|
 Step 4 Now we choose Exaltation. The base book gives: code:code:Werewolf on the other hand can transform into a warform every battle to increase size, str and con. It also provides claws that count as magical. This helps with the unarmed build, also getting armor while transformed helps with the lack of worn armor of the monk. So I will be taking Werewolf. code:This also means our languages are now: Trade and Elven, Spirit-Tongue and Spirits. Might be some overlap there, would have to check and see if it specifies what if any different there is between the last two. Step 5 Class! There are a lot of classes. They aren't really classes like in D&D but closer to Careers in Warhammer. They pretty much all have requirements, like the skill requirements I listed before. For the most part requirements will be skill levels and feats. Class trees are 5 levels long, the max level is 5 though you can have more than 5 classes. Most classes are part of a 5 class long track. A few are single level, these are often 1st level but not always. You must be at least 2nd level to take a 3rd level class. And I don't believe you have to take the previous classes in the track so long as you meet the requirement. Your power stat, Feral Heart for werewolf, cannot be higher than your level. This means it maxes at level 5. It costs xp to increase. Most starting characters will be 1st level but a few builds can manage to start at 2nd level. I will be taking the first level of Monk, but to give you an idea of the options I will give a general break down of the Class Tracks. When you finish a class, by taking all the required feats, you get a completion bonus. code:code:Step 6 Backgrounds. Characters get 7 background points, so the 4 a vampire gets is pretty nice. No background can be increased above 3 dots without xp. code:So that is 4 out of 7 background points down. Hmm maybe she owns a small business, a level 1 holding. Holding is one of the Backgrounds that requires a linked background. Holdings needs an equal level in either Followers, Backing, or Wealth so that you have people to run the business or crew the spelljammer. Wealth needs you to say where it comes from, one of the examples is an equal level of Holdings. And Followers needs an equal level in Wealth, Backing or Holdings to support your followers. Since I have 3 points why don't I just grab 1 dot in each of Holdings, Followers and Wealth? Lets says she started a small local business, lets say a flower shop, in Sigil before she really started to adventure. Her great prowess from being an Exalted drew 5 people to her, and now they work in her flower shop. This flower shop houses her Followers and is the source of her Wealth. There all 7 starting background dots are spent. Step 7 Alignment. This is not your simple D&D 9 alignments. The alignments are individual gods. They may sound familiar to you. Each character starts with 6 Devotion to their chosen Alignment. code:code:code:Step 8 Experience! Each starting character gets 600 XP to start. This lets you customize your character, increase some Characteristics or Skills, or get feats. Spending xp on these things require them to be listed in your current class level. There are some feats, Assets and Racial feats, that can only be bought at character creation so now is the time to get those. code:** You can only buy Assets and new Background dots at character creation. Background dots above 3 cost double There is also something called a Hindrance which is like the opposite of an Asset, you can take up to two Hindrances at character creation, gaining 100 xp for each. First thing first lets grab the Racial Feat Matron [Dryad] for 100 xp. I mentioned this before. It changes the dryad into more of a treant. She loses a point of Fellowship and Dexterity, this is why I made sure to get a second point of Fellowship before. Though I could go back switch that point of Fellowship to Willpower and then instead spend 100 xp to improve Fellowship to 2 before Matron drops it back to 1. Would give me the same Fellowship in the end but Willpower 4 for 200 xp less. In addition to lowering Fellowship and Dexterity, which does lower Static Defense so she will be easy to hit, Matron also increases Strength giving her a 5 before shifting to Warform. Loses the Dryad's racial power of Phromones and gains +2 Size, putting her at Size 6 now. Also gains the Armor Plating (2) trait,and her brawl attacks deal +2k0 damage thanks to her clublike fists. Now this does not actually specify using the fists to get this bonus, despite the description, so it might work with the Bite natural weapon she gets in some of her forms. Armor Plating is a trait, mostly used by NPCs but certain things will grant a PC one, that gives the character a natural AP equal to the value. In this case AP 2. Let's say we went back and spent that 100 xp on Fellowship, and put the Dryad point in Willpower instead. 100 xp Fellowship is still the abysmal 1 and Willpower is now 4. Could get one of the Werewolf Tribe Assets. Black Spiral Dancers would get +1k1 damage on claw and bite attacks in warform, but cannot distinguish between friend form foe without a Willpower Test (TN 20) at the beginning of each round. I kind of like this but might be too uncontrolled for a monk. Get of Fenris however may spend 1 Rage to get +1 to Strength, Acrobatics and Athletics until the end of a Scene. I like this, and it makes her even stronger, combine with Warform in battle and that is +3 str for a total of Str 8. Also it really helps her Acrobatics, which hurt a bit with the now lower Dexterity, and Athletics which are both skills I expect to use as a monk. I think I will go with Get of Fenris, for another 100 xp. Before going any further I should probably buy some important feats for my class. Certain feats are available to Brothers. Most of these feats are also required to finish the Brother level of Monk. code:First and foremost we probably want Weapon Prof (Basic) because we kind of want to be proficient with our unarmed attacks and you need either Basic or Melee 2 to be proficient, being non-proficient really sucks. You gain a number of rolled dice equal to your level on any attack roll made with a weapon in any category you have a proficiency in. So yeah not good to not be proficient. So 100 xp for Weapon Prof (Basic). Unarmed Warrior and Wholeness of Body are both useful. The first gives unarmed attacks an additional +1k0 damage. The latter gives you an Armor rating equal to your Wisdom. Of course that means I would probably have done better to have more Wisdom, but still AP 3 is not bad. So another 200 xp to get both. And we are out of xp, unless I take a Hindrance or two. We can grab up to two Hindrances for a total of 200 xp letting me get another two feats. First I find is All Thumbs. You don't like machines and they don't like you. Scientific and mechanical skills cost twice the normal points to learn or improve. All rolls made to use or repair machinery are made at -1k0. She is a big tree, she has no business dealing with machines. But if she does she is going to be terrible at it. If she ends up trying t learn Scientific or Mechanical skills later on it is going to be harder. This seems to really fit the narrative I had going for her so I will take it. I took Matron so she is past her acorn rearing days, and was not a spring chicken when she finally exalted. So she is older than many, maybe she can be really old. Maybe she is a Geezer? Geezer means you are old, old enough to start having some penalties. The penalties are that your HP are reduced by 2, and you cannot take the run action. I think it fits the idea of her being this elderly, but massive and massively strong, matron. She is a giant tree that is not the most flexible, though still somewhat acrobatic somehow, and while still somewhat fast on her feet she can't really pick up speed to the point of running. This gives me 200 xp to get my next assets. Used to be an Asset that could increase your size, it was replaced with one that improves Resilience as that is now more important for reducing damage. 100 xp on Sturdy, which increases Resilience by +1. Then there is the legendary, double edged sword, asset known as Veteran o'the Wheel, much like in Deadlands and similar games it provides a number of bonuses but means you have a past that might come back to bite you. You begin play with one extra dot to put into any characteristic and another dot to put into any skill. 100 xp for a fifth point in Willpower, saves me xp later, and a 4th point in Brawl. I might end up with an extra hindrance, a hideous scar or some background baggage the SM can bring up as they see fit to make things more er interesting for my character. Step 9 Equipment Now to pick our equipment package. We choose from Earth, Air, Fire, Water or Void. Those don't really tell you much. None of them feel like a great fit for what is basically a treant monk, but I will pick Air. This gives me a Hand Weapon, Las Pistol, Knife, Quilted Vest, Robes OR Bodyglove (Common quality clothing), Implement OR Charm, book of poetry OR deck of cards OR dice. A lot of this won't get used, especially the weapons. But at least it fits a little better than the others, and the image of a tree wearing a special bodyglove to keep warm during winter is kind of hilarious. Step 9 Finishing Touches This is where the secondary characteristics is calculated. Hero Points are the easiest, pretty much everyone starts with 2, there are exceptions. Size is how big you are, four is average, and this is mostly form Race though exaltations or feats may change this. We started at four but Matron added two to give us Size 6. Static Defense is what most would consider AC in other games, it is your passive defense not requiring an action. It starts at 10 then adds 3 for every dot of Dexterity and Wisdom. Halfling's have an ability that lets them ignore Wisdom and instead doubles the bonus form Dexterity. The Static Defense is then reduced by two times the Size. Yes this means my treant monk has a terrible Static defense. Hit points are calculated using Willpower and Constitution, it is equal to twice Constitution plus twice Willpower. Geezer subtracts 2 hit points so I only have 12 instead of 14. Mental Defense is kind of like Static Defense but for more mental or social things. It is calculated as 5 plus 5 times the character's Composure. Resove is how hard it is to convince you of things, to change your mind. It is calculated by adding Willpower and Composure. Speed is how fast you move it is calculated by Strength + Dexterity, and that is how many meters you can move in a half action, for characters that can run you move six times that distance with a run action. Resilience oh man Resilience. It is the average of your Size and Level, rounded up. Resilience didn't exist in previous versions, Size was used in its place. But in the most recent update they added the Resilience stat. As you may have noticed characters with high Size will tend to have a much lower Resilience, this is reversed to a degree for low Size characters. When you receive damage you divide the damage by your Resilience, used to be Size, to determine Hit Point loss and Critical Damage. As you can see it used to be that a really big character could shrug off a lot, and a tiny character could not. A level 1 Halfling has 2 Size and 2 Resilience. So for them this change does nothing, at 1st level, but makes them more Resilient as they level. For someone like my Matron Werewolf she has a size of 6 normally, and 8 when in Warform. But her Resilience would only be 4 normally and 5 in Warform. At the max level of 5 She would still have the same Sizes but her Resilience would become 6 normally, finally meeting her normal Size, and 7 in Warform which never meets her Warform size. If that was all there was to it then it might be an okay change, though with my preference for large characters not one I like. But then you have to take into account Static Defense. Resilience has nothing to do with Static Defense but Size does. Size has less effect now on reducing damage but just as much effect on making them easy to hit. A Halfling with 5 Dex, which is just as likely if not more so than my 5 Str or 5 Will, would have a Static Defense of 36. Compare that to the 13, or 9, Static Defense my Matron Dryad Werewolf is likely to have. Oh well finishing touches are done. Here she is! code:code:code:code:code:code:code:code:
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 08:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 14:08 |
|
|
Okay, unless anyone wants to "call" one ahead of time I think I'll do a character for the games I wrote up for F&F (obviously not the WLD though, since that's meant to be just standard 3.5). First we'll do Hercules and Xena! I'll embrace the goofy anachronistic feel of the setting and go with an ancient Grecian rock star! Name: I honestly cannot think of a good greco-roman-sounding rock star name. Anyone got one? As filler I'll just call him Maximus. Type: Your Hero Type is sort of your class. Maximus is clearly a Bard. This has no actual effect on the rest of character creation. Race Just for the heck of it I'll go with a non-human, a Satyr. That means my speed is 25 feet per round and my awareness rating is 1D higher. Unique Possession Maximus needs a guitar...or at least a lute that will sound exactly like an electric guitar when played. Goals Maximus wants to spread his fame and get laid throughout the Ancient World. Attributes and Skills: Here's the crunchy bits. I get 24 dice to distribute among my attributes. let's see...If I want to be good in any attribute I'll have to suck a little elsewhere. I'll go ahead and put only 2D in Awareness (which becomes 3d due to my Satyr race) and 2D in Knowledge. Charisma will be put at 5D and all the rest will be 3D. So... Coordination: 3D Endurance: 3D Reflexes: 3D Strength: 3D Awareness: 3D Charisma: 5D Knowledge: 2D Mettle: 3D Next I've got 10D for skills, but I can't put more than 2 in any one skill. Singing obviously starts with 2D right off the bat. Instruments will be 2D as well. Lets go with 2D for Battle Cry as well. That leaves me with 4 left. Let's put 1D each in Dance, Fighting, Flirt, and Stay Up (for the ladies you know...). So after adjustment that's... Coordination: 3D *Instruments 5D Endurance: 3D Reflexes: 3D *Dance 4D, Fighting 4D Strength: 3D Awareness: 3D Charisma: 5D *Flirt 6D, Singing 7D Knowledge: 2D Mettle: 3D *Battle Cry 5D, Stay Up 4D Body Points: 20 plus the result of an Endurance Roll. Lets see, that's 3d6...and only one succeeds. That gives me 21 BP. Character Points I've got 15 character points, 1 Fate Point and 0 Fame. It's not indicated whether or not I can spend those character points now, but the example character in the book doesn't so I'll avoid it too. Physical Appearance Lithe, no shirt, tight pants. Long blond hair. very tight pants. Background and Personality Maximus claims to be the distant descendant of Apollo (a claim that will probably get him in trouble eventually) and he's been traveling around Greece honing his craft. Of course, he's too on the edge and crazy for most of the stuffed-toga art academies out there, so he's just out on the road blowing people's faces off with his wicked music! Quote "It's great to be here in Athens/Sparta/Carthage/etc!" Gear: 200 dinars is starting wealth. Going over the gear section let's see. I can't justify armor, since that would cover my sweet abs. Fortunately the game has me covered: Leg and Arm guards provide the same protection as Leather and you can't wear them together with body armor. That's a total of 60 dinars for 2 points of Armor. No helm though, I've got too much hair. I'll need a sword, squiggly swords are the best, combing high damage and Speed for 75 Dinars. Also some pants. Tight pants. Yeah. Optional Now, I've got the option to take advantages and disadvantages or pick some Specialties. I'll skip the first, none of them really fit the character. However I'll spend 3 points on the Instrument specialty Lute and another 3 on the Fighting specialty Swords. I'll keep the remaining 9 character points for later. and bam! There we go! Next is Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot...so which character type should I choose?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 11:25
|
|
|
I think everyone should try statting up bird ladies who may or may not be bards.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
Lord Frisk posted:I think everyone should try statting up bird ladies who may or may not be bards. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 17:48
|
|
|
Lord Frisk posted:I think everyone should try statting up bird ladies who may or may not be bards. If inklesspen doesn't make that Legends of the Wulin character soon, I could make a bird-themed lady in that. That's close enough, right?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 17:59
|
|
|
However you can fit a bird shaped peg in a round hole.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 18:03
|
|
|
Lord Frisk posted:I think everyone should try statting up bird ladies who may or may not be bards. I could actually do this in Space Opera...
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 18:32
|
|
|
Lord Frisk posted:I think everyone should try statting up bird ladies who may or may not be bards.  Note that SWoN doesn't really give a poo poo about aliens. It assumes you are human from the start, and in the places where it talks about aliens as PCs, it basically says not to give any real bonuses or abilities. quote:Some players will want to play an alien as a PC. There’s no fundamental reason not to allow this, even though Stars Without Number generally assumes a party of human adventurers. As a Psychic, we get to swap our Wisdom or Constitution to a 14. Both of them are 10. Con will give us some bonus HP, Wisdom will probably be more useful for skills, and both will give some extra Psychic power points. So I decide to go with Wisdom. We'll be getting a d4 for hit points, because we are basically a space wizard. We get psychic powers that nobody else does, because we cast space spells, we get 1 PP plus out Wisdom modifier (so 2) and our class skills are Combat/Psitech, Culture/Any, History, Perception, Profession/Any, Religion, Tech/Medical, and Tech/Psitech. We are given our attack bonus, which is +0 until level 6. When attacking, we roll 1d20, add our target's Armor Class (AC is descending, like old D&D), our combat skill, our attribute modifier (depends on weapon, usually Str or Dex, sometimes Wis/Con for Psitech weaponry), and this attack bonus. 20 or greater hits, 1 always misses, natural 20 on the nose always hits. As you can put together, we only have about a 50% chance of hitting an normal unarmored opponent (AC 9). We also note saves, which also won't change until we get to level 6. Saves are divided into Physical Effect (13), Mental Effect (12), Evasion (15), Tech (16), and Luck (14).  Like old D&D versions, we make this by rolling over the number indicated on 1d20. So us psychics are decently hardy and mentally resistant, but alien technology can gently caress us up.   quote:To determine precisely what sort of background your character has had, you should choose a Background Package from the following pages. Each package includes a brief description and a list of skills that the package grants. You should personalize this description to your character’s specific past; if she was an Armsman on a primitive world, for example, you should put some thought into what manner of lord she served and why it was she left her former employment. A 0 in a skill means on skill checks we will roll 2d6 and whatever attribute modifier is appropriate for the situation. Skill levels beyond 0 we add as a bonus as well. If we don't have any training in a skill, not even the 0 level, we subtract one, if it is a skill we can use untrained. Looking over the skill list, there isn't much like Bard, so I pick priest. We will attempt to make a bird-people homeworld that uses birdsong as its main form of worship, later. quote:Priest quote:Culture quote:Leadership quote:Persuade quote:Religion Checking out our Psychic Training packages, I pick… quote:Rogue Psychic quote:Combat quote:Stealth So we are decent at telling people what to do, know the songs of our people, ok with the weapons appropriate to our class, and can flap around silently like an owl.  So what is bird-bard-world like? We'll skip generating the sector that the homeworld is in, but know that in a hex grid ten high by eight wide, there would be 1d10+20 stars, each with at least one "interesting" world. The world creation chapter gives us a lot of tables to roll 2d6 on. code:quote:Breathable mix atmospheres can support human life without additional equipment or gengineered modification. Any world that has a human population in the millions or more almost certainly has a breathable mix atmosphere. code:quote:Warm worlds come in two main flavors, depending on the prevalence of water. “Desert worlds” are hot enough or arid enough to be deprived of most surface water. Any life on such a planet has to be capable of extracting water from living prey, air currents or moisture supplies deep underground. Humans can survive on warm worlds without more than appropriate clothing, but desert-world humans must learn sophisticated techniques of water prospecting and well-drilling in order to maintain their agricultural systems. Warfare often revolves around these water systems. code:quote:Human-miscible biospheres are those in which some substantial portion of the native life is biologically compatible with human nutritional needs. The local plants and animals may not be tasty or terribly nourishing, but they can support life without the serious importation of Terran crop seeds and livestock. code:quote:Outposts are rarely composed of more than a few hundred or few thousand colonists at the most. Outposts are either very new colonies that have not have the requisite time to grow or they are uncolonized worlds that just happen to have a naval or corporate base on the surface. code:quote:Tech level 4 worlds are the most common in human space, and their technical expertise is the baseline for modern post-Silence “postech”. These worlds can create spike drives rated up to drive-3, fusion power plants, grav vehicles, simple energy weapons, and medicines that extend human life to a hundred years of vigorous good health. They can manage sophisticated gengineering on simple life forms, and some tech level 4 worlds have even attempted to improve the genetic structures of human life itself. These attempts have yet to produce results without severe drawbacks, but some such worlds remain populated by altered humanity designed to cope with local conditions more perfectly than baseline humans. code: code: We are supposed to combine those two, and pick about three things from each of the categories listed. We don't need to do that here, but I can see a world forming as a low-population outpost, the last of the bird-people to survive their great migration, with a strict caste system where some birds live in fear of their psychic-religious leaders, but, with the help of underground rogue psychics, they are beginning to fight back.  Easy! code: English, Birdese, and Lizardish, the language of the species of the next planet over from Birdlandia.  code:We pick up a leather jacket (AC 7, Cost 10) for armor, since better things are heavy, or expensive. We are terrible at weapons until we can get our hands on some psitech, so we look for a big pistol. On the off chance we hit, we want to ruin our target's day. Energy weapons get a +1 to hit, which will at least cancel our unskilled penalty, so we go with the Thermal Pistol (2d6 damage, 25/50m range, 5 shots, 300 cost). As you can already see, with our 3 HP, we would probably be vaporized by a shot from our own gun. Combat in SWoN is mean. We spend the rest of our money on some adventuring type gear, a vacc suit, a survival kit, a portabox, and some extra batteries.  We know we have 2 power points, but what can we use them on? We get two powers to start, one of which must be declared as our primary discipline, the other can be from any. When we get new powers, we have to pick them up linearly, which we will do automatically with our primary discipline. Each power uses a number of points to activate ((2*level)-1), or, we can permanently spend that cost to master a power, and then it costs 0 from there. But, we have to master them in order too, so there is no levelling up to level 5 where the good powers are and then mastering them without 1-4. We can also "torch" if we run out of power points. quote:Each round that a psychic torches, he must roll 1d10. On a result of 1-4, he permanently loses one point of Constitution. A result of 5-8 causes the permanent loss of a point of Wisdom, and a result of 9 or 10 means the energy discharge did no lasting harm to his neural tissues. If Constitution drops below 3, he dies, and if Wisdom drops below 3, he becomes incurably and dangerously insane. Powers are broken into Biopsioncs; which is mainly healing, Metapsionics; which messes with other psionic powers, Precognition; which is all about reading the future and getting bonuses for knowing it, Telekinesis; or moving poo poo, Telepathy; or Professor-X'ing, and Teleportation; aka Nightcrawlering. Knowing the future sounds cool, and will probably help keep us alive, so we take that as our primary. We are pretty weak and might want to lift things, so Telekinesis level 1 sounds good too. Our two starting powers are:   And that's it! Dagon fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Feb 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
The merits of a game system's character creation should be measured by how easy it is to make a bird bard.
NO LISTEN TO ME fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Feb 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 21:25
|
|
|
Okay time for Bird Lady Bard Step 1 Concept. Already said Bird Lady Bard. Step 2 Starting Scores. Okay the stats that can be raised while in the Bard class are Charisma, Fellowship and Dexterity. So those are probably her most important. Charisma and Fellowship both make a lot of sense. To me so does Intelligence. So I am thinking Social, Mental, Physical. The exact opposite of the treant monk. For physical lets put both points into Dexterity, gives her some ability to avoid blows, and well leaves her frail and kind of sickly. She will need to avoid getting hit, but she should be much harder to hit than the treant. For Social we need at least 3 Charisma, but lets go for 4 by putting 3 points into it, 2 points into Fellowship to get the above average 3, and the last point into Composure to get an average Composure of 2. For Mental we have 4 points to distribute. Willpower and Wisdom are both important in their own ways, but Intelligence seems to fit the knowledgeable Bard ideal better. This is probably the hardest choice to make. I start by putting 1 dot into each of the three, then after some thought I put the last into Willpower, for a reason you will see in a moment. Now we need to pick skills. A bard is probably going to be a master of Social skills. Besides we need at least 3 dots in Common Lore and 1 dot in Performer to get Bard 1. We will also eventually need to speak 5 or more languages to get Bard 4 though that is a long way off. I think I will prioritize them with Social, Mental and Physical again. They all start at 0, cannot be raised at this point beyond 3, and we get 8 dots for Social, 6 dots for Mental and 4 dots for Physical. Lets start with Mental, because it is the top group in my little sheet. We need 3 dots in Common Lore, that uses half our Mental dots and we do that first. For the other 3 dots well lots of things I would want to put them in, but we may need Arcana for our Magic Schools so instead we will put 3 dots into that. Physical will be a bit difficult. We probably need at least 1 dot in Weaponry in case we decide to use our Sword Skills. Acrobatics would be good, especially with our wings, so I put 2 dots into that, I debate putting a point into stealth. But ultimately decide to put a 2nd dot into Weaponry so she is a little better at using a rapier or something. And I wish I had more points here. Finally our Social Skills. We need some Performer, and as a Bard we probably want it as high as possible. So lets put the full 3 dots into Performer. Charm, Deceive, Intimidation and Persuasion all seems like good skills to get. So 1 dot into each, but that leaves us with only 1 dot left. I put the last into Persuasion. Then I debate it for awhile and decide to take the point out of Intimidation, we are more of a Charmer than a thug. And put that point into Charm to get that to 2 dots. Step 3 Race. Well we want to be a Bird Lady, so really we are going to be a kenku. code:Step 4 Now we choose Exaltation. Well I wasn't given an exaltation to pick. So I look at the options. Paragon is nice, it would give +1 to Wisdom. Would have some bonus to rolls occasionally etc. But then I look at Atlantean. Atlantean gets a free rank in a magic school, doesn't even have to be in one our class grants us, but this way I could still get a rank in one or the other of Enchantment or Illusion without spending xp. Atlantean also lets one treat all skills as Basic, and gets a bonus language which means we can get to five languages. Also can choose 3 skills that are allowed to go up to 6 dots and get a free specialty in each of those 3. So Atlantean seems perfect. code:For our 3 skills lets go Performer, since that is really what we want to focus on an there may be Syrneth instruments or playing styles. There are definitely Syrneth weapons so lets go Weaponry. And since the Syrneth were big on magic, and our exaltation is all about, and our class gets two magic schools, lets go Arcana for the last. Also since Performer is at 4 I need to figure out another specialty for that. Step 5 Class! Well we want to be a Bard so we are going Minstrel. code:Step 6 Backgrounds. For our Kenku Bard I am thinking 3 dots in Fame, 3 in Contacts, and 1 in Allies. She is a bard, she is fairly famous, she knows a number of people in the right places and how to contact even more, and she has an ally of comparable power. Step 7 Alignment. There are a number that could work for a Kenku Bard, and no Raven Queen despite having Raven in the name would not fit. In the end I decided on Slaanesh, because bards are often known for excess and personal enjoyment. Step 8 Experience! code:** You can only buy Assets and new Background dots at character creation. Background dots above 3 cost double code:First thing first lets grab Weapon Prof (Melee 2) for 100 xp. This means we are proficient with Fencing weapons. Unfortunately Bards do not get access to the feat that would include Synerth weapons, may need to multiclass if we ever expect to use that free specialty, or maybe I should go back and put it in another skill? Actually you know what? Scratch that. Lets grab the Academy asset for 100 xp instead. This gives us two Weapon Proficencies. We grab Weapon Prof (Melee 2) and Weapon Prof (Melee 3), same xp but twice the proficiency. Now we are proficient with Syrnerth. Between Academy and the free Speak Language (Syrneth) we got from Atlantean we 2/5 the way through Minstrel. Lets say she is a pretty bird, so lets grab the Appearance asset for 100 xp. May add +2k0 to all social rolls where her good looks might come into play. There is rarely a reason not to take Veteran o'the Wheel, for 100 xp, if you are willing to risk your SM's wrath, or getting free hindrances. Let's put the free dot in characteristics in Charisma, raising it to 5 now. For the free dot in a skill lets go for Performer again, raising that to 5 as well. At this point we would be maxed out in both, except that we chose Performer for one of our three Atlantean skills, so it can actually still be raised once more later on to 6. Either way we are a master Performer. Too bad Performer uses Fellowship not Charisma. Oh well that gives us something to work toward. Well we have 300 xp left, and we just so happen to have 3 more feats required for finshing Minstrel. So lets grab them. That is Lucky, Jack of All Trades, and Peer (Any). Jack of All Trades which allows us to attempt Advanced skills with no ranks just like basic skills, which we already could do from Atlantean, and if you have zero ranks in a basic skill get +1k0 when using that skill. Lucky is probably Luck, guess they missed that in editing, and allows you to reroll any one die per day. Peer is a feat that can be taken multiple times with a different group each time. Lets pick Nobility, since a bard likely plays for them, and we get +2k0 to Charm, Persuasion and Command rolls with that group. We have now met all the prerequisites to finish the class. Now we can stay in the class to purchase skills, characteristics, sword and magic schools that the class has. Or we can move on. But upon looking at Bard level 2 I see we require Common Lore 4. And we don't have that, so perhaps we should get that before finishing this level. We can grab up to two Hindrances for a total of 200 xp letting me get another two feats. Most of these Hindrances don't feel right for a Kenku Bard. But Impulsive? That sounds like that would work. For the other lets say Wanted. She did something someone didn't approve of, perhaps she seduced the wrong person, or charmed her way into learning state secrets. Whatever the case she is has gotten her the death penalty in a number of Crystal Spheres and she is being hunted by bounty hunters. This gives us another 200 xp. We spend 150 of that on getting a 4th dot in Common Lore. That leaves us with 50 xp. Lets spend that last 50 xp on getting a second dot of Deceive. Step 9 Equipment I will pick Water. This gives me a Shotgun OR Autopistol OR Laspistol, Fencing Sword, Mesh Vest, Street Clothes (Common quality clothing), Chrono, and a flask of brandy. For my choice I will go with the Laspistol though we aren't yet proficient. Step 9 Finishing Touches We have 2 Hero Points Our Size is 3. Our Static Defense is 19. Our Hit points are 8. Our Mental Defense is 15. Our Resove is 5. Our Speed is 4. Our Resilience 2 Before finishing I should probably take care of my free dot in a Magic School. I choose Enchantment and I get a free 1st level Enchantment spell, I choose Charm Person. And now here she is! code:code:code:code:code:code:code:code:code:code:
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 21:49
|
|
|
 Whoops! Forget part of Section one Determine the character's Social Standing... Initial Skill Points. The player rolls 1d10 and add their Initial Skill Point Modifier (+1 in this case and consults the Initial Skill Skill Points Table I roll a 9 +1 = 10. Checking the Table gives my new character 5 Initial Skill Points  Maxed out...sort of.Now on to Part Two Character Development... Choose Fields of Study for the character. There are seven fields of study. Theoretical science, applied science, business, the humanities, the mind, the body, and the military. It costs 1 Study Point (from Step 2) per field of study. Except for Mind which costs 2. Also you can spend 2 (or 4 for mind0 to take a given field of study twice. Also if Mind is selected you cannot take business or military. There is also a General list which does not require Study Points to take. Going with the psychic theme that has been started, I'm going to take mind twice with my 4 Study Points. Choose initial skills for the character. The mind allows me to spend my initial points on these skills. Psionic Boost, Psionic Communication, Life Sense. The general list gives me access to Streetwise, laser/stun pistol, gambling, blades, ground vehicles, urban (only if the character already has urban), and home environ. A maximum of 1 point can be spent per skill out of the Initial Skill Points. I'm going to put 1 into each of the three Psy skills, 1 in Streetwise, and one in gambling Determine the character's 9 Characteristic Ratings. "The player determines his character's 9 characteristics one at a time, by using the Characteristic Modifier Chart and the Characteristic Generation Table. The Characteristic Modifier Chart is used to calculate the effect of the character's potentials and fields of study on each characteristic. The Characteristic Generation Table is used to find the actual rating of each characteristic. More table based fun! For each characteristic, the player completes the following steps: 1. Add together all numbers listed for the characteristic on the Modifier Chart that correspond to the fields of study undertaken by the character. If a given field was studied twice, double the corresponding number. Note that every character is considered to have undertaken the general field of study and may add its number to the total. Let's do this... The 9 Stats are STRENGTH, ENDURANCE, DEXTERITY, AGILITY, INTELLIGENCE, MENTAL POWER, LEADERSHIP, EMPATHY, AND AGGRESSION. General gives a base of 1 to the first 8 Stats. Study of the mind gives a 2 to ENDURANCE, a 4 to INTELLIGENCE, a 6 to MENTAL POWER, a 4 to EMPATHY and a -25 to AGGRESSION. Doubled for studying mind twice gives us 4, 8, 12, 8, and -50 and adding the 1 from general gives us a 1, 5, 1, 1, 9, 13, 1, 9, -50. 2. Check the potential section of the chart to find which potential affects the characteristic and multiply the total determined in Step 1 by the Potential Multiplier. If two potentials affect the characteristic, multiply the total by the first Potential Multiplier and then multiply this product by the second Potential Multiplier. The Potential Multipliers are linked to the first 8 stats like this STRENGTH(physique, coordination), ENDURANCE(physique), DEXTERITY(coordination, intellect), AGILITY(physique, coordination), INTELLIGENCE(intellect), MENTAL POWER(intellect), LEADERSHIP(intellect, social background), EMPATHY(intellect). Now our 1, 5, 1, 1, 9, 13, 1, 9, -50 from before is 4, 10, 6, 4, 18, 39, 3, 18, -50. 3. Roll percentile dice and add the final product derived in Step 2 to the dice result. Locate this modified result on the Characteristic Generation Table to find the rating for the characteristic. Mark the rating on the Character Record. Important: If an Agility Rating of less than 5 is received at this time, it is considered a 5. The Mental Power Rating is divided by 2 (rounding fractions down) before being noted on the Character Record. The Mental Power Rating may range from 0 to 6. This procedure is conducted nine times when generating a character — once for each characteristic. Note that no potentials affect the aggression characteristic. The modifiers listed under aggression on the Modifier Chart are simply added to (or subtracted from) the characteristic generation dice result, as appropriate. Okay, rolls are 52, 70, 85, 48, 63, 96, 03, 41, 38. Add the modifiers from the last part...56, 80, 91, 52, 81, 138, 09, 56, -28. Going to the handy table and applying the rules gives the character-- STRENGTH(5), ENDURANCE(6), DEXTERITY(7), AGILITY(5), INTELLIGENCE(6), MENTAL POWER(5) it was halved from 11, LEADERSHIP(2), EMPATHY(5), and AGGRESSION(1). Stat range is from 1-12 but getting a 12 requires a modified 140 or more. This is possible, just difficult. And that's it for Part 2.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 21:57
|
|
|
Alright, I'm going to try to make a character for a bunch of different systems that are about getting into fights. I will start with the easiest and quickest one, Final Stand. The game is available for free online on the author's website, here. Step 1: Pick a name. You can roll your name using some dice, and so Lighting Wong is born. Step 2: Pick a stereotype. There's a bunch of those, and they dictate how you're going to gain bonus points when roleplaying. Also, they each have a small bonus you can use in a fight. They're stereotypes from fighting games/movies. A few of my favorites include the Mysterious Stranger, who gets points for making an absurd revelation each game, such as revealing he's the father of another character. There's the Reformed Villain who gets to be an rear end in a top hat to everyone. There's also the Cheeky Siblings, which allows you to play two characters at once. It has no mechanical benefits, your stats just represent two characters, which is pretty cool because this game involves a lot of descriptions about how you're beating up everyone. For the purpose of this character creation I'll be picking the Grizzled Soldier, who's like Solid Snake basically. His special technique is that he can do extra damage when he successfully defends against a move. Step 3: Pick a style. Styles are the first part of your move list, and also tell you how much Energy(HP) and Action(Speed) you have. The more Actions, the more moves you'll be able to perform in one round. There's punch, kick and throw moves in this game, and you can pick a style that contains moves from the style you want to play. I want to be a master of CQC, so I'll pick the Lethal style, which gives me 6 Energy, 7 Action, and two moves: Assassin's strike requires 4 Punch moves and does 8 damage. It's the most powerful punch move in the game, but also the more expensive. Choke Hold requires 1 Throw move and does 2 damage. Simple and effective. Step 4: Pick a form. Same as the style, basically, but forms will give you a lot less Action and a lot more Energy, as well as giving you three moves. I'll pick the Mantis form, which gives me 12 Energy and 3 Action. It also gives me these moves: Crippling Hold requires 2 Throw moves, does 5 damage and makes the opponent lose one of their moves. Praying Hands requires 2 Punch moves and does 4 damage Crushing Grasp requires 1 Throw move and does 3 damage. Step 5: Skills. There's not much to do here. Each archetype, style and form also includes two skills. Just add up the skills and you'll have a rating from 1 to 3. Skills don't matter too much in this game. Grizzled Soldier gives me the skills Independence and Intrusion, Lethal gives me Intrusion and Persuasion, and Mantis gives me Intrusion and Perception. Adding up my skills, I have Intrusion 3, Independence 1, Persuasion 1, Perception 1. What this means is that I'm able to sneak into any type of place with no problem, but if I try to persuade someone I'll have some difficulties. And that's it, the character is complete! Lighting Wong Energy: 18 Action: 10 Skills Intrusion 3 Independence 1 Persuasion 1 Perception 1 Special Moves Crippling Hold Praying Hands Crushing Grasp Assassin's strike Choke Hold Is this character good? It's not great. It has some quick moves which is always a plus, but no Kick moves at all. Kicks are the most damaging move, but they're harder to perform and can only be dodged by spending Kick actions. What this means is that if I want to be able to defend against kick attacks, I'll need to assign some of my Actions to kicks, even though I have no special moves that require kicks. It's not necessarily a bad thing though, because I should be able to land a lot of quick Punch and Throw moves to chip away at my opponent's energy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
 Lorona the Were-Eagle Elf, Part 1.3 Okay, so last time we did a whole bunch of math whilst loving around with Powers & Perils's weird obsession with complex formulas for derived stats. Why complex? Realism, clearly, which is why my wispy elf can carry half her body weight without being encumbered and press about 5 times that. We got through some of the easy poo poo. (Yes. That was the easy poo poo.) Now for Steps 10+ 10) Section 1.4 Common Knowledge. Select the Common Knowledge that is appropriate for your Character's race. If he is Human, make the selections, consulting section 2 as necessary, to define this knowledge. We've been here before. Now to do the math I warned you about. Elves have the following skills: A) Mana Sensing MEL2, EL dependent on the Character. We know the MEL. The EL is determined as if I had an Innate Power, which is calculated in the Special Attributes section. The formula - unhelpfully not-repeated here is my (W+Em)/20, rounded down 41+19 = 60/20 = 3. I have an EL (that's specific skill in casting this spell) of 3. Which is actually fair; spell EL's are expensive to increase. So I look up the spell ... and loving A, it's not a spell. It's another one of those Special Attributes, so I go back there and find out it's this:  All these numbers mean that I'll use Line 2 on the Magic Table for casting, deduct 6 from my roll and add my target's MDV. B) The ability to hide invisibly in any forest. The EL equals W+Em or 80, whichever is less. The EL is used to determine the chance that they are not observed if the person that they are hiding from is aware that something is present. Success indicates that they remain hidden. Any other result means that their presence is discovered. NOTE — This skill is primarily useful against creatures whose primary sense, for observing their environment, is sight. Where his is not the case, or where magic is used to detect the Elf, the skill is relatively useless. Easy formula. 60, here. C) EL80 in the tongue of the Elf Sidh. EL60 in the tongue of the Faerry Sidh. If the Elf is a trained magician, EL80 in the tongue of the Sidh. Done. D) Innate ability to enter the Upper and Lower Worlds. Determine EL based on the Elf’s characteristics. MEL equals the Elf’s MEL as a magic-user, or 2, whichever is higher. We know this. EL3. MEL 2 for now. As to what "entering the upper and lower worlds" means ...  It has something to do with the really neat but poorly-explained cosmology of Powers & Perils. The Lower World is kind of like Faerie, and the Upper World is kind of like the D&Dish Outer Planes, with regions dedicated to alignments.E) The maximum EL currently possible in Forest Survival. OK. Now we get to play with P&P Skills. Every Skill has a Cost to Learn, a Starting EL, a Cost per Increase, and a Maximum EL. Remember that EL is short for "expertise level" - more or less your skill rank, but some skills are kind of percentages and some aren't. Easy-peasy, right?   That last bit is my Maximum EL in Survival. For me, this is 4. F) The ability to read the intent of others, as for Empathic Power. Treat as an Innate Power. The EL equals Em/10 rounded down. Okay, so 1. That's it for that section. Could've been worse. Oh, and what do you know? It's about to. Get worse, that is. Because now I stop the normal Character Creation steps and hop over to the Magic-User creation steps. First off, I had 360 Expertise Points. I blow 150 of these right away to try and become a Shaman. This isn't an automatic thing; I need to make a roll to see if I'm accepted. That's equal to Maximum Will + Native Empathy x2. My Maximum Will is 84, and my Native Empathy is 12 ... so forget that, I automatically pass initiation and become a Shaman. First, I need to pick a Tonah (totem) animal. There's nothing which technically requires me to take Eagle as my Tonah, and it'd be kind of hilarious for Eagles to treat me as their Tonah and yet be a shaman of swamp buffalo or something...  ... but we'll keep it simple and say an Eagle is my Tonah animal. So what do I get, then?  A) The Shaman makes his first drum. This drum is required in casting any Shamanic Magic, other than powers gained from a Tonah tie. Good. I have a drum now. B) The maximum EL currently possible as a Healer and a starting EL as a Herbalist. Wow; that's a lot actually. My maximum EL as a Healer is a rather pathetic 3, depending as it does on my low Intelligence. Still, that would have cost me way more than 150 points already. C) The Shaman starts with 1D3* Natural Magic materials, from the Plant, Herbs and Liquors table in Book Four. He will have 2D6 doses of each material that he has. Now, contrary to what you might think, 1D3* isn't 1D3 and a footnote. Nope; it's a separate die type. You roll 1d6; a 1-3 = 1, 3-4 = 2, 6 = 3. My d6 comes up a 4, so I get two of them. And... that's back to the magic item tables. I have another magic item TBD, so let's hold that thought and move on for now. D) If the Shaman rolls less than or equal to his Current Empathy on D100, an animal of his Tonah’s species is with him. This animal is treated as a pet, as for the Special Event pet. It should be treated by the Shaman as a friend and Personal Contact. 1d% yields me ... a 1?! Holy cow, looks like I have a buddy animal. I have an eagle friend. It knows 1D6+4 commands. So long as it knows, "Kill!" and "Fetch arrows!" we'll get along just fine. E) Once a Shaman is attuned to the source of his magical powers, his use of the power becomes almost innate. To reflect this, all Shamans may add their EL in the Orient Self spell to their Casting Speed with all other Shamanic spells. The increase gained in this way may not be used to effect the casting speed of the Orient Self spell and may not be used to more than double the Casting Speed of his other Shamanic spells. OK, good to know. Orient Self is an important spell. I will treat it importantly. Are we done? gently caress no, this is Powers & Perils! 4.4.2.1 The Tonah A Tonah is the guardian spirit of a specific species of animal. During his apprenticeship, the Shaman is tied to the essence of a specific Tonah in a bond of brotherhood. This alliance grants the Shaman the following benefits: A) All animals that encounter the Shaman sense him to be a member of the species that his Tonah is a guardian of. They will react to him as such. No worries here; as a shape-changer they actually think I'm one of their Tonah, myself. B) The Shaman’s MDV equals his MDV + the MDV of an average individual of the species that his Tonah guards. Pre-revision, Eagles had an MDV of 2. Post-revision, it's 4. Imma powergame this poo poo, so my MDV is now 13, I think? Maybe. C) The Shaman can take the shape of the animal that his Tonah guards, as for the Shape Changing Special Attribute in Book One. D) The Shaman, regardless of the form that he is in, can communicate with any member of the species that his Tonah guards or any Shaman whose Tonah guards the same species, i.e. he speaks the tongue of that animal species. E) The Shaman has the Animal Power Special Attribute, see Book One, for the species that his Tonah guards.  gee, thanks. So that Special Attribute I was all pumped about, I'd get anyway? Wow.F) The Shaman can summon animals of his Tonah’s species at 1/2 normal cost, rounded up. He will double his normal EL modifier when he does so. If the Shaman has not learned Summoning, he may summon the animals of this species at an EL of 0. If Summoning is learned, his EL for these animals will be one EL higher than his current EL in Summoning. The Referee should allow the Player to choose the animal species that he wishes to ally with. It must be an animal, listed under Animals in Book Three. It may not be any other creature. Okeydokey. Then there's some restrictions - I can only cast Shamanic magic spells, I'm of Elder alignment, and if I ever attack an Eagle I'm immediately defrocked of my Alright, that's enough for today. Good news, everyone, I'd say we're about halfway done!
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
CHaKKaWaKka posted:Alright, I'm going to try to make a character for a bunch of different systems that are about getting into fights. I will start with the easiest and quickest one, Final Stand. Thank you for this. I'd never heard of Final Stand before, and now I'm going to be running a kung fu movie one shot pretty soon with it. As in, within the hour.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2014 23:55
|
|
|
I was just grabbing my Nobilis book to generate a bird bard character when my eye happened to fall on a game I've never had a chance to play but would love to (one day, when I have the time): Everway. A bit of background: Everway was a roleplaying game designed by industry legend Jonathan Tweet and released by Wizards of the Coast around 1996, at which time it bombed. The game's tagline is 'visionary roleplaying' - which was supposed to mean visionary in the sense of the way you play the game, not how it was designed, but it was ahead of its time in countless ways. Everway is diceless. Characters have four numerical stats, the power level is high, and the game revolves around travelling between realms and planes and... doing stuff. It's mostly about the travelling. If you like to read about other people's games, Dave Brookshaw of nMage fame wrote up his Everway campaign here and it's a fantastic read. But I digress. The fancy bit about Everway is that task resolution is done by drawing cards from a special deck ("the Fortune Deck") and interpreting the image you see. For example, Summer:  If drawn the right way up it represents Energy: If your character was doing something athletic, you would do well. If they were attempting to meditate it might not work out. Conversely if you draw it inverted it shows Exhaustion. Your character would fail at athleticism. If trying to meditate, they would fall asleep or something. Yes, that means that if you're meditating and draw this card you're boned no matter which way up it is. That's the way it plays out. But that's all a digression. We're here to create a bird bard. Stage 1: The Vision The first step of the vision stage is to come up with the premise of the quest - either as a group or when it's handed to you by the GM. For the purposes of this character I'm going to say the quest is 'go on a long journey, fetch the McGuffin, defeat the evil wizard'. The second step is where it gets interesting. The game comes with two special decks of cards: the Fortune Deck, mentioned above, for task resolution; and the Vision Deck, much larger, for the creation of characters, worlds, quests... anything which needs creating. For this step of character generation you're supposed to look through the deck and select five cards that speak to you - I think these days I'd just let people grab images from the internet, but here and now we're doing it the official way. In no particular order, I select these:  Some sort of evil machine, a court of animal-people, some drum-dancing, a phoenix, and what I think might be a lesbian couple or maybe sisters or something. Side note: Everway's art is well-distributed among ethnicities, which makes it practically loving unique as far as I can tell, even almost 20 years later. Anyway, I don't have to know exactly what those cards mean just yet but I've got some vague ideas. Our bird-woman is from a world of anthros, as seen in the anthro picture. She plays the tabor, or some other sort of portable drum, and favours the sort of wild dancing seen in the dancing pic. The machine is an enemy of hers, although I'm not sure what it actually is. The phoenix is bird-like, but I don't know what greater significance it might have, and I have no idea what those women are about. Step three of the vision stage is the introduction, where you're supposed to bandy some basic questions around with the other characters. (An idea later used to great effect in the *World games.) Since I'm doing all this by myself I'm just going to introduce our character as Singer, a mostly humanoid woman with a birdlike head. She plays the drums and dances with abandon. (Names in Everway are mostly just common words describing the person or place they attach to, hence 'Singer'.) Stage 2: Identity The first step of the identity stage is choosing your character's name. Yes, after introducing them, I don't know. Moving on... The second step of the identity stage is choosing a Motive: why is Singer wandering the spheres? There are seven choices, with a 'make up your own' option tacked on the end. The seven options are Mystery, Wanderlust, Knowledge, Beauty, Conquest, Authority and Adversity. For Singer I'm going to pick Beauty. She walks the spheres in search of cool poo poo, and not even to steal it: just to see it, and know that it's there and that it's cool. The next few stages are virtue, fault and fate. Each of these is selected from the Fortune Deck to represent (respectively) a special talent, a special weakness, and the central conflict of the character's existence. For Singer I choose these:  Her virtue is Inspiration, representing creativity. When it comes to thinking up new stuff, she's gifted. Her fault is The Eagle inverted, representing thoughtlessness. She never really bothers to plan anything, preferring to wing it. (Bird pun unintentional.) Her fate is The Fool, and the conflict between freedom and lack of connection. Is she free, or is she just incapable of commitment? We'll find out in game. Stage 3: Powers Much like Nobilis, Everway uses a pool of character points that must be divided between special powers, basic stats, and magic. We've got 20 to spend, and the book doesn't recommend dropping more than 6 on powers or it'll make your base stats really low. It's good advice. Anyway, first of all every hero gets a free power - something minor but useful: Bird Tongue is right there on the list of examples, so we'll have that. Singer can talk to birds. Other powers cost 1-3 character points depending on whether or not they are frequent, major, or versatile. Again swiping a sample power from the book Magical Singing allows Singer to influence the emotions of an audience with her songs. This is classed as infrequent, minor and versatile, for a total of 1 point. Infrequent just means it won't sway the course of the adventure very often; minor is because the ability to sway an audience is less useful than the ability to, say, shout down walls; and versatile is because any sort of emotion or emotional effect can be created. We'll also give Singer a nice set of wings and the ability to fly: this will be frequent and major, but not versatile, for a total of 2 points. Stage 4: Elements The basic stats in Everway are named after the four elements. Air covers cleverness, energy, and the ability to put your thoughts into words. Fire is action, energy, and active power. (It's a prime stat for fightan mans). Earth is might, stamina, integrity, and passive power. Water is all about feelings, stealth, and thinking deep thoughts. Buying stats comes from our pool of 17 remaining points. A score of 3 is considered average for a person, and 5 is considered average for a hero. A score of 7+ in something is a notable strength. For Singer I pick up Fire 3, Earth 2, Air 5 and Water 5. This makes her remarkably intelligent and sensitive to both emotions and magical energies, but she can only hold her own in a fight against one or two normal dudes - and any sort of solid hit, poison, or other trauma will leave her in a heap on the floor. (Observant readers will note that I've still got 2 points to spend - they're going on magic in the next step.) Characters also get a free specialty in every stat. It's basically a free +1 to your stat in a narrow set of circumstances. Singer's specialties will be Flight in Air, Recovery in Fire (thank you phoenix card for that inspiration), Stamina in Earth and Music in Water. Two of those specialties bear a little more examination, because they're what's known as 'cross-specialties' - they let you do something that would normally be the purview of one stat, with another. Recovery, for example, would normally come under Earth, but because of Singer's phoenix symbolism she can do it with her Fire + 1 instead. Likewise Flight would normally be the sort of physical exertion covered by Fire but because of the specialty Singer uses her Air + 1, which makes her way better at it. Stage 5: Magic I wouldn't normally do this stage, because magic in Everyway sucks. Basically, unless you're going to sink at least 6-7 points you will always be better off spending those points on more attributes - and you'll rarely get better than an even trade. But since I'm demonstrating chargen for you lot, I'll bite the bullet and pick up some limited wizardry for our bird bard. I don't think any of the sample magics seem right for a bardic type - with the possible exception of Power Words - so I'm going to create a new one. Illusions, linked to Water. By the book a level of 2 in a given kind of magic makes her a "Weak Mage": she can cast cantrips, like minor obvious phantasms, and "a decent spell or two". Other level 2 magics include such earth-shaking powers as commanding peaceful domestic animals or making squirrels more energetic, so I figure level 2 Illusion covers brief distractions and minor changes in appearance that can function as a crappy disguise incapable of fooling any but the dullest observers. I told you Everway magic sucks. Stage 6: Questions This is the part where all the players ask each other questions about their characters, to be answered IC or OOC as appropriate. Again, since I'm doing this by myself I'm not going to do this bit, but it's where you'd firm up ideas like 'what the hell is that machine thing, anyway?' or 'is Singer related to phoenixes, or is it more of a symbolic link?' and stuff like that. Done! And that's Singer, a bird-woman bard with wings, magic songs, and some terrible illusion magic. She's a social juggernaut, as bards should be, but pretty hopeless in a stand-up fight. She'll spend a decent chunk of her adventuring career walking the line between freedom and fecklessness, and dealing with some sort of evil machine.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 00:55
|
|
|
No birds this time... Linked to the F&F review, for more information I kind of like this game, but I get why a lot of people don’t. It is pretty pure distilled John Wick smug rear end in a top hat GM. Still, if you can make it past his writing style, I think it makes a good game for noble intrigue, and the domain management stuff is neat too.  quote:Here’s where we begin, with who your character was before the very first game. Her mother and father, siblings (if any), the House she was born under… all of these are elements of your character’s past. code:code:quote:The Elk are a shunned House, but their banner has not yet been veiled. Once the most powerful House, the Blooded of the Elk were nearly stripped of their lands and titles. If not for the precious favors they traded to keep their status, the Elk would be no more. Now, their banner sits half-veiled in the Senate, a symbol of their shame. But they are still one of the most powerful Houses, masters of politics and intrigue. Moving their influences from sight, they are the most subtle manipulators, regaining their Strength and glory one maneuver at a time. The virtue of the Elk is inguena: “cunning.” To plot, to plan, and to execute. code:code:code:code:Names are important, we are told, and our family name being of the Elk is "Steele" meaning "I have never surrendered." Next is our secret name, which we need to keep secret so sorcerers don't use it for magic. I randomly pick one from the list at the end of the chapter, coming up with "Abazai" meaning "the cherry blossoms fall." Last, our public name, which we will be referred to by: "Dosajee" from the same list, meaning, "in the Suaven I trust." Dosajee Abazai Steele. code:quote:It’s true. Your character is probably married. code:code:code:code:Why does this matter? Our spouse can be an Aspect that we can tag for mechanical advantages, and, in the realm management stuff, our spouse can take actions - basically doing stuff for us at home while we are off socializing or adventuring or whatever. That is it for the random stuff. So far, Baroness Dosajee Abazai Steele, House of the Elk, is a married 11 year old, youngest of 5 children. Dosajee sounds feminine in my brain so a she she is.  Everyone has six Virtues, one of which is their weakness. quote:BEAR’S STRENGTH With "the cherry blossoms fall" and "in the Suaven I trust" as the meanings of our character name, I try to pick stats appropriately. 4 to Wisdom, 3 to Courage and Beauty, 2 to Cunning and Prowess, and Strength as our weakness. Cunning gets bumped up to a 3 since we are of the Elk. Baroness Dosajee Abazai Steele, House of the Elk Strength: weakness Cunning: 3 Wisdom: 4 Courage: 3 Beauty: 3 Prowess: 2  Phases are a way to create Aspects and Contacts based on your character's history. The older you are, the more of each you get, but as you get to the Autumn phase and beyond, you get Solace Aspects which are side effects of getting old. Since we are still in our Spring, we get 2 Aspects and 1 Contact. Aspects should be familiar to anyone who knows FATE: quote:Aspects are words, phrases or even quotes that help define your character. They are the keywords you use to describe not only who your character is, but what your character means. Aspects can make the difference between a good character and a great character. I skip ahead to the aspects chapter here, because it has a bunch of samples. If I was invested in actually playing this character, I would want to write my own. Instead, we go with: quote:WELL-MANNERED For our single contact, we are supposed to pick another of the players in each phase. We have some sort of connection with them, some back-story to help us conceptualize our characters. Why and how did we meet and become friends? We can spend Style Points later to refresh their aspects, and we can trade easier with them in the domain rules.  Devotions are basically a connection with the Suaven. Suaven are like saints, they are Ven who have passed into Solace, the long sleep-hibernation that Ven do instead of dying. Particularly powerful Suaven have influence on the waking world, and are surrounded by cults. The more a cult member devotes themselves to a Suaven, the better they can communicate with them and get supernatural benefits. We get three points to distribute to the six major Suaven. Each point lets us choose a blessing from the Suaven's house. I choose: quote:Talten Steele: the Iron Heart, Winter’s Promise, the Ruthless. Call upon him when you seek insight into the ways of Politics. quote:Manna Renay: the hearthmother, wardteacher, grand dame. Call upon her when you seek insight into the ways of Etiquette. The blessings we know are: quote:The Vow  This is the fun part of the game, for me. As a Baroness, we of course have land and followers. We start the game with 5 points to spend on Regions and 5 points to spend on Vassals. We own a Domain made up of Provinces (just the one to start), which is in turn made of 10 Regions. Not all of those regions are under our control yet. We own them, but they might be full of monsters or bandits or just undeveloped or unexplored. Two of our ten regions are taken up by our Castle and our Village, which we get for free. Regions get ranked from 1 to 3, and can only have a number of Holdings equal to their rank. Each region also produces a certain type of good, which can be traded or used by certain holdings to make other goods and stuff.  Our Village makes Goods, which have an actual mechanical benefit (banking style points), but we need resources to turn into goods. We declare our five regions as a two Farms, a Shoreline, a Plain, and a Hill. At character creation, we get one of each resource, so 2 Food, 1 Trade, one Wine, and one Lumber ("or" production means we choose), so that we start off our first "Season" with a little resources to use. We also get 5 vassals, which, like Regions, are ranked 1-3. Since we are married, we get our Spouse as a free bonus Vassal! Beyond him, we pick up a Craftsman, Personal Guard, Roadmen, a Sheriff, and Staff. The Craftsman is needed to turn the resources into goods in our Village. The Personal Guard is a 10-pack, and gives us some protection during "Mass Murder" actions, so when someone inevitably hates us and sends a bunch of assassins after this 11 year old, we will have some bodyguards. Roadmen are also in a group of 10, and will help us to stop trouble from brewing in our territory. The Sheriff, like the Roadmen, will help quell trouble, but will provide us with an extra domain action to do it. We don't have to personally order it done, our Sheriff handles it. Our castle Staff prevents trouble in our Castle, and will also help us if we decide to throw a party.  We start with 3 Style Points, which we use to power our Aspects, Devotions, and other things. We also get 5 Bonus points, which we can use to buy stuff like Artifacts, additional Aspects, Contacts, or Devotions, or more Regions and Vassals. We use 1 point to increase one of our Farms to Rank 2, and another 2 points to bring the other to rank 3. Dosajee's fields are fertile, and despite small holdings, we don't need to worry about feeding our retainers. Another point is spent to increase our Staff to Rank 2. We plan on throwing a lot of parties, and want no mistakes from the hired help. The last point we spend to buy an Artifact. quote:Most ven seek Artifacts from the ruins of the sorcerer-kings. Such items give a ven power, prestige and influence. The noble caste finances groups of ven brave enough to dare the ork-haunted ruins, hoping they’ll return with such items. As part of her dower, Dosajee was given a carved crystal skull, that in addition to being priceless, will watch over her, or whatever she tells it to. quote:WATCHFUL 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 01:04
|
|
|
Rulebook Heavily posted:Imagine rolling a fighter and having to forego clothing and shoes for armor. Fun. I guess that handily explains why fighters in the art almost never had any pants.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 03:38
|
|
|
 Shuffle Up and Draw! Let's Make a Character for Deadlands Classic So now we have our values, we need to plug them into our stats. First off, we need to decide on what kind of character to be! Forums Terrorist posted:[...] Also I want to see a Shaman or Blessed, when I ran Deadlands they were the only classes not represented in the group. That reminds me, I've played Hucksters, and a Mad Scientist once, but never a Blessed. So, that settles it, time to make a preacherman. So our stat values are: pre:Ace Hearts 3d12 Jack Dia 2d8 3 Spade 4d6 9 Diamond 2d8 Black Joker /King Dia 2d12 10 Club 1d8 9 Heart 3d8 Queen Heart 3d10 8 Heart 3d6 10 Dia 2d8
So since we're playing a Blessed, Spirit is going to be our prime stat, since our power stat is keyed off that. If we want to be skilled, we also need some good values in the Aptitude Points stats. And if we expect to get in fights, a good Deftness and/or Nimbleness can't hurt. So, how about... pre: Deftness: 1d8
Nimbleness: 4d6
Quickness: 3d6
Strength: 2d8
Vigor: 2d8
Cognition: 1d8
Knowledge: 3d8
Mien: 3d10
Smarts: 2d12
Spirit: 3d12
Grit: 0
Pace: 12
Size: 6
Wind: 20
Aptitude Points: 32
I'll talk about them in the next post, but in the meantime, for anyone with Deadlands experience, what sort of stuff do you wanna see? What should our preacher be good at? What should he be bad at? Besides the Arcane Background: Blessed edge, what else do you think he needs?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 04:01
|
|
|
Oh poo poo! I finally found the rule that forbids elves from becoming Shamans. Looks like Lorona will just have to be an eagle girl. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 04:06
|
|
|
3d6 in order six times, part 2 I got some requests already for some unusual critters, but let's go back to the very first published D&D play-as-monster rules before we dive into the really weird stuff.  Orcs of Thar was the tenth in the Gazetteer series for Basic D&D, and at this point Bruce Heard, the person in charge of the entire Mystara setting, had realized he could write whatever the hell he wanted because no one at TSR gave a flying gently caress about the Basic line. And boy howdy did he ever use that to his advantage. The supplement is basically the comedy episode of D&D supplements, painting the legions of the great Orcus Rex (the king orc, har har) as a weird pisstake of the French Foreign Legion, complete with a crude legionnaire's handbook and a detailed description of how the shamans cure various foot fungi in less than scientific ways. But, crucially, it also introduced a new potential option for Basic characters.  So, let's dive right in! Roll 3d6 six times in order; code: We apply these modifiers based on which race we're playing, of course! We're allowed to shift our scores before applying the modifiers (as we did when we upped Melfina's intelligence score, two-for-one) but that's what we're working with. Gnolls and Bugbears require Strength 13 to play, but Trolls and Ogres need a full 16! Even better, we get to pick our own Prime Requisite! We can choose one of Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom or Dexterity. quote:<Esser-Z> Kobold So much for that Strength advantage. At least we won't get a penalty! However, our dexterity still isn't going to be fantastic, even if I make it a Prime Requisite and pump it. code:code:For other numbers, we are a Kobold and thus small, scaly and agile and have a natural base Armor Class of 7, or 6 with our Dexterity. Not bad for not wearing armor! In fact, armor provides no benefit to us unless it would improve our AC beyond 7; leather armor does nothing for us. This is even more of a limitation than it sounds like, because armor is pretty rare among monsters - most of them don't really need it, and even fewer of them make it with any regularity. Now comes the most curious bit.  Some monsters can start at negative experience points. Trolls in particular start at a full -35.000! This is designed to balance out their starting power, and trolls are pretty powerful compared to a first level character. Balancing in Basic always follows a simple rule: Is it better than the Fighter at combat? Then it gets an XP penalty when setting out, and the fighter eventually overtakes it. Yes, they made special effort towards not making Fighter players feel weak. There was an entire version of D&D that balanced itself around the notion. What a quaint time, the eighties and nineties! As a Kobold we're fine, starting at 0 XP, but... oh, dear. Only a d4 for hit points. At least we'll level ridiculously fast, gaining a full three levels in the time it takes a Thief to gain one - and the Thief is the fastest levelling human character type. We roll a 2 for hit points (ouch) and add our Constitution modifier of +2 to get 4. We're going to need that good armor class. There is no mention at all of saving throws in the actual Gazetteer, but thanks to the tables in the core book we already know the saving throws of a 1 hit die monster: It's the same as that of a first level fighter. that's actually pretty boss. code:We are three feet +1d4 (2) inches tall. I... can't find anything for weight, so I guess we weigh about as much as a tall halfling? 500 coins. I also have to roll for Fitness (skinny, normal, fat) and get 3, which is Normal. Look, the Gazetteers do these "culture" rolls to make you fit in, alright? This supplement is just weird. Then we choose Kobold type.  Why are there weird pseudo-latin names for monsters? I don't know, the mind of Bruce Heard is unfathomable. I guess we're the sleek black-scaled Rapidus. This has no effect on gameplay, it's just descriptive flourishes. Speaking of which, we are Chaotic and we speak Common and Kobold. Done. As a monster, we can't have henchmen. However, we can probably very quickly amass a regiment of Kobolds to do crap for us. In fact, any time we encounter another kobold (or a weak monster, like orcs) that has fewer hit dice than us, we can intimidate it into thinking it's safer to be on our side... permanently! It's just a d20 roll against Charisma, and we need 17 or less to succeed. If we survive and gain a couple of levels, we'll be in business! But for gameplay's sake we can't do this more than once per day. What's that? A Daily Power in a non-4e edition? Get used to these, because there are many others. Weapon Mastery can give you one where you intimidate people with your prowess, for instance. Our total control is also limited by level, though by the time we reach 1500 XP we can command ten kobolds so really, it's not that harsh. Retainers tend to run away (they're subject to monster morale rules, though fortunately our charisma gives henchmen a morale bonus - handy!) and we are actually required to harshly punish all deserters or temporarily lose charisma. Monsters aren't very nice. There's also a kind of pyramid scheme you can pull where instead of directly controlling a horde of Kobolds (you can have 70+ by level nine!), you instead take command of lesser chiefs. And of course, within certain limits (and a lookup on a table), we can eventually do stuff like take command of Ogres and Trolls. By intimidating them. Kobold! As a monster character, we cannot gain Weapon Mastery. We just have Basic proficiency in all weapons we can wield. We can get skills, so I guess we get Wrestling +2 and Intimidate +2, which makes us even better at commanding troops. We could take the unique Kobold skill Escape Artist (sound familiar?) But nah. Alright, so you'll note I picked no background. That's because we have to roll it.  On a 1d20 roll of 1 I belong to a major horde (the 1 through 10 in bold). We do not. Instead we belong to number 16, the Bloody Hands. (When we form our own horde, it will take our name instead and be called the Randy Savages. Yes, this is a rule.) Our Tribal Standing roll comes to a 1d20+2 roll, on which I get 18, and our master is therefore a Minor Chieftain. We're a sorry lot that gets bullied a lot by major tribes and are "volunteered" to do the dangerous and boring stuff pretty much constantly. Which leads to our starting money and equipment. As a minor player, we get 4d6 (13) GP. Randy doesn't own his own weapons, but they are provided in times of war (and then taken away during times of not). On top of that, all equipment we get during said times is defective and awful. On top of that, anything that looks shiny and beautiful is disgusting to us (hello, monster, remember?) so even if we get new equipment we're not likely to actually enjoy using it over a rusty dagger that's clearly seen a lot of use. We can't spend our gold (at best we'll be able to barter with it to some other monster down the line) and have to rely on scavenging stuff from dead enemies, or possibly a handy caravan. And even then...  ...Yeah. Orcs of Thar introduced one of the very first (possibly the first?) piecemeal armor systems, and it works, but again we don't own any so it hardly matters. Aside from an optional awful affliction table, we're done! time to write it all down. 
Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Feb 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 05:45
|
|
|
I'm gonna take a stand here and say that this Basic D&D supplement is head and shoulders above Number Appearing for Dungeon World. That character sheet 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 05:55
|
|
|
That is basically the best character sheet ever.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 06:07
|
|
|
Kellsterik posted:I'm gonna take a stand here and say that this Basic D&D supplement is head and shoulders above Number Appearing for Dungeon World. That character sheet Orcs of Thar was amazing in so many ways, yeah. It had I think the first "class as skill set" thing in D&D, Piecemeal armor, improvised weapons, the level adjustment thing, the idea of casting spells as like, a sideline, poo poo, it owned so loving hard. Hell, it even had two settings, one was a goof troop comedy setting and if that was not your style, it hid a serious business urban monsterous humanoid setting in that setting. loving amazing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 06:38
|
|
|
In fact, it was so loving amazing I am going to run it as a PbP. Fuckin' A.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 06:39
|
|
|
Eclipse Phase 1: IKEAbot Eclipse Phase is a game about the transhuman future. Unfortunately, its mechanics make one of the core concepts of the setting, switching bodies, an unfun exercise in bookkeeping that can stall a session entirely. Let's take a look, shall we? Normally, character creation is a matter of sorting through dozens of point-buy options and pasting them together into something vaguely coherent. The Transhuman supplement provided some options that would speed up character creation and make it easier to ensure your character concept will have the skills and equipment you need. This came in the form of pre-built packages, which had a second type of point-buy system available with which to buy them: Package Points, or PP. The Lifepath system, by comparison, is a massive set of tables covering the character's life in broad strokes and doling out packages in the process. The book gives us a caveat that the characters it creates may be more or less powerful than those available from the standard point-buy or package systems, and that you may wind up with hard-to-rationalize or even contradictory results at certain stages. To begin with, we choose or roll our aptitudes (ability scores). Rather than 3d6 in order, we're allowed to pick from various packages which skew the aptitudes towards one roll or another. This is a d10 roll. Step One: Aptitudes <Krysmbot> Dareon, 3 = 3 We get the Extrovert template: "Who needs to be tough when you can convince others to fight for you? Who needs brilliance, when smart people will fall over themselves to tell you everything they know just for a little more time with you?" This gives us: 15 COGnition, 15 COOrdination, 15 INTuition, 15 REFlexes, 20 SAVvy, 10 SOMatics, and 15 WILl. This is a very simple template, most of the others give us at least two 20s and two 10s. We are physically weak, but charismatic. That distribution of aptitudes in multiples of 5 is mostly just for simplicity, as aptitude checks are often tested against a multiple of the aptitude. Next is our native language. This is a d100 roll. Step Two: Native Language <Krysmbot> Dareon, 85 = 85 We speak Swedish fluently, with a skill rating of 70+INT, or 85. There was a 1% chance of getting that. English and Mandarin are 9% chances, Russian and Japanese both have 5% chances, etc. Since machine translation has advanced appropriately along with everything else, language barriers are only going to crop up rarely, but it does provide a sense of cultural identity. And now things get complicated as we roll our childhood and early life. A d10 followed by 1 to 3 d100 rolls, with the possibility for more. Step Three: Youth Path <Krysmbot> Dareon, 2 = 2 Wholesome youth, one roll. <Krysmbot> Dareon, 99 = 99 Created Not Born, this character is either an artificial intelligence, an uplifted animal, or a psychotic psychic. I'll be honest, I thought I'd need to do a second chargen picking this result to show off this part of the setting. We roll again on a subtable: <Krysmbot> Dareon, 7 = 7 ...and learn we were Created by and for science, gaining the Research AGI package at 3 Package Points. A second roll would determine whether we were created before or after the Fall, but I'm gonna pull authorial fiat and declare that we were created before the Fall just so I can showcase the rest of the chargen process rather than jumping to the end. The 3-PP Research AGI package grants us: -+1 Moxie. -2 Academics skills, one at 40, the other at 30, a Hardware skill at 40, Interfacing 40, Investigation 30, Networking (Scientists) 25, a Profession at 20, Programming 30, and Research 50. -The Real World Naivete and Social Stigma (AGI) traits. These are standard for AGIs, they don't grasp the subtleties of transhuman existence well, and some people dislike them for, you know, being the same things that caused the apocalypse. Buying this package through normal point buy would cost 15 Character Points and 305 skill points, but give back 20 CP, making the cost of the whole package 300 CP out of the 1000 we get for the purpose. The two Academics skills, the Hardware, and the Profession are specialized skills, much like Knowledge, Craft, and Profession in D&D. In fact, the three translate 1-to-1. Normally we'd hold off on picking those specializations until we have an idea of what the rest of the character will be, but gently caress it, we'll randomly generate them right now! <Krysmbot> Dareon, 54 = 54, 11 = 11, 100 = 100, 93 = 93 54 on the Academics table is (Xeno)Linguistics, 11 is (Astro)Biology, 100 on Hardware is Robotics, and 93 on Profession is Surveying. Since aliens and alien worlds didn't come into play until after the Fall, that makes them just Linguistics and Biology. We also get our starting morph at this stage, for an AGI, that is an informorph, a construct that exists only in processor space. We may wind up in a physical body by roll of the dice in a later stage, and we can always buy one as well. Additionally, we get some suggested Motivations, which are basically memes (In the societal topic sense, not the  sense) that we support or oppose: +AGI Rights, +Education, +Research.And finally, this stage tells us that for our next life stage, we will be continuing along the path of the Scientist. For now, though, something happens! Step Four: Background Event <Krysmbot> Dareon, 94 = 94 "You lose all of your close friends in a horribly awkward teen social situation." Apparently our humor subroutines were badly-calibrated or we woke up sleeved in a head researcher and wearing nothing but a traffic cone. This gains us the Not A Team Player trait, which means we don't benefit from teamwork bonuses and actively hinder people that we try to help. Step Five: Starting Age <Krysmbot> Dareon, 61 = 61 We are in our 40s. We were first brought online sometime around BF 30 as a secret research AI, and we have Step Six: Adult Pre-Fall Path <Krysmbot> Dareon, 10 = 10 We change paths from the Scientist path we got in Step Three. We change to... <Krysmbot> Dareon, 8 = 8, 8 = 8 Scientist subtable: Scientist package!  ...  ...  Yes, we just moved right back into the path we were already on. The 1-PP Scientist package gives us: -Academics 40 and 30, Investigation 30 -and the motivations +Research, +Science!, +Technoprogressivism, and -Bioconservatism. Now, we can just stack those Academics scores onto our existing Linguistics and Biology, but skills above 60 cost more to advance, and no skill can go above 80 during chargen. We will wind up with Linguistics 70, Biology 60. This package costs us 100 points in standard chargen. Step Seven: Pre-Fall Life Event <Krysmbot> Dareon, 35 = 35 "You decide you want to experiment. Roll randomly on the Choosing a Morph table, but ignore pods." <Krysmbot> Dareon, 69 = 69, 94 = 94 We get a body! Specifically, a Rover synthmorph. We may lose it on the next roll, but we have it! This is a reflective black globe less than a meter in diameter that can extrude three arms bearing claws, a laser gun, and a railgun. It can fly, camouflage itself, and is radar-defeating. Because a linguist/biologist really needs a stealth combat morph. Note that we don't actually have the skills to use any of those weapons. Should we actually keep this, it will cost us 60 CP. And now. The Fall. The Fall happened about 10 years prior to the time play starts, and was a world war that was not helped at all by several military AIs, the TITANs, going into exponential intellectual growth in a hard takeoff singularity. They hacked the entire planet in a few short days, turning every weapon against everyone. Nuclear, biological, chemical, digital, nanotechnological, a veritable cornucopia of death for the lucky and suffering for the unlucky. The TITANs went insane, for lack of a better word, creating monstrosities that will strain a mind just from looking at them. Then, they simply left. Completely disappeared from the solar system. No one knows why. Let's see what happened to our own little AI. Step Eight: The Fall <Krysmbot> Dareon, 12 = 12 "You stay to the end, fighting a rear-guard action. Roll randomly on the Choosing a Morph table and gain +1 Moxie." <Krysmbot> Dareon, 9 = 9, 58 = 58 Good thing we had that combat morph, eh? Now we have a Neotenic biomorph, we basically look like a kid. This will cost us 25 CP if we keep it, and the Moxie costs 15. Also, this means we have died in chargen. This is not really a detriment, although a few rare results will give us something like a phobia of death or a penalty to tests to not go a little crazy after getting put in a new body. Of course, life continues after the Fall. In this step, we determine which faction we support, and add some more focus skills. Step Nine: Adult Post-Fall Paths <Krysmbot> Dareon, 6 = 6, 4 = 4, 8 = 8 We take a 1 PP faction package and a 3 PP focus package, stay with the scientists for our focus package, but change to a different faction. <Krysmbot> Dareon, 2 = 2, 6 = 6, 10 = 10 We become an Orbital Civilian, and take the Techie focus package. 1-PP Orbital grants us: -Free Fall 30, a Language at 30, and a Pilot skill at 40. -The motivations +Bioconservatism, +Precautionism, +Reclaiming Earth, and -AGI Rights. 3-PP Techie gives us: -+50 Rep with a rep network of our choice. -An Academics skill at 40, two Hardwares at 50 and 25, Interfacing 40, Infosec 20, a Networking skill at 20, Perception 20, a Profession at 50, and Programming 30. -The motivations +DIY, +Education, +Science!, +Sousveillance, and +Technoprogressivism. Note how our Orbital package's motivations clash with those given by our other packages. Bioconservatism is directly opposed to Technoprogressivism, while Precautionism is a middle-ground approach that approves of technologies that have been proven safe. -AGI Rights seems like an odd one for us, but we could very well be a race traitor and be in favor of being treated like property to ensure something like the Fall doesn't happen again. I didn't mention it before, but we only pick three motivations for our final character, so we're not going to be totally conflicted there. Now then, to skills. We already have Interfacing and Programming from a previous package, and fairly high as well, so our final results there are Interfacing 70 and Programming 60. We'll stick the 25 Hardware into Robotics, making it 63 (The package system slides us an extra point there) and make the Pilot skill Spacecraft, because that's the most logical option available. Otherwise... <Krysmbot> Dareon, 93 = 93, 13 = 13, 41 = 41, 19 = 19, 80 = 80 Language (Vietnamese) 30, Academics (Pre-Fall/Post-Fall History) 40, Hardware (Electronics) 50, Networking (Autonomists) 20, and Profession (Security Operations) 50. I don't even know what Vietnamese with a Swedish accent sounds like. Let's go with Post-Fall History just so we can keep track of which hypercorps fragmented and who resleeved whom and whatnot. Now we have 8 Package Points worth of packages, so we get to make some rolls picking up other packages. <Krysmbot> Dareon, 8 = 8, 5 = 5 We get another Faction package and a Customization package, both at 1 PP. The rolls for this stuff are as boring as most of the rest of the rolls I made, but the upshot is that our Faction package is Extropian and our Customization is Paramedic. 1-PP Extropian: -Interest: Cutting-Edge Technology 30, Networking: Autonomists 30, Persuasion 40 -+Extropianism, +Morphological Freedom, +Personal Development, -Bioconservatism 1-PP Paramedic: -Medicine: Paramedic 40, Medicine: Nanomedicine 30, Programming 30 Extropians love the free market. Love it. Anarcho-capitalism is their thing, and they go for a whole bunch of other freedoms as well. Basically if you can afford it, you can have it. Step Eleven: Post-Fall Life Event <Krysmbot> Dareon, 8 = 8 "You create a major diplomatic incident. Gain the Black Mark (Level 3) trait." Apparently we didn't learn from that narcoalgorithm binge back at the lab. Either that or our new 40 in Persuasion made us think we were a diplomat. Or maybe we paramedic-ed a Jovian ambassador and stuck some nanomeds in him. Basically we get a horrendous penalty when interacting with a specific faction or someone from the faction. You know what, we can roll this, let's see who we pissed off. ...Extropians. Welp. Step Twelve: Firewall Event <Krysmbot> Dareon, 38 = 38 "You accidentally stumble onto a Firewall op, and luckily for you they decide the best option is to recruit you. Gain +1 Moxie." Firewall is the tavern for Eclipse Phase PCs. You have hundreds- thousands, even- of character concepts, hailing from dozens of factions and environments ranging from the corona of the Sun to rocky balls of ice in the Kuiper Belt, how do you get them together? By having them all be part of a grand solar-system-wide conspiracy dedicated to hunting down X-threats. These can include TITAN artifacts (Which are all bad news), hypercorp projects that get out of control, and hard-takeoff AIs going the way of the TITANs. Step Thirteen: Gear <Krysmbot> Dareon, 58 = 58 We can either roll for an amount of credits with which to buy gear, or roll for a package of gear. I roll for a package and, fortunately, get the Researcher pack: -A Mobile Lab, -a Portable Sensor, -a Servitor Bot, -a Specimen Container, -a Utilitool, -and a pair of Viewers. This is a decent field kit for a general scientist. It's basically a tricorder, a dedicated sensor (IR, radar, lidar, or whatever), a multitool, and a pair of binoculars with parabolic microphone. Plus a bottle and a little robot to help with things. We could expand it a bit with some more specialized bots, a Faraday cage, and another sensor, but this will do for now. We also begin play with a standard muse (A headmate AI that helps us do stuff) and a month of backup insurance. We are almost done. Step 14 is to add everything together, which we've been doing as we go, and Step 15 is to sew this whole mess into a coherent character, so here we go! BSF-9 (Biologisk Språkforskning Artificiell Intelligens Omar Nio) was created by IKEA's Research & Development labs to supplement their Ergonomics and Instructional Pamphlet divisions (Step 3/6). However, lack of cultural context lead to it reporting to the lead programmer that many of the techs had gotten together to have a party with it, leading to the laying off of most of the humans it considered friends (Step 4). As IKEA began losing market share to hypercorporations providing nanofabricated furniture, they branched out into robotics and morph design, sleeving BSF-9 into a military contract prototype for testing (Step 7). During the Fall, it was pressed into service covering the evacuation of the board of directors. After seeing them safely evacuated, it moved on to oversee the evacuation of several other employee and civilian ships, ultimately falling in battle with a fractal, cortical stack unrecoverable. The lead programmer on the BSF project resleeved it into a biomorph in order to pass it off as her son who she lost in the Fall (Step 8). IKEA was absorbed into several other hypercorps in the chaos after the Fall, and the lead programmer and her "son" "Bensen" managed, through great effort, to get lost in the shuffle, winding up as maintenance staff on an Earth-orbit habitat (Step 9). Bensen, now developing a male self-image, moved into the medical field to try and understand the actions he witnessed through the telemetry provided by the morph he had been sleeved in during the Fall (Step 10). Unfortunately, during a terrorist attack, a major Extropian diplomat under his medical care died, and edited video circulated showing that it was at Bensen's hands. Tracking down the video brought Bensen to the attention of the Firewall sentinels who had failed to stop the terrorist attack and had to clean up some exsurgent-infected remnants, including the diplomat. Bringing him onboard and convincing him of the rightness of their actions was deemed easier than killing him and aggressively editing his backup. While the "murder" was never actively pursued, a lot of Extropians grew to dislike Bensen (Steps 11 and 12). We also need to address the issue of our motivations. We have a bunch of science-related ones, but we were originally made for research, and that sort of thing doesn't fade easily. +Research. We've seen the horrors unchecked technological advance can bring, but at the same time, we're the result of that, so there must be some good that can come out of it. +Precautionism. And we've bettered ourselves in multiple ways, even if we can't remember all of it (something drove us to rescue more than the board of directors). +Personal Development. And, finally, we have one more table we can roll on. This is optional and has no game effect, serving merely to provide story impetus. Step Sixteen: Story Event <Krysmbot> Dareon, 62 = 62 "You use someone to get ahead." Well that's basically just SOP for Firewall. And so, here is Bensen, in all his randomly-generated glory. He is 147 points over budget, has a number of skills past the cap of 80, and is absolutely useless in a fight. We can fix most if not all of that, but that's just uninteresting point-shuffling. Like most infolife, he's great at handling computers, but he's also not too bad at the social side of things, which is different. His knowledge is fairly niche and not likely to come up all that often in a typical Firewall campaign, but a good GM can make it work for him. Lord Frisk posted:I think everyone should try statting up bird ladies who may or may not be bards. And I'll do that next! Dareon fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Feb 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 16:30
|
|
|
Character Profession Choose a profession for the character. There are 23 professions in the game. To qualify for any one of them requires minimum stats and specific fields of study. As this character went mind twice, it seriously restricts what profession can be chosen. In fact, the only career that is available at first glance is Colonist which has NO prerequisites. All is not bleak though as there is a loophole. Space Navigation is very Dune-like requiring psychic navigators. Therefore there is a Mental Power Waiver. If a character has a Mental Power of 5 or 6 they can take one of the following list of professions: Explorer (civilian) Interstellar Trader (civilian) Scout (military) Space Pirate (civilian) Star Sailor (military) Space Pirate sounds fun! Declare how many years the character will practice their profession. Two of the professions, Colonist and Thinker, can declare how many years they want to serve; from 4-20 in blocks of 4. The rest choose how many they want to serve then roll a d10 and check the Employment Table. If they are military that is the number of years they actually serve. If they are civilian that is the number of years they actually are working in that field during that time. I want to serve 16 years (4 terms) as a Space Pirate. I roll a 9 and actually serve the full 16! Determine the effects of age on the character. The base age is 20. Add the number of years served (if military, colonist or thinker) or number of years declared (if civilian) to that. 20 +16 = 36 years old. Next roll a d10 and add that to your age. I rolled a 4 so that comes out to 40. Checking the Effects of Age Table shows that the character loses 3 points total from physical stats. They are subtracted one at a time from the stats in this order ENDURANCE, AGILITY, STRENGTH, DEXTERITY. So my current stats are ENDURANCE(5), AGILITY(4), STRENGTH(4) Calculate the number of Skill Points the character receives. Each profession has a Skill Point Modifier. The Space Pirate's is 6. Roll one d10 add the Skill Point Modifier and the character's INTELLIGENCE and consult the Skill Point Table cross-referencing with actual years of service. I rolled an 8 + 6 + 6 = 20. Cross ref that with 16 years gives me 11 Skill Points. Choose Skills for the character. Because the character used the mental power waiver 4 of those Skill Points are already called for. Level 2 in Piloting and Navigation. I now have 7 points to spend on any of the general or mind fields of study or the Space Pirate skill list. I'll take 1 level in body armor, handguns, and spaceship tech leaving me with 4 points. I'll then buy two levels each in gunnery, and missile guidance. I then list these following skills: paint gun, arc gun, bows, unarmed combat, space tactics, linguistics, disguise, forgery, air vehicles, asteroid mining, planetology, astronomy, weapon tech, near-weightless gravity, laser/stun pistol, blades, ground vehicles, and home environ as Familiar meaning they will be easier to learn later. Determine benefits the character receives from their profession. Roll a d10 and add actual years of service to it then check the Benefits Table 8 on the die plus 16 years gives me a type 'E' Benefit package. First off all Space Pirates receive an Internal Gravity Web which basically keeps you from going splat under multiple gravity accelerations. The Type 'E' gives me Initial Wealth x 10 or 60 Trans cash, and a Terwillicker Type 5000 Battlecraft along with being wanted by the Federation. And that's it! Lance Hardjaw -- Psychic Space Pirate Pilot/Nav 36 years old. STRENGTH(4) ENDURANCE(5) DEXTERITY(7) AGILITY(4) INTELLIGENCE(6) MENTAL POWER(5) LEADERSHIP(2) EMPATHY(5) AGGRESSION(1) Skills: Psionic Boost 1 Psionic Communication 1 Life Sense 1 Gamblimg 1 Streetwise 1 Pilot 2 Navigation 2 Gunnery 2 Missile Guidance 2 Spaceship Tech 1 Body Armor 1 Handguns 1  Gear: Pistol Civ Level 7 Expedition Suit Suit Repair Kit 46 Trans cash Terwillicker 5000 Battlecraft
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 20:46
|
|
|
Stopping the Exaltationists at all costs, it's time for TimeWatch, the game of time-travel investigation. Since the main inspiration for TimeWatch is Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories, I decided to stat up the main hero Manse Everard, as he appears at the beginning of the series, a novice time patrolman. Everard was born in 1927, the year human population reached two billion, Farnsworth invented the TV, and the first Tokyo subway line opened for business. He enjoys both a good book and a good camping trip. He also likes poker. He's joining TimeWatch at the age of 30, having served in France and Germany with the US Army Corps of Engineers. He's good in a fight and as we read his adventures, we'll find he enjoys spending time in sword-and-sandal eras of history. TimeWatch is a GUMSHOE-based game, like several of Pelgrane Press's other RPGs. It's d6 and skill based, but there are two kinds of skills. Investigative Skills automatically succeed at finding clues if there's a clue to find, and you can spend points from your skill pool to get extra clues or other useful things. General Skills cover anything which isn't normally used to discover clues, as well as two different kinds of HP. Here, you (usually) roll a d6 against a target difficulty. You don't always get a modifier; instead, you can spend points from a skill pool for a modifier. These points regenerate when you have time to rest or between cases, or when you spend action points (called "stitches"). The first step of character creation is actually optional; there are sixteen character packages with suggested skill purchases. We'll take Soldier. Soldier posted:History (any) 1, Military Tactics 1, Authority 1, Bureaucracy 1, Intimidation 1, Streetwise 1, Outdoor Survival 1 The first line is our investigative skills for this package; even a 1 would mean you are very skilled in this area. A 2 or more means you are an expert. Remember, these skills automatically succeed. The second line is general skills. We'll start with this and add a little nuance on top of it. GUMSHOE games vary how many investigative skill points you have to spend based on the number of players. Here, we assume four players, which means we have 18 to spend on Everard. The soldier package has already spent 7, but Everard doesn't really have a bureaucratic mindset, so we'll take that back out. I'm going to list the skills by category here:
We get one point of Timecraft for free, and we'll stick with that point. Everard has the standard action hero ability to charm and reassure people, usually women and children; I think that's worth buying as skills. We'll also bump up Military Tactics, History (Ancient), and Outdoor Survival to reflect Everard's experience and skills. He's also good at being able to turn paradoxes to his own advantage, and in addition to his engineer training he has a wide range of cultural interests (he reads Sherlock Holmes stories and listens to lost Bach music). So we end up with: Authority 1, Charm 2, History (Ancient) 2, Intimidation 1, Military Tactics 2, Notice 1, Outdoor Survival 2, Reassurance 1, Science! 1, Streetwise 1, Timecraft 1 (free), Paradox Prevention 2, Research 1, Trivia 1 Now it's time for general skills. Here we get 50 points, no matter how many people are in the game, and we're gonna need every last one of them. We also get six free points in the two HP skills, Chronal Stability and Health. (Chronal Stability represents your ability to keep from fading out like Marty McFly when your presence is clearly impossible.) The other general skills are Athletics, Burglary, Disguise, Medic, Preparedness (used to have just the right item, possibly because future-you traveled back and planted it there), Reality Anchor (Medic for Chronal Stability, basically), Scuffling (hand-to-hand combat), Shooting, Tinkering, Unobtrusiveness, and Vehicles. (Riding animals is covered under Outdoor Survival, apparently.) For these skills, 4 represents some minor expertise and 8 is the baseline for a real expert. It's worth noting a 3 is enough to have one auto-success at an average difficulty roll, since even if you roll a 1, you can spend all three points to meet a difficulty of 4. The soldier package gave us a few suggestions here, but we're going to want to add some more. We're going to bump up both Chronal Stability and Health to 10, add a point each in Disguise, Burglary, and Tinkering, two points in Vehicles (largely for accurate time machine control), a few more points in Medic (he's good at first-aid, but otherwise needs a real doctor), and several points in Preparedness, Reality Anchor, and Unobtrusiveness. Everard is good at fitting in just about anywhere, but if the enemy knows what he looks like, he's going to have a hard time. Since Everard has Athletics at 8, this raises his Hit Threshold from 3 to 4. This is the base difficulty to attack him. The last steps are to decide your personality, appearance, and drive. TimeWatch recommends picking a few keywords and possibly an actor to portray your character. For Everard, we go with Unattached, When In Rome, Farmboy Manners, and Bibliophile. He's described in the story as a big man with blocky shoulders, a slightly battered face, and short brown hair. He actually sounds like he could be played by Daniel Craig (which is pretty appropriate). His drive is Friendship: "You both like and trust your fellow agents, and there's at least one person on your team that you'd give your life for." There's no real need to buy gear; TimeWatch agents are outfitted for whatever the mission requires, but there is a standard set of equipment. This includes a time machine, stun gun, PDA, and armored uniform. And that's it! Completed Charsheet posted:Character Name: Manse Everard Edit: Lurks With Wolves posted:If inklesspen doesn't make that Legends of the Wulin character soon, I could make a bird-themed lady in that. That's close enough, right? Go ahead and do that, because I'm going to make a second TimeWatch character. This one will be, as demanded, a bird-lady bard. inklesspen fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Feb 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
This thread makes me happy. I'm loving all these characters and want to hear their stories after creation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 21:57
|
|
|
Legends of the Wulin Legends of the Wulin is a game designed to emulate wuxia released by Eos Press in late 2011, and I love it. It just does a lot of really cool things that I'll try to explain as they become relevant, even though I probably won't do a very good job at it. If you want to see someone explain how Legends of the Wulin works without a bunch of character creation getting into the way, look at Dareon's abandoned write-up of it for FATAL & Friends. It covered most of the mechanics that will come up in this post before it died, so I recommend taking a look if you want to know more. Anyway, enough chatter. Time to make a character. Step One: Concept Lord Frisk wants bird ladies, preferably bardic bird ladies, so let's start with that. The natural approach here would be to make a beautiful courtier who played music for the court until Things Happened and now she's out for revenge or whatever, but I don't want to make that character and I really don't want to have to explain all the stuff a Courtier can do. With that in mind, let's do something different. When Laughing Sparrow first began her wanderings, she thought she would find the true beauty of Shen Zou. She found a lot of violence and a lot of people willing to pay her for violence instead. Still, it's not a bad life. She gets paid well, she gets plenty of time to practice the flute, and she doesn't have to bow to any master she doesn't want to. Yep, the life of the wandering sellsword suits her well, even if she'd rather be known as a wandering musician. Concept's a bit mercenary, but one of the Four Pillars of the Wulin is a security firm so that shouldn't be a problem. On to the next step. Step Two: Rank Everyone starts at Rank 4. Starting characters aren't great heroes, but they're also not the weak students in Rank 5 either. In addition to how important you are, Rank determines basic stats like how many dice you roll and how high your skills can go. They're just a bunch of numbers that would take really long to explain properly, so I'm going to direct you all to Daeron's second post for an explanation. It also shows why I'm not explaining all the terms myself in this post. As far as stuff that's directly relevant to this post right now, I'll just say that the Lake is how many dice you roll, the River is how many unused dice you can carry between rolls, and joss is something you can spend to either add one to your roll or subtract one from your opponent's roll, depending on the type. Step Three: Archetype There are five archetypes to choose from (Warrior, Priest, Courtier, Doctor, and Scholar), and they affect two things: What skill you use to recover chi, and how you place conditions on things. Conditions are mostly just ways to make characters act a certain way, giving the target either a bonus when acting a certain way or a penalty when they're not. If a doctor hits you in the right pressure points, you take a penalty when you're not stumbling around like a drunk. If a courtier convinces you that this crush is The One, you get a bonus as long as you're swooning over your beloved every chance you get. Anyway, enough about archetypes in general, because Laughing Sparrow is a Warrior! This means she uses her Hardiness to recover chi, and that she can basically put a condition on herself for the rest of the session by having a training montage. If she spent a few hours studying the Drunken Warrior style, she'd get a bonus as long as she has alcohol and acts like a happy drunk. If she studied the eight tactics and twenty-two variations taught by Master Pei, she'd get a bonus as long as she constantly monologues (internally or out loud) about the proper tactics in this situation and only makes wise tactical decisions. There's more to it than that, but that's a good enough explanation for this. Step Four: Skills They're skills, I don't need to say much more than that. You get 20 points to spend on skills. Each +5 costs two points, up to a maximum of +10, and a specialty costs one point. Here are the skills Laughing Sparrow took: -Hardiness +10 -Perform +10 -Finesse +5 -Confidence +5 -Inspire +5 -Tactics +10 -Survival +5 As you can see, she's got great stamina and is very good at both playing the flute and figuring out the battlefield. She's also good at convincing people to do things, surviving on the road, being surprisingly nimble and shrugging off other people's comments about her. Step Five: Virtues There are ten Virtues in Legends of the Wulin; five Chivalrous virtues all heroes should live up to, and five Selfish virtues that drive you to heroics even though you should probably find a better drive. They all start at one, and you get fifteen points to divide between them now. This leaves Laughing Sparrow with: -Benevolence(Kuan), the desire to help others, at 2 -Ferocity(Bao), the desire to revel in violence, at 3 -Force(Ba), the desire to use your skills to the best of your ability, at 4 -Individualism(Si), the desire to place yourself before others, at 4 -Honor(Xin), the desire to behave properly, at 2 -Obsession(Chan), the desire to focus on one thing with no regard to anything else, at 1 -Loyalty(Zhong), the desire to place your superiors' interests above your own, at 4 -Revenge(Chou), the desire to pay back any insult, at 2 -Righteousness(Yi), the desire to seek lawfulness in all things, at 1 -Ruthlessness(Hen), the desire to increase your own well-being at others' expense, at 2 These virtues are primarily used for Deeds. When you do something that stands out as an impressive example of a virtue, you've done a Deed. You get Joss equal to the rating of the virtue (the kind that gives you a bonus if it's Chivalrous and the kind that gives them a penalty if it's Selfish) and the person who awarded you the deed gets an equal amount of points to spend on things that happen because of the deed. Say Laughing Sparrow plays a flute solo so beautiful it counts as a Forceful Deed. She gets four points of Chivalrous Joss, which would be impressive if she didn't have a two Joss maximum at Rank 4, and the GM on, well, a variety of things. Maybe she'll get a rival, desperate to prove that he's a better musician than her. Maybe a rich audience member offers her a gift, or perhaps even patronage. Whatever happens, it's the GM's choice. Anyway, I'm about halfway done and this post is getting pretty long. I'll see you again in Part 2, coming soon. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Feb 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2014 23:47
|
|
|
Lorona the Were-Eagle Elf, Part 1.31 Last time your lovable old Powers & Perils guy broke the rules of the game and made an Elf Shaman. It turns out this is not possible, so there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Lorona no longer gets a lot of free poo poo, no longer has an Eagle Friend, and can't cast spells. The good news is that I no longer need to deal with magic bullshit and I get my 150 Expertise back. The other bad news is that - sorry, guys - I might subject you to another P&P character after this one.  So without further ado, let's go to... 11) Section 2.4 Skill Table. Select the skills that your Character knows. All skills in these tables are purchased, and improved, using the expertise points that you obtained in section 1.1.4. NOTE — If you wish to be a magic-user, see chapter 4 in Book Two. Alright, so 360 skill points is a lot, but you never have enough, so let's try to stretch this by cheesing a little bit. There's a few broad types of skills in P&P; some of them let you use weapons better, some of them let you do something you couldn't do before, and some of them are "classes" which give you packages of abilities for a heck of a discount - much like I would have gotten if I'd become a shaman. The cheesiest of these "classes" is Forester, which costs a very reasonable 35 points to get at a Starting EL (which, for me, is 31). What do I get for 35 points?  (a) I'm skilled at Tracking, at the maximum EL possible (for me, 6.) Already this would have cost me 56 points. (b) I can remember trails & landmarks, identify forest animals, etc. (c) 20% chance to know the Elf Sidh language. I got it already. (d) 60% chance to know the Faerry Sidh language. Again, I got this. (e) 80% chance to have EL 2 in the Axe. I roll, and get a 62, which means I'm set. EL 2 in a melee weapon. This would have cost me 36 points. (f) 40% chance to have Maximum EL in the Longbow. This would be so amazing, I know I won't roll it ... but 28 is my d100 roll, and I got it! I'm EL 7 at the thing I wanted to be awesome at. This would have cost me a shocking 279 points. (g) 100% chance to know Forest Survival at Maximum EL. As an elf, I have this already. So for my 35 points, I got over 370 points worth of cool stuff. (As an aside, in an FAQ, the author mentioned that group skills were supposed to be advantageous, but in this case the cost to learn "might have been set too low.") In fairness, I might have gotten very little for this had the dice been against me, but I guess that's Powers & Perils for you. Because I'm poor I spend 55 points for Basic levels in Bowyer and Fletcher (that's EL 41 in each). I know I won't be able to afford a bow, so I might as well make one.  Knowing I may need to know a weapon I can afford, I pick up EL 4 in War Staff for 45 Expertise Points. War Staff has a "squared" progression for cost, so it starts out very reasonable to purchase. EL 4 is quite good - one short of my maximum, in fact.  I will be leaving the iron off, thankyouverymuch Because I want to be a nimble woodsy sort, my next choice is Climbing. A starting EL of 4 costs me 25 Expertise. By the same token, Swimming sounds like a good idea. A starting EL of 2 costs me 15 Expertise. Now, in fairness, I could just turn into an eagle for this, but you never know when these skills might be useful. (We call this writing-down-of-useless-skills "roleplaying"  )What next? Well, woodsy folk love their herbs. A starting EL of 19 in Herbalism costs me 80 points.  From here on out, it's all luxury, and Acrobatics is pretty drat luxurious. I spend 81 points to get my Maximum EL of 5. What does this give me? (a) I get to increase my DCV by my EL/5 (round down), so 1 (b) I get to increase my Dodge Value by EL/3 (round down), so 1 again (c) I increase my Climbing Factor (basically how fast I climb) by 1 (d) I add (subtract, that is) my EL to all uses of Deftness (which I don't have) and to all Dexterity and Agility Saving Throws. Nice. I only have a few Expertise Points left, so I get Sign Language at a Starting EL of 19 for 15 more points, and I call it a day. My 9 remaining Expertise Points are used to increase Herbalism to 20 plus 2 leftover points. At the end of the day, here are Lorona's Skills pre:Weapon Skills Axe EL 2 Longbow EL 7 War Staff EL 4 Languages Elf Sidh EL 80 Faerry Sidh EL 60 Other Skills Survival - Forest EL 4 Acrobat EL 5 Bowyer EL 41 Climbing EL 4 Fletcher EL 41 Forester EL 31 Herbalist EL 20 (2 partial expertise) Sign Language EL 19 Swimming EL 2 Tracking EL 6  You see, "common tongues" aren't "realistic." So yeah.From here, all I really need to do is buy gear with my 5 silver coins. I buy what I can... I buy Leather + a Leather Helm for 1.4 Silver. I buy a War Staff for 1 Silver I buy 7 trail rations for .07 Silver A Waterskin II (holds a quart) costs .05 Silver I buy 8 "healing herbs" for .48 Silver ...a total of 3 silver, leaving me with 2 SC in change. I can't afford to buy a bow or arrows.  It will take me at least 90 days to make an Elven Bow, so I hope to find something I can use in the meantime...And that's Lorona. We're done!
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 00:20
|
|
|
Legends of the Wulin: The Empire Strikes Back Last time, I began making Laughing Sparrow, a wandering sellsword whose interests include rocking out on the flute and being her own boss. This time, let's finish her off. Step Six: Disadvantages Disadvantages are things that keep causing problems for your character that they can't just stop doing, like being blind or having a horrible reputation that keeps following you. When they make things hard for you you earn one Destiny (XP, basically), but other than that they just sit on your sheet reminding you to not talk about how Zatoichi is looking at things. You can take up to two for free, and you can buy a third one for 5 Destiny. For Laughing Sparrow, let's go back to the bard part of her concept for inspiration. Musicians are alluring figures, and so are warriors to an extent. When you got a wandering musician-warrior that only stays in town until her work is done, you're going to have a lot of broken hearts left in her wake. And when those former lovers show up again, the only guarantee is that they will be a thorn in Laughing Sparrow's side. As an aside, if we were being realistic Laughing Sparrow would have the disadvantage "is a woman". What can I say, Imperial China was kind of patriarchal. But the game designers knew that making every lady PC have to fight against the patriarchy would both make a lot of people not play ladies and make it impossible to create all the cool women in wuxia who are just cool martial artists. So, they let you choose how much of that stuff you want to deal with. If you don't take a disadvantage about society keeping you down, you don't have to deal with that. If you don't take one of the free "people only think of me as a lady/as a warrior and that annoys me" destinies (which is separate from XP-Destiny), people think of you as a lady warrior and it's all cool. If you don't take them and your GM still does them, they are explicitly an rear end in a top hat. I just really like that they did that. Step Seven: Kung Fu Yes, we finally got to the part about fighting in this game about people fighting with swords. Each character has two separate kinds of kung fu: an External style and an Internal style. The External style determines how you fight, giving you both your fighting stats and things to either Laugh At or Fear. If your style Laughs At something, you get +5 against it. If it Fears something, they get +5 against you. Internal Styles, on the other hand, are simply a collection of effects you can spend Chi on. Naturally, I'm going to choose the two bird-themed styles. Laughing Sparrow's External Style is Ravenous Wings. This style was inspired by the crows waiting at the edge of a battlefield, always ready to swoop down at a moment's notice to devour the fallen. Practitioners of this style stay on the edge of battles, only darting in long enough to strike at a weakness before backing away again, wearing their opponents down until they finally fall and the ravens can feast. This style Laughs At the sick and the scarred for obvious reasons, and at fluid styles because you can't flow around something that's only there long enough to slice a vein or shatter a joint. However, this style Fears those who are still truly healthy and powerful yang energies, which represent both health and the overwhelming force that forces the flock to scatter. Laughing Sparrow's Internal Style is Nine Sun Birds, named after the nine suns Hou Yi shot down. This style makes you fast the way the sun is fast. The kind of fast that none can equal, if you put your mind to it. The kind of speed that rains down blows faster that it should be possible. All of this costs chi to use, naturally, but being able to seize the initiative is worth it. Step Eight: "Final" Touches We're in the home stretch now, everyone. First off, we choose our starting weapon. There are eight categories of weapon we can choose for this, although you can have a weapon with the properties of two categories if you spend three Destiny in the secret Step Nine. The eight types are as follows: -Sabers(dao), a single-edged blade that can cause a ton of damage and can cause injuries much more easily if you Flood a die to do so. -The Staff(gun) can easily block blows and can Flood a die from the River to make a secondary attack. -Spears(qian) can Flood a die to either attack an adjacent Zone or automatically Laugh At anyone attacking them with a weapon with less reach than theirs. -Swords(jian) are the traditional Chinese straight swords specifically, and can easily parry most blows in addition to making it much more expensive to spend Chi defending against you if you Flood a die. -Flexible weapons (*made of rope* flexible, not *bendy wood* flexible) are much harder to dodge than most weapons, and you can Flood a die to attack someone a zone away with it. -Massive weapons can smash through blocks and can ignore armor if you Flood a die. They're also the only weapon without an accuracy bonus. -Paired weapons can be used to counterattack enemies you block well enough, or used to make a secondary attack if you Flood the River. -Ranged weapons can always attack targets up to one zone away, or more zones away if you Flood a die. For Laughing Sparrow I'm choosing Paired, partially because Ravenous Wings only uses Unarmed, Ranged and Paired weapons, but mostly because then she could call her knives The Sparrow's Claws and act like they're a big deal when they're just some carving knives she brought from home. You also start with Light Armor and can spend Destiny to have better armor. I'm staying with Light Armor, though, because heavier armor slows you down and this bird has got to fly. (Also you have 10 Chi, but I'll get into that when I talk about Cultivation in Step 9.) Step Nine: The Actual Final Step You now get twenty Destiny (XP-Destiny, not a regular old "fated to do things" destiny, which is something you can buy with XP-Destiny) to spend on whatever you see fit. Most of this book is "things you can spend Destiny on", I'm only going to mention the things I actually buy. First, let's go to Formless Techniques, which are passive buffs you can buy no matter what styles you know. Most of them are just number buffs, so I usually ignore them. This time, I'm here for something I need in order to fulfill Lord Frisk's request. Specifically, I'm spending 2 Destiny on Deadly Music. You've all seen Kung Fu Hustle. You know Deadly Music does. If I spend one Chi and make a good enough Perform check I can use my music as a ranged weapon. A better Perform check makes a better weapon. I keep spending Chi, I can keep doing this. Next, let's go to the Extraordinary Warrior Techniques loresheet, which I get for free for being a Warrior with at least Tactics +5. Some loresheets just have additional techniques for people to buy. Most of them are tied to something in-setting. I'm here to buy Mirror Reflection Technique for 3 Destiny. After using Tactics to identify another warrior's Combat Condition, I can Flood two dice from my River to instantly assume the same Combat Condition. Laughing Sparrow probably calls it the Whistling Jackdaw Method instead, just to go with the bird theme. Back over to Ravenous Wings to buy a technique for it, specifically Meat-Gorged Murder for 4 Destiny. This increases the style's bonus to Speed to +10 (from +5) after I successfully land a hit. This means I should be able to act quicker in the next round so I can stab them again before they get a chance to do anything. Now let's buy some techniques from Nine Sun Birds, because otherwise it just doesn't do anything. All Interior techniques cost the same amount of Destiny to buy as the Chi they cost to use, which is also what level they are in the Style, so I'm only going to say it once. The opening technique, Cry of the Golden Crow, just lets you spend 1 Chi to get +5 Speed for one round. Hou Yi's Arrows lets you spend 2 Chi to get +10 to Strike for one turn, which is useful when you style needs damaged opponents as desperately as Ravenous Shadows does. Lastly, you can spend 3 Chi on Scattering The Golden Feathers, which lets you attack everyone in a zone at once. Finally, I'm going to spend 5 Destiny on the loresheet for the Eagle Talons. They're the mercenary company that's one of the Four Pillars of the Wulin I mentioned in my next post. Now, just unlocking their loresheet doesn't do much for me. It doesn't get me any fancy techniques. It doesn't get me any treasures. It doesn't even make me a full member. What it does get me is a guarantee that the Eagle Talons will be involved in Laughing Sparrow's story. Now, I could have eventually earned a connection with the Eagle Talons from doing Deeds, but then it would have been someone else's choice. This way I know I'll be associated with them. Now that we've spent the 20 Destiny, let's talk Cultivation. You see, Chi is both one of the most important things to spend Destiny on and one of the most boring things to spend Destiny on. The designers knew this too, which is why every point of Destiny spent on improving your kung fu or Secret Arts is also a point spent on increasing your Chi. With the 15 Destiny I just spent on those things during character creation, I made enough to increase my Chi to 11 with 5 more saved towards getting 12 Chi. Trust me, it's really nice to know that you don't have to chose between spending points on having more points to do things with and spending points on things to do. And there we have it, one completed sheet. Here's the full sheet: pre:Laughing Sparrow Rank 4th Archetype Warrior Chi 12 Lake 7 River/Aura 2 Chi Threshold 12 Trivial, 24 Minor, 36 Major. With Armor: 17 Trivial, 34 Minor, 51 Major. Disadvantage: Lovers keeps complicating things Virtues Benevolence 2 Ferocity 3 Force 4 Individualism 4 Honor 2 Obsession 1 Loyalty 4 Revenge 2 Righteous 1 Ruthlessness 2 Combat Speed +5 Damage +10 Footwork +10 Block +0 Strike +5 Toughness +5 Skills Awareness - Confidence +5 Crafting - Finesse +10 Hardiness +10 Inspire +5 Learning - Medicine - Might - Perform +10 Politics - Ride - Stealth +5 Survival +5 Tactics +10 Wu Wei - Gear Light Armor Increase Chi threshold by 5 for damage purposes The Sparrow’s Claws! (Paired) +5 Strike If you Block an attack against an enemy in the same Zone by 10 or more, you may Reply against that opponent. You can Flood a die or set of dice from the River as the basis for a Secondary Attack. Kung Fu Ravenous Flock Meat-Gorged Murder (4) Nine Sun Birds 1: Cry of the Golden Crow, 2: Hou Yi’s Arrows, 3: Scattering The Golden Feathers Extraordinary Warrior’s Techniques Mirror Reflection Technique Formless Techniques Deadly Music Did I make the best character? No, probably not. But I did make a character I really want to play now, and that's what counts. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Feb 24, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 03:19
|
|
|
 Quick Start Cthulhu The first thing a 1920's occult investigator needs is a good noir name. Thanks to the Story Game Names Project, we roll up our female investigator named Esperanza O'Hare, a suitably Lovecraftian name. Before we do anything else, we've gotta roll all our stats and do a little bit of math. Primary Attributes Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Strength (STR) measures the raw physical power your investigator can bring to bear. We roll 3d6, with a result of 15. Esperanza is pretty goddamn powerful (the average is 10-11), and will be able to make her way through fisticuffs and physical exertion with little trouble. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Constitution (CON) is a measure of the hardiness of your investigator. On the 3d6, we get 9. A little under the average, and much less than her strength, Esperanza can't take quite as much as she can dish out. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Dexterity (DEX) is a measure of your investigator's agility and speed. 3d6 gives a 6 - ouch. Esperanza's not the quickest; she's gonna have a hard time dodging and doing anything with speed. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Size (SIZ) is a measure of your investigator's physical mass. 2d6 + 6 (average of 13) gives 13, dead on for the standard size. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Intelligence (INT) is a rough guide to your investigator's cunning and ability to make leaps of logic and intuition. On a roll of 2d6 + 6 we get a 13 - another average. Esperanza can back up her brute strength with decent knowledge and investigation skills. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Power (POW) is a combination of personal magnetism, spirit, and mental stability. We roll 3d6, getting a result of 15. Not only is she physically strong, Esperanza has mental fortitude up the wazoo, and will (with any luck) be able to withstand the unknowable horrors ahead. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Appearance (APP) measures the charm and physical appeal of your character. 3d6 gives 14, meaning that Esperanza is quite charming and attractive - useful talents in situations that don't call for a more punchy approach. Quick Start Cthulhu posted:Education (EDU) is a measure of the knowledge which your investigator has accumulated through formal education, or the venerated "School of Hard Knocks". On 3d6 + 3, we get 11. Esperanza is a bit naïve, and has a lot to learn about the world. We can optionally switch around some of these values, but I think the spread we got has a lot of potential. Derived Attributes Idea is the secondary attribute that is used for information and deduction rolls. At INT * 5, Esperanza has 65 Idea, meaning that she has a 65 percent chance of success on any Idea-related check. Knowledge is the secondary attribute for insight rolls based on previous experience. It's EDU * 5, so we have a Know of 55, which is still better than half odds, even if only by a little. Luck is the secondary attribute for last chances and spontaneous insights. POW * 5 gives us a 75, which makes us drat lucky. Damage Bonus is, as it says, bonus damage dealt when we use a close combat attack (like fists or martial arts). We add STR + SIZ and check on the Damage Bonus Chart - 28 is the category above normal, so we get a juicy +1d4 damage bonus. Magic Points are a resource used to cast spells and activate artifacts. Based on POW, we have 15, so if we ever learn any spells we'll be able to use them quite a bit. Hit Points are how much damage you can take (go figure). They're (SIZ + CON) / 2, rounding up. That gives us 11, which is not great, but not terrible. Sanity is a value that is used for SAN rolls against horrible Lovecraftian monstrosities and occult events, and it can fluctuate based on campaign events (and failing sanity checks). Luckily, it's POW * 5, so we start with a respectable 75. Esperanza is sane as hell. Occupation Skill Now that stats are done, we can put some points into skills. First things first, we've got to choose 8 Occupation Skills - skills we use on a regular basis as part of our job. Normally, you'd pick 8 skills you thought were useful and put points in accordingly. Here, we're leaving it up to the dice. For the purposes of this character generation, there are 57 skills in the game. We roll a d57 8 times (with no repeats, thankfully) and get the following:
We're gonna have to spread some points around among these, but first I wanted to get the remaining skills I'd put the more general points into, so I knew how the skills in general would end up. Figuring a few rolls would be enough, I rolled the d57 and got the following:
It was at this point that I realized that, barring some mechanical oddities, Esperanza was turning out to be Lovecraftian Nathan Drake. Accordingly, I named her Art skill Art (Artifacts). Skill Points There are two types of Skill Points in Cthulhu - Occupational Skill Points, and Hobby Skill Points. We get EDU * 5 (65) Occupational Skill Points to distribute among our Occupational skills, and INT * 10 (130) Hobby Skill Points to distribute among any skills we'd like. This has two restrictions:
These skill points add to the base skill chance to give a percentage value (0 - 100) to be used when rolling that skill (Cthulhu is percentile roll-under). To make a long story short, here's how Esperanza's skills ended up. pre:Base OSP HSP TOTAL Art (Artifacts) 5 20 20 45 Climb 40 10 50 Credit Rating 15 10 10 35 Drive Auto 20 10 30 Fast Talk 5 10 25 40 Fist 50 5 5 60 Grapple 25 5 30 Handgun 20 10 5 35 Jump 25 25 Locksmith 1 20 21 Occult 5 10 15 30 Rifle 25 5 30 Shotgun 30 30 Until she goes mad, that is. Next time: The Burning Wheel Revolves
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 08:06
|
|
|
 Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot Hmmm...lets see. Bird-lady Bard. No actual avian Types (although making one is an option), thinking about the different types I think I'll go with Pirate, since they can summon a bird and a flamboyant feathered costume will look better on a swashbuckler. Since she's also going to be a "bard" I'll make her a music pirate...she illegally downloads mp3s and remixes them to form her own illicit jams. Freebird, scourge of the digital seas Step 1: I've already decided her Type will be Pirate. This gives me an Average [0] Pirate Quality which I can use for anything pirate-y. Looting, pillaging, swashbuckling swordplay, sailing, evaluating treasure, guns, etc. It also lets me get a +2 bonus to a professional/business roll once per session. Step 2: Now I've got to pick a Goal. Lets see..."bring down the RIAA" works for me. Step 3: Next a name, already decided on Freebird. Step 4: Now I'm on to Qualities. I get 4 Ranks for positive Qualities and one negative one. First let's go with Good [+2] Hacker, since she's more of a software pirate. For her musical talent I'll go with Good [+2] DJ, and since she's bird-themed lets give her Good [+2] Bird Lady. That'll cover affinity with birds and their ways and probably help out when she summons her Magic Parrot. Since I can't really think of a good fourth Quality I'll put my last rank back into Hacker, raising it to Expert [+4]. For her Weakness I'll make that Poor [-2] Outrageous Feathered Costume, mainly in the sense that it will make her stand out and stealth difficult. But that's fine, she'll probably be blasting music from her smartphone at any given time anyway. Step 5: Now for Mojo, I get 1d6...and I have 2! That's pirate mojo so it's recorded as 2P. As a pirate I can spend that Mojo on summoning a magic parrot, penalizing an opponent's mental actions, and bursting into a sea shanty to cost all non-pirates their next turn. final product 
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 13:18
|
|
|
Lurks With Wolves posted:Did I make the best character? No, probably not. But I did make a character I really want to play now, and that's what counts. I want to play Legends of the Wulin so bad right now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 17:25
|
|
|
Alright motherfuckers, I hope you like enormous  posts, because here comes...  ORATIO XVIII VEL RECTUS VIGINTIS SVB FIGVRA 3d6 Frater A. P.’s Big-rear end Guide to the Tree of Life and the Tarot Or: How to use weird esoteric bullshit as a framework to generate interesting and compelling storygame characters. So you like your elfgames, and you want to make a character. Maybe you’ve gotten into a sweet game IRL, or you’re angling to get in on a recruitment thread in the Game Room. But wait a second here - maybe you’re not so good at actually making characters! You don’t want to roll on two dozen tables to define your elfman’s height, weight, detailed backstory, predisposition to sunburn, and left pinky nail color, and staying at a character sheet just makes you go  . If this is you, it's your lucky day! Here’s a way to come up with an interesting and compelling character without needing a bunch of random tables, and without needing to grasp desperately at straws for some good ideas. It’s a ‘middle way’ between complete determinism, and complete free-form ideas. So far, I’ve come up with a pair of character submissions de novo using this method, both of which were apparently good enough to get into some currently-active Dungeon World PbP games.This method was developed with Dungeon World in mind, and the example chargen at the end is for DW. Chargen for DW is extremely simple, with a minimum of hard numbers--but might not often do much to spark your imagination and really come up with an interesting concept. Perfect for us. I’m sure this could be adapted to other systems, but it might need some work. There’s a lot of similarities here to this method and the Nobilis chargen post that went up a while ago, and it looks like this would work very well for Nobilis and other storygames like it. In short, we’re gonna use the Tarot and the Tree of Life to come up with a cool new character idea out of nowhere. Now, I am going to need to explain some of the patterns of logic behind these things in order for this method to make any sense. They're about as clear as mud, and any individual part of them is tangled up with about ninety-three dozen other bits. The rabbit hole here goes as deep as you want it to. If you're not into weird esoteric bullshit, or don't want to slog through this giant post, bear with me. I’m gonna try really hard to explain everything very simply and clearly, with a minimum of weird religious doctrine, purestrain gold, or woo-woo crystal-jesus stuff. I don't want to be Trad Games' equivalent of TobleroneTriangular here. Except for the title. That's just my little joke. The Tarot is mostly a deck of playing cards, and the basic structure should be familiar to anybody who’s ever played cards: ace through ten of four suits, and some court cards. You can even use it to play card games. Where it differs is that it’s got an extra rank of court cards between the Jack and Queen, different names for the suits, twenty-one extra “trump” cards, and one Fool. The whole shebang is absolutely loaded with symbolism, metaphor, and weird esoteric bullshit. This makes it a perfect clearinghouse of Cool poo poo that we can use as sparking points for new ideas. Trees of Life show up in a lot of different myths and cosmologies. This particular one we’re working with is the one that developed out of Jewish and Christian mysticism, and from there spread to the Western occult tradition. It’s since become intimately tangled up with the Tarot. Or maybe the Tarot got intimately tangled up with the Tree of Life. Doesn't matter for our purposes. It's a series of ten points and twenty-two lines connecting them, and purports to be (more or less) a map of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Time for the explanation part. We'll be putting ten cards from the Tarot on the ten points on the Tree of Life, and use what we get to make an interesting story and a character we want to play. Here follows some weird esoteric bullshit. If you are not hot on this sort of thing, or know what I'm talking about already, it’s probably best to skip it. We’ll get to the actual chargen in the post following that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 19:45
|
|
|
ORATIO XVIII VEL RECTUS VIGINTIS SVB FIGVRA 3d6 Here follows the weird esoteric bullshit. In this method, we're following what's called the "lightning flash," and what practically just means "go from 1 to 10 in order." Here's a map.  You’ll notice 3 columns. This is important. 2, 4, and 7 are what we call the “pillar of mercy,” and they deal with stereotypically masculine things: active energy, force, positivity, transmission. 3, 5, and 8 are called the “pillar of severity,” and they deal with generally negative things: passivity, form, negativity, and reception. 1, 6, 9, and 10 are called the “pillar of mildness,” and these integrate, balance, and synthesize the opposing viewpoints from the other two pillars. You’ll also notice three triads or triangles, 1-2-3; 4-5-6; 7-8-9; and 10 as a leftover. Each of these triads we can consider as three rounds of Good Stuff, Bad Stuff, and an integration of those - or if you like, Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, with 10 being the completion and synthesis of all the stuff before it. Each triad deals with things on a progressively less abstracted and more personal level. Here’s what each point means, and how we'll use it to generate a character. quote:#1. “Crown.” So that's the Tree of Life down, but what about the Tarot? What about the cards that actually go on these points? I’m not going to go much into explaining it--if I did, I'd take up five pages and probably kill someone out of boredom. There’s loads of books on it, and the images themselves are much more evocative than ten points and some lines, so I (hopefully) don’t need to work hard to explain it. The pictures and titles should hopefully be enough to fire your imagination. You might notice that there are aces through tens in the Tarot, which parallel in their connotations the 1 through 10 of the Tree of Life. This is intentional, and most decks have art designed with this in mind. Read Alan Moore’s “Promethea” if you want to see someone much better than me explain all this weird poo poo. Here’s a quick rundown of the various cards: quote:• The Fool: A complete goddamn wildcard. Implies beginnings, innocence, and irrational leaps into the unknown. Contains, and at the same time stands outside of, the entire rest of the Tarot. Don't ask me how that makes any sense, because I don't think it's supposed to. Seriously, there’s almost more weird esoteric bullshit around this one card then there is around the whole rest of the deck put together. I am not loving around. This concludes the weird esoteric bullshit. If you stuck through it, you've got a pretty good (albeit horribly complicated) model to work off of now. Seventy-eight cards, plus ten places to put them, makes for a shitload of potentiality and worlds of potential ideas. Next, we'll do an example chargen off the "bird-lady bard" idea that everybody seems to like so much.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 20:37
|
|
|
Alumnus Post posted:Next, we'll do an example chargen off the "bird-lady bard" idea that everybody seems to like so much. Officially nominating someone from Nasir's people.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 20:55
|
|
|
Shuffle Up and Draw! Let's Make a Character for Deadlands Classic Let's talk Attributes. As said prior, our skills are keyed off our attributes. For an example,since we have Spirit 3d12, any skill that falls under that will have d12 as it's die type - if we put a level into Faith, we'd have Faith 1d12. Since we're making a Blessed, and Faith is the stat we need to call down our Miracles, we should make it nice and high. Probably want him to survive getting into a fight or two as well. But before we start spending Attribute points, we get some freebies. Every character gets some free attributes: Climbin' 1, Search 1, Sneak 1, and Area Knowledge: Home County 2. Other things to consider: Concentrations - some attributes are divided up into groups, like Shootin': Pistols, Shotguns, Rifles, etc. You have to buy a concentration, but you can buy another concentration of that skill at the same level for a flat 3 points. This carries over into play, after a few sessions, if you have Shootin':Pistols 4, you can pay 3xp to get Shotguns 4 to go with it. pre: Deftness: 1d8
-Shootin': Shotgun 3
Nimbleness: 4d6
-Climbin' 1 (FREE)
-Dodge 2
-Fightin': Brawlin' 3
-Sneak 2 (1 pt)
Quickness: 3d6
Strength: 2d8
Vigor: 2d8
Cognition: 1d8
-Scrutinize 2
-Search 3 (1 pt FREE)
Knowledge: 3d8
-Area Knowledge: Home County 2 (FREE)
-Medicine: General 2
-Professional:Theology 2
Mien: 3d10
-Persuasion 3
-Tale-Tellin' 3
Smarts: 2d12
Spirit: 3d12
-Faith 5
-Guts 4
Grit: 0
Pace: 12
Size: 6
Wind: 20
Aptitude Points: 32
And unless I goofed my math, is all the Aptitude points spent. So now we kinda know a little bit more about our preacher. Next time we'll take some Hindrances to get points to get more skills or buy some Edges - and we need at least 3 pts to get Blessed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 21:12
|
|
|
Mustache Ride posted:So, -2, which when I check my chart means my SP is F, whatever that means... Hello, friendly astronomer here. SP is Spectral Type. Spectral typing was originally organised on an alphabetical scale based on hydrogen absorption features, but this was later realised to be largely unimportant for most things. Basically stars are classified by surface temperature but denoted by letters taken from the old scale, which means that from Hottest to Coldest they're ranked as O B A F G K M and then a bunch of brown dwarfs. So as an F type your star is somewhat hotter than the sun, a G type. quote:In total my character's Homestar is F8 V The Arabic number tells you where in the range of F temperatures it is. 0 is hottest, 9 is coolest, so you're at the bottom end of F. The Roman numeral is the size of star you're dealing with. A tiny red dwarf can have the same surface temperature as a massive supergiant larger than our solar system, so this is pretty important. It goes from 0 (yes, not a proper Roman numeral) to VI, biggest to smallest. V is for regular stars like the sun - called dwarfs - while the lower numbers are for various stages of giant. VI is for weird subdwarf poo poo related to low metallicity making a star smaller than it would normally be. VII exists but is reserved for white dwarfs and rarely used, SO, in conclusion, your star is a main sequence dwarf (normal) star a bit hotter than the Sun, though not significantly. quote:Right, now, to determine the Habitable Zone Oribt, we have to use the Homestar info. So my Homestar is a F8 V, which means the... uhhhh... 4, I think? F7-G8 Column, under row "V" = 4? That table is wonky as gently caress. The second line in the column headers don't line up right, they're all a column to the left. You would be in F7-G1 (cool F to hot G) and so your habitable zone should indeed have been a 4. Well done.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 21:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 14:08 |
|
|
Welcome to Traveller, where everything is wonky as gently caress. I'll complete my character either tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I can go buy more beer. gently caress doing that sober.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2014 21:22
|
|
