Hello again, old dead forum! It's been a while. And I've got no idea whether or not I'm engaging in productive discussion or shouting into an empty cave, but what the hell, I like how my voice sounds, so here goes:
The Endgame came and went, and the world moved on. House Games 1.5 hit when no one was lookin'. Then all of a sudden, old friends told stories together once more.
Before I get too wrapped up in pretentious narration, I'll get to the point instead. I've been compiling all the information from the wiki and a couple of forum posts to try and put together some player's guides. Which we do have already, but, no offense Ed, I thought it would be useful to have something that was a bit more user-friendly (and particularly new-user friendly) than our own personal Magic the Gathering Comprehensive Rules.
In doing this, I've also found a ton of places where the Wiki is still out of date for the 1.5 rules, as well as a number of places where things just needed to be cleaned up or redone a little bit. I'm not done with the actual guides yet, still got more non-rules based content that needs writing, but I've made a list of changes to various rules and systems that I think would be smart, as well as a list of thus far unresolved issues that I'm not sure how to resolve yet.
So obviously none of this is set in stone, even if I had that kind of authority I don't have that much faith in my abilities. So if anyone is still out there, I'd love some input!
General changes:
1) Removed all references to:
a) Manipulation
b) Intuition
c) Humanity/Morality
d) Virtues
e) Study points
f) Aggravated Damage
And replaced them with
a) Generally Wits or Intelligence, but uses Stamina when paired with Meditation
b) Either Awareness or Occult
c) Willpower and Traumas
d) Temporary Willpower rolls
e) Nothing, fuck study points
f) Nothing, fuck aggravated damage
2) Changed the wording in many cases to help with grammar and sentence structure, as well as to aid in being written well
Specific Changes:
1) Earning experience
a) Removed line about how other characters (retainers and the like) gain xp, that info should be found on the relevant merit/flaw page
2) Abilities
a) Fields
- Normalized all fields to 1 per rank except Linguistics
- Removed fields from Survival and Performance
b) Secondary Abilities
- Adjusted some of the connections to base abilities, some of them didn’t make sense
- Re-categorized skills that had previously used Intimidation, Intuition, Psychology, Culture, or Engineering as their base ability
- Eliminated several that were just stupid and inane
- Took all secondaries with only one base ability out of the big list and made several small lists on each of the Ability pages. Left a single list at the end with abilities that can have multiple different base abilities.
- Took the long list of different realms off of the Cosmology description, since those are cell-dependent
c) Changed the description of Brawl 2 so it no longer described beating on women
d) Changed mythos lore from restricting your starting morality to restricting the number of dice available for Trauma rolls
3) Merits
a) Added several merits
- Status (1): You may not be famous, but within your field you are highly respected. Choose a field of work or area of influence (must be consistent with your character). Your social interactions with people in that field will be positively affected by your Status, and any social rolls that come up will be at -2 difficulty.
- Beautiful (2): You’re quite the specimen! Rolls that rely on physical appearance in some way are at -2 difficulty, and social interactions should be roleplayed with this Merit in mind.
- Contacts (2): You know someone in a particular area of influence that is otherwise tricky to access. You must specify the details of your contact and obtain GM approval (things like the Pope’s inner circle will most likely be off-limits unless your character is already a bishop or cardinal).
4) Flaws
a) Added several flaws
- Brittle Bones (3): Your body just isn't capable of deal with impacts effectively. Each attack that does bashing damage to you gets one automatic success on the damage roll.
- Notoriety (3): You got your fame, but for all the wrong reasons. Whether because of a heist gone wrong or a high profile murder, you have a hard time staying anonymous in public. If people recognize you, bad things happen.
- Underage (3): You are far too young to be doing this sort of work, a preteen at the oldest. People treat you distinctly differently because of your age, and your starting Strength and Stamina are limited to 3.
- Tainted (5): An unlucky ancestor or an unfortunate brush with a dark power you didn’t understand has left you tainted and marked by the Devil. You begin with a Demonic Taint Autonomy pool, starting at 2 points instead of 1.
- Blacklisted (2-5): You pissed off the wrong people somewhere down the line, and now you’re being shut out. At two points, a single group or corporation (must be relevant to your character) has Blacklisted you. At 3 points, the entire industry refuses to do business with you. At 4 points, there’s not a business in the country that would dare affiliate with anyone by your name, and 5 points organizations the world over give you the cold shoulder, forcing you to deal with black market groups. Come up with a compelling reason why this happened to you! You must get GM approval before taking this Flaw. 5 points is VERY rare.
- Dependent (2-5): You have a dependent whom you must take care of at all times. Your dependent is required to attend every game with you. Come up with a reason for this: you’re being forced to watch them constantly by a vengeful mob boss, you’ve got a kid with severe mental disabilities, your wife is paraplegic and you can’t afford a caretaker, etc… You must also come up with an appropriate consequence should they die while on a game. The severity of this is dependent on the nature of your relationship with the dependent, as determined above. For example, if the dependent is your child, the consequence will be extreme: losing 6 permanent willpower would be appropriate, or gaining 4 Permanent Derangements. The point value of the flaw will depend on the severity of the punishment. A member of your immediate family will usually be 4 or 5 points, while someone forced into your care might only warrant two or three. The specifics of this flaw are quite flexible but it is subject to GM approval if you wish to take it at creation.
b) Renamed “disfigured” as “ugly”.
5) Willpower
a) Changed how willpower is regained, is now Stamina + Meditation
6) Derangement
a) Temporary derangements are now bought off at a flat cost of 10xp, in addition to requiring appropriate roleplaying.
7) Other Sources of damage
a) Fire Damage
- Removed soak difficulties for different sources of fire damage
- Fire changed to Lethal Damage
- Unsoakable unless armor specifies that it is flame retardant.
8) Feats of strength
a) Changed the chart to spencer’s cooler chart from a forum post
9) Computer rules
a) Added the computer system that was on the forums from way back when, listed as optional
10) Augmentation
a) Removed Humanity Index, Replaced with Autonomy pool
b) Revised all things that impacted humanity index to have roughly the same impact on the Autonomy pool
11) Advantages
a) Tolerance
- Revised to function based on Autonomy
12) Pools
a) Autonomy
- Made slightly more general. Now is used for any fight for control against an intruding force. Taint and Augmentation both use this system now, since they were already basically the same anyway.
- Instead of using the same triggers for gaining points for each type of Autonomy, that is now variable and should be worked out by the GM when this pool is given in a flavorful way
b) Pathos
- Low pathos score now requires a temporary Willpower check at increasing difficulties to resist pursuing your Passions, replacing the increased Self-Control difficulty
c) Taint and Torment
- Folded into autonomy
13) Templates
a) Psy-Stalker
- Lethal Soak dice from Stamina changed to ½ Stamina rating, rounded up, of Lethal Soak
14) Teaching Powers
a) No longer uses Study Points. Instruction is now accomplished by the teacher rolling Intelligence (or maybe Charisma) + Power Rating at a difficulty of 10 - the student’s Intelligence, with successes reducing the cost of the level to be purchased. That level must be purchased in the same Downtime as the Instruction.
Questions that linger
- Blind fighting is listed as a Secondary Ability AND as a maneuver, should we pick one?
- How to solve the Management problem?
- Examples of Permanent derangements?
- Still need a write-up of how to properly make and give Gifts
- Therapy, both for Augmented characters and for dealing with Derangements, needs to be looked at
- Regeneration Augments need to be rebalanced with the removal of Aggravated Damage
- Need to fix Retainer systems
- Mythic Attributes need to be looked at and potentially changed
- Should Autonomy be a template?
- Chi needs to be entirely redone
- Negative side-effects of Rage are enlightenment based, need replacing
- True Faith is Enlightenment-gated, something else needs to restrict access
- What to do with Bestiary + relevant Forum posts, including Antagonists?
