Cthulhu Dark has a similar but amusingly inverted concept in the way it handles Insanity escalation--folk unexposed to the uncanny are really jumpy and shoot up the Insanity ladder, but the more scares they've had the harder it is for crazy experiences to make them lose it further.
The previous one, by the way, got a "Good Insight!" comment from Vincent Baker on the Powered by the Apocalypse G+ community page. So, yay, I'm officially not crazy. In that regard.
@DuckTapeAl @Shalvenay @Emrakul I like all the plot ideas, though I know nothing about the Elder Scrolls games. Although I like the sound of the Just Cause plot, I could perhaps get myself into trouble irl considering my geographical location! So... happy to go with the HP or Carnival of Carnage games which were Shalvenay's and Emrakul's preferences.
yeah...I don't know enough about TES or HP to feel comfortable RPing in those settings
the Unjust Cause makes my "don't do this" senses tingle for other reasons -- probably because of how close it is to RL
which leaves me with Carnival of Carnage (although I'm not familiar with the ICP cosmology, it being a fantasy setting gives me enough combination of linkage with the familiar and distance from reality that I think I'll be comfortable with it)
@DuckTapeAl @Shalvenay @Emrakul As I said to DuckTapeAl, my big problem is going to be time. How would UTC 16:00 - 19:00 Saturday be for people? It would be my late night, and at least Ducktape Al's middle of the day Saturday.
Sure, but the ES world is about as close to generic fantasy as you can get. There's basically no messing around that needs to be done to make GURPS work with it.
In fact, one of the alternate spell systems in GURPS works perfectly for TES, right out of the box.
@harlandski When you get back on: Is there a morning that could work for you? An 11 hour time difference is going to be difficult to work around. If your 'late night' is too early for Shalvenay, maybe we can find an early morning for you/late night for us kind of thing?
150 points of disadvantages means everyone ends up with at least 50 points of mental disadvantages, which pushes the edge of functional party members.
Most of us had more like 100 points of mental disadvantages, and none of us were really functional as people. We were making self-control rolls every ten minutes.
I suppose my other problem that can crop up (especially if you like highly sandboxy campaigns) is that I can be very adversarial in that sort of environment
I am trying to build an Pathfinder Alchemist and ran into a few questions that I am having trouble answering:
The FAQ clarifies that a Smoke Bomb will deal "bomb damage" (to the main target I am hitting). Does this also include Splash Damage?
Can I combine the effects of an INT boosting Cognato...
The others are more simple to me. :P I could see an argument for considering bomb damage and splash damage two separate things, with bomb damage being the main bomb and splash damage being splash. It's not specified anywhere that I know of what bomb damage means.
Yes, I've read it. I'm just not sure I'm confident enough in that line of argument to post it in an answer. The fact that there's errata means there was confusion.
Er, an FAQ, I mean.
Also worth noting is that only Smoke Bomb has this FAQ; lots of other bombs don't mention damage changing but don't have the FAQ. So I'm not sure about them either. Trying to think back to how we handled it in my game.
I would accept your line of reasoning personally, I'm just again not sure I'm confident enough in it to answer myself. If the questions are split, feel free to answer it. xD
Ah. I don't really consider it a bad question myself. They're all pretty straightforward (my reservations about that one not withstanding), just, y'know, in the same question.
I think I figured out why that errata only talks about those 4 bombs. Those 4 are the only bomb-related non-damaging discoveries in the APG, where the Alchemist was printed.
All the other bomb discoveries in the APG are clearly damage-related, and all the other non-damaging bomb discoveries were printed after people already knew about how that bomb damage worked.
As for the others, mutagens are alchemical bonuses and cognatogens are stated to function just like them aside from the stats, so they stack with Fox's Cunning. Drawing and using an extract is all one standard action (that is in the FAQ as well actually).
But I don't want to answer until the question becomes questions. P:
I'd have thought someone would have, really. The rules are pretty straightforward about it, but it's still the kind of thing I imagine could confuse someone.
This is an exercise in ridiculousness, but I find it quite fun to consider - hence powergaming.
Let's consider three characters: a gnomish cavalier (small) with his wolf mount (medium), half-orc druid (medium) and druid's companion, a gorilla (large).
I remember the rules saying that the rider...
yeah, she's volunteering to go through a one-shot dungeon I'm working on -- who knows, after her try at it as a player, I might even let her take a shot (spark?) at DMing it for me ;)
How does D&D 3.5e handle the case where the means of bypassing or disabling a trap is located somewhere other than the trapped door/lock/...? For instance, take an electricity-based trap (such as an electrified door) where the electricity source is located somewhere else -- you can't simply cut ...
Graaah. Even if I had been awake enough to work on that character tonight, personal stuff keeps rearing its head. I spent the better part of several hours navigating it. I think... I think I'm good now. Maybe. I hope.
The D&D 3.5e's original Truenamer is considered so badly broken it's nearly unusable, and in the Tier system, it gets pegged at tier 6 or 7, i.e. it is the lowest of the low.
However, the folks on the Giant in the Playground forums have rewritten the class in an attempt to mold the Truenamer int...
Yeah. Also, he didn't actually say anything about what a TWWW can do that warrants a T2 rating. Flight, teleportation, and self-healing are pretty nice, but not really game-breaking in the way that the tier system intends.
I'd say that, in general, offensive utterances are pretty much useless. A decent truenamer will end up with an AL of about 80 at level 20, which is basically one hit from death anyway.
I am trying to build an Pathfinder Alchemist and ran into a few questions that I am having trouble answering:
The FAQ clarifies that a Smoke Bomb will deal "bomb damage" (to the main target I am hitting). Does this also include Splash Damage?
Can I combine the effects of an INT boosting Cognato...
Is voting to close something I can do at my rep level? I thought it was, but when I actually need to it seems like I can never find the option. Hence my not on that question.
I saw someone talking about elections, then someone talking about voting, and made assumptions.
Oh, and since you're here, shalvenay: When I finished reading TWWW, I ended up with a profound 'meh'. If feels more like they were trying to shoehorn in skill checks into the existing spell system.
The flavour is still cool, but the implementation doesn't feel like it matches the flavour in any real way.
It's definitely better than the ToM Truenamer, but that isn't saying much. :)
I feel like the power level of the vocalizations is all over the place.
Like, there's one utterance that's just a 10 point DoT that can be augmented up a bit.
Up to 25, it looks like. And it has a minimum level of 13.
And there are other sort of random shortcomings to the system, too.
Like, the Recitation of the Unclouded Eye is a trivial check, is super important, and the Lexeme doesn't get it for free.
And the big one, the fact that you set your DC before you make the check means that if you power up a vocalization to anything close to it's maximum power, there's going to be a significant chance that you'll just waste your action.
@Shalvenay @Emrakul Since @harlandski doesn't have a strong preference for either of the HP or CoC games, do either of you feel strongly about playing one, or not playing the other? I have a mild preference for the CoC game, if only because it gives me more authorial control over the setting.
If one or both of you have a strong preference, then I'm willing to bow to that.
There will definitely be some hack-and-slash, but there will also be a fair bit of investigation and social stuff, too. If you're not partial to hack and slash, then that part can be toned down.
user61230
I'd really appreciate it, at least for my character.
user61230
10:22 PM
Though I'm absolutely fine with it if it's too difficult to work in.
@DuckTapeAl also, I'm fine with investigation play, just keep in mind that I think in terms of forensic science/engineering when investigating much more than I think of gumshoe witness interviewing
@BESW :) I think the CoC setting will be fun either way
@Shalvenay Fair enough. The setting is a TL3 fantasy world, so keep in mind that a lot of forensic science doesn't exist yet.
@Pureferret Huh. I'm not super surprised that there's an official Discworld supplement, since there's an official supplement for basically everything else, but it still seems like a weird setting/system matchup.