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I'm not sure how I feel about 5e Wildspace being set in the astral plane instead. On the one hand I realize that it unkrangles 2e's wacky-rear end cosmology some, but on the other hand it also feels janky and opposed to some of the original wildspace ideas that I liked.
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Aug 16, 2022 19:35
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm not sure how I feel about 5e Wildspace being set in the astral plane instead. On the one hand I realize that it unkrangles 2e's wacky-rear end cosmology some, but on the other hand it also feels janky and opposed to some of the original wildspace ideas that I liked. It sounds like it's more replacing the phlogiston, as there are still "solar systems" of Wildspace around Material worlds and then you transition into the Astral Sea when you get far enough away. It jibes pretty well with other random stuff through the history of D&D that associates the Astral with more-than-mere-planetary travel (like the Greyhawk god Celestian, whose whole deal is being the space and stars god but also likes to dwell in the Astral), plus the Astral is periodically associated with magic in general. The phlogiston was neat but just subbing in the Astral makes it more noticeably just shoved in to have something there when, yeah, the Astral (or Ethereal, as it was written in 2e) could also do the job ably.
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Aug 16, 2022 20:09
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The weightlessness feat sounds like they got rid of “grubbian” physics, which is a shame because I liked the weirdness of how gravity worked in 2e spelljammer. Not a downgrade as much as a sidegrade, I suppose.
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Aug 16, 2022 20:12
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they (and Yusin will) get into it when discussing ship gravity planes, but there’s still some fun stuff in there. like if you do it correctly you could jump off the side and float all the way around and use that to surprise a boarder. and you’d have to, because (editorializing on future content) there are basically no rules for ship-to-ship combat in this version, so you might as well try to make normal combat on a ship deck interesting.
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Aug 16, 2022 20:28
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:they (and Yusin will) get into it when discussing ship gravity planes, but there’s still some fun stuff in there. like if you do it correctly you could jump off the side and float all the way around and use that to surprise a boarder. and you’d have to, because (editorializing on future content) there are basically no rules for ship-to-ship combat in this version, so you might as well try to make normal combat on a ship deck interesting. Well on that spoiler The rules are there just simple, and I honestly think it's for the best. But I will get to that when I get to it.
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Aug 16, 2022 20:38
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Spelljammer Adventures in Space Chapter 1: Character Options (Continued) Hadozee  (No I do not know how they put on pants) The hadozees were originally small housecat sized mammals that lived in trees and evolved wing-like flaps to glide from branch to breach to avoid predators. Hundreds of years ago a wizard came to Yazir the homeworld of the hadozees, with a fleet of spelljamming ships. His apprentices captured many hadozees and they were fed an elixir that enlarged them, and turned them into sapient, bipeds. It also had a side of effect of making them more resilient when harmed. The wizard planned to sell enhanced hadozee warriors to the highest bidder. But the apprentices grew to like the hadozees and rebelled against the wizard with them, slaying the wizard before going back to their home with the elixir. With the apprentices help the Hadozees used the elixir on more of their kind, and eventually all hadozee newborns had the traits of the enhanced ones. Then using the spelljamming ships the hadozees left their world and its predators behind to venture in the stars. Traits Hadozee’s can be either medium or small chosen at character creation. They also have a climbing speed of 30 feet. Dexterous Feet. As a bonus action a Hadozee can use their feet to pick up stuff, manipulate objects or close and open doors among other things. Glide. When not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor a Hadozee can glide with their skin flaps. They can move 5 feet horizontally for each foot they descend, and they can use a reaction when they would take damage from a fall to reduce it to 0. Hadozee Resilience. Several times per rest a Hadozee can use a reaction when they take damage to reduce it. Plasmoid  Oozes with no typical shape, but in the presence of others they adopt similar shapes (But you are not going to make a plasmoid for something else). They function similar to amoeba consuming food by osmosis, excreting through tiny pores, and absorbing oxygen through a different set of pores. While normally a translucent grey they can take on other colors and translucence by absorbing dyes. They don’t have normal internal organs, but instead fibers and clusters of nerves. The nerves give plasmoids most of their senses like touch, hearing, smell, and sight. They can also stiffen the outer layers of their bodies to maintain a shape allowing them to wear clothing. When they sleep, they lose their shape and spread off, and are sometimes mistaken for rocks or other features. Traits Plasmoids are oozes and can be either Medium or Small chosen at character creation. Amorphous. Plamoids can squeeze through any gap at least 1 inch wide if they are not wearing or carrying anything. They also have advantage on escaping or starting grapples. Darkvison. Can see in the dark in greyscale. Hold Breath. They can hold their breath for an hour. Natural Resilience. They have resistance to acid and poison damage, and advantage against being poisoned. Shape Self. As an action a plasmoid can grant themselves limbs and a head or revert to a blob. With a humanoid shape they wear gear meant for their size. As a bonus action they can extrude a pseudopod up to 10 feet long or reabsorb it. This pseudopod can as part of the same bonus action can manipulate objects, but it can’t attack, activate magic items or lift more than 10 pounds. Thri-kreen  Thri-kreen are insect like creatures that can alter the coloration of their carapace to blend with their surroundings. Thri-kreen do not have a typical language and their clacking mandibles and waving of their antennae to express their thoughts and feelings can’t really be understood by others. So, to interact with other thri-kreen rely on a form of telepathy. (The thri-kreen's entry here is a bit lacking, but they get more in the Bestiary section) Traits Thri-kreen are monstrosities and can be medium or small chosen at character creation. Chameleon Carapace. Their chitin gives them a base armor class of 13 + Dex Mod. They can as a action change the color of their carapace to give them advantage on Stealth Checks to hide. Darkvison. Can see in the dark in greyscale. Secondary Arms. They have smaller secondary arms below their primary ones. The secondary arms can manipulate objects and wield weapons that have the light property. Sleepless. Thri-Kreen will remain conscious during a long rest as they do not need sleep. They still need to refrain from being active to benefit from the rest, however. Thri-kreen Telepathy. Thri-Kreen can’t speak non thri-kreen languages even if they know them. They can use telepathy to transmit their thoughts to willing creatures within 120 feet of them. These creatures don’t need to share a language with the Thri-kreen but they have to be able to understand language. This link is broken if a creature is ever more than 120 feet away from the thri-kreen, incapacitated, or if someone decides to break contact. Next time we move into the meat of the book with Chapter 2: Astral Adventuring
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Aug 16, 2022 21:42
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Odd choice to make the Thri-Kreen telepathic, in 2e they had difficulty speaking non-Kreen languages, but were able to do so as well as understand them(though other races speaking the Kreen language was nearly impossible since they couldn't make many of the noises for physiological reasons), and generally their issues relating to other species weren't linguistic but instead down to psychology(things like never sleeping, distinctly different perspectives on the concepts of family and friends, being carnivorous predators while most other species are omnivores, etc. Most of these new races I find kind of pointless, but I do like the plasmoids.
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Aug 16, 2022 21:53
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Yusin posted:
One leg at a time, obviously.
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Aug 16, 2022 22:05
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Firearms Mastery seems like an awfully stacked thing to be a racial trait.
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Aug 16, 2022 22:12
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PurpleXVI posted:Odd choice to make the Thri-Kreen telepathic, in 2e they had difficulty speaking non-Kreen languages, but were able to do so as well as understand them(though other races speaking the Kreen language was nearly impossible since they couldn't make many of the noises for physiological reasons), and generally their issues relating to other species weren't linguistic but instead down to psychology(things like never sleeping, distinctly different perspectives on the concepts of family and friends, being carnivorous predators while most other species are omnivores, etc. Well all the races are from the original setting. (Along with some Star Frontiers inspiration)
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Aug 16, 2022 22:25
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Yusin posted:Spelljammer stuff. Leraika posted:Firearms Mastery seems like an awfully stacked thing to be a racial trait. Well it does not stack with their other trait, and firearms are generally rare in D&D settings, so I don't think it's overly powerful. The other races there seem to get more stuff than the giff as well cause the giff's traits are powerful.
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Aug 16, 2022 22:38
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there are only two setting-appropriate firearms in the game, they’re exclusively in the DMG, and even when adding The Gun Guys they didn’t see fit to reprint them, so it’s probably fine
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Aug 16, 2022 22:53
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MonsterEnvy posted:Well it does not stack with their other trait, and firearms are generally rare in D&D settings, so I don't think it's overly powerful. The other races there seem to get more stuff than the giff as well cause the giff's traits are powerful. The other players (who are inclined to care about balance and effectiveness) in the former will be annoyed because the giff got this cool thing for free and in the latter the giff player will be annoyed because they don't get to do their one cool thing.
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Aug 16, 2022 22:56
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Dammit, they made the giff more boring! Granted, a lot of what made the giff interesting had issues in retrospect - they combined a racial fascination with firearms with a whopping -4 INT and I can’t say I’m sad to see that go. Tell me: do they at least still have comically English names?Robindaybird posted:yep, this shows up in Greek legend (this however does vary depending on the tale, Agamemnon sacrificed one of his daughters so they can actually get to Troy). We know Shang dynasty kings were buried with much of their households to serve as servants in the afterlife, only for the practice to decay during the Zhou from the sheer number of people it was killing off (among other reasons). There’s very good reason to believe the famous Terracotta Army was an attempt to fill a similar function without putting as many people to the sword.
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Aug 17, 2022 00:46
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Falconier111 posted:Dammit, they made the giff more boring! Granted, a lot of what made the giff interesting had issues in retrospect - they combined a racial fascination with firearms with a whopping -4 INT and I can’t say I’m sad to see that go. Tell me: do they at least still have comically English names? as of Monsters of the Multiverse WotC no longer provides typical heights, typical weights, typical languages spoken, typical lifespans, typical ability score improvements, or typical names.
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Aug 17, 2022 00:59
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Falconier111 posted:Dammit, they made the giff more boring! Granted, a lot of what made the giff interesting had issues in retrospect - they combined a racial fascination with firearms with a whopping -4 INT and I can’t say I’m sad to see that go. Tell me: do they at least still have comically English names? We will get more Giff lore in the Bestiary. As for funny names a Giff in the Adventure is named Major Warwyck Blastimoff.
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Aug 17, 2022 01:01
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:as of Monsters of the Multiverse WotC no longer provides typical heights, typical weights, typical languages spoken, typical lifespans, typical ability score improvements, or typical names. I wish they had kept typical names. Lifespans are pretty much assumed human unless said otherwise.
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Aug 17, 2022 01:03
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typical stats should go, but languages and names were useful in character creation, especially thinking up cultural backgrounds.
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Aug 17, 2022 01:33
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yeah, agreed. I’d like to know what NPCs expect from, say, a hadozee mage, so that I can decide whether to lean into it or subvert it. but they’re cool new races! I particularly love the plasmoid of course
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Aug 17, 2022 01:45
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:yeah, agreed. I’d like to know what NPCs expect from, say, a hadozee mage, so that I can decide whether to lean into it or subvert it. but they’re cool new races! I particularly love the plasmoid of course Not as new as you'd think; they are pretty obviously lifted from the Star Frontiers Yazirians (note the homeworld name) and Dralasites respectively. Hell, the Thri-Kreen actually sub kind of well for the other major non-human race in Star Frontiers, the Vrusk. Mind you I don't dislike that they're using them; indeed I hope they stole some of the more interesting cultural traits, like the Yazirian "life enemy" idea (which isn't always a person or race; a Yazirian doctor could declare a particular disease his enemy for example). I suppose the Plasmoids would be pretty funny if they maintained the Dralasite terrible sense of humor too (a whole race of dad humor blobs!).
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Aug 17, 2022 02:55
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Hadozee and Thi-Kreen were both character choices in 2nd edition Spelljammer., so they're really not new.
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Aug 17, 2022 03:07
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right—I meant “new to 5e” but wasn’t clear. interesting to see the differences though, like how little Athasian thri-kreen (for a particularly stark example) resemble their new counterparts
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Aug 17, 2022 04:03
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MadDogMike posted:Not as new as you'd think; they are pretty obviously lifted from the Star Frontiers Yazirians (note the homeworld name) and Dralasites respectively. Hell, the Thri-Kreen actually sub kind of well for the other major non-human race in Star Frontiers, the Vrusk. Mind you I don't dislike that they're using them; indeed I hope they stole some of the more interesting cultural traits, like the Yazirian "life enemy" idea (which isn't always a person or race; a Yazirian doctor could declare a particular disease his enemy for example). I suppose the Plasmoids would be pretty funny if they maintained the Dralasite terrible sense of humor too (a whole race of dad humor blobs!). It's for sure on purpose there is a Thri-Kreen ship called the Vrusk in the adventure.
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Aug 17, 2022 04:30
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MadDogMike posted:Not as new as you'd think; they are pretty obviously lifted from the Star Frontiers Yazirians (note the homeworld name) and Dralasites respectively. Hell, the Thri-Kreen actually sub kind of well for the other major non-human race in Star Frontiers, the Vrusk. Mind you I don't dislike that they're using them; indeed I hope they stole some of the more interesting cultural traits, like the Yazirian "life enemy" idea (which isn't always a person or race; a Yazirian doctor could declare a particular disease his enemy for example). I suppose the Plasmoids would be pretty funny if they maintained the Dralasite terrible sense of humor too (a whole race of dad humor blobs!). 
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Aug 17, 2022 04:38
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Dralasites and Yazirians! Yesss!
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Aug 17, 2022 16:33
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Spelljammer Adventures in Space Chapter 2 Astral Adventuring.  Spelljamming Spelljamming is the act of using a spelljamming helm to propel and maneuver a ship, and the one who operates the helm is a spelljammer. A spelljamming ship when moving through wildspace can travel 100 million miles in 24 hours. The helm automatically course corrects the ship to avoid hitting small objects and creatures when at this speed. The minor movements can cause space sickness to those unused to space travel. The ship will automatically slow down to its flying speed (Which is generally about as maneuverable as a seafearing vessel of similar size) when it comes close to something large enough to have its own air envelope and gravity plane (Which we will get to soon). The exact distance the ship will slow down at is variable, but whatever caused it to slow down will normally be close enough to be seen. When using a helm to move the ship the spelljammer will normally feel a pins-and-needles sensation though not as painful. The spelljammer will normally be the first to detect the approach of something large as the ship slows. And experienced ones can sometimes sense the cause before it’s seen, as an asteroid feels different from other things for example. Spelljammer Duels A ship can have multiple helms on board, but only one can be used to control the ship. If someone tries to gain control of the ship through a second helm a spelljammer duel happens. It’s simple each spelljammer makes a Constitution check, the one who rolls lower loses and takes 1d4 levels of exhaustion, their attunement to their helm is ended, and they can’t attune to any helm until they completely recover from their exhaustion. Air Envelopes  When creatures or objects leave an atmosphere and enter Wildspace, they bring an envelope of breathable air with them. For creatures this is a cube that forms around the creature and depends on their size. This personal envelope will be exhausted by a creature that needs to breathe in 1 minute, which is why ships are a much better choice of travel (I would personally allow larger creature’s air envelopes to last longer as well). For objects the air envelope extends outwards a distance equal to the objects longest dimension. The diagram above shows a good example of this. The nautiloid has 180 foot keel length so the envelope extends 180 feet from the ship. Habitable planets and moons have an air envelope called an atmosphere, which causes its air envelope to replenish itself. Creatures and objects can refresh their own envelopes by entering an atmosphere. Air Quality An air envelope can be one of three qualities. Fresh. The air can be safely breathed. A ships envelope will remain fresh for 120 days but will be exhausted quicker if they carry more creatures than a ship’s listed crew size. Foul. The air is stale, partially depleted and smells bad. Any creature that breathes the foul air will become poisoned until they breathe fresh air. Foul air with a normal sized crew will degrade their air quality again in another 120 days. Deadly. The air can’t be breathed. Any creature that does will start suffocating. Overlapping Air Envelopes. When any two bodies with air envelopes come close to each other, their envelopes merge, and the smaller one takes on the quality of the larger. When they move away, they reclaim their own envelope with the new quality. A good example is that if a small fresh aired ship approached a large derelict one with deadly air, the fresh ship’s air would change to deadly. Gravity Planes Gravity is why creatures can stand on a spacecraft without falling and why everything pulls its own atmosphere with them. In the Astral Plane gravity is accommodating, as its direction seems to work in “That which is most convenient.” For large things like moons and planets gravity pulls everything towards the center. For smaller things like spacecrafts, gravity instead comes from a plane that forms horizontally through the object and extends to the edge of the air envelope. It’s two directional so someone can stand on the bottom of a ship, the nautiloid diagram above shows how it works. If something falls off the side of a ship it will oscillate back and forth across the gravity plane. Falling until it crosses the plane then reversing and falling back towards it again. Overlapping Planes When two ships are near each other they will still maintain their own gravity planes until the ships touch. Once two ships touch the ship with more hit points (even if it’s smaller) will override the other ship’s gravity as long as they remain in contact. This can be quite dangerous for the weaker ship if the other ship connected at a different angle. If a ship lands on a large body like a planet. The gravity plane is suppressed (So precautions should be taken to ensure nothing falls if the ship takes advantage of two-way gravity). Drifting When ships move in space creatures and objects in the air envelope move with it. However, creatures and objects are weightless when unanchored in the air envelope and will slowly drift away along the gravity plane to the edge of the air envelope and will be left behind once they exit it. Next talking about the Astral Plane itself.
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Aug 17, 2022 17:13
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 GURPS Aztecs – Chapter 4: War  Take a look at the first sentence of the chapter: GURPS Aztecs posted:The Aztecs knew the universe existed because the blood of captured enemies nourished the divine sun. We’ll talk about this more next chapter, but human sacrifice wasn’t done out of sadism or death worship; they genuinely believed human sacrifice was necessary to hold the world together. Survival demanded blood, and blood demanded sacrifices – and there was no better way to gain sacrifices than through war.  That didn’t mean the Aztecs killed everyone they met, though; like we discussed a couple chapters ago, war, while glorious, was wasteful compared to extracting enormous amounts of tribute. Before conquest was even on the table, the Aztecs would gather intelligence through a mixture of ambassadors, government-employed traders (the pochtecas, they have their own chapter later), and waves of spies that could expect public execution if they were caught. After that, the Imperial government sent an ambassador offering tributary status in almost entirely positive terms – join us and pay a small tribute, and you get the protection of the strongest military in the known world and access to massive trade networks. If they refused (lots didn’t), or worse, sent the ambassador back in a box, another delegation bearing gifts would show up from the capital and camp outside the town for 20 days (the Aztec month). If they didn’t cave theb, a delegation from Texcoco would show up, then another from Tlacopan a month later, and finally a month after that the delegations would issue a formal declaration of war and pull out.  The Aztec war machine liked raising massive armies to overwhelm their enemies as fast as possible, as far away from valuable property and people as possible: better to get captives and tribute flowing again that way. Within about a week of the declaration of war (depending on portents and weather), the Aztecs could usually scrounge up tens of thousands of troops from the homeland and local tributaries, plus an impromptu logistics network that subbed out standard tribute payments for logistical support in every town along the way. In general, every army would have about half its strength in porters milling around; no beasts of burden or wheeled devices to schlep stuff around in, so everything a soldier couldn’t carry while staying in fighting shape traveled either on the back of a peasant conscript or a squire off to support some noble or knight. Commanded either by the Emperor himself or one of two generals that acted as his lieutenants, armies usually travelled as quietly as possible in staggered groups according to where the troops came from, only gathering to make camp at night or assemble before battle proper.  At this point the book refers us to GURPS mass combat system to help run battles, which it recommends we find on Steve Jackson Games’s dedicated BBS  . Ah, those bygone days in 1993, when I was but a fetus! Sadly, that BBS is long gone now and I don’t have access to the scattered sourcebooks it mentions that also contain those rules (apparently they weren’t in the core book), so all the sidebars listing different troop types and qualities are meaningless to me. At least it tells us how battles worked.Most fights followed a specific pattern. First, skirmishers would get just close enough to launch a wave or two of arrows and slingstones before melting off to the sides to harass the flanks; then, the rest of the army would charge in two massive lines for close combat (the second would step in after a bit to let the exhausted fighters rest and retreat safely, especially since turning your back on the enemy (even during an order to retreat) was considered so cowardly it would get you hauled before a military tribunal). Typically, Aztec forces would overwhelm their enemies and drive them from the field, soon followed by a formal surrender. The Emperor would accept that surrender and (unless they’d done something to seriously piss him off) basically treat the defeated enemy like any other new tributary, integrating them into the Imperial system as adroitly as possible.  Granted, not every battle went like this. Ambushes were rare but still happened from time to time, as did sieges; the Aztec army’s ad hoc logistics system tended to break down the longer they stayed in the field, so if they had to lay siege to a town they usually try to burn down or scale the walls as fast as possible. If their enemy wouldn’t give in, the Aztecs would usually sack any town or city they took, tearing down the temple to the town’s patron god in the process to symbolize conquest. How bad the sack went depended on how much they wanted to punish the city. If the process was relatively clean, sometimes they let them get away with extra tribute payments (and the Imperial government would pay off troops disappointed they didn’t get to participate in a sacking). If they got mad enough, though, they’d burn the whole city to the ground and carry off the entire population for slavery or sacrifice. The book gives one example of a Totonac city that locked Aztec emissaries demanding submission in a room, piled chilies against the door, and set them on fire until the emissaries choked to death on the fumes, then dressed up the corpses for a banquet in their honor; the only reason the Emperor didn’t put the whole thing to the torch was because the city handed over its entire aristocracy for execution, and even then they had to pay double tribute from then on out. On the other hand, sometimes they’d agreed to settle disputes through what were called Flower Wars, since flowers carried associations with both magic and death. Flower Wars consisted of simple pitched battles with a strong emphasis on capture instead of bloodshed, something the Aztecs very much preferred – after all, that was kind of the point.  Taking captives was the only reliable way to advance in Aztec society. The priesthood could help you gain power and influence and being a successful merchant could get you filthy rich, but only capturing enemies for sacrifice could send you rising up the ranks. It actually took a lot to secure these promotions; you had to have four captives to your name before you’d receive recognition as a fully-blooded warrior and enter the nobility. At least some of these could be joint captures pulled off with the help of others, though, and participating in even a single joint capture gave you the right to wear certain class-specific jewelry and pick up one of an entire class of government-employed “courtesans” who served as a kind of surrogate wife until you actually got married. Once you passed that four-captive minimum, you could earn knighthood by taking a captive from one of a small number of peoples the Aztecs considered particularly tough (capturing, say, 20 Huastecs would you gifts and see condescending pats on the back but no promotion). More captives from those peoples could get you promoted all the way up to the group of generals who commanded the whole military (theoretically, in practice they were all upper nobility, anybody else had to settle with just being a knight). On the other hand, the Sacrifice skill offers massive benefits when used on knight captives, which made them natural targets/boss battles for your players. If they didn’t die in combat or to a priest’s knife, knights could return to civilian life with the right to wear certain kinds of fancy clothing and special honors and titles, and when they got too old to fight, they’d help organize camp and carry news of casualties back to their families.  It’s worth explaining what the hell a knight even is. So, just about every male capable of fighting was a member of the militia, but the actual “standing army” was just a small officer corps drawn a group of organizations roughly analogous to European knightly orders (hence the name). Two of them, Jaguar and Eagle Knights were open to anybody who took for more captives; while they were mostly nobles, commoners could and did join up, earning their descendents noble status in the process. The book doesn’t give us much about how the two orders differed and implies they were rival groups, but the details only matter so much; gaining a knighthood was the mechanism for entering the nobility. Above them were two orders called the otontin (the generic high nobility one) and the Shorn Ones, the best troops in the empire, notable for shaving their heads outside a single tough to hair above the left ear. Aside from being showered with gifts and honors and having the option to go full-time (most didn’t), knights were given special armor according to their rank; the lower two orders received tough leather animal-themed skinsuits, while the others got the same but with a layer of feathers crafted to deflect missile fire.  Speaking of which, equipment! The book does talk a bit about Spanish equipment, but it’s basically all in the corebook so they don’t dwell on it (except for the arquebus, but good luck using those in standard RPG combat). Instead, the section focuses on Mesoamerican arms and armor. While bows, slings, blowguns, axes, and stone knives saw everyday use in hunting or whatever and some nobles owned decorative weapons, military-grade equipment universally sat in the town armory under armed guard until war rolled around. In a nice touch, a sidebar points out your average party will want to get their hands on good weapons as fast as possible and lays out a whole mini-adventure for locating and fast-talking their way past various bureaucrats to get to the good stuff during peacetime (it advises players against trying to bribe their way in, that carried the death penalty). Aztec warriors used wooden clubs, stone maces, obsidian-tipped pikes, bows, and slings (especially the militia), but the nobility’s trademark weapon was the macahuitl. Think a big, flat wooden board three or more feet long with huge obsidian shards along each side, swung like a cutlass with enough cutting power to decapitate a horse. They were dangerous, but the obsidian was fragile and shattered quickly; the book has rules for macahuitl durability and if I’m reading them right they only last for like max 10 minutes of sustained combat before the obsidian breaks (significantly less if they’re going up against metal armor). That two-line structure existed in large part to let warriors change out their macahuitls when they needed to. They also used the atlatl, a particularly terrifying kind of spearthrower that could hurl a 2-foot wooden dart through a steel breastplate, but that didn’t see too much use since it was kind of overkill given the armor it usually went up against. Most proper infantry war a kind of cotton armor over an inch thick, with knights wearing their special war gear over it; the book says “only the strongest dart or spear can penetrate it” and implies it offered protection comparable to Spanish metal armor, but mechanically even cotton armor and warsuit combined aren’t as good as leather armor, let alone metal. Knights also used thick wooden shields to ward off arrows plus decorative helmets, grieves, and armbands; the book says these were more status symbols and identifiers then actual armor, but they offer protection about as good as the cotton armor it was talking up earlier. Just looking at raw stats in the equipment tables at the end of the chapter, Aztec equipment actually kind of sucks. The book lavishes praise on it, but it’s really just the sort of thing the core book gives to Stone Age societies with some extra twists. And they’ll be going up against enemies with crossbows, cannons, and steel. A bit of gap between fluff and crunch here.  The longer the book goes on, the better I think I understand Locsin. He’s a skilled writer and pretty creative, but I’m not sure how much actual experience he has running campaigns; a lot of the tips and tricks he drops in sidebars are excellent for character creation and one-shots, but there isn’t that much support for long-running games and I just don’t think he thought through how dealing with the Spanish wou;d work in the setting he’s building. I’m not sure how heavily he playtested this. I guess I could be wrong, though; we have a few chapters yet before we really hit campaign advice. And the next chapter is one of the thorniest and most interesting: Aztec religion.
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Aug 17, 2022 17:45
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Out of curiosity, is there any obvious expectation for whether this is intended to be run "straight"(i.e. completely realistic) or with some fantastical elements like priestly blessings and divine creatures being real?
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Aug 17, 2022 17:57
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Wait spell jammer, the space ship game, doesn't do space ship combat?
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Aug 17, 2022 18:17
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tokenbrownguy posted:Wait spell jammer, the space ship game, doesn't do space ship combat? It does we have just not gotten to it yet.
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Aug 17, 2022 18:19
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PurpleXVI posted:Out of curiosity, is there any obvious expectation for whether this is intended to be run "straight"(i.e. completely realistic) or with some fantastical elements like priestly blessings and divine creatures being real? GURPS worldbooks in historical periods tend towards a "your characters believe in it even if you don't" tone. The system here, where sacrifice negates mechanical penalties, is similar to one in their classical Greek books where characters take penalties in circumstances that make them think they've been cursed, have seen ill omens etc unless they take appropriate steps. It's up the GM and players whether or not this is psychological or supernatural.
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Aug 17, 2022 19:06
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PurpleXVI posted:Out of curiosity, is there any obvious expectation for whether this is intended to be run "straight"(i.e. completely realistic) or with some fantastical elements like priestly blessings and divine creatures being real? The religion chapter actually mentions three different levels of supernatural influence on a campaign, but I haven’t gotten far enough to see if it follows through. I can say the book is written as if Aztec religion and magic are universal, objectively real and consistently mechanically effective. Unrestricted, too; RAW it’s entirely possible for you to roll up with your IQ 14 Jesuit, spend the GURPS-session-standard two character points on the right skills, and be burning sandals to pagan gods by session two. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 17, 2022 |
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Aug 17, 2022 19:28
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This book is hardly unique in underselling textile armors, it seems really common in RPGs, but it's too bad. IIRC we have accounts of Spanish fighters adopting native armor, so it was clearly effective enough against the native weapons that it was appealing to replace metal armor with it. Climate was certainly part of that, but it's hard to imagine anyone would replace their uncomfortable metal armor with something that would just get them killed. For fantasy it's fine to have an easily readable cloth < leather < mail < plate progression, but it's a pity people so frequently keep it even if they want to be more based in history, where that's not really a decision anyone seems to have made.
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Aug 17, 2022 20:12
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MadDogMike posted:Not as new as you'd think; they are pretty obviously lifted from the Star Frontiers Yazirians (note the homeworld name) and Dralasites respectively. Hell, the Thri-Kreen actually sub kind of well for the other major non-human race in Star Frontiers, the Vrusk. Mind you I don't dislike that they're using them; indeed I hope they stole some of the more interesting cultural traits, like the Yazirian "life enemy" idea (which isn't always a person or race; a Yazirian doctor could declare a particular disease his enemy for example). I suppose the Plasmoids would be pretty funny if they maintained the Dralasite terrible sense of humor too (a whole race of dad humor blobs!). Mentioning this sense of humor, one of my players decided to play a Plasmoid, and they named themselves Oozymandias.
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Aug 17, 2022 20:30
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Ultiville posted:This book is hardly unique in underselling textile armors, it seems really common in RPGs, but it's too bad. IIRC we have accounts of Spanish fighters adopting native armor, so it was clearly effective enough against the native weapons that it was appealing to replace metal armor with it. Climate was certainly part of that, but it's hard to imagine anyone would replace their uncomfortable metal armor with something that would just get them killed. The biggest downside to Aztec padded armor is it was cotton, which would have made it absolutely miserable in wet climates.
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Aug 17, 2022 20:34
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mellonbread posted:To really sell the benefits of padded armor you need to enforce encumbrance and give variable defense against different damage types (slashing, piercing, etc). Both GURPS and D&D have a mechanical framework for this, but it's the kind of thing that's quickly forgotten about in actual play. Encumbrance isn't so bad, but having different damage types that also interact differently with different types of armor adds a lot more book-keeping to fights, and honestly in ways that aren't super interesting. It would be interesting if players were expected to carry around a varied armory, and swap up their weapons against different threats, but with specific weapon specializations and encumbrance, players are encouraged to just focus on one weapon and then if something had a resistance to that damage type, just treat it as a difficulty increase in terms of to-hit or to-damage rolls.
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Aug 17, 2022 20:50
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Of course a lot of the problem is that reality isn't very good gameplay. For most of history it seems to be the case that you (understandably) got kit based on: -what your culture could make -what you could afford -what made you least likely to die. Within those considerations, most historical eras have a clear best solution (adjusted for the opponent and the kind of place you're fighting), and generally that's the one the warrior aristocrats use. Generations of warrior-nobles are just a really good practical testbed. (I suspect one reason you don't see Mesoamerican metal arms and armor, for example, is that metal armor is terrible in that kind of climate, and metal armor is one really good reason to develop metallurgy to combat standards.) Sometimes the best solution to keep you safe precludes a certain kind of fighting style, and so poorer people who can't afford the armor fight in that style, but if you're talking about the kind of wealthy person adventurers invariably become, based on history you'd expect almost everyone to get full plate basically as soon as they could afford it (it being the most protective armor in the D&D core). But of course games benefit from having lots of viable choices, so it's totally reasonable the game doesn't do this. It does IMO sort of illustrate the problem with something like GURPS, though, that tries to claim to be able to do both. If you want to do a fantasy adventure game in which people have different kits and fighting styles and so forth, you need to make different kinds of kits have reasons someone would take them even if a lot of alternatives were available and affordable. So you run into something like what happened here, where it seems like some part of GURPS decided that cloth armors needed to be "light," with the tradeoffs in protection that implies, but in history lots of societies made textile armors thick enough to be both protective and relatively constricting. I saw a recent article about this - Alexander the Great wore lithothorax, which was made out of some kind of resin-enhanced textile but was heavy armor. It seems likely that the Aztec Knight kit had a similar situation going on. Both seem like they'd be best understood as either a medium or a heavy armor, while medieval textile armors were a budget thing. (Of course they also probably weren't a lot less encumbering than the metal armor and mostly got worn because people couldn't afford the ruinously expensive heavier stuff, but that's a separate issue.) Of course you could do this in a generic system by just having categories that ignore time period, but for GURPS part of the appeal is also that you can do crossover stuff, so it'd be pretty weird to have the Aztec cloth knight armor be as protective as your sci-fi space marine armor. Well, it'd actually be completely fitting for a lot of genres, but it wouldn't be what GURPS is going for.
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Aug 17, 2022 21:19
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Ultiville posted:I suspect one reason you don't see Mesoamerican metal arms and armor, for example, is that metal armor is terrible in that kind of climate, and metal armor is one really good reason to develop metallurgy to combat standards.)
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Aug 17, 2022 23:02
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mellonbread posted:They did make limited use of bronze axes as weapons, although they seem to have been more often used as tools and generic trade goods. I suspect they weren't as popular because they were expensive and not obviously better than obsidian weapons for the type of warfare the people of the One World fought in. A macahuitl gives you greater reach and a larger striking surface, and the hardness of the bronze isn't relevant when the heaviest armor you'll face is a cotton gambeson. A quick survey of the sources says bronzeworking was new to the area; there’s no evidence of metalworking in the area at all before 800 and bronze didn’t arrive until around the same time the Aztec ancestors did in the 1200s or 1300s, probably brought north from the Andes by the Purepucha and spread from there. It took most old world metalworking cultures centuries, even millennia, to fully develop bronze technology, so it isn’t surprising they wouldn’t have grasped all its applications yet. Also, keep in mind that not only are huge swaths of central and western Mexico high up enough to be temperate or even cool, but metal armor emerged in multiple ancient civilizations in very hot areas. It’s not like Egypt or Iraq are ski trip destinations, you know?
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Aug 18, 2022 00:43
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Falconier111 posted:A quick survey of the sources says bronzeworking was new to the area; there’s no evidence of metalworking in the area at all before 800 and bronze didn’t arrive until around the same time the Aztec ancestors did in the 1200s or 1300s, probably brought north from the Andes by the Purepucha and spread from there. It took most old world metalworking cultures centuries, even millennia, to fully develop bronze technology, so it isn’t surprising they wouldn’t have grasped all its applications yet. Fair, though my understanding is that the humidity in Mexico is on another level - Spain isn't exactly cool, come to that, but the Spanish still found Mexico pretty oppressive. But I could certainly be misinformed on that as well, and it being a recent arrival certainly also seems relevant.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:15
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