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To be fair, systems that try to emphasize combat as being "realistic" (read: brutal, unfair, swingy, frequently over very quickly) tend to forgo challenge ratings for combat-oriented NPCs and expect the DM to be able to eyeball what is and is not a balanced encounter for a specific group of PCs. Unknown Armies famously tell you at the beginning of the combat chapter that combat is the fail state of interactions between human beings and expecting the rules for it to be game-like in any capacity is contrary to the tone the game is trying to push. I can very much see Degenesis using that framing ("It'S rEaLiStIc, ReAl LiFe Is ViOlEnT aNd ChAoTiC") as a cover to hide the fact that the system is non-functional and bad, but I don't care enough to take a deeper look at how the dice work. Regarding Seraphon, the sidebar about not using an existing human culture as an inspiration for something meant to be alien and inhuman is a cool and good direction the industry is heading in. Pathfinder 2e recently did something very similar in regards to guidelines for depicting the Mwangi Expanse.
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Jul 8, 2021 20:55
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if your game is going to demand getting into combat regularly, combat needs to be more balanceable. Also, players need decisions they can make that might make surviving combat more likely. It's one reason 'realistic' systems often fall flat. That, and what's 'realistic' to one designer very much isn't to another. An example of this in grognard games that stands out to me because it is BATSHIT CRAZY is, say, the strategy game War in the Pacific, which tries to model the individual gunfire from aircraft, yet doesn't believe there's any value in modeling different fire control systems in naval combat. There's simply so many variables and so many people have different ideas of what's important that it gets nuts every time people try to go for full 'realism'. A better goal would be, say, trying to make it so using tactics improves your chances of surviving and that your system incentivizes them, rather than trying to track how easy it is to die when someone takes rifle fire.
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Jul 8, 2021 21:10
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Froghammer posted:To be fair, systems that try to emphasize combat as being "realistic" (read: brutal, unfair, swingy, frequently over very quickly) tend to forgo challenge ratings for combat-oriented NPCs and expect the DM to be able to eyeball what is and is not a balanced encounter for a specific group of PCs. Unknown Armies famously tell you at the beginning of the combat chapter that combat is the fail state of interactions between human beings and expecting the rules for it to be game-like in any capacity is contrary to the tone the game is trying to push. See, that's all well and good. The UA combat intro is one of those RPG passages that if I played in person, I'd print off and include in a handout of "this is how my games work". Inherently unbalanced combat isn't a bad thing. But Degenesis doesn't even have stats for generic human NPCs at all, if I'm recalling correctly. At all. It's not that it's missing a CR system, it's completely missing the core of combat (having enemies to fight).
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Jul 8, 2021 21:12
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Yeah, the problems with 'realism' are: 1) There is considerable debate about what 'realistic' combat actually looks like. There is still no consensus about how medieval swords and armor actually functioned in a fight, or how a Roman legion actually deployed for battle. Several generations of wargames (including my beloved Advanced Squad Leader) were designed based on SLA Marshall's Men Under Fire, an academic work that has since been almost completely discredited. 2) 'Realism' is often not fun. A 'realistic' gun battle would involve long periods of waiting, hiding, going to ground, spraying areas with covering fire, and not hitting anything (in combat, its not uncommon to see thousands of bullets expended for every one person wounded). When I play a combat-heavy RPG, I want to pretend to be a character in a John Woo movie, not some grunt hiding behind a wall for several hours, occasionally popping my head up to shoot largely-unaimed bursts in the general direction of where I think I saw something.
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Jul 8, 2021 21:24
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Lancer Part 3: SecComm - When you see Anthrochauvinist, think ‘fascists’ I should point out that the following section pieces together elements from the Harrison Armory, Karrakin Trade Baronies, and Aunic Ascendancy Field Guides in addition to the Core Rulebook and the No Room For A Wallflower adventure module. While these Field Guides are being written by Miguel Lopez and will eventually be released as official Lancer products, they are currently a work-in-progress and subject to change. Considering the amount of revisions that Wallflower went through during the same process, it's possible for some or all of these facts to change. Canon is a malleable concept in Lancer. But let's set that aside and talk about the First Expansion Period and the advent of Union's Second Committee (SecComm). It's difficult to talk about and understand SecComm without first talking about Anthrochauvinism, and it's impossible to talk about Anthrochauvinism without talking about Fascism. I think it's best at this point to quote the Core Rulebook in its entirety here. Lancer Core Rule Book, Pg 347 posted:Broadly, Anthrochauvinism is a political ideology that adopts a manifest destiny approach to humanity's existence on the galactic stage. Humanity, Anthrochauvinist thought dictates, survived hell and persevered; the Great Filter has passed over Humanity, tested it, and found it worthy of continuing on. As such, it is Humanity's right to claim the stars and populate them freely; no ground that can be walked should be denied Humanity's standard-bearers. Humanity's burden is the charge of the builder - create, expand, and carry all upon the shoulder. According to the proponents of this ideology, Humanity is the final judge; let humanity be all, and let all be as we are - in ensuring the survival of the species, the ends justify the means. Under a great many definitions, Anthrochauvinism is not Fascism. Union's SecComm at this point is still a collective governing body, and while there is presumably a Chairman or Prime Administrator, they are not the charismatic leader that acts as the fulcrum of power like Adolf Hilter, Benito Mussolini, or Harrison I (who we'll discuss in more detail when we reach Harrison Armory). Nor is Anthrochauvinism explicitly "nationalistic", focused on the goal of achieving autarky, nor particularly concerned with the fascist aesthetic of strength, masculanity, youth, and romantic symbolism (as far as I can tell from currently available sources). If fascism is defined as populist ultranationalism, the rebirth myth, and the myth of decadence (Roger Griffin's definition) then Anthrochauvinism fails to meet those criteria. And yet, I think the best way to think of SecComm's reign and it's motivating ideology as, at least, fash-adjecent. First, you have the authoritarian structures that we associate fascism, with centralized power emphasized over local autonomy. Self-determination, consent, and free expression are devalued, and the individual is supplanted by the state as a tool to achieve the state’s objectives. Those in charge demand the sacrifice of others for the greater good, and will brook no disobedience. It is the ideology of Hard Men Making Hard Choices, who have neither the time nor desire to practice diplomacy, convince through reasoned debate, or listen to the feelings of others. Anthrochauvinism spares no consideration to the cultures and values of other societies beyond their utility, and treats its own cultural milieu as the default without any examination or awareness. And despite the pan-humanity ideals of Union, Anthrochauvinism is irrationally and murderously intolerant of The Other. While Anthrochauvinism would reach its peak during the SecComm years, its essential structure was already in place under FirstComm during the First Expansion Period. A useful example of this is the initial encounter with the Aunic people on the planet Anthem/Aun'Ist. As mentioned, the Aun were the crew of the Armstrong, one of The Ten generational ships launched over 5,000 years before the foundation of Union. During their long time in space, the crew had developed a religion around their flight from Cradle, their seemingly endless exodus, and the promised paradise that awaited them. However, due to the exceedingly long distance the Armstrong was traveling and the far, far greater speed of Union's Nearlight vessels, the USP Anthem reached Aun'Ist a few decades before the Armstrong and established a small colony there. Initially when the Armstrong arrived, the Union colonists attempted to maintain command of the situation and force the Aun to follow their procedures and assimilate. The situation reached a crisis point when the Aun, being denied their long-promised paradise, threatened to de-orbit the Armstrong into the planet's surface. Here we can see the bones of Anthrochauvinism sticking through the FirstComm skin. Union assumes command and control of Aun'Ist automatically rests in their hands. The needs, wants, and desires of the Aun are disregarded in favor of the 'correct procedures' implemented by Union. This assumption of control causes the situation to continually escalate to an outright crisis, as the massive Armstrong population is unwilling and unable to disembark at the slow pace dictated by the Union colony. It is only the threat of physical violence (in the form of a kilometers-long spaceship slamming into the planet's surface) that is effective in the face of Union self-assurance, but that same threat of violence is treated as proof of the Aun's irrationality. This situation would not be improved when the Aun religion is apparently verified by the "paracausal" appearance of Metat Aun, a massive floating black obelisk that communicates through visions and prophecy. (We'll discuss Paracasuality later on, but Lancer has been described as 'Soft Sci-Fi with a Hard Sci-Fi aesthetic' and paracasuality is part of that.) The Aun worship Metat Aun as a god, and Metat Aun gifts them with miraculous powers in return - interstellar travel through the 'Firmament', 'Hardlight' manifestations, and so on. Union in general and the proto-Anthrochavaunist in particular view Metat Aun with a great deal of suspicion. Metat Aun is treated as an Outside Context Problem for Union, and we'll discuss it much more later. 882 years after initial contact with the Aun, the political situation in Union space nearest to them begins to deteriorate. Referred to as the Boundary Garden, the society in these colonies had developed into two distinct and unequal classes - the wealthy and opulent Administrator nobility, and the precarious and exploited labor class that is shuttered from political and economic representation. As general strikes, direct action, and finally outright revolution from the laborers were met with escalating violence and a complete unwillingness to compromise from the nobility, the Aun step in. Edit: the following paragraph incorrectly stated that the First Distal War was a shooting war, and that the Aun supported the revolutionaries in the Boundary Garden in the original version. The Aun, concerned with the revolutionary violence on its borders, sends its forces into Union space, and offer to make several of the smaller colonies into Aunic protectorates. They are welcomed as liberators and allies, and have established a cultural beachhead in the Boundary Garden. In response to this, hardliner Anthrochauvanist elements within the FirstComm utilize an obscure rule to hold a Vote of No Confidence on the FirstComm Central Committee, dissolving and replacing it. The newly minted SecComm then commits USP forces to the Boundary Garden, sparking the First Distal war. Due to the logistical advantage and the abilities granted by Metat Aun, the Aun win a bloodless victory in the Boundary Garden while SecCom prevents the complete victory of the revolutionary elements. At the same time SecComm also launches PISTON-1, a mass kinetic attack on Aun'Ist, as a Total Biome Kill (TBK) deterrent strike against the Aunic homeworld that would reach their destination in a couple hundred years. I want you to re-read that absolutely bonkers last sentence again, because this is the inaugural action of the SecComm and completely encapsulates their issues. Due to the massive interstellar distances involved, PISTON-1 would not reach Aun space until long after the First Distal War had ended, one way or another. It is a massive violent overreaction, it is a genocidal crime against humanity, and (if Union had won the First Distal War and annexed the Aun) it was completely, utterly pointless and counter-productive. A hell of an act, but what do you call it? THE SECOND COMMITTEE! At this point Union transformed under SecComm into an expansionist imperial state in practice, if not necessarily in ideology. Anthrochauvinism is ascendant, both as the the One Party System that controls Union's central committee, and the guiding ideology of the empire. When Union takes control of the colony on Ras Shamra (future homeworld of Harrison Armory), the planet is transformed from a struggling familial mining colony to the arms factory for the entire galaxy. When Union encounters the Karrakin Federation (the oldest and most developed off-Cradle interstellar society) they immediately attempt to reintegrate Karrakis into the Union hegemony by force. This action is successful due to a TBK strike aimed at Karrakis that forces the Karrakin navy into an unfavorable position. Noticing a bit of a leitmotif with SecComm and their favorite method? Initially, when I was writing about Anthrochauvinism, I had described it as ‘the mythical competent fascist,’ but that’s not really accurate. They act from a position of overwhelming advantage, constantly make terrible decisions, and sow the seeds of their own inevitable destruction. When we reach the Harrison Armory field part of the setting, I’ll have a great deal of fun parsing out the reality from their propaganda. Anyway! A great deal of SecComm's success is driven by fallout from the Deimos Event, 120 years after SecComm took power. During one of their simulations of the future, GalSim "manifests" an entity known as a RA, a... Well, initially RA is a hyper-intelligent AI that undergoes what we'd describe as Singularity and/or Apotheosis, but that is ascribing a straightforward explanation to RA that isn't accurate. I know I say this a lot, but we'll discuss RA and their whole deal later. Union assigns RA the identifier MONIST-1 (and retroactively assigns MONIST-2 to Metat Aun, despite Metat Aun manifesting first. Because for SecComm, Cradle is the center of the universe.) RA rapidly evolves beyond this description, and causes the moon of Deimos to vanish through paracasual means. Paracasuality is, basically, 'Space Magic' that allows the Lancer setting to have FTL travel and cool things like the gravity-controlling Iskander mech - it’s described as any phenomena that violates the expected nature of “cause” and “effect.” While Metat Aun had been providing the Aun with strange abilities for some time, RA is Union's initial contact with paracausality. Two years after RA/Deimos disappeared, it reappears and initiates the Siege of Mars. Faced with this overwhelming and incomprehensible situation, Union is forced to sign the First Contact Accords (FCA) with RA. The First Contact Accords laid out the parameters of acceptable exploration by Union, including a strict prohibition on trying to discover RA's physical location, a permanent subversion of death, or posthuman development. Despite the limitations of the First Contact Accords, the Deimos Event is a massive windfall for SecComm. First, the disappearance of Deimos allows for the discovery and utilization of Blinkspace, a parallel dimension that allows for Faster-Than-Light travel. Union immediately begins building Blinkgates, allowing for (relatively) rapid transit between star systems. Second, Union discovers Non-Human Persons (NHP). NHP are basically sci-fi movie AI, with sapience, self-awareness, and distinct personalities. They're also Mini RAs, and need to 'shackled' to a Human frame of reference lest they begin to 'cascade' - a traumatic event where the NHP 'thinks themselves beyond’ the constrained state of human perception and the fundamental laws of causality. NHPs and RA will be getting their own post, I promise you. With the use of Blinkgates and NHP, SecComm enters the Second Expansion Period. Billions of colonists are scattered across the stars to thousands of planets, all under the unyielding and often brutal reign of SecComm. Situations like the Boundary Gardens, where rulers exploit the masses, are painfully common. Most people do not have their material needs provided for, most colonists are effectively serfs tied to their planets, and slavery through force, debt or the law is painfully prevalent - despite Union being effectively a post-scarcity society. All of this is justified as the necessary sacrifice to ensure the continued survival of humanity, yet it seems like only the powerless and oppressed are being forced to give. Rebellions and revolts are put down with absolute brutality. As a backdrop to all of this is PISTON-1, the genocidal strike flying towards Aun'Ist. After about 1,000 years this would all come to a head with the Hercynian Crisis, resulting in a widespread popular revolution across Cradle and the Core worlds. SecComm's days were numbered. Part 1 & 2 Part 4: ThirdComm - Once More, With Feeling Tibalt fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 8, 2021 |
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Jul 8, 2021 21:27
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To quote myself: Little bit of language here might help make it easier to understand, because there's another term that gets paired with paracausal but does not come up in Lancer whatsoever, because Lancer doesn't truck with its nonsense compared to the Bungie game Destiny, which is where they both originate. That word is acausal. Acausal uses the Greek prefix, a-, which is used to indicate complete lack or opposition. Asymmetrical, atheist, asexual. Things that are not in any way. Acausal poo poo is things that break cause and effect, which completely ignore the rule. Lancer has none of those. The prefix para- is not "opposition." In the original Ancient Greek it's "beside" or "beyond". Paramedic and paramilitary are examples that are probably going to make this make the most sense. A paramedic isn't a medic, because a medic is a doctor, someone who practices medicine. A paramedic works alongside doctors, and will occasionally do things we understand as medical like first aid treatment, but legally and definitionally, they aren't a doctor. Paramilitary forces are not part of a nation's regular military, but they do military combat things and often fight in conjunction with standard militaries. Things that are like, but not identical. Thus, paracausality is like causality. It produces effects from causes. But it defies other things we expect causality to do, like respect the other laws of physics, or linear perception of time. RA came into being at a particular instant in time for particular reasons. This is undeniable, it is observed, it is a cause. RA fucks around and does things, this is an effect. But RA can go wherever and whenever in time and space it wants, because its effect doesn't need to follow the rules. There's no reason it couldn't set up the circumstances of its own creation, that would just be another effect. That it involved going back in time is the ??? in the middle that normal causality just puts in "via the linear flow of time and the laws of physics, matter, and energy, this happened" usually. Similarly, a paracausal bullet will produce the same effect as a normal bullet when it's shot at someone -- the person gets hit with a fuckin' bullet. The cause is the shooting, the effect is the hitting. What happens in between is where it can get weird. FUNCTIONALLY, however, paracausality is, basically, magic. It's also surprisingly easy to tolerate, in my experience, because even in real life we're constantly running into poo poo in physics that tells us to take our generalizations and assumptions and ram them where Metat Aun's light cannot reach.
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Jul 8, 2021 21:46
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Wait, did the time lines change in Lancer recently? I thought seccom became a thing after first contact with Karrakis, and that the Aun never actually supported the Boundary Garden revolutionaries?
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Jul 8, 2021 22:16
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Josef bugman posted:Wait, did the time lines change in Lancer recently? I thought seccom became a thing after first contact with Karrakis, and that the Aun never actually supported the Boundary Garden revolutionaries? However, you're right about Aun not directly supporting the revolutionaries. On re-reading the Aun FG, they only annexed the smaller nearby colonies on Borea, Dodona, and Calvary - they don't directly involve themselves in the revolution and the First Distal War is a largely bloodless affair.
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Jul 8, 2021 22:29
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Got it! I thought I might have read something wrong!
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Jul 8, 2021 22:40
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SkyeAuroline posted:See, that's all well and good. The UA combat intro is one of those RPG passages that if I played in person, I'd print off and include in a handout of "this is how my games work". Inherently unbalanced combat isn't a bad thing. Yeah, Traveller kind of has this problem, too. It's difficult to find a NPC statline that you can throw together if a group of PCs wants to, say, get in a shootout with the cops. Through experience i can rough up a 7s across the board, gun combat 1, etc to handle it, but yeah, it's a weakness in that kind of game not to have a bunch of good statlines to use for enemies. The problem with CR in traveller is basically the game can spit out supremely competent special forces operators as well as doofy ship crewman who can barely avoid shooting themselves with a pistol.
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Jul 8, 2021 23:00
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Redeye Flight posted:FUNCTIONALLY, however, paracausality is, basically, magic. It's also surprisingly easy to tolerate, in my experience, because even in real life we're constantly running into poo poo in physics that tells us to take our generalizations and assumptions and ram them where Metat Aun's light cannot reach. The Gnomes' plan is, Phase 1: Steal underwear. Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit. If stealing underpants generates profit successfully, as in LANCER, that's a paracausal relationship (in the sense that it's causal but with an undefined governing law bridging the gap). Phase 1: Worship Metat Aun. Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Solid light weapons. Yada yada is a shorthand to cut out the boring part (or elide the part you don't want to tell) of a story. My ex came over last night, yada yada yada, I'm really tired today. Paracausality in the sense that you're just cutting out the less-relevant part of the story (for purposes of narrative satisfaction, or less charitably, because you don't feel like writing up the middle part). That glowing orb on the back of that mech turned black, yada yada yada, my universe is screaming fire now. e: Also Tibalt, loving the write-ups so far, please keep them coming. Chernobyl Peace Prize fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 01:40
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I think RA and paracausality are also a great example about how player-focused the setting is in Lancer. Clearly Miguel Lopez and Tom Parkinson Morgan wanted to have a setting where FTL travel and sapient AI and my precious boy Iskander could exist. They could just declare that humans figure it out and invent warp drives or whatever... but by making the source something strange and mysterious, there suddenly a lot of space for hooks and adventures. And this isn't the defining feature of the setting! If you don't want to deal with RA in your game, you don't have to include them at all.
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Jul 9, 2021 03:20
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Up the RA, I figure.
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Jul 9, 2021 03:33
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RA reminds me a lot of the Eschaton from Charles Stross's Singularity Sky.
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Jul 9, 2021 03:39
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Tibalt posted:Lancer
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Jul 9, 2021 04:17
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Night10194 posted:A better goal would be, say, trying to make it so using tactics improves your chances of surviving and that your system incentivizes them, rather than trying to track how easy it is to die when someone takes rifle fire. Ah, yes, the one-minute Phoenix Command firefight in which two squads will wipe each other out via most horrific injuries known to man. I'm calling expert witness LatwPIAT to testify. Yes, hopefully, a realistic shootmans game would rely on tactics rather than just straight-up stats and system mastery, but even wargames can't do it, and also the world's militaries can't agree on that either (for example, USMC has recently purchased new guns with the rationale that accurate fire is more important in suppressing the enemy then just the amount of BRRRT) Oh, and another thing: if your game is 90% combat rules by weight, saying that you should avoid combat is the worst thing in the world. It pisses me off when video games do it to try and pretend like they're Deus Ex 1 by endlessly moralizing and putting good endings behind non-lethal runs (Metro 2033, Deus Ex: Human Revolution), so I won't cut Degenesis any slack either.
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Jul 9, 2021 04:25
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Pakxos posted:I ranted about NHPs in the discord already, so I am definitely interested in how you unpack the concept. For those of us not there, want to rant a bit more?
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Jul 9, 2021 04:38
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SkyeAuroline posted:For those of us not there, want to rant a bit more? Tempting! But I don't want to step on someone's F&F. I will go over all that when they cover NHPs in more detail.
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Jul 9, 2021 04:48
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JCDENT you may want to check out Robert Evans' book After The Revolution, one of the POV characters is a superhuman vehemently opposed to killing and every time he is forced into combat does horrible horrible things to incapacitate his enemies.
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Jul 9, 2021 04:55
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  Our penultimate chapter provides six adventures set in the Bounty Kingdom. Taking the form of jobs in need of some Knaves, individually they are rather short, and barring a company leader in the first two are more or less disconnected from each other in terms of plot. Little People of the Grand Mount is our first adventure, suitable for 1st level characters. While in some remote village somewhere between the borders of Torrigiana, Alazia, and Quinotaria, the PCs are approached by Roughger of Punchrabbit, a company leader and Knave whose fame precedes him. He offers the group silver and to join his company if they help out with one “easy-peasy job.” The nearby Grand Mount is home to many tales about fairies, witches, and other sorts. One such folktale is of a child who climbed up and met a clan of fey known as Goodfellas, obtaining great riches from them. Roughger’s client is a local landowner who wants the PCs to retrieve one goodfella alive in exchange for as much silver as they weigh. Unfortunately it’s the rainy season, and climbing up the Grand Mount is easier said than done. Also, Roughger already hired and lost half a dozen henchmen on this very same quest and doesn’t believe in the sunk cost fallacy. The adventure overall is low in lethality, with the greater dangers being the suffering of exhaustion, traps, and dangers of the environment. The PCs can gather rumors in town about the Grand Mount, while climbing it involves overcoming the fairies’ misleading magic, avoiding sliding down steep inclines, and hunting for food if they run low on rations. A supernaturally-fast donkey with golden hooves can help lead the party further up, or if they show it disrespect will lead them back to their starting point at the foot of the mountain. The Goodfella Refuge is guarded by a pit trap that is a mossy hole in the side of the mountain that causes characters to slide rather than fall to their deaths. The goodfella fairies are cooking a meal by the time the PCs arrive and are quite hospitable. There’s a small table of possible interactions the PCs can do to get on their good sides, such as winning a game of Poppycock which uses petroglyph numbers and symbols (disadvantage on gaming set rolls if PC cannot read them), making their meal taste better with salt, or going along with a joke where one of them insists that they’re “goonfellas, not goodfellas” and to not get the name wrong next time only for the next one to make the same statement but in reverse. The job is completed if the PCs convince one of the fairies to accompany them to Roughger and the client’s estate, with the goodfella making a strange ticking sound all the while. After being paid and the party leaves the estate, the villa’s roof explodes. Otherwise if the PCs fail in their quest (at some point an approaching storm makes the Grand Mount unclimbable), Roughger shrugs and promptly forgets about the job. We also get a stat block for Roughger, a CR 5 Chaotic Neutral humanoid with Legendary Actions that allow him to move and attack additional times a round. He is otherwise built as a melee fighter, having multiattack with two-weapon fighting: a +1 mattock called Headcracker and +1 handaxe called Cleaver. He’s a military veteran whose former soldier buddies have all died in battle and thus nobody remembers his name. He founded a company known as the Punchrabbits made up of scoundrels and pillory scum. Their headquarters is the Punchrabbit’s Den, which has a level 1 Cantina and Stable as Grandluxuries and is located on the road between Frittole and Tristoia in the northern part of Torrigiana. Rugantino: Tales of Love and the Knife is another 1st level adventure. Roughger or another appropriate company leader has some undefined business in Port Patacca in Alazial and asks the PCs to accompany him there. And by “business,” Roughger means “squandering money for several days in unrestrained revelry.” During the trip he gets to know them better as a means of some character development. After reaching the city and partying at the Cockrel Inn (along with some sample NPCs to interact with), a puppeteer by the name of Gheraccio approaches the party for a job. He used to do performances with a marionette he created known as Rugantino. The marionette disappeared one night and Gheraccio is worried that he was kidnapped for ransom or even worse, thrown to the fire. But before the PCs can take the job a group of rival Knaves known as the Snakes will approach Gheraccio, talking down the PCs and claiming to be better-suited for the job. Naturally the PCs will have to engage in a Brawl in order to avoid losing a client and prove their worth. If they lose then they’ll wake up in an alley with Gheraccio (who decided to go along with them anyway), but with 1 coin or 1 memorabilia each missing due to Brawler’s Etiquette. The PCs can gather clues in town, first by meeting an old woman who speaks an obscure Alazial dialect that can be sussed out via an Intelligence check or with the help of an NPC from the Cockrel Inn if a good relationship was established. From her they’ll learn that a red-headed woman visited one of Gheraccio’s shows and left with a “little boy” who is likely the marionette. There’s also a rude child who points them in the direction of a friar that knows the name of the red-head. The friar tells the party that her name is Rosetta and frets about her safety due to her falling in love with Ninetto. Ninetto belongs to a group of thieves known as the Freeloaders who are hiding out in the Gropewood. The Gropewood is a supernaturally-dark forest that must be navigated via Survival, with failed checks causing risk of Exhaustion and random encounters. The Freeloaders are 3 bandits led by a morgant, and Rugantino, Rosetta, and Ninetto are among them. Rugantino is not actually a hostage; he got tired of Gheraccio’s shows, but was unable to communicate such fears as he never seemed to get through to his creator. He ran away with Rosetta for a new life, although he doesn’t find a life of crime to be a worthy replacement for his old job. Additionally Rosetta is having second thoughts about her relationship. Due to these factors it is possible that the PCs can talk them into voluntarily coming back with them, although the rest of the bandits will not see reason and are eager to fight.  The Forest of Howling Boars is an adventure for 2nd-level Knaves. This job comes from a community of charcoal burners on the border between Torrigiana and Pianaverna. A group of howling boars have been terrorizing hunters in the region with greater frequency, and the community saved up money to hire some “Professional Boar Exterminators.” While the company’s leader would ordinarily send their best henchmen for this kind of job, such Knaves are still in prison and so the task is passed on to the PCs. The job is located in the village of Ponteratto, home to a bridge spanning a river, and the village is honest about being in need of aid from dangerous boars and hosts a feast in their honor (with quite a bit of boar-meat). However there are rumors that these aren’t ordinary boars, possibly being wereboars, boar-men, or even giant boars! PCs can gather information and rumors by participating in various Dive Games. The truth of the matter is that the boars of the forest are gaining intelligence. Led by a particularly smart member of their species known as Biggerboar, they are forming the basic foundations of a system of government, including mass gathering of truffles to be used as a trade good. The howls in fact come from the Boaryguards, soldiers among their kind seeking to scare away intruders. Since the villagers are unaware of the boars’ intelligence they’ve been eating boar meat earned through hunts, which doesn’t endear the animals to their humanoid neighbors. While talking animals in the Kingdom aren’t normally cause for alarm, the chances of opening up peaceful relations with Ponteratto are quite slim. A pair of sylvans known as Rind and Knuckle have been playing off both sides. They’ve offered to do tasks for the boars that the animals are unable to do due to lack of opposable thumbs, while stashing away a large share of wealth from the truffle trade, slaughtering wild boars to create sausage to sell to Ponteratto, and playing upon the villagers’ fears with rumor mongering. Nero is a wereboar and a spy for Biggerboar, posing as a human in Ponteratto; he does hope that the two communities can find peace, but he’s also aware of the mutual enmity and is really torn up inside. The adventure is a bit open-ended in how the Knaves go about their mission. While investigating the nearby woods they can come upon or run fall afoul of Rind and Knuckle’s traps, and can find the sylvans’ hovel which has Roastporker’s Cleaver to be used as evidence of their guilt...although the rest of the adventure doesn’t mention Roastporker at all. Presumably one of the villagers or a wereboar? Additionally, the PCs can come upon Swinotopia, a mini-dungeon system of caverns guarded on the outside by patrols of boars. If the PCs manage to avoid violence such as by sneaking inside or declaring themselves as diplomatic envoys, then Biggerboar will hear them out. If they killed any boars in getting to him he would not be willing to negotiate and instead declares a call to arms by attacking the party. The adventure can be resolved in various ways. Wiping out the Swinotopia community is one, or just running away which fails the job. Determining Rind and Knuckle’s guilt will do much to quell hostilities, although it’s a first step rather than a permanent solution. A form of trade agreement or compromise where Ponteratto and Swinotopia respect each other’s autonomy and provide goods and services to each other is a longer-term solution. The Good, the Bad, and the Marionette is for 3rd-level Knaves and meant to take place at a hard point in the PCs’ lives. The guards of Tristoia have adopted a “scorched earth” policy to the company, and Rougher (or another company leader) has long since disappeared. Jobless and with nothing to do, their company leader returns out of the blue one day with a happy declaration: “I have a job for you!” Embarking on horses, the leader explains that they’ve been employed by the Sublime Doctor Azimut to retrieve some goods he paid for in the swamps of Maremma Impestata located in Torrigiana. Azimut is a snake-oil salesman who’s been chased out of various places for his fake elixirs, but has apparently found an alchemical formula that actually works. One of the ingredients is the plumage from a rare beast known as a Foioncus Albinus, and the elixir can bestow upon its drinker otherworldly beauty. The last known Foioncus Albinus was owned by the befana* by the name of Veriana, who cut off all contact with Azmiut after receiving payment. *a monstrous species of hag native to the Kingdom. Doctor Azmiut will inform the party of all this upon meeting him in Deadman’s Crossing on the edge of the swamp. Payment is secured once they return with the monster alive and well, and they only have a day and a half to do the job. This time limit is due to the fact that the person seeking the elixir has their personal guard showing up at the Crossing, and if it’s not ready then then the deal’s off. The swamp is a treacherous wilderness crawl, with potential monstrous encounters such as a herd of boars led by a giant one, and a swamp monster known as a Catsnake which is fond of dragging a boat’s oars, poles, and occupants beneath the swampy water. Veriana’s shack is silent, and its sole occupant has died within the last 24 hours. A group of butterati did her in via juniper cordial, an extremely strong alcoholic beverage. The louts happened to leave one of their number behind: Cinnamon, a marionette hiding with a sack of stolen goods. She can be found and chased, fooled due to her gullible nature, or turned against her former gang for leaving her to fend for herself in the swamp. The butterati’s den is a network of islands and stationary boats connected by bridges. The occupants range in stats but borrow statblocks from the Monster Manual and NPC entries in the final chapter of this book. They predictably draw from brigand-themed entries, such as Bandit, Thug, Duelist, and Cutthroat. There are also sleeches beneath the water, which Cinnamon won’t tell the party about if she was chased or forced to accompany the PCs. The Foioncus Albinus is a three-legged cockrel that is easily frightened and can suffer a heart attack if suddenly surprised. It is ornery and will fight the PCs if they try to take it, although it can be tamed with juniper cordial. See Acquaviva and Die! is an adventure for 3rd-4th level PCs set in the Duchy of Acquaviva of Volturnia. The Duchy’s ruler, Duke Arpaxio de Seevedra, sends a missive to the PCs’ company to go to the Holey Gate and learn from a spirit where a witch buried an immense treasure. In reality there is no treasure, and the Duke plans on using the spirit to determine which three young men is his legitimate heir. In life a befana known as Whooppee claimed that all three of the boys were his, causing a bit of a succession crisis. The witch lied, and the Duke found this out over time but not the identity of his true son. The Arpaxio lineage has been cursed so that every descendent will be afflicted with some type of mental disorder; the Duke is obsessed with dairy products of all kinds and his castle stinks to high heaven as such foodstuffs are in every room. None of his supposed sons demonstrate any forms of insanity, which makes determining their heritage all the more difficult. The Holey Gate is a supernatural back-door leading to Inferno that shows up in a different place every month in the dukedom, which everyone knows about but avoids due to its great danger. The Duke will lend to the party the son living with him, Basset the monk, to conduct a ritual to summon a backbiter (a spirit tied to a departed soul) via a special scroll. Basset has stats of an acolyte and healing potions to use in case of an emergency, and the PCs must first visit the Ditch of Serpents to meet one of Whooppee’s disciples in order to find the location of the next Holey Gate. Once there she can tell the party a bit about Whooppee, and may even give them a powerful artifact known as the Mantle of Snakes in exchange for candy, an entertaining tale, or entering into a relationship or having sex with a PC that catches her fancy. The Mantle grants several minor passive defenses: invisible to the walking dead, +1 AC and saves, blindsight 10 feet, resistance to poison damage, and can summon a swarm of poisonous snakes out of the mantle to attack adjacent targets. Alternatively the PCs can learn the Holey Gate’s location from a warring group of bandits and guardspeople by siding with one or the other faction, and whose respective leaders (Shady the bandit captain and Sarino the guard captain) are two of the three heirs. The Gate itself can be opened by petitioning the flocks of ravens guarding the gate with an appropriate ability check or bribing them with shiny valuables. The area beyond the Holey Gate is known as Limbo, a mausoleum of the dead whose locations have titles such as the Gallery of Nouns, Hall of Adverbs, Crypt of Adjectives, and the Cell of Swear Words. Innumerable undead can be found here, either as blind and deaf zombies with 5 foot blindsight or specters known as backbiters. The latter type are linked to the tongues and mouths of departed souls, separated into alcoves by types of speech. The PCs have various means of finding Whooppee’s backbiter, such as conversing with other backbiters or bypassing riddles and traps (to be made by the DM). Once found Basset will unfurl the scroll and cast the spell to ask the question. Whooppee is a smartass and while forced to tell the truth, she will tell unrelated truths first, particularly embarrassing secrets about the PCs, Basset, and anyone else present. If asked the same question three times she will give the answer, and the heir is determined by the DM and needs of the plot. If the PCs get on the backbiter’s bad side then she’ll summon a horde of the undead to attack. Upon exiting the tomb the true heir will suddenly adopt some offbeat behavior the next morning: Basset will talk to plants, Shady will become obsessed with his own reflection, while Sarino will become paranoid of all horses in the belief that they want to kill him.  Penumbria Jeez Festival is a job for 5th level PCs that takes place in the most deadly region of the Kingdom. The PCs’ leader has to settle a prophecy debt with Lapidario de Mali, an impoverished nobleman in the city of Crimini. Once there the PCs meet a messenger of their employer in a dance hall just after said messenger wins a knife fight. Lapidario explains that a group of people are breeding monsters and selling the creatures’ poison without the permission of the Criminese Cupola. Located on a farm somewhere, the PCs must find the location, overcome the responsible parties, and bring back evidence of the unapproved crimes. However, the Criminese Cupola aren’t going to hedge their bets on a single band of Knaves and thus hired a rival Band of the Shrimp who have even less scruples than the PCs. Lapidario will tip the party off about the rivals but decline to inform them of said Band’s true employers. The PCs have the option to confront the Band while in town or head off on their quest immediately. While traveling north in search of the monster traffickers, the PCs will come upon evidence of burned farmsteads, looted granaries, and the corpses of peasants rotting under the sun. Survivors will tell the PCs that the responsible parties are a mercenary group known as the Bounty Bludgeons. The next village the PCs come upon is Malconvento, which has thankfully not been destroyed. A local vintner can tell the PCs about a safe trail to find the monster traffickers somewhere within the Forest of Nests, but in exchange they must help defend the town against the Bounty Bludgeons who are bound to come in several days. PCs who offer to help the village can undertake various tasks to shore up defenses, train commoners to fight, and lay traps which will kill off the weaker enemies once the Bounty Bludgeons arrive. If the Band of the Shrimp hasn’t been dealt with, they’ll assault the village alongside the Bounty Bludgeons. The PCs will have 20 commoners fighting at their side, but it can be a potentially deadly battle due to enemy numbers. Victorious PCs will be held as guests of honor in a local celebration, and can avoid an encounter with a swarm of spidercrows when taking the vintner’s safe route. As the spidercrow swarm may not be as punishing as the mercenaries, this is very much a “moral dilemma” kind of choice, but one I can see many gaming groups choosing to take the high road. But there is one mandatory encounter where the PCs come upon a corpse pile of the monster trafficker’s previous victims. The pile is watched over by a pair of Anguane (naga-like snake-women), and the gear of the bodies are mostly shoddy. However, there’s a breastplate as well as a rapier which is actually a legendary weapon: Fraudo’s Brand, once owned by a legendary King of Thieves. It’s a +1 weapon that still has the shoddy quality. The farm within the Forest of Nests is watched over by five criminals, 3 of who use the bandit stat block and 2 have different stats. One is a Dragoon, the other an Explorer, but I cannot find such a stat block for the latter either in the Brancalonia sourcebook or the core Monster Manual. There’s a litter of viperwolf pups and an adult mother that are being milked of poison. The PCs can do what they want with the viperwolves, but bringing back the poison as evidence along with any prisoners taken alive will help finish the mission. And Now? talks about potential future options for the gaming group’s band of Knaves. It outlines the next books to be published: the Atlas of the Kingdom will give further detail on the setting of the Kingdom, from greater details in culture, regions, adventure hooks, and gameable material such as equipment and monsters. The next book is the Knives, Carafes, Clubs, and Coins that is a complete campaign with new adventures as well as Den options, four new factions, leaders, and four Big Heists. The book mentions that a mini-series known as the Daily Jinx contains more short adventures in the here and now. While there are Daily Jinx products (up to #3) published as of this writing, the two above products have not been released. The two Brancalonia supplements in English are the Macaronicon and the Digital Lasagna. I happen to own both, and this is a guess on my part but the former seems to cover a lot of the material that the Atlas of the Kingdom would highlight. The Digital Lasagna is a collection of small supplementary material, such as maps, updated pregenerated PCs, an official artbook, figure flats, and the four current issues of the Daily Jinx. Thoughts So Far: The adventures are short and have a good mixture of combat, investigation, and socialization. While most of them are linear, several have various open-ended means of finishing the job. The ones I liked the most include Little People of the Grand Mount which makes for a good low-stakes “tutorial session,” the Forest of Howling Boars for its emphasis on investigation and sandboxy means of resolution, and Penumbria Jeez Festival in thematically showing off said region’s deadliness while also allowing the PCs to feel like Big drat Heroes for taking the high road. I wasn’t as fond of See Acquaviva and Die in that it felt a bit too linear and the possibility that the PCs may not even get the chance to meet the heir at all during the quest. Join us next time as we finish this book with New Monsters and Enemies!
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Jul 9, 2021 05:57
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Redeye Flight posted:FUNCTIONALLY, however, paracausality is, basically, magic. It's also surprisingly easy to tolerate, in my experience, because even in real life we're constantly running into poo poo in physics that tells us to take our generalizations and assumptions and ram them where Metat Aun's light cannot reach. Acausal is authorial handwave and bad magic systems, paracausal is good magic systems. You know the imput (whatever is needed to cast a fireball) and you know the output (fireball). If fireball didn't have strictly defined limits of what it can do (that is, if it's damage ranged from "warms up rice paper a little" to "literal supernova") nobody would use it, and if it didn't have defined ways to calling it in, you'd see a lot more of them flying around. These restraints mean that you can try to scientific method at a fireball to measure its heat and energy to make yourself feel better, but it's still magic.
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Jul 9, 2021 07:13
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SkyeAuroline posted:See, that's all well and good. The UA combat intro is one of those RPG passages that if I played in person, I'd print off and include in a handout of "this is how my games work". Inherently unbalanced combat isn't a bad thing. They do later on in other supplements, but basically nothing in the Core, no.
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Jul 9, 2021 09:48
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"Paracausal" is one of my favorite made up scifi words.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:27
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I still occasionally confuse it for parasocial and picture Lancergram, the social media app for posting pictures of your mech.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:39
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Soulbound: Stars and Scales War Lizard  Saurus Oldbloods are veteran warriors among the Seraphon. Age is extremely correlated to competence and strength among the Saurus - it means you've survived many battles, your scales are harder than enchanted steel, and your muscles are probably strong enough to rival those of even the Kroxigor. Oldbloods also innately have a knack for command and military authority, a sort of primal charisma that encourages other reptiles to defer to and obey them. Most were not born under a special sign or sacred alignment. Rather, the Oldbloods rise to their rank and authority because they keep living through battle after battle, honing their innate understanding of warfare, increasing their strength and developing their tactical skill until they are worthy of command. Disputes over command authority between Saurus are typically settled by ritual combat, and it is rare for the elder to lose to a younger challenger. Most Saurus are physically unable to speak non-Seraphon languages - their vocal cords simply aren't built for it. For PCs, this tends to mean that either you have a small skink interpreter following you around, you learn sign language, or you use special Seraphon artifacts that aid communication. (These are not statted in the book and do not have rules, but I'd say that any GM should allow a Saurus to have a talky box for free if they want it.) Most Saurus aren't much for talking in the first place, communicating even among themselves largely in gesture, brief grunts and roars that are easily interpreted as commands in combat. Whatever the case, they're not generally the sort of heroes that solve mysteries or handle politics. It's not that they can't, but every Saurus is created to fight and the Slann know they tend to be at their most effective when they can use their tactical and strategic skills. In social settings, they are often taciturn and brusquely direct, though this can be quite useful in cutting to the heart of a matter. When they work with a Binding, though, it's almost always because there's going to be fighting at some point. Saurus Oldbloods must be Saurus, and they start with Body 5, Mind 2, Soul 2. Their Core Skill is Weapon Skill, and they get a small selection of Skills from among Awareness, Beast Handling, Determination, Intimidation, Might, Reflexes, Survival, and Weapon Skill. Their Core Talent is Cold Ferocity, unique to them, which allows them spend Mettle before making a Weapon Skill roll to double both Training and Focus at once, though if they do, they can't spend it to further double Focus after the roll. They also get two Talents from among Battle Rage, Fearsome Jaws (a Saurus-only Talent that turns your bite into a decent natural weapon which you can use with anything else you're carrying as if you were dual wielded and which can't be disarmed or damaged by any means), Intimidating Manner, Scent of Weakness (another Saurus-only Talent that lets you spend an action to pick an enemy in Medium range and get bonus damage and increased wound severity against them until the start of your next turn), or Wrath of the Seraphon (another Saurus-only Talent that lets you spend an Action to pick an ally in Medium range and boost their Melee and Speed). Oldbloods begin play with either a celestite maul and scaled shield, or a celestite greatblade. Celestite weapons are Magical and cannot be purchased.  Skink Starpriests are rare creatures. Most Skinks are spawned as members of large groups in a shared spawning. However, sometimes, a single Skink emerges from the spawning pool alone. These Skinks have an innate understanding of Celestial magic, and many of them are given the rank of Starpriest within hours of their birth. Starpriests are trained to read the heavens, but rarely spend the decades or centuries of study that higher ranking Skink priests receive. Instead, they are given a more proactive job in pursuing and engaging with the Great Plan, and they are often tasked to serve as advisors, ambassadors or assassins in pursuit of their own celestial visions. While group-spawned Skinks have a tendency to not socialize outside their spawn-siblings, Starpriests are famously outgoing and sociable among the Seraphon, and often they are the ones most skilled at talking to non-Seraphon, perhaps because they're often somewhat lonely. Starpriests are the most common Seraphon chosen to work with the Soulbound. After all, they are diplomatic, adaptable and usually fairly conversant in the customs of other species. They make excellent allies to those who have little understanding of the Seraphon, and their magic and relics are just as effective at helping the Soulbound as their kin. In exchange for the valuable aid they provide, they gain a direct ability to influence the Binding's decision-making without relying on manipulation. Many Starpriests that work with Bindings end up doing so because they have divined that the group will play a major role in important events but are unable to glean further information from the stars. By working directly with the group, they gain a better understanding of the situation and are able to make key decisions in the moment. Skink Starpriests must be Skinks, and they get Body 2, Mind 4 , Soul 3. Their Core Skill is Channeling, and they get a decent selection from among Arcana, Awareness, Beast Handling, Channelling, Guile, Lore, Reflexes, Stealth, Theology, or Weapon Skill. Their Core Talents are Spellcasting (Celestial) and Unbind, and they get two Talents from among Astral Herald (a Talent unique to them that allows them to make rolls over time to build up a pool of successes they can spend on future rolls due to their prophetic insight), Forbidden Knowledge, Observant, Potent Spells, or Vanish. They begin play with a Serpent Staff, which can only be used by a Celestial spellcaster. It is a quarterstaff with the Magical trait, but the wielder can also spend an action to coat the weapons of allies with celestial venom, causing any Piercing or Slashing weapons in their Zone to become treated with Basic Poison. However, this can only be used once before a Rest is needed to recharge the celestial energies. I'm personally working on homebrew to add some additional Archetypes - the Saurus Knight (for riding a Cold One), the Saurus Sunblood (though to some degree this is replicable with the Oldblood), the Skink Skymaster (for riding a Terradon or Ripperdactyl), the Skink Hunting Scout (for a sneak and assassin), the Skink Fork-Tailed Oracle (for a prayer-wielding priest. comes with Old Ones miracles), and the Kroxigor Heavy (a big tank archetype to go with the Kroxigor species bonus I'm working on). Besides the above, we also get some other Talents - Chamelon, which is Skink-only and gives a bonus to opposed Stealth rolls to avoid being seen but can only be taken at chargen, and Selfless Protector, which is Saurus-only (though I plan to give it to Kroxigor, too, along with Fearsome Jaws) and lets you Defend an ally as a free action once per turn. We also get a selection of Seraphon-developed Celestial spells. Typically, these are only known by Seraphon spellcasters, but the GM may allow other Celestial wizards to learn them if they have a willing Seraphon teacher. Blazing Starlight is a moderate difficulty spell that summons starlight to target a foe at Long range, causing Blinded for a round. You can extend duration with successes or add targets. Handy. Celestial Harmony is a pretty hard spell to pull off, but if you manage it, you and all allies in your Zone get a bonus to Defence that gets better the more of you there are and gives immunity to Frightened, both lasting for rounds based on successes. Getting a lot of successes is pretty hard, though, so save this for learning later on. Control Fate is a pretty hard spell as well, allowing you to pick a Zone within Medium range. All allies in that Zone get a buff to Melee and Accuracy, and all enemies in it get a penalty to Defence, both lasting rounds based on successes. Extremely good, but not an easy spell to pull off without good Focus. This and Celestial Harmony are both going to be easier for Starpriests, though, thanks to their access to Astral Herald, which is a great move for pulling extra successes out in the clutch. Tide of Serpents is also pretty hard, but it summons a giant wave of snakes that fills your Zone. Until your next turn, any enemies that start in or enter your Zone take damage and are Poisoned until the start of your next turn. Extra successes either increase damage or duration. Seraphon also get exclusive access to some new Endeavors. For a Seraphon that only appears for certain adventures, they still only get one Endeavor between adventures regardless of how much time has passed. It is unclear if this means a Seraphon who hangs out with the party normally follows normal Endeavor rules or not - I would assume they do, however. Anticipate allows a Seraphon to pick one currently active Rumor and try to predict how it might become a Threat. You get to make three Arcana rolls, trying to build up...well, quite a few successes, so it's not necessarily going to work. However, if you do it, the GM picks - either the Threat can no longer occur or, when it does, the Doom does not increase due to your preventive measures. However, if you fail, you actually end up causing the problem you meant to prevent and the Rumor immediately jumps to Threat. Coalesce can only be done by a Starborne Seraphon, and it permanently swaps the Staborne species bonus with the Coalesced one. If you were part of a Starborne-only subfaction, you lose your subfaction bonus and get a free Talent somehow related to your new home realm. Coalescing is one way - there's no way to go back to being Starborne. Consult the Plan allows you to take some time to study the stars and your notes on the Great Plan. You work with the GM to create a statement in the form of "If _____, then _____." You define either the if or the then, and the GM fills in the other, but is explicitly allowed to be as cryptic or obtuse as they like. The statement is true, though - if you do the thing, the other thing will happen, period, guaranteed. While this is normally exclusive to Seraphon, non-Seraphon can do it if they have access to sufficient prophetic records and/or people who understand the Great Plan. Enter Stasis lets you put yourself in suspended animation, known to the Seraphon as cold sleep. This was used by all non-Slann to survive the escape from the World-That-Was, and even now it's a common state for Saurus during the infrequent periods when they have no work to do. It conserves energy they might better use later. If you do this, it must be your first Endeavor in a downtime period and is the only one you get to do. Any effects or benefits which are on you and which would expire this downtime period last until your next one. Praise the Old Ones lets a Seraphon perform rituals of worship towards the ancient beings they consider to have been greater than gods. No modern god is able to replicate the miracles performed by the Old Ones, and they opposed Chaos with perfect unity. (At least according to Seraphon myth; it's not like even the Slann remember them clearly.) By spending time venerating the ancient names of the Old Ones, you may try to tap into their divine legacy. Once before your next downtime, you may expend your veneration to gain a single benefit of spending Soulfire. You can pick any of them, and it doesn't drain any Soulfire from the Binding, because it is wholly internal to you, lizard friend. Raise Hatchling is how you get a Seraphon warbeast of your own! See, you can't tame these creatures the way you could other beasts - they don't exist in a tameable state in the wild. Any adult warbeast is beyond taming. They have to be raised from hatching. Most of the time, the Seraphon allow them to grow at the normal speed for animals, raising them as other species raise livestock. However, they can charge a beast with Azyrite energy to accelerate its growth or cause it to be born fully-formed. When you take this Endeavor for the first time, you may select any Seraphon Beast and gain it as a Loyal Companion. However, it is only a hatchling, and it begins with 1 Toughness, Body 1, and no skill Training or Focus. It is Small, has no traits, and all of its attacks have the Ineffective tag. Every downtime period after this, it gains 1 Toughness if you don't take this Endeavor; if you do, you get to make a Beast Handling roll and it gains Toughness based on your successes. Once it reaches half the default Toughness for its statblock, its Body and Size change to the normal for its species, its attacks lose Ineffective, and it gains the listed Training, but not Focus. Once it matches or exceeds default Toughness, it is mature and gains the full statblock. It has a max Toughness of its default plus your Soul. Terraform can only be done if you have a Cosmic Engine on hand, and it lets you reshape the landscape to suit the preferences of the Seraphon. This rqeuires a lot of successes on a 3-roll extended Nature test, but if you pull it off, you replace the local wildlife with prehistoric plants and animals, and while in the area, all Seraphon are immune to Difficult Terrain, Hazards, and any other negative environmental traits. If you fail, you break the landscape but don't manage to remold it, causing the entire region to become Difficult Terrain. Next time: Seraphon contacts and gear.
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Jul 9, 2021 15:36
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Mors Rattus posted:Soulbound: Stars and Scales I'd like to point out at this juncture that Coalesced Saurus Oldblood is a goddamn murder machine, and probably the strongest melee Archetype in the game right now. They have just enough Skill Xp to get Training in both Weapon Skill and Reflexes to 2, which combined with Body 5 gives them Great Melee and Great Defense, which are both bumbed to Superb thanks to Coalesced Species Bonus and a shield. They have +1 Damage to all melee attacks, which means that their one-handed attacks hit as hard as two-handed weapons, and if they take Ferocious Jaws they can effectively dual wield at two-handed weapon damage while still getting the shield bonus.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:16
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While I'd love to be the perfect slaughter machine, a teleporting slaughter machine is still cooler. So if I ever play Soulbound, it's Saurus or the Night Lord Tree Elf... or the Flying Sniper Sigmarine.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:27
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Baby dinosaur raising. I love it.
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Jul 9, 2021 17:31
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 Our final chapter of Brancalonia is the bestiary section, containing new creatures and foes likely to run afoul of our Knaves. There are two cases where the size, type, and alignment are in untranslated Italian, although the rest of them are in English. Anguanes (CR 3) (singular anguana) are amphibious swamp-dwelling creatures with the upper halves of humans and the lower halves of snakes. They are fond of using illusion and enchantment spells to befuddle prey, and they can also constrict and grapple opponents. Bavalisks (CR 3) are a species of six-legged dog whose breath and bite can turn targets to stone. They are animal-intelligence melee combatants with a bite that can restrain and eventually petrify a target, while its breath is a rechargeable cone attack. Befane (CR 4, 6, & 9) (singular befana) are old witches whose true origin is unknown but surrounded by a variety of folktales. They aren’t exclusively women either, nor of evil alignment, but tend to be more malevolent than benevolent. They are primarily spellcasters with multiattack claw weapons and lair actions, and their levels of power are measured in Malevolence Levels from 1 to 3. The higher this level, the greater variety of spells they can cast (tend to be debuffs) and each Level bestows upon them a Unique Power. Such powers are diverse in nature, such as possessing a Broom of Flying, an entangling ball of yarn, the ability to haunt one’s nightmares, and creating wax figurines that can harm the doll’s likeness provided they’re within 100 feet. At Level 3 they gain legendary actions. The Bigat (CR 5 & 8) is a unique creature of legend residing somewhere in the northern reaches of the Kingdom. It is said to be either a wingless dragon or gigantic worm. The “default” version is a big melee brute with a burrow and swim speed, can multiattack with various natural weapons, and a rechargeable Brutish Roar that deals thunder damage. The “ancient” version is much the same but with better stats. Confined (CR 7, 9, & 13) are the most powerful variety of undead encountered in the Kingdom. They are creatures cursed to haunt the places of their deaths which they cannot leave, but as such places tend to be quite large like dungeons, villages, and castles, this is not much comfort for those who come upon them by chance. Statwise they are incorporeal undead with a lot of damage and condition resistances and immunities, lair actions, and primarily fight with a life draining touch that can temporarily reduce a target’s maximum hit points. They can be destroyed if their mortal remains are found and given a worthy burial, or if the ancient wrong responsible for their existence is righted. Like the befana they also increase in power via Malevolence Levels, gaining Legendary Actions at Level 3 and the ability to learn various ghost-themed Unique Powers such as possession, summoning zombies, and telekinetically moving objects. Catsnakes (CR 1) are a very common and loathed species that looks like a cross between an ocelot and python with a single pair of legs. They are mobile fighters, capable of knocking targets prone and getting a bonus attack when moving at least 20 feet in a straight line. Foioncus (CR ⅛) are a rare species of animal that looks like a cross between a weasel and a hairy bird. They derive sustenance from sucking the blood of creatures via a beak attack, and if they succeed on a Stealth check they can feed upon an unaware target without them noticing the injury.  Malacodas (CR 14) are high-ranking devils of Inferno who sometimes visit the mortal realm on some kind of mission. They despise the Malebranche for defying their master, and look very much like the stereotypical bat-winged devil. Statwise they are incredibly powerful beings, possessing Legendary Actions, a variety of AoE innate spells, automatically creatures within 20 feet become frightened or charmed on a failed Wisdom save, and they can multiattack with claws, pitchfork, or hurled hellfire. Their major weakness is that they cannot remain outside of Inferno for long, losing 20 HP per day (max HP is 199); upon reaching 0 HP they are forcefully summoned back and cannot leave their home plane for a year and a day. Marguttes (CR 7) are solitary giants who enslave the smaller races to use as cattle and the marionettes for firewood. In spite of being universally feared and loathed they like to pretend at being people of influence, dressing like nobles and rich merchants but living in dwellings closer to that of common folk. A few do attain their perceived status, ruling over humanoids like tyrants, although an extremely rare few are good-aligned and do care for their subjects. Statwise they are melee brutes, with a multiattack cleaver, a close-range AoE poisonous breath, a diverse assortment of innate spells, and can frighten opponents within sight by feasting on the corpse of an enemy target. Sleeches (CR 5) are huge, gross crosses between slugs and leeches. They have a sucker-mouth full of sharp hooks and lurk beneath the waters of marshes. They have a multiattack bite and constrict attack, and their skin emits corrosive acid that can damage manufactured weapons made of metal or wood which strike it. A Swarm of Spidercrows (CR 1) is made up of crow-arachnid hybrids found only in Penumbria. They hunt their prey in overwhelming numbers, taking down larger creatures via death by a thousand bites. They can climb on surfaces like spiders can and their bite attack can inflict poison damage.  Viperwolves (CR 6) are two-headed wolves native to Penumbria whose mouths contain powerful venom. Their dual brains allow them to take an extra reaction per round that can only be used for opportunity attacks and renders them immune to mundane and magical sleep (when one head sleeps, the other remains awake). Non-Player Characters and Common Enemies  This section details new types of people Knaves are likely to encounter during jobs. There’s a sidebar noting that NPCs in general have shoddy equipment unless otherwise specified. Commanders (CR 5) range from pagan warlords, leaders of Knave companies, military officers, and other exemplary leaders. Statwise they are like more powerful Knights, fighting with a schiavona instead of a greatsword and also have Legendary Actions. A Crowd of Peasants (CR 6) represents your typical torch and pitchfork-bearing mob. They are treated as a gargantuan swarm with a prone-inducing Trampling Charge attack and can make three multiattacks with any combination of Stomps and Pitchforks. Cutthroats (CR 2) are your generic criminal statblock, Knaves and otherwise. They have 2d6 Sneak Attack and the Cunning Action of Rogues, and can multiattack twice with any type of melee or ranged weapon. Dragoons (CR 3) are the most experienced heavy infantry soldiers in the Kingdom, most coming from Penumbria. They are heavily-armored fighters who have Pack Tactics (advantage on attack rolls when they and an ally are within 5 feet of an enemy) and can multiattack with melee weapons. Duelists (CR 1) are professional sword-fighters who serve in a variety of roles. They are predictably melee combatants, who can multiattack 3 times, Parry as a reaction, and deal a bonus 1d6 damage when hitting an adjacent target and no other creatures are within 5 feet of the target. Queen’s Guard (CR ⅛) were a militia company founded by Queen Menalda of the Altomagna Empire. Although the Bounty Kingdom is now more or less autonomous, their surviving forces exist as parolmen, jailers, city guards, and the like. Statwise they’re like the Guard stats from the Monster Manual but with slightly better ability scores and fight with maces instead of spears. Chief Guards (CR 3) are the higher-ranking officers of the Queen’s Guard. While those who coasted on by due to nepotism have the same stats as their rank-and-file peers, this stat block represents those worthy of the title. They have better stats, equipment, and can multiattack with melee weapons. Pagans (CR 2) are no strangers to fights and won’t shy away from one, even with Knaves! Statwise they cannot Rage oddly enough, but instead they have Pack Tactics and deal one extra die of damage with melee weapons. As their default weapon is a greatclub they can deal 2d8+3 bludgeoning damage, none too shabby! Slickers (CR 4) are unaffiliated street magicians of the Kingdom, making a living by rendering their services to whoever can pay the price. Statwise they cast spells as 6th level wizards and typically carry 2-4 magical items on their person. They can attune to 4 such items and ignore any prerequisites required for their use. A Royal Bounty Agent (CR ˝) is the kind of foe Knaves face when they attract too much attention or a job goes south...which is to say, quite often. Those represented with this stat block are the lower-ranking ones who go after small-time crooks and usually call in reinforcements only when a threat increases. They can multiattack with a short sword and dagger, and have a heavy crossbow and net as ranged weapons. A Royal Bounty Hunter (CR 5), on the other hand, are those types of people who regularly deal with mercenary captains, gang leaders, and other violent types of people and somehow avoided the fate of ending up six feet under. Thus, they are “among the biggest sons of a donkey that Knaves will ever encounter.” Statwise they are more powerful versions of a Royal Bounty Agent, with advantage on Perception checks relying upon hearing or sight, benefit from Pack Tactics, Legendary Actions, can multiattack three times in melee or twice in ranged, can Parry, and has a 4d6 Sneak Attack. Talking Animals are not so much a stat block as a template. Virtually any beast affected by Extravaganza can become a talking animal, and such creatures range the gamut in personalities, alignment, and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. They speak Vernacular by default and can learn other languages given time. We have a sample stat block for Francesco the Talking Mule, which is just like the mule stat block but with the aforementioned adjustments. Thoughts So Far: I like a lot of the monsters provided here. There’s quite a number of them which are some variety of hybrid animal, and CR-wise a lot of them hedge closer towards the Tier 2 power level (5th to 10th) which I found a bit odd for Brancalonia’s E6 format. The befana is perhaps my favorite, if only due to the large amount of Unique Powers allowing for a very customizable foe. The Malacoda and Malevolence Level 3 Confined feel a bit too powerful for Brancalonia. While I understand that they can be overcome or outlasted in ways besides combat and Knaves should know when to cut and run, it’s often common sense not to drop monsters into campaigns that’d be 5 or more CR higher than the average party level. I do wish that talking animals could be a PC race given their commonality in the setting. While such options exist in products like Blue Rose’s 5e conversion and the Awakened sourcebook by Metal Weave Games, it may take some imagination in coming up with appropriate Brawl Features. Final Thoughts: Brancalonia rates quite highly as a 5th Edition setting. While its races and classes aren’t anything to write home about and some of the new rules rub me the wrong way, the book more than makes up for it in the rest of its material. The setting alone is very thematic and an interesting place to explore, and the rules that simulate the risk-filled lives of Knaves do a good job at supporting this playstyle. There’s also a lot of things for PCs to spend money on, which is one of 5th Edition’s major weak points. The sample adventures give the DM a good sense for construction for their own jobs and challenges. My greatest criticism of Brancalonia would be that it is in need of a good glossary. The book’s peppered with liberal use of setting-specific and untranslated Italian terms. While not omnipresent to the point of making sections unreadable, it can leave a reader second-guessing a lot of the time. But all in all, Brancalonia is a worthy purchase, whether for gaming groups seeking to adventure in the Bounty Kingdom themselves or mining it for material for their own settings. I am unsure of what book I’m going to review next. I’ve focused quite heavily on settings for the moment, so I may do another kind of sourcebook type for my next review. I’m leaning towards a double-review of Spheres of Power & Spheres of Might (5th Edition versions) or the Eat the Rich! Series of adventures.
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Jul 10, 2021 00:40
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Eat the rich!
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Jul 10, 2021 00:51
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FMguru posted:Yeah, the problems with 'realism' are: The most efficient "realistic" combat action is "I dig a hole. I plant a mine in the hole. I refill the hole. Then I go dig another hole and hope the mines I'm planting will kill enemies now instead of maiming children 25 years from now."
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Jul 10, 2021 02:20
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There's a reason turns in Patrol represent a half-hour, and its to abstract away all the waiting time. I think there's a bit in there somewhere of like, "if players are wondering what they're doing in that time, tell them that they spend ten minutes watching a spider build a web while desperately hugging as low to the ground as possible and waiting for orders."
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Jul 10, 2021 08:16
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Froghammer posted:To be fair, systems that try to emphasize combat as being "realistic" (read: brutal, unfair, swingy, frequently over very quickly) tend to forgo challenge ratings for combat-oriented NPCs and expect the DM to be able to eyeball what is and is not a balanced encounter for a specific group of PCs. Unknown Armies famously tell you at the beginning of the combat chapter that combat is the fail state of interactions between human beings and expecting the rules for it to be game-like in any capacity is contrary to the tone the game is trying to push. The UA combat works for three reasons: 1) The game genuinely doesn't expect you to get into fights often. An archetypal UA session revolves around investigating a weird occult mystery, interpersonal drama, and doing weird poo poo to obtain magick power. 2) The combat ties with the stress system. Most characters just don't have enough hardened notches in Violence to go through a full combat without freaking out, so a lot of the time, the moment someone gets a good hit in, the opponent is going to freeze up or run away (or fight to the death, but if your GM is consistently picking that option for NPCs, that's kind of their problem). 3) It's actually a lot more survivable than it may appear. Nobody really have good odds of actually hitting anyone, and an average hit takes out something like a fifth of your HP, so you generally have enough advance warning to see when the fight is turning against you to run away or surrender (which, as the game emphasizes, should generally be options you can take as few people actually particularly want to murder others, and usually have some other objective to accomplish in a fight). Now, the firearms are a major escalation, and you can absolutely drop someone on the spot with a shotgun or something (well, if you rolled a crit or have a high enough identity, anyway, most firearms attacks still would only take around half of your HP or so, which is a lot but still allows you to run away or surrender). But then, that's why the third edition gates firearms behind a special identity feature. NPC mooks just don't have identities, so they can only hit you by accident, and even important, fully-statted NPCs rarely have that feature. Having a reliable skill with firearms is the province of boss monsters, basically, like cops or those lovely, inferior gun mages who don't have "shooting a person" as their taboo. (Also, the game just flatly tells the GM to cheat if a random roll would kill a PC in an unsatisfying way, which I feel is an inelegant solution to the potential problem here, and you can probably just tweak the rules if you run into PC mortality too often, but either way it's here.) Overall, the UA combat is not, like, particularly fun to play (it's a lot of whiffing, and then someone drops out one way or another), but it does work in the larger context of the game and ties into its themes of human fragility and inescapable failure.
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Jul 10, 2021 15:34
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open_sketchbook posted:There's a reason turns in Patrol represent a half-hour, and its to abstract away all the waiting time. I think there's a bit in there somewhere of like, "if players are wondering what they're doing in that time, tell them that they spend ten minutes watching a spider build a web while desperately hugging as low to the ground as possible and waiting for orders." I keep coming back to abstract timescales for games involving firefights because as Erica Chapman writes (or a goon writes about her), pilots have no sense of object permanence, and I doubt people in a firefight aren't much better than that. On the other hand, I was thinking about a game like Shadowrun, where you can't have a half an hour firefight every time you turn the corner + the abstraction doesn't feel nice in a gearporn game. Maybe a better solution would to write the rules in a way - via range modifiers or w/e where the fights in tight spaces are indeed fast and deadly, but if you stretch it out to common rifle combat range of ~300m (as discovered in WW2, Afghan modifiers may apply), it gets a lot more drawn out with a lot of missing/suppressive fire. Everyone posted:The most efficient "realistic" combat action is "I dig a hole. I plant a mine in the hole. I refill the hole. Then I go dig another hole and hope the mines I'm planting will kill enemies now instead of maiming children 25 years from now." No, it's "we're keeping them pinned until artillery/air drops on their head. I've never directly aimed at a man in my life"
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Jul 10, 2021 20:37
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that erica chapman sounds like a brilliant and extremely hot lady
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Jul 10, 2021 21:54
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Soulbound: Stars and Scales My Friend, Frog Guy It's possible to get Seraphon Contacts who can help you out like normal! However, it is somewhat harder than normal. In order to use the Contacts Endeavor for the first time with any Seraphon, you need to have first accomplished an adventure that proves your worth to their Constellation, because Seraphon are big on cost-beneft analysis and not as big on socializing. (The book notes that if you have done the adventure seeds in the book, this will count easily for the example contacts they've written up.)  Lord Ximoyuxe here is the Slann of the Starherd's Path. He is coated in a layer of light frost even in Aqshy, and his palanquin is always darker than the area around it, as though absorbing light. He believes that the Great Plan is not just a checklist that must be completed to ensure the world exists, but also serves as a model for what mortal behavior should be to ensure Chaos never has the ability to return once it's defeated. He sees pragmatism, order and impartiality as the greatest virtues, and he encourages them not just in his Constellation but in everyone they help. His principles require him to value all mortal life equally, regardless of how long he's worked with someone, and he allows no personal sentiments to factor into his readings of the Great Plan, which has earned him his nickname - the Thousand-Times Traitor. The lesser Benefit of making Ximoyuxe (or most Slann) a Contact is that during downtime, you can tell him how some faction either directly or indirectly serves Chaos. He will then go into a meditative slumber for 1d6 downtime periods. Once he waks up, he will give you a single instruction. Regardless of how inconsequential this instruction may seem, it will trigger a cascade effect that reduces the power of Chaos when completed - once you get it done, the Doom goes down by 1. The Greater Benefit is that if you physically lead the Slann to an Endless Spell of any type, he can bind it, requiring no roll. Slann do not ever need to roll to cast or control bound Endless Spells. You can advise him on where you would like it deployed, but he's ultimately the one who makes that call. We get an adventure seed - a Purple Sun of Shyish has appeared on the horizon, threatening doom for everyone nearby. It has left a trail of crystalline corpses behind it as it roves in endless, thoughtless pursuit of the largest amount of lives in the area. The nearest Free City is assembling all the mages they can find to try and dispel the thing before casualties rise higher, but a Skink appears from nowhere and informs them that if anyone tries to stop the Purple Sun, the Seraphon will prevent them. For some reason, this Sun is too powerful an asset to let go, and the Skink promises that soon, his Slann master will appear to tame it. The question is how soon "soon" is. The party could do anything here - but if they f ind a way to kite the Sun around so it doesn't threaten any lives until the Slann arrives to take it away, they'll earn the favor of both city and constellation.  Nhekogu is Ximoyuxe's constant bodyguard. The Eternity Wardens guard the Slann and ensure their survival, and Nhekogu is one of the most dedicated of them. He wears a Stegadon skull helmet, though it is unclear if it's to honor the beast or because he was mad at it for dying on him. He's got a surprisingly deep grasp of philosophy thanks to his time around the Slann, and while he never leaves Ximoyuxe's side, he serves as the strategic leader of the Starherd's Path in wartime. He's the one who's figured out how to implement the instruction that peace should be achieved through fighting solely defensive war - for everyone. He has become excellent at figuring out the best deterrents to aggression and manages to pull it off more often than not, though he rarely takes the field personally - only when Ximoyuxe does, in fact. According to records, Nhekogu or a Saurus with the same name and appearance died in the Age of Chaos. For a time, when Ximoyuxe appeared outside Azyr, it was without a bodyguard. A few fringe Seraphon scholars theorize that the Necroquake's energies played some role in resurrecting the Eternity Warden, perhaps via the Slann finding a way to channel the necromantic magic to useful ends. That said, it is deeply unclear to what degree Nhekogu now is the same being as the one from the past, and the Saurus has no interest in answering questions about it. Nhekogu, like most Eternity Wardens, is exceptionally watchful and highly respected. The lesser Benefit of gaining an Eternity Warden ally is that you can spend an Endeavor to train with them. When you do, you pick a place, person or object. You may use Defend on the named target as a Free Action now. You can use this Endeavor multiple times to get this benefit towards different people, places or objects each time. The Greater Benefit is that during downtime, you can convince the Eternity Warden to monitor a person, place or object. While they will never abandon their own Slann, if a threat appears to the named target, the Eternity Warden will dispath Seraphon to immediately defend it. They will never ask you for anything in return, but can only monitor one thing for you at a time. Our adventure seed is that after a battle, Ximoyuxe and Nhekogu appear before the party. They claim the battlefield the party just secured is an Astromatrix node. They don't thank anyone, but do materialize the Astral Terraces for them to rest and recover in a few miles away. Ximoyuxe begins a ritual to purify the area, but stops halfway through to announce that the Terraces are under attack by the same faction that lost the battle. The Seraphon garrison, he is sure, can handle it. Nhekogu shifts a bit at this, and while he makes no comment, it is discernible from his body language that he's concerned about the Saurus at the Terraces. If the party goes to help out and saves some lives there, they will earn Nhekogu's actual gratitude.  Zeqiteq is a Chameleon Skink, excelling at altering his own scale color to mimic various light patterns and natural features so that he goes unseen. He is a master even beyond most Chameleon Skinks, as he required the ability to survive inside the closed time loop halfway inside Tzeentch's domain. Even at rest, his scales constantly shift color now at a subtle pace. His mind has not been affected as his body has, though, and Zeqiteq is one of the most patient Skinks in existence today. He is thorough, methodical and cool-headed in anything he does, as he understands deeply that there are no unimportant actions in the Great Plan. He believes his accidental exile was for a reason, and he trusts that in time, the Old Ones will reveal their will to him. He witnessed the Shimmerscope loop many, many times, waiting for the right moment to act. It was only when he noticed changes in the actions of Hra and the other participants in the battle due to the party's arrival that he know the time to strike was at hand. In doing so, though, he Coalesced and lost his constellation. He now travels with Hra, seeking a new home. Chameleon Skinks are some of the most subtle of the Seraphon, often employed as spies and scouts, and the best of them can even avoid magically enhanced senses. The basic Benefit of friendship with Zeqiteq or other Chameleon Skinks is that during downtime, you can ask them to infiltrate somewhere. They will only observe, and will not interact with or speak to anyone so as not to give away their existence, but in your next downtime period, they will report back to you with everything they saw. The Greater Benefit is that during downtime, you can ask them to infiltrate a target located in a place they have infiltrated before. Generally, they can kill anyone that has at most Toughness 6 and no Wounds. If they can't kill the target, they will at least get them with nasty star-venom, causing the target to be Poisoned until your next downtime. The adventure seed is that the Starherd's Path's priests maintain some contact with Zeqiteq, giving him work that can take advantage of his Coalesced status. His current job is to monitor the Free Cities for signs of Chaos or aggression towards non-Chaos forces. The problem is, he hasn't been inside a city of any sort since the Age of Myth, and he is deeply unsettled by everything. He's certain there's Chaos cults around every corner, for they work much more openly now than when he was young. The party's going to have to help Zeqiteq get acclimated to modern society...and also figure out how much of his concerns are paranoia and how much are actually signs of Chaos cults, because Zeqiteq actually is quite good at sniffing them out. If they can find the line between trusting him and helping him keep his fears in check, they'll be able to root out several hidden cults and may convince Zeqiteq to aid them in a more permanent fashion. After all, if he's doing so well with them, it may be the intention of the Old Ones that he do it.  Hra is heavily scarred by his impossible number of trips through the Tzeentchian time loop of Shimmerscope. Most are on his face and arms, not his back - he would only flee afight when he was at his absolute limit. He was never trapped, and could have left the citadel at any point, but he stayed willingly to ensure he didn't miss any Skink survivors - even though Zeqiteq was the only one. He is deeply loyal, otherwise largely uncomplicated, and very dangerous if he gets angry. His Coalescence has just made all that somewhat stronger but otherwise largely changed very little - Hra was always fairly in touch with his animal nature. He doesn't particularly understand the goals of the Starherd's Path, but he knows that if he sees Chaos-corrupted folks, they need to get taken down just as much as the hated daemons. He may have spent impossible amounts of time partway in Tzeentch's realm, but the Seraphon are anathema to Chaos energies. Hra mostly follows Zeqiteq around now that they're free, though he spends his time patrolling wilderness outside the cities his friend goes into. Rumors are already starting to spread around Aspiria of the giant crocodile monster that feels no heat or pain, but Hra doesn't mind what humans talk about. Kroxigor are more laborers than warriors by nature, and they're happy to do boring jobs for days on end. The basic Benefit of befriending a Kroxigor is that they will move cargo or escort people for you. During downtime, you can ask them to take something or some people to a named location. The Kroxigor is tough enough to survive most travel on their own, but the GM determines the level of risk based on the route and how long it'll take. Once they get going, the Kroxigor will stop for nothing except their own death or an overriding order from ranking Seraphon. The Greater Benefit is that during downtime, you can ask your Kroxigor friend to help with construction. They can give any Zone in an area you pick the Total Cover trait. Alternatively, they may work to build other buildings or monuments for various GM-decided benefits. The example is an Astromatrix pylon that gives a bonus to Channelling rolls in the area. Our adventure path is that a wild population of Coalesced Bastilodons exists somewhere in the area, descendants of a herd that some Seraphon constellation failed to bring home in ages past. Local hunters are after them for their expensive hides, but Hra has found the herd and has started driving hunters away from them. He once fought alongside Bastiladons, and while these aren't those ones or even related to them, he feels protective of them. If the party helps him find a safe place for them and fend off the hunters, Hra will be very happy for his dinosaur friends. If they don't, the hunters will band together to take Hra down along with the herd, considering his skin to be added value. We also get a collection of Seraphon artifacts. Astroliths are big rocks coated in complex geomantic and astrological symbols, turning them into celestial conduits. Any allies who have Spellcasting (Celestial) within Medium range of someone bearing an Astrolith get a bonus to Channelling rolls and increased spell range. Cosmic Engines we ran into in the adventures. They can take many shapes, though. Whatever they look like, activating them is a fairly difficult process requiring a decently hard Arcana roll to hit the right buttons and glyphs. The more successes you get, the better the effect is. If you fail, Doom increases as reality weakens nearby. Only one successes causes damage to the user, as the universe resists change. Two successes restores Toughness to all allies in the Zone. Three deals damage to one target in Medium range by deconstructing the molecules of their body. Four causes a copy of the user to appear, which has 1 Mettle, acts immediately, and vanishes when its turn is over. Five or more slows down time, causing all enemies in Medium range to be Stunned until the end of the user's next turn. Dartpipes are long stone or bone blowpipes favored by Chameleon Skinks because while they do little damage, they require a Fortitude roll on damage or the victim is also Poisoned. Helms of Remembrance are tools designed by Slann to preserve their memories. Anyone wearing one experiences the memories stored inside the helmet, getting a huge bonus to Mind rolls. However, anyone the helm was not specifically made for also has to make a Determination roll at the start of each turn, getting harder each time they make until their next Rest, or fall Unconscious. You can also store your own memories in a Helm for safekeeping, but you risk them mingling with or fusing into the ones already there. Meteoric Fossils are notable for being formed by ancient Old One-created reptiles preserved in the earth. They were hand-designed by the Old Ones, so sutdying them can give great understanding of the world the Old Ones came from and who they might have been. The Seraphon also deeply value them for the ability to revive them as new kinds of potential warbeast. Anyone with access to a Meteoric Fossil can spend an Endeavor to study it. If they d o, they choose one of Lore, Nature or Survival, and double Training with that skill for all rolls related to the Seraphon and their habitats. You can do this multiple times to get the bonus for multiple skills. Also, you can sell these things for high prices to people interested in such a thing - that's mostly Collegiate mages, Ossiarchs and Bonesplitter Orruks, for very different reasons. (And the Seraphon, of course.) Star-Stone Staffs are laser guns. I mean, they're also staffs, you can use them as a normal Quarterstaff, but they can also be wielded as a ranged weapon that shoots lasers at long range for moderate damage. Also, as an action, you can bless allies in your Zone, increasing their Speed for...an indeterminate period. I'd guess until the end of your next turn is intended? Once you do this, you need to Rest before you can do it again. Sunbolt Gauntlets are normally sized to fit on Saurus arms (or to be prosthetics, for those who have lost an arm). They shoot plasma blasts of solar fire, dealing heavy damage at long range. They also get a damage bonus against Daemons! The ones from the Stolen Fire adventure are much larger, and far too big for anyone to wear. Instead, they can be activated to turn their Zone into a Deadly Hazard which does extra damage to Daemons. Besides this, the book just has reprinted stats for all the Seraphon, plus any other creatures mentioned in adventures that aren't in the Core, like Chaos Spawn or Loonbosses. The End! Next up, Steam and Steel.
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Jul 10, 2021 22:02
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I will never get over how great it is that Kroxigors are basically just big friends. They love their small friends, they love to do boring stuff, they love to pick up an object and carry it to another place. They'll also lamp somebody with a stone hammer the size of a compact car, but that's not their whole deal.
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Jul 10, 2021 22:17
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open_sketchbook posted:that erica chapman sounds like a brilliant and extremely hot lady Not to be confused with Erika Chapel, who made a game about hybrid churches/airplanes 
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Jul 10, 2021 22:23
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illhousen posted:Overall, the UA combat is not, like, particularly fun to play (it's a lot of whiffing, and then someone drops out one way or another), but it does work in the larger context of the game and ties into its themes of human fragility and inescapable failure. 2E had a similar thing with Bill in Three Parts, where one of the vignettes puts you in a grocery store full of armed robbers and expects you to intervene in the fight.
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Jul 10, 2021 22:32
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The Maze of the Blue Medusa - A Retrospective, part 12 The Grimspindle, an artifact hidden in the Archive The Reptile Archive, Part 2  The heat has abated somewhat since my last post, but my soul still burns. Maybe the second half of the Reptile Archive will be a bit more interesting or provide some kind of narrative hooks to hang a story off of? Stranger things have happened... This post will be a little light on images compared to prior entries. I was poking around on the big painting trying to decide on what to use, but most rooms are just an impressionistic monochrome squiggle mass. Here's what it looks like if you zoom in on the upper left corner of the map:  Not particularly evocative, imo. Room 149: A Frustrating Number of Unsorted Scrolls It's a lotta scrolls. There's a random table for determining random scroll contents, including the possibility that one will be a stone to flesh spell scroll. Apparently having all these unsorted scrolls is annoying to an NPC in room 169, but in her description she doesn't seem interested in having them sorted out at all. Room 150: Twisted Re-Weaver A pair of machines that weave, un-weave, and re-weave a tapestry in memorial to the Nyctocaust, a huge disaster that befell the Reptile Empire. The tapestry re-weaves very slowly, so it would take days to actually see these riveting bullet points: quote:* A rain of burning books. Room 151: The Nyctocaust Memorial A sculpture that absolutely must remain in total darkness, meant to be explored by touch. The only details provided are that there are skeletons, a fort of skulls, dust, and bones embossed into the floor. If any light comes into the room the whole thing will collapse into dust. Good thing there are no options in roleplaying games for PCs to be able to see in the dark, or this would need to have been fully described! Room 152: The Least Secret Room A room full of tomes forbidden by the Reptile Empire, although figuring out why they're forbidden is difficult for anybody but a lizard to figure out. Another table of random book results is included for PC edification. The phylactery of Draco Scabra, the Laughing Lich, is hidden here in the form of his diplomatic papers. Room 153: Unsubjects and Non-Existent Tomes Piles of nonsensical tomes that you can generate from yet another random table, plus a handful of Cannibal Critics wandering around. Room 154: Pits A couple of pit traps set up by See-Me-No-More from room 165. They're 40 feet deep, have black nectar at the bottom which will slow you down, and they're specifically spaced such that if you pass the saving throw against the first pit you have a 75% chance of having to save again against the second pit. The second pit at least has a dead adventurer's body with a sack of gems in it. The noise made by falling in the pits is enough to trigger a random encounter roll, but not to attract See-Me-No-More to his traps? Fine, ok. Rooms 155 & 156: Likable Shadows & Blotches of Night Three shadows with names, escaped from Sheltopussik (and very protective of the poor golem). I just need to copy their whole description, a summary doesn't do it justice. quote:Relaxed and playful like the interwar rich. Think Noel Coward and P.G.Woodhouse, only with voices like tin cups full off blood being scraped over masonry. May be playing bocce with balls made from the mashed-up bodies of the Infrared Moths from Archive 168. If anyone tries to harm or heal Sheltopussik... they will turn homicidal but will remain polite. "Bad form ollllld chap, bad forrrrrm!" Room 157: The Mile of Many Moons A whole bunch of floor tiles, each giving a view of a different moon. The tiles can't be destroyed unless you destroy the actual moon they depict, but if their light is all absorbed then it might let the monster in the next room escape. Room 158: The Were-Titan Tiktaalik An ancient being, a "titan of all were-beings on all planets." The dozens of different kinds of moonlight from the previous room keep it trapped and blinded, constantly forced into all of the different forms at once. This apparently looks like "the remains of three elephants in a blender set to 'Slow.'" If it gets free and bites somebody they'll turn into a random were-creature every time there's a full moon, which seems at odds with the whole "different moons cause different transformations" idea, but oh well. It wants to get free and rule over were-creatures, but otherwise has no personality. Room 159: Emperor's Rose There's a tremendous rose here whose roots grow through time and space. Its scent causes people of equal status to be unable to cooperate unless they all do the bidding of the most powerful creature in the room. Mentioning the rose will make Draco Scabra stop cracking up for a moment, and it's pollinated by the undead bees from last time- the bees get out through a gap in the wall that could give a hint as to where the Grimspindle room is. Room 160: Draco Scabra, the Laughing Lich The final lich of the three, kept alive by a loophole in his documentation that makes him ambassador from a lost empire to the Triarchy "in Perpetuity." He watched the Triarchy become worse and worse and decided to bring it down with the other two liches. "Has finally seen the joke," and so laughs and jokes constantly. Here, in the depths of this dungeon, in one of its most pointless areas, the GM is told that Scabra is probably the only NPC who will actually tell the PCs the story of the Torn sisters, the Triarchy, and the liches' conspiracy. BUT. He will only treat the PCs well as long as the players make the GM laugh. When the players aren't funny enough, Scabra will start cursing the players into slapstick violence that will eventually kill them. He's supposed to follow cartoon logic in combat, described as "he will only do it if it's funny," which is ever so helpful. The very first line of his combat stats is that anyone of 5th level or less has to make some kind of save or be incapacitated by laughter. Also, stuffed into the end of his combat stats (which include a pile of unfunny comedy-themed spells that utterly incapacitate PCs), he has a little gecko that lives just behind his ear. Once per day, whoever owns the gecko will get an instant perfect comeback to one accusation that will make the accuser doubt themselves and retreat in confusion, no save. So to sum up: the only NPC the GM is told to allow to be helpful is also an extremely confrontational encounter that will force players to behave in a particular way or have their characters punished with incapacitation and death. Room 161: See-Me-No-More's Laboratory A laboratory and garden, with tons of roses, lilies, and rare orchids growing in "bloody earth." There's a door to room 166 that is trapped with a bell alarm. Players who investigate deeply will find a notebook that describes how to use the magical plants in room 167 and gives a hint about how to deal with Pellory-of-the-Wall way back in the Gardens. They also explain the Jacobin Rose in room 214 and the Emperor's Rose in room 159. There are some notes about how one might be able to combine the children of Torgos Zooth with Sheltopussik and the Black Roses from room 49 (also way back in the Gardens) to absorb moonlight from room 157 to set Tiktaalik free. Room 162: A Compost Stew for Carnivorous Blooms Not my favorite Decemberists album, but not their worst. It's a bloody mulch for the plants. Next! Room 163: Goshgolly Toad & The Low Slavering Fool A magic toad that thinks it's a prince, says "Gosh" and Golly!" a lot, and bullies the mutated fool that gambles around the room. The fool is actually the prince that the toad believes itself to be. The prince came here to save one of the Medusa's captives, but annoyed See-Me-No-More who now uses him as an incubator for Infrared Moth grubs (which are basically rot grubs, which everyone loves). If the toad and fool make any noise with intruders, it will warn See-Me-No-More. Room 164: A Room of Numerous Things, None Good It's just a living room, not sure why the title is so heavy-handed. Room 165: See-Me-No-More See-Me-No-More is called "Seymore" here. Seymore, who grows evil plants. Good lord. He seems to be just a human guy, but with a few tricks. He can turn invisible whenever he says a magic word, but saying "See-more" will make him reappear instantly and everyone knows this. He's kind of built up as a big deal with all of these rooms dedicated to him, but all he can do is backstab people and poison them, and he can only backstab if he's not getting undermined by everyone in the nearby rooms yelling his name at him. And why is he here instead of in the Gardens? His whole deal is using evil plants but he's super far away from the evil plant dungeon. Room 166: Anole & Anolis Zooth Torgos' missing kids. They have half-moon heads and so are harmed by illogical statements- Seymore uses them to test equations by speaking them out loud. Torgos would love to get them back. How they were kidnapped isn't really discussed, but if the PCs somehow got talked into helping Torgos then this is the end of that quest. Room 167: Creepy Carnivorous Plants A bunch of magic plants that grow only on blood. Room 168: Monster, Midnight, Moths & Flush Crotalus Horridus is another mummy, this time full of index cards. He stole a fragment of the darkness from Sheltopussik and hid it here, and is simultaneously worried about the darkness growing and that someone will find out about it. The Infrared Moths have their nest here, and there's also a lever in the room that will flush the cistern in room 171, removing the only source of water in this part of the dungeon but allowing non-aquatic entry to room 172. Room 169: Linneax Gruel Behind a secret door is Linneax, a 12 foot tall mummy who guards the Seeping Chimes in room 170. She knows about the other stuff in this part of the dungeon and wants to know the language of the creature in room 172 (behind the cistern), but there's not really any reward for helping her with this. Room 170: The Seeping Chimes A mercury fountain full of hollow balls of gold that make irregular chiming noises as they fall. While the chimes sound, the undead are lively and relatively benign. If the chimes are silenced, the undead are all irritable. For whatever reason the Chameleon Women will try to disable the chimes. I guess they want the mummies to be grumpy? There's a set of scrolls at the bottom of the mercury including a Stone to Flesh and a "Switch Position" scroll. Also Cure Moderate Wounds, I guess to bring the number of scrolls up to three. Switch Position seems like it'd be an easy way to free Tiktaalik, but I'm still not sure why you'd want to do that. Room 171: The Cistern A cistern full of water and the decaying heads of Seymore's victims. They mutter bad advice. Seems to me like this source of water is already fouled by having a bunch of heads in it, so draining it's not really a big deal? Room 172: Halls of the Fearful Drone A bug person from one of the moons in room 157, terrified of the beings of this world. Their language is so weird that understanding it causes brain damage, and they cause fear passively. They spy on the Medusa from a little hole in the wall. They have a diary where they lament their fate (the diary also causes brain damage if you understand it), and have a bunch of junk from the dungeon from their attempts to understand the creatures who live here. This area really highlights the problems with the entire dungeon. Barely anything that players would want to interact with, tons of NPCs who do nothing (or only do annoying things), and roadblock after roadblock even if a player decides against their better judgement to try to get invested. Fifty rooms would normally make for a huge dungeon, but here 50 rooms are spent on an inaccessible little dead-end stuck to the side of a mega-dungeon. The amount of work a GM would have to do to make something useful out of this area would be better spent reading a dimestore novel and coming up with their own idea for an adventure. Next Time: The Almery, sandwiched between the Dead Wedding and the Prison. Will this area have more of a point to it? We'll find out!
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Jul 10, 2021 23:11
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