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Demons don't start to melt if people figure out what they are (or, more specifically, if they tell people what they are or if people start to investigate what they are). They start to lose their Cover. And, of course, having weak or nonexistent Cover is only a problem because your vastly powerful and seemingly-omnipresent foe will have a much easier time tracking you down in order to recapture or destroy you, which is totally different from what Changelings have to deal with,
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Apr 14, 2015 05:10
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Mors Rattus posted:I do want to emphasize again that not all of Beast is bad. I dislike a lot of the fluff, but I really like the Lair stuff and almost all of the Nightmares are really cool powers. I especially like how Nightmares can halfway function as blessing powers if you're willing to be really backhanded about it. I think there is potential here, and I would love to see it realized. Let's hear some of the standout good stuff then, cause I don't want this to be a total burn-this-fucker-down party if there's stuff to celebrate.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:11
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Lairs are your personal nightmare otherworld that your Soul lives in. When you're in it, you basically don't have to pretend to be human any more - you get to just be whatever monster you are. And you can drag people in there - it's risky, though. If you die in there, you die for real, and if they're persistent they can break parts of it. Your Lair is made of Chambers (nightmare-settings, most of which are drawn from real places you visit that you find resonant with your nature) and Burrows (passageways between Chambers). With some effort, you can rearrange your Lair, so it's your personal ever-shifting terror dungeon. You get Lair Features, which are basically environment conditions that are always on in the various parts of your Lair, and which you can overlay onto the real world in areas that resonate with your Lair. So basically, if your Lair has Extreme Cold, then when you fight in, say, a meat locker, you can invoke that and turn the chill into a literal weapon that will wear away and harm your foes. You are encouraged to use trickery and terrain manipulation to get the initial Tilt you need to overlay your Lair onto the world. Oh, and if you're fighting in one of the places that spawned one of your Chambers, you can just start laying poo poo down even if there is no resonance - so, for example, if part of your lair is full of terrible, burning flames, and another part is this meat-packing plant that resonated with you in some other way, if you fight in the meat-packing plant you can just loving spawn bonfires to kill people. Lairs can be connected to the Lairs of other Beasts, allowing you to borrow some of their Lair traits and to work together to protect and fight in your communal Brood Lair - but that's a little risky, since if you can't trust them, they can destroy you. The core of your Lair is your Heart, the nightmare-realm where you first realized what you were and embraced your nature, and if that gets destroyed, you loving die. So, you know, be careful with that. Even when you personally aren't focused on your Lair, your Soul is always hanging out there, so it's never totally unguarded. If someone somehow breaks in and starts trouble, your Soul will go deal with them and you'll get an instinctive sense of what's going on so you can then focus on it and direct it rather than rely on its bestial instincts. As your power grows, you can keep adding more Chambers to your Lair, gaining more Lair Traits and developing your own personal nightmare dungeon to your heart's content.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:17
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tatankatonk posted:Who wins in a legal battle between the Beast lawyer and the Adamantine Arrow lawyer who fights his war in the courtroom? Any time you're asking who wins between the mage and [x], it's always the mage. I maintain that's a decent against-the-grain concept, and I present as evidence the Daredevil franchise.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:19
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Daredevil is the perfect Adamantine Arrow lawyer concept. But if I recall correctly, the original character pitch in the last thread had the Adamantine Arrow conducting their combat exclusively in the courtroom, because that was their battlefield -- much in the same way a doctor could conduct their combat exclusively on the operating table, as that was their battlefield, etc, because the entire point was the combat could be entirely metaphorical. That's not Daredevil, but Jack McCoy. And Jack McCoy isn't an Arrow.
Crion fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 05:22
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Lair sounds great, and the kind of environment/keyword matching game it encourages you to play would probably be really fun.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:24
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The Lairs still sound extremely cool. I'm curious about the "if you die in your Lair, you die for good" bit - is there something where if you get owned outside your Lair you can automatically retreat to it? I'm assuming there is, since it seems obvious.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:25
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Nightmares, meanwhile, are your fear-based magic powers. They are entirely mental - a Nightmare doesn't create physical things, it messes with your mind. However, this is fear turned up to 11 - it can create real, psychosomatic effects, which can in some cases kill. To use a Nightmare, you have to meet your victim's gaze and then call forth the fear with a nice, simple statement - 'They're coming for you, Michael' or 'You're going to die up there.' They don't have to hear you or understand you - the important part is evoking the fear verbally. This is a bit of a trick to do - eye contact can be tricky in a fight - so they're pretty powerful but I think not overpowered given the challenge of laying them on there. They (usually) last for a scene, and you can choose to have them not take effect until the victim goes to sleep and wakes up. You can't stack them on each other - someone can only suffer one Nightmare at a time. If they have multiple Nightmares hanging over their heads when they sleep, only one resolves each morning. They also have some great names. All Your Teeth Are Falling Out uses the fear of age, disease and weakness to make the victim become physically weakened and unable to take advantage of their looks, strength or speed. You can mess with their minds enough to cause them to automatically fail at physical actions if you're willing to spend Satiety on it. Behold, My True Form! lets you basically do a psychic terror attack. You have very broad control over how the damage manifests if you kill them - it might be death by fear, or you might turn them to stone. You Are Not Alone makes a victim terrified of being watched, and even more of seeing what's watching them. It makes your victim very bad at noticing things around them, and can even force them to have to take an actual action to make a perception roll. Nightmares can be based on common fears...or you can develop them based on the supernatural beings around you. (Except for Demons). You Are Infected is based on vampires, and it lets you use a Nightmare on someone without the normal eye-based rigmarole. Instead, you can use it if they've drunk your blood in the last day - even just a tiny drop. Or you can infuse a Nightmare into your blood, causing it to automatically affect anyone who touches or drinks your blood. Your Rage Consumes You is werewolf-based, and it lets you force someone to lash out in rage at the closest person to them, lasting until that person is knocked out, flees the scene, the victim of your power is Beaten Down or the scene ends. If you're willing to spend Satiety, though, it goes from a rage curse to a rage blessing - for the duration, the victim can't be Beaten Down and gets +2 to all combat rolls. And if you roll well enough, you get to name their target rather than it being the nearest person to you. A lot of Nightmares, actually, have a clause like this, that turns them into a back-handed blessing in some way. E: Nightmares also get boosted or slightly different effects if you have Satiety 7+. This is the opposite of Atavisms, which have boosted effects at Satiety 3-. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 05:28
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Dammit Who? posted:The Lairs still sound extremely cool. I'm curious about the "if you die in your Lair, you die for good" bit - is there something where if you get owned outside your Lair you can automatically retreat to it? I'm assuming there is, since it seems obvious. If you're in an area that resonates with your Lair, you can make a relatively simple roll to retreat to it at any time. Beasts love home turf advantage.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:30
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Mors Rattus posted:Behold, My True Form! lets you basically do a psychic terror attack. You have very broad control over how the damage manifests if you kill them - it might be death by fear, or you might turn them to stone. Yes! Yes!!!
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Apr 14, 2015 05:31
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Crion posted:I don't think that alone explains it. Changelings are just as paranoid as Demons -- and their Mask roughly as impenetrable, unless that's been nerfed recently -- but Beasts apparently have no problem with them. See, I don't think so. Changeling are often very paranoid people, but that's because Changeling is about abuse and madness. Changeling paranoia is the result of their abuse, its the most chronic form of madness they suffer. It's very much part of the game, but its not the core of the game. Changeling is much more about what you suffered and your personal quest to try and piece it all back together as best you can. Demon is about Paranoia from moment one. Just as all the sub themes in Changeling branch out from the core theme of abuse, all the sub themes of Demon go back to Paranoia. I mean go back to how Enscrolling works. A Changeling normally suffers a breaking point for having his Mien revealed because of the trauma involved, unless he Enscrolls the mortal because he is controlling the encounter with this thing that makes him vulnerable. There's a safe way to out yourself in Changeling, compared to Demons who risk discovery every time they out themselves no matter what.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:34
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Oh right and do you remember that one episode of Fringe, the one with the drug that made the dude fear bladed butterflies that killed him by making his body act as if the butterflies were real even though he was hallucinating them? Bugs Everywhere! lets you do that. You make a victim think that they're covered in bugs, and at high Satiety, they literally believe the bugs are biting and stinging them inside their skin, to the extent that their body acts as if it's poisoned even though there is no actual, physical venom. (You can also turn it into a backhanded blessing - normally, it gives the Sick tilt, and if you spend Satiety, the penalty from Sick is applied a bonus to any form of supernatural mental influence, control or mind-reading.)
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Apr 14, 2015 05:36
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So Lairs are Freddy's boiler room?
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Apr 14, 2015 06:21
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So, if Changling is Abuse, and Demon is Paranoia, what's Beast? Psychopathy?
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Apr 14, 2015 06:43
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Is "teen angst" an emotion or a collection of them? And can Mummy be Alzheimer's Disease?
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Apr 14, 2015 06:59
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moths posted:So Lairs are Freddy's boiler room? Yes. Also my thrown gauntlet to white room combat "analysis", as Beats are never in a white room; they drag their environmental tilts around with them. But it's like Freddy's Boiler Room, yes. Or the room in IT, or the cave in the Fire Worm, or any number of other examples.
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Apr 14, 2015 09:51
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yes. Also my thrown gauntlet to white room combat "analysis", as Beats are never in a white room; they drag their environmental tilts around with them. If the environmental Tilts are present by default because the Beast is there, it sounds like it would be rather easy to account for them in a "white room" combat situation.
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Apr 14, 2015 12:13
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Dammit Who? posted:Yes! Yes!!! You're welcome. EDIT: I came this close to including a Nightmare called That Song You Like is From Twenty Years Ago. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 14:16
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Denim Avenger posted:See, I don't think so. Changeling are often very paranoid people, but that's because Changeling is about abuse and madness. Changeling paranoia is the result of their abuse, its the most chronic form of madness they suffer. It's very much part of the game, but its not the core of the game. Changeling is much more about what you suffered and your personal quest to try and piece it all back together as best you can. The central theme of C:tL is self-expression (in the face of trauma and recovery), and choosing who to "out" yourself to is part of that. Otherwise, the Mask as-written is near impossible to blunder through. However since Beasts can break into any "zone", that means they can pop into the Hedge- where the Mask doesn't exist, and all Changelings are in their true form.
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Apr 14, 2015 14:23
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GimpInBlack posted:You're welcome. Did you do You Are Meat? 'cause that one is a bit of a problem. (Pretty much all the rest are great, though!) (Also, Beasts can spot Changelings without seeing through the Mask. Beasts have MONSTER SENSE, they can spot most people. Except Demons if the Demons spoof them.)
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Apr 14, 2015 14:31
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Hopefully they'll clean up some of the more rediculous bits, because a lot of this sounds really cool.GimpInBlack posted:You're welcome. Oh my god.
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Apr 14, 2015 14:39
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Mors Rattus posted:Did you do You Are Meat? 'cause that one is a bit of a problem. (Pretty much all the rest are great, though!) I did all the Nightmares, yeah. Glad you liked (most of) them, and glad to see people pick up on the idea that most of them can be used as buffs, provided you're cool with the Darth Vader school of employee motivation. As for You Are Meat, can you elaborate on what you see as a problem? It's beefy, yeah, but I'm curious if there's something blindingly obvious I missed or if something in the Nightmare isn't as clear as it should be. I haven't seen anyone use that particular Nightmare in playtest yet.
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Apr 14, 2015 14:55
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I think the actual issue with Beast its that it's a less-compelling version of Changeling. They're human-looking monsters changed into something else by nightmare creatures, feed their supernatural powers by causing emotions in victims, specialize in specific feelings, and live in dream-logic lairs carved into in otherworldly fairy tale dimension. They're, at best, trying to fill the niche of particularly potent Autumn Court members and, at worst, are spooky things living in lairs in Hollows, emerging from the hedge to cause trouble and serve as a cautionary tale for why you shouldn't get too similar to the gentry. Beast reads as something written by someone who wanted to play Changeling, but with a higher power level and a font featuring tacky blood drips and skulls and none of the nuance or depth. At least, that's my problem with it. I can't see any reason to play it over the exact same character concept but in Changeling, save for being really interested in the raw power that Atavisms provide. I can't wrap my head around what niche they're trying to fill. jagadaishio fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 14:56
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GimpInBlack posted:You're welcome. You are forever haunted by a spectre of your high-school-aged self humming the intro riff to "Bittersweet Symphony"
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Apr 14, 2015 14:58
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GimpInBlack posted:I did all the Nightmares, yeah. Glad you liked (most of) them, and glad to see people pick up on the idea that most of them can be used as buffs, provided you're cool with the Darth Vader school of employee motivation. You Are Meat removes souls; okay, that's fine. For one Satiety it does so permanently, and it explicitly works on things that don't actually have souls. And not having a soul is a death sentence. If you do not have a soul, you are going to loving die if you can't get it back. If it weren't so easy to make permanent, that'd be fine, but it's only one Satiety to do. That's super, super cheap. Oh, and You Are Meat doesn't allow a resistance attribute. It's just Int+Satiety. So: if I have a decent tank of Satiety, I can drop this on anyone - anyone at all and spend 1 Satiety to make it permanent.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:07
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jagadaishio posted:I think the actual issue with Beast its that it's a less-compelling version of Changeling. They're human-looking monsters changed into something else by nightmare creatures, feed their supernatural powers by causing emotions in victims, specialize in specific feelings, and live in dream-logic lairs carved into in otherworldly fairy tale dimension. Beasts aren't changed into Beasts, they're born like that. Its basically a coming out metphor. (Except my coming out didn't involve hoarding gold and eating people) Also they feed on more than emotions, it looks more like they feed on concepts. Plus, I think at least some the similarities to the other lines are meant to be like a built-in hook for crossover stuff. VVV  VVV
Luminous Obscurity fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 15:08
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jagadaishio posted:At least, that's my problem with it. I can't see any reason to play it over the exact same character concept but in Changeling, save for being really interested in the raw power that Atavisms provide. I can't wrap my head around what niche they're trying to fill. Even worse, once Changeling 2E comes out and equips characters of every kith with +10L 8-again thistleblasts or whatever, Beast won't even have that!
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Apr 14, 2015 15:11
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I like this Lair and Nightmare stuff. Seems a bit OP but it's fine. If you guys rewrite the really cringey fluff surrounding Heroes and Beasts, you might have a good game on your hands.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:20
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Mors Rattus posted:You Are Meat removes souls; okay, that's fine. That's not how soul loss works in nWoD 2E, though. There's nothing inherently fatal about any of the Soul Loss conditions, the worst you get is the Thrall condition, which prohibits you from spending Willpower, using Defense, or spending Experiences (which probably doesn't matter unless you're in a PvP scenario), and you suffer the Broken condition. That's harsh, but it's not a death sentence--and don't forget it can take days or even weeks to progress to that level, depending on how fast the target burns through Willpower. It's a long-play power that's way better for creating havoc and leeching your target's mental reserves; if all you want to do is make someone loving die, there are way more efficient means to do it. Even then, the permanent version has an out in the form of a crazy vision-quest to recover their sense of self. Sure, your victim might need to find a Beast, or maybe a mage or a changeling, to start the journey, but that's a great story hook IMHO. It explicitly works the same way on everything to avoid crossover arguments; mechanically, every target follows the Soulless > Enervated > Thrall track, so there's no "well, but my soul isn't really a soul, so this doesn't work on me" wiggle room or questions of "what happens if I use this Nightmare on [splat from a game line three years down the road that didn't exist yet when the power was written]?" Future-proofing, if you will. The missing Resistance Trait is legit my bad, though. Should definitely be Int + Satiety - Resolve.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:32
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It's a good sign that the writers here on SA are taking the critism so well, but I cannot help but remember that most criticism towards Heroes is mostly being shut down.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:34
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Giving it a Resistance trait helps a lot, since it means Supernatural Tolerance gets involved. I still feel that permanent soul loss is too cheap, though. (Granted, the thing has very little utility in the short term. I would raise the price on permanence but increase the base duration from one scene to at least a day or two. Hell, a day or so per success would be fine.) E: Basically, I find that 1 Satiety isn't a very meaningful cost. Sure, going from 7 to 8 or 8 to 9 Satiety is a bit tricky barring using a Nightmare that counts as feeding - which at that level is risky to do - but going from 2 to 3 or even 4 to 5 isn't particularly difficult. 1 Satiety is not hard to get - the hard part is staying at high Satiety rather than middling. This, as a note, is one reason why the Atavisms are kind of OP. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 15:37
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paradoxGentleman posted:It's a good sign that the writers here on SA are taking the critism so well, but I cannot help but remember that most criticism towards Heroes is mostly being shut down. In his defense that RPGnet thread turned into a total mess and literally had people freaking out about insidious feminists and other weird junk (I agree it felt like he was dodging it though). The OPP blog's comments seem a bit more sane and a couple people posted some pretty good wall-of-text criticisms that he actually responded to. Granted it was to the effect of "Sorry to hear that. I hope these blogs can change your mind. If not, no hard feelings" but he's at least aware of it as more than a "But they're called Heroes why can't I play ooooone" kind of deal so hopefully something will come of it.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:48
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That's the thing that really bugs me about Beast, really. Even fi the game ends up good, it just feels like there's a lot of more interesting things Onyx Path could have done before slightly-different-changeling. Like, I can propably brainstorm half a dozen ideas in five minutes: - Aliens - Dopplegangers - Mad Scientists (a better take than the Genius fangame) - Deep Ones/other hybrids with lovecraftian horrors - Mutants/escaped experiments - Time and/or Dimension travelers (sliders meet Continuum: roleplaying in the yet, I guess) - Bug people, why not - Abbott and Costello
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Apr 14, 2015 15:49
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On the note of new things, here's one I think is weird but not necessarily bad: Beasts basically get SUPER MERITS. These are Beast-only merits that are advanced versions of a normal merit that everyone can take, which provide significantly boosted effects, but require you to fully invest in the normal merit. For example: Demolisher is a 1-3 dot merit that lets you ignore 1-3 points of Durability when breaking stuff. A Beast with Demolisher 3 can take SUPER DEMOLISHER for 2 dots (note: not its actual name, the actual name is Demolisher (Advanced)) to just straight-up ignore Durability and get exceptional successes on 3 rather than 5 when breaking stuff. (This actually overlaps very extensively with an Atavism; this is a minor issue I've noticed a few times). Merits that have SUPER MERIT versions: Danger Sense, Demolisher, Direction Sense (which also has a HYPER MERIT version that requires you have SUPER DANGER SENSE), Double Jointed, Eidetic Memory, Fame, Fast Reflexes, Giant, Iron Skin (which also comes in HYPER IRON SKIN), Killer Instinct, Library (which has HYPER LIBRARY too and is the only one that isn't Beast-exclusive in either case), Resources, Striking Looks. I don't understand some of the picks, like SUPER FAME or SUPER RESOURCES but, y'know, whatevs.
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Apr 14, 2015 15:57
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Super Fame either is on the level of "You are the President", or they'll never make that a mechanical element in a game ever.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:18
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Super Fame means that your MONSTER SELF has legendary notoriety that boosts your Fame even further. It acts as bonus Fame dots, but also gives you the power to put an appropriate Condition on people when you act in accordance with your reputation, once per session per Super Fame dot. Also, Heroes can sometimes sense your presence within a half mile.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:20
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The Super Resources makes sense if you're a dragon-type hoarder who has been amassing a fortune from everything. As for the whole Heroes thing, if you want to make them bad guys or jerks or whatever, that's your call. I think that the thing I posted about Heroes being rivals that have the skills to take you down is a better idea, but it's up to you guys if you think "internet trolls with magic" is a better idea. In any case, I'd strongly advise against picking the scab that is Gamergate. Just let it rest and remove that joke about the ethics thing because it'll bring nothing but unnecessary drama.
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Apr 14, 2015 16:43
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MonsieurChoc posted:That's the thing that really bugs me about Beast, really. Even fi the game ends up good, it just feels like there's a lot of more interesting things Onyx Path could have done before slightly-different-changeling. Like, I can propably brainstorm half a dozen ideas in five minutes: -Where's the personal horror? -Where's the personal horror? -Covered by Mage. -Covered by Werewolf/Beast, unless you've got a compulsive need to see "cyclopean" in your roleplaying game fluff. -Where's the personal horror? -Where's the horror, period? -I'm pretty sure you can be a bug person in this game, or Changeling, or Demon. -Covered by the corebook.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:17
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Honestly, unless one of the devs is sitting on something brilliant, I hope Beast is the last gameline for a bit. I'd like to see them just focus on fleshing out what they have for a little while. I mean, counting Beast, we'll be at ten lines plus the core.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:28
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I dunno, I think the Genius fangame was pretty good at delivering a sense of powerlessness and horror, while at the same time creating an interesting setting for the whole thing to take place in. I know I am absolutely in love with the Foundations a Genius can belong to. The way they handled the creation of mad inventions was sort of lacking and confusing, but I would call it pretty good, especially by fan splats standards.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:36
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