists from other games can sometimes spark an idea. Perform (Pan-Pipes) could be the operational skill for your pied piper power, which has a pan-pipe focus. There are also rules for using different stats with skills, so if you're trying to impress a lady with your guns skill a roll of charm+gun makes perfect sense. Perform is broader than it actually sounds, since it also has stuff like acting and public speaking. Under the alternate options is contacts, which are specific NPCs that you can get a once per session favor from, designed to bypass a skill roll later. Examples given are things like not needing to bluff a guard because they gave you a fake id, or not needing to research to find some info because they told you right where to find them. I think generally a lot of uses of other charm skills just get skipped in favor of persuade, and just changing those to be "public speaking or persuade at -2" sorts of things can give more weight to alternate skill options. In terms of charm itself note that once you're into 6+ charm levels you basically have magic brainwashing abilities that involve just talking at them long enough. That bit about Kerberos Club sounds kind of like the Occupations skill option just fleshed out more. I haven't really read onto the system itself, though it is sort of on my 'to-do' list. Continuing my various villians, here is my Bebop remake. Sort of Bebop mixed with Roadhog. He might be tuned a bit high, but I'm pretty sure some focus fire from my players can take him down. Like rocksteady he has a bunch of hyperbody and brawl, but his only powers are extra hitboxes and always-on regen. Blocking and melee combat doesn't incur a multiple action dice penalty (only for 1 extra action I think), but if you don't have something to block with and the attack does killing damage you take 1 killing to your choice of arms. With a 14+wd pool, he can take multiple swings, tack on +1 speed/dmg, or other combat maneuvers and still have a full dice pool. BeHog 200 pts Source: Genetic Permission: Mutant Base Will: 6 Stats (82) Body: 6d+wd (2d+wd of hyperbody) Coor: 2d Sense: 1d Mind: 1d Charm: 1d Command: 3d (2d hyper) Skills (43) Athletics: 2d (1d hyper) Brawl: 8d (6d hyper) Block: 8d (hyper) Endurance: 3d (1d hyper) Perception: 3d Intimidation: 8d (6d hyper) Leadership: 4d (3d hyper) Stability: wd Powers (64) Extra Tough [4/8/16] 4hd [U] Engulf (+2) Permanent (+4) Always On (-1) Self Only (-3) Regen [4/8/16] 3hd [U] Engulf (+2) Permanent (+4) Always On (-1) Self Only (-3) Extra tough gives him 4 extra hit boxes to all locations, and he heals 3 shock and 3 killing each round on all locations.
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Nov 7, 2016 20:14
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ZypherIM posted:You could make charm hyperskills too, and do similar things. A lot of it is coming up with what you want it to do, though just looking through skill lists from other games can sometimes spark an idea. Perform (Pan-Pipes) could be the operational skill for your pied piper power, which has a pan-pipe focus. The way that Operational Skill works, you roll the lower of the two dice pools between your Miracle and its Operational Skill. Obviously this means you need to pump points into the skill, but it also means that you want 10d in the Miracle as well (though if you have less it could mean that your hardware isn't as keen as it could be). So you're spending 10 points at the least on the Miracle, and easily upwards of 30-50 if it's really powerful, plus the points of the skill as well. I'm assuming that this is done intentionally as a balancing act for focus-based Miracles, but I wish it was handled in a more elegant fashion is all. It's kind of hard to explain to a new player the how-and-why of this part of the system.
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Nov 8, 2016 21:59
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Well there are two ways you can can go about it. You can just add stuff to hyperskills straight up, so if you want a hyperbrawl with the ranged extra so you can punch someone across the room you can just do that. Hyperstats you can do the same thing to as well, just remember stats have all 3 qualities by default while skills have just the 1. When you're doing stuff with operation skill the biggest thing is that buying special dice in the skill is probably going to be way cheaper than in your overall power. So you buy 10 dice in your power, and then your skill (or hyperskill) you put in (7d-stat) and 3wd or whatever. I don't have a guy worked up at the moment, but I had a player character idea that used basically just hyperskills. Probably inhumane stats to get coordination up to 6 (or potentially up to 6) so he can dodge bullets, then just a bunch of different martial arts sorts of things. Maybe on body as well to allow special dice in body stats. I'll work him up later tonight probably, the idea is pretty fun.
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Nov 9, 2016 01:13
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Was drinking a lot, so this was a bit slower on coming. This guy show-cases how you can do a hyperstat+hyperskill combo to give decent sized dicepools to a variety of actions. I focused this one on hyperbrawl stuff, but I'm kicking around an idea for a master-mind death trap building villian for another take on the idea, but without the direct combat stuff. This setup can be harder to try to do multiple action things, and if I expanded this out from 200 points to 250 I'd definitely scoop up 2d more sense, and invest in more interpersonal skills. That said she has a variety of fun attacks that are easily tweak-able, and more in there to show some stuff you can do than anything else. 6d total in body moves hand-to-hand damage from shock to killing, and 6 in coordination allows for dodging bullet speed objects. If those are too much, drop off inhuman stats capping them at 5. Elemental Psi Monk 200 pts Source: Psi Permissions: Peak Performer (5) Inhuman Stats [Body & Coor, Rest capped at 4d] (2) Base Will: 4+7=11 Stats 60 (44) Body: 2d+3d+wd Coor: 2d+4d Sense: 2d Mind: 2d Charm: 2d Command: 2d Skills 32 Endurance 2d Empathy 2d First Aid 2d Knowledge[Psionics] 2d Navigation 2d Survival 2d Persuasion 2d Stability 2d Hyperskills 36 Athletics: [2/4/8] 1d --No Physics (+1) Ignore the pesky laws of physics for cool althetic moves. Brawling (Fire Fist): [8/16/24] 1d --Range (+2) Burn (+2) Area x2 (+2) Booster:Range (+1) Range of 100 yards, explodes for 2 area dice in a 10-yard impact setting poo poo on fire. Brawling (Lightning Flurry): [6/12/18] 1d --Attacks+1 (+1) Spray x3(+3) Electrocuting (+1) Roll 9d+wd with +1 to damage, use all sets, and damage travels from impact location through chest to a leg. Brawling (Stone Punch): [8/16/24] 1d --Penetration x3 (+3) Deadly (+1) Go First x2 (+2) Daze (+1) Ignores 3 har/lar, does shock+killing damage, and they get a width reduction to their dice pool the next round. Dodge: [2/4/8] 4d --Defends+1 (+1) Generates 1 extra gobble die. Stability: [1/2/4] wd
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Nov 10, 2016 00:39
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ZypherIM posted:Was drinking a lot, so this was a bit slower on coming. This guy show-cases how you can do a hyperstat+hyperskill combo to give decent sized dicepools to a variety of actions. I focused this one on hyperbrawl stuff, but I'm kicking around an idea for a master-mind death trap building villian for another take on the idea, but without the direct combat stuff.
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Nov 10, 2016 22:07
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Glad they aren't too annoying! The system is a ton of fun to make characters in, especially since it is so easy to break the system that worrying about trying to make an effective character isn't a concern. Like make a guy and after one session you'll have a good feeling for if some things just aren't working well, and if that is a problem with his design or just a limitation that you'll have to work around (maybe sinking xp into more dice for it or something). The base stuff in the game lets you do so many things, and once you have a good feel for the system it can be pretty easy to go "this is about a +1 extra cost, I'll skip the steps of selecting X extra and Y flaws and make a custom one". Typing up a guy is also pretty useful I've found, because it helps me think about how I've got stuff setup or sometimes different things I can do with it. Here is my next guy, Bob the (Deathtrap) Builder. The idea is that he'll study the heroes with a clairvoyance type power, then use a hypermind skill to figure out how to build deathtraps. He'll have a variety of other skills as well, making him well suited to being an npc in a position that public opinion favors and is hard for the heroes to just go punch a bunch. Going with the theme I've given him a hard hat that dishes out hyperbody, hypercoor, and out-of-combat multiple action dice so he can build his traps quickly on the sly. If he gets down to actually fighting they'll give him a chance to make some hits, but overall he relies on indirect confrontation. Bob the (Deathtrap) Builder 200 points Source: Technological Permissions: Hypertrained (5) Super-equipment (2) Base Will: 8 Stats: 70 Body 1d Coor 2d Sense 2d Mind 3d Charm 3d Comm 3d Skills: 12 Dodge 2d Driving(Car) 2d Weapon(Rifle) 2d Hyperskills: 51 Lockpicking 3d Empathy wd Perception wd Scrutiny wd Langauge (Spanish) 3d Langauge (Mandarin) 3d Research wd Security Systems 3d Tactics 2hd Lie wd Perform (Public Speaking) 2hd Persuasion wd Interrogation 3d Leadership wd Stability wd Having a wiggle die lets him always succeed on a lot of interaction things, but with a low dice total he won't always have a great success or a large width. Difficulties that PCs have to beat when interacting with people that he has already convinced of stuff (or set up security on, etc) handled as opposed rolls. We Can Build It! (Mind Hyperskill) [5/10/20] 2hd (20) Duration (+2) Variable Effect (+4) If/then: only for variable effect (-1) If/then: only for knowledge skills (-1) This hyperskill uses variable effect to emulate other knowledge skills, allowing him to figure out a way to construct his deathtraps, or figure out a legal loophole, etc. Can We Fix It? (Useful) [1/2/4] 10d (10) Booster (+2) On Sight (+1) Focus (-1) Bulky (-1) Delicate (-1) Unwieldy (-1) This is his spying focus. I imagine it as some sort of machine in his lair. 10d with booster 2 gives it a range of around 300 miles, on sight means he can apply it through indirect means, such as security cameras on flying drones. Any powers he sees people use (or passive-on effects, or skills) he knows the specifics of. With a few rounds he'll also figure out power sources. Builder Outfit (Hard-hat and Toolbelt) Toolbelt (Useful) [1/2/4] 2hd (6) Duration (+2) Self-Only (-3) Hardhat (HyperBody and HyperCoor) [6/12/24] +3d (18) Focus (-1) Accessible (-1) The toolbelt gives the non-combat bonus from the multiple actions power. This means he reduces the time for actions by 2 steps (pg.24). So a project that'd take a year would only take a week, one that takes a day only requires 10 minutes, etc. The hardhat gives 3 dice of hyperbody and hypercoor (think technically I can seperate both of those out for double reduction but I was feeling lazy).
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Nov 19, 2016 01:15
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I'm feeling Cosmic Bumfights 3E a lot more now that it ditched the anti-science poo poo and owns the fact that its magick comes straight from a Tim Powers novel. E: I do wish they would outright state if Channel/Whatevermancy is a Feature and am deeply confused why conscious obsession/assumption around a thing doesn't make you knowledgeable about said thing (A&As don't get Of Course I Cans). I'm glad they finally denoted Avatar and Adept Identities got Casts Rituals and Gutter Magick though. MadRhetoric fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Nov 21, 2016 |
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Nov 21, 2016 22:26
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You can be obsessed with something and not actually know about it. I used to obsessed with the SAVING POWERS OF ROCK AND ROLL but I can't play an instrument and was saved by like 4 mediocre bands. But I still had the obsession. Obsession can narrow your focus on to one aspect of something that takes on symbolic importance to the whole. Like a Dipsomancer who's obsessed with getting drunk and doesn't care what he's drinking is going to know less about booze than a sommelier or a craft beer nerd, even if they don't drink as much.
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Nov 22, 2016 01:53
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Count Chocula posted:You can be obsessed with something and not actually know about it. I used to obsessed with the SAVING POWERS OF ROCK AND ROLL but I can't play an instrument and was saved by like 4 mediocre bands. But I still had the obsession. Obsession can narrow your focus on to one aspect of something that takes on symbolic importance to the whole. But you can know things about the culture or your particular version of the obsession. If it is a part of your Identity, you should know how to do things in tune with your expression of the obsession.
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Nov 24, 2016 02:20
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