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Topics - luminos

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1
DFRPG / Making Evocation more Complicated
« on: July 29, 2010, 11:24:42 PM »
A bit of a preamble before I get started.  I first began this project a while ago with the thought of making Evocation have a more of a D&D feel.  The thought was that I'd make about a billion custom powers for evocation to power up various elements, and create a lot of mechanical differences between the elements.  This original scheme was intended to replace Specialization bonuses with these custom powers.  

This whole idea goes very much against the way magic currently works, and is probably a bit more crunchy than the DFRPG was meant to be.  I'm sure there are several other reasons not to like this idea as well, but its just for fun.  I'm going to post all of the custom evocation powers I've thought of here, and I'd ask anyone else interested to make their own contributions to the list.

(Warning: powers may not be balanced.  In fact, they are all might be a bit overpowered if they can be taken in addition to normal specialization bonuses.)

Fire powers:  
Napalmist - The "On Fire!" aspect from your fire maneuvers will do a 1-stress hit upon a successful hit.  In addition, any fire attack can give the "On Fire!" aspect for an extra 3 shifts in power.
Purifier - You can perform counterspells with fire at +2 power/+2 control

Earth powers:
Crusher - Your earth evocations can be designed to exclusively target the opponents Might.  No athletics dodge available!
Spectrum Bender - Earth evocations can now be used to create veils.  In addition, any veils created using earth has +1 power/+1 control

Water powers:
Entropist- +2 control/+2 power for hexing purposes with water.
Drizzler - The "Soaked" aspect from water maneuvers will put a threshold: 1 effect mimicking running water, as long as the aspect stays on the target.  In addition, any water attack can give the "Soaked" aspect for an extra 3 shifts in power.

Air powers:
Gale Force:  Any wind evocation that is designed to effect or limit movement of your opponents (zone borders, knockback spells, grapples) has +1 control/+1 power
Buffeter:  The "buffeted" aspect from air maneuvers will require the effected person to overcome a zone border of one when moving between zones as long as this aspect is in place.  In addition, any air attack can give the "Buffeted" aspect for an extra 3 shifts in power

Spirit powers:
Dazzler - The "blinded" aspect from spirit maneuvers reduces the effected persons alertness by one as long as the aspect stays in place.  In addition, any spirit attack can give the blinded aspect for an extra 3 shifts of power.
Shroudist - Any veils made from spirit have +2 power/+2 control.


Other idea's I've toyed with include giving each element an inherent vulnerability (like saying fire evocations take extra shifts for making armor) and separating the custom powers into tiers that only be bought following the ladder system (3rd tier power would need a 2nd and 1st tier power, for example).

So thats what I have for now, but more will come up, I'm sure.  Post your own!  Post ideas of what the powers would be in alternative schemes of magic that have different elements!

2
DFRPG / Clouded Skies: Seattle game report
« on: June 25, 2010, 03:26:52 PM »
So the group I'm GM'ing for a play by post game is finishing up its first scenario.  Read the whole thing here: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,17729.0.html)

For those of you who don't have the time to read through 20~ pages, here is what happened:

The Player Characters:  Faraday Church is a member of the Venatori Umbrorum with a serious grudge against Red Court and Black Court vampires.  He is as powerful as a White Council wizard, but he was denied membership when he was younger and less powerful, and doesn't have a high opinion of them.  
Tubal Cain is a pious Catholic and a White Council Warden with an amulet that grants him use of Soulfire.  His attitude for dealing with monsters is righteous wrath first, ask questions later.  
Mallory Janus is a changeling in the court of Autumn.  Autumn is a well kept secret in this game world.  Mallory sided with them when they helped him deal with a Summer Sidhe giving his family problems.
Detective Paul Mitchell is a focused practitioner (refers to himself as a 'findomancer') who works for the Seattle police department.  He occupies a precarious position of being clued in about monsters, and still having to deal with bureaucracy.
Joseph Smith is a werewolf that looks out for the little guy.  His player ended up leaving the game, so he was replaced by...
Lilith Aleza is a White Court vampire who inherited a lot of money after her father's "accidental" death.  She is a savvy business woman with no opposition to doing work that is less than legal, but she still finds herself acting as the unlikely champion of King County.

The Story:
Faraday and Joseph encounter a couple of toughs trying to kidnap a woman.  The two of deal with the toughs pretty quickly (Faraday performed an awesome maneuver where he used his magic to turn their kidnapping van into a giant electromagnet, disarming the entire group) and manage to capture one of them.  Faraday soulgazes the man, and what he sees leads him to believe that this is a vampires thrall.  Joseph deals with the captive (at this point, his player has left the game) while Faraday goes to check one of his Venatori sources.  He learns that Summer is up to something, but the details are vague.  After making a few calls, he goes to the police station to inform Detective Mitchell of the situation.

Mallory Janus is enjoying the day at the mall when an over muscled thug comes up to him and makes not so vague threats.  Mallory picks up on the aura of Summer coming from the thug.  He is able to use the guys less than stellar intelligence against him and get away without much trouble.  Then Mallory goes to meet Biggs, a goblin that is a decent source of information.  Biggs informs him that someone in Summer is stirring up trouble against Mallory upon finding that he has sided with Autumn.  This is bad news, because Autumn is supposed to be a well kept enough secret that even Biggs shouldn't know about it, let alone agents of the Summer court.  Mallory decides that he should go find some help from some people he knew.  First, he would go see Detective Mitchell at the police station...

Detective Mitchell has been called to a crime scene on the docks, and Tubal Cain is given a message from a priest that he should go to the docks for some vague reason.  The cop at the scene explains that the current theory of how the guy died was an animal attack, but she admits its not a very good theory.  Mitchell is able to figure out rather quickly that this wasn't an animal attack, but probably a vampire snack.  Cain figures out that he was probably sent to the docks for the murder that he finds happened there, but he is kept out of the scene by the police.  A man named Joshua Fontaine approaches him purporting to offer information about what happened.  He leads Cain off to the side and makes a poor attempt at subtlety while suggesting he'd pay Cain to go vigilante on the killer of the murdered guy.  Cain soulgazes Fontaine to get the measure of the man, and does not like what he sees.  Fontaine makes a few futile attempts to lie his ass off about his intentions, while Cain tries to threaten him into spilling the beans.  Detective Mitchell managed to see Cain at the edge of the police tape earlier, and shows up at this war of words, hears Cains story of what happened, and arrests Fontaine.  After sending Fontaine away in a squad car, Mitchell goes back to the crime scene to perform a quick ritual to dust for supernatural 'fingerprints'.  What he finds indicates not only a vampire, but one that practices magic.

Detective Mitchell shows up at the police station to interrogate Fontaine.  Fontaine, of course, already had a lawyer waiting for him.  After some difficult negotiation, he finally gets Fontaine to give up some information, as long as he gets the charges against Fontaine dropped.  Around this point in time, everyone starts trickling into the station to meet up with the detective.  When he gets out of interrogation, the group discusses what has been happening this day.  They decide to all head out to the port to check out the information Mitchell had just got from interrogation.

At the port, they hardly get anything done when the Summer thug that had threatened Mallory earlier shows up.  He loses the glamour that had been on him and appears as the full sized ogre he is.  After a few spells bounce harmlessly off of him, the group switch to mundane weapons and start doing some good damage to him.  Just as the ogre is taking his last few hits, two Black Court Vampires come at the group from the other direction.  Two of the high points of the fight involved Cain disappearing in a puff of feathers as he teleports right next to a vampire and slices it up, and Faraday shooting a gun with special ammunition that blows off a vampires head in a single shot.  

The downed ogre leaves cryptic threats against Mallory, and Cain takes several teeth from the dead vampires so they can be used as links to the master vampire.  The group finds the shipping crate that smuggled the vampires into the city.  Faraday calls his mentor, Jack Brink, to talk over the events so far.  Faraday considers the possibility that the master vampire of this scourge could be the one responsible for killing his family.  Mallory receives a visit from an a pixie with uncharacteristic reserve that tells him one of Autumn's top messenger pixies has gone missing.  The group decide to go equip themselves for battle, and to meet up at Mitchell's house to perform the tracking spell on the master vampire.  

Lilith Aleza meets with a man who promises her a lot of money, and future business opportunities, if she will deliver some blackmail material to a city councilman at a prearranged meeting.  The blackmail goes smoothly enough, but the councilman put a tail on her to follow her to her mansion that she saw too late.  Later that evening, someone manages to sneak into her large and well guarded estate and attacks her.  A few convenient declarations later, the assailant is falling out of a fourth story window.  Lilith doesn't get any useful information from him, and she feeds on him to satiate her hunger.  The next visitor to the estate is more polite about it, and shows up at the front gate.  Lilith lets in this woman who claims to be a researcher out of a sense of hospitality.  Lilith decides its time to hire a mercenary, Seth, to help out with whatever trouble she had managed to stir up.

Faraday is surprised to see his mentor, Jack Brink, waiting at his house for him.  Jack tags along as Faraday heads to the meeting at Mitchell's house.  When meeting the group there, Jack tries to take charge, and demands the group run surveillance on the vampire master but not try to engage him until a Venatori strike team is prepped on the situation.  No one thinks much of Jack's plan (too many innocents could be killed in the days it took to get a strike team ready) and a minor confrontation occurs between Cain and Faraday over whether the Venatori Umbrorum or the White Council are better able to handle supernatural threats.  After everyone calms down, Detective Mitchell performs a tracking spell to locate the vampire master.  He then performs a remote viewing spell to allow him and everyone else in the room to spy on the vampires activities.  The remote viewing shows the vampire performing a complex ritual, and Cain makes an educated guess that it is a ritual to remove the traditional Black Court weaknesses from the vampire performing the ritual.  The group mount up to track down the vampire and kill him before he can complete the ritual.  Mallory, however, receives a warning that a group of Summer Fae have discovered a Way to one of Autumns strongholds, and he rushes off to defend it.

The remaining vampire hunters follow the tracking spell to the Space Needle.  Faraday and Cain manage to handle a very long flight of stairs to the top without overexerting themselves, while the out of shape detective is having trouble breathing when he gets to the top.  Jack Brink takes his chances with the elevator.  At the top, there is an epic battle with spells flying all over the place and plenty of collateral damage.  The vampire goes down faster than I had intended, but the good guys didn't come away completely unscathed.  He reveals that he is indeed the one that was behind the deaths of Faraday's family, but when Faraday interrogates him at the end, he hints that he acted on the orders of someone else.  He also got in the three words "Destroy your Allies" as his death curse on Faraday.  A little after the fight ended, a strange short man showed up, talked about how much he enjoyed the entertaining fight, hinted at his connection to the days events, and promptly disappeared.  The group parted ways and got out of the Space Needle before the cops showed.

Mallory is led to the location of the way the Summer is attacking.  This way happens to be inside Lilith's property.  When Mallory gets there, Lilith, Seth, and Lilith's security forces are engaged in battle with several things that look like grassy moving hills.  Mallory crashes his car into one of them, and points out the gas tank, allowing Seth to use some tracer rounds to blow up the car and one of the hill monsters that was near it.  After a lengthy battle (in which Lilith makes good use of a grenade and a halberd, and Mallory makes several distractions) that results in one of the security guards completely trampled, the hills are defeated.  Mallory runs towards the closing Way, into which one last hill got away to.  He and Lilith head into the Nevernever to face off with the final hill, and after winning, the Sidhe that led the attack gets away.  The Sidhe, by the way, is the same 'researcher' that Lilith let onto her property earlier, and is the very "Evelynn" that forced Mallory to first seek Autumn's protection.  The grateful Autumn Lord, Waylen, thanks Mallory, and offers Lilith a minor favor to be paid in the future.


3
DFRPG / Custom True Faith power
« on: June 18, 2010, 03:48:33 AM »
Looking for some feedback on a True Faith power I'd thought up.

[-1] Ring of Faith:  The True Believer with this power has a portable circle made of items representing his faith (ex: Indian shaman has a rope with totems tied to it at even intervals) that can be used as a threshold to bar supernatural threats from entering it or harming those
inside it.
  Musts: A true believer or Champion of God related high concept Aspect.
  *Portable Threshold - Given sufficient time to set up the ring of faith (15 minutes minimum, longer times for circles > 10 ft. radius), the
                                ring acts as a Threshold: 2
  *Exclusive Threshold - The Ring of Faith does not stack on top of any pre-existing thresholds, and is not affected by this characters,
                                  or any other characters, Bless This House power.

4
DFRPG / Quick grapple question
« on: June 12, 2010, 10:26:32 PM »
How, specifically, are you supposed to initiate a grapple?  Guide me through the steps.

5
DFRPG / At Evocation speeds and methods
« on: April 27, 2010, 04:14:40 PM »
I'm in a debate about some of the effects about sponsored magic and I'm looking for opinions.  The debate is on what it means to cast spells that would normally be thaumaturgy, but due to sponsorship, can be cast at evocation speeds and methods.  One side interprets this to mean that the spell still counts as thaumaturgy, is cast as quickly as an evocation, and uses complexity bonuses from that field of thaumaturgy to increase the amount of power that can safely be used.  The other side interprets this to mean that the spell has the effects from that field of thaumaturgy (including duration), but is effectively treated as an evocation and uses power bonuses to help cast it but not complexity bonuses.  Both sides agree on the issue of duration and letting control bonuses for that kind of thaumaturgy helping the spell casting.

Looking for opinions, arguments and so on.

6
DFRPG / Small shape-shifting question
« on: April 22, 2010, 05:55:35 PM »
How is shape-shifting done in terms of mechanics?  If you want to use your beast change power to change into your wolf form, does it take a full action, supplemental action, or is it handled differently?  Does it require a skill check to use?

7
DFRPG / First Aid
« on: April 21, 2010, 02:47:05 AM »
How does the difficulty get set for the First Aid trapping of Scholarship get set?  I originally assumed just having scholarship was enough to give first aid, and it would be an automatic effect that didn't need a roll, because I didn't see anything in YS suggested I would need one.  But then on the OW stat block for EMT's, there is a stunt to give +2 to efforts to administer first aid.

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DFRPG / DFRPG as a Supers Game (renamed, split topic)
« on: April 20, 2010, 06:58:31 PM »
High Concept: Batman
Trouble: Becoming the Mask
Other Aspects: Criminals Killed my Parents, The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a superficial playboy, The Batman Gambit, Loads of Gadgets

Skills:
Fantastic (+6):  Resources (Although his wealth is likely epic, or even legendary, it operates on an effective level of fantastic so that the people he works for have a harder time discovering that Bruce Wayne is Batman.  In a direct contest of resources, assume that he beats you)
Superb (+5): Stealth, Fists, Alertness
Great (+4): Discipline, Deceit, Empathy, Athletics
Good (+3): Driving, Endurance, Intimidation, Contacts, Investigation
The rest of his skills default to fair or average

Stunts:
Lush Lifestyle
High Quality Workspace x4
Martial Artist
Lethal Weapon
Armed Arts (Various bat gadgets)
Acrobat
On My Toes
Paranoid? Probably
Never Surprised
Too Fast to Hit
Ear to the Ground
Pilot
Rule With Fear (modified to just be against criminals, so give it a +1 to intimidation when used this way)
Hidden Menace
Quick Eye
Swift and Silent
Perfect Ambush
Fade Out

Refresh: -19 (pure mortal)

He own a lab and a workshop equal to his resources skill, and a library that is specifically for researching crimal and law enforcement topics of superb quality.  His employees and friends and what not use these workspaces to make him all kinds of useful gadgets, including full body armor that counts as armor:3, various projectiles, a state of the art armored vehicle, gadgets that act as stunts (grappling hook gives him an advanced version of spider walk, for example), and other things.  His stunts and skills give him everything he needs to be a scary, sneaky fighter.  But the one thing that truly makes him powerful, and a threat against his enemies, is that the guy who plays him is meta-gamer of the highest caliber.  This is why Batman will always just happen to have the exact countermeasures in place that he needs to get an advantage over even the most powerful opponents.  And whats worse, the GM can't do anything about it, because all these details are casually added in by Batman's player long before he has to use them, so its perfectly acceptable role-playing.

9
DFRPG / Some of my character Ideas
« on: April 18, 2010, 08:05:11 AM »
I've come up with some interesting character ideas that don't completely fit inside the templates, and figured I'd make character sheets for some of them and post them here.  This is my first one, a cross up between a True Believer and a Wizard. 

Name:  Claude Wellson

High Concept Aspect:  True Templar on a Crusade
The True Templar is a secret society whose organization is descended from the original Knights Templar.  Their mission is to root enemies of the Christian faith that have infiltrated Christian institutions, be they supernatural or mortal.  Claude's specific charge is to discover and defeat the evil cult of false templars that seek to use the faith others to help them conquer the world.

Trouble Aspect:  Called to walk a lonely road.
His mission is of a nature that makes it impossible for him to form lasting, meaningful connections with other people.  Because he must keep his true purpose a secret, he is often forced to stay aloof from society.

Other Aspects:  Justice must be dealt, Looking for a silver lining, Too clever by half, Honesty or Silence, Mentored by the Venerable Timon van der Venne.

Skills: +35 (Submerged)
Superb (+5):   Conviction
Great (+4):     Weapons, Investigation, Empathy
Good (+3):      Lore, Discipline, Athletics
Fair (+2):        Scholarship, Alertness, Intimidation
Average (+1):  Presence, Endurance, Contacting
Languages: English, Ancient Greek, Latin, four more undefined at this point (one of which can be obscure or dead)

Stunts:
Blessed Words:  Can use Conviction to perform blocks in physical conflict
Linguist:  Knows four additional languages

Powers:
Guide my Hand         [-1]
Evocation               [-3]
Ritual                     [-2]
Wizard's Constitution [+0]

Starting Refresh: 10
Adjusted Refresh: 2

Magic:  The 'elements' of Claude's evocation are based on the four cardinal virtues, plus a fifth element that represents all three theological virtues.  To cast a spell in a certain element, he has to completely understand the spell as an application of that virtue.  So, to create a veil, he'd probably use prudence, to make supernatural armor he'd use fortitude, to make an aggressive spell, he might use justice, and so on.


Evocation: Prudence, Justice, and Theology  Specialization:  Control in Justice
Ritual:  Wards
Rotes:  Final Judgement (Justice):  Weapon:5  Claude creates a spectral sword and sends it straight at the foe to be struck down.
                                                requires the Templar sword sheathe focus item to cast.
           Light of Faith (Theology):   5 shift maneuver to produce an intense burst of sunlight, placing an aspect on the scene
                                               for two exchanges.  Requires Crucifix focus item to cast
           Weight of Guilt (Justice):   5 shift maneuver to place a 'pinned' aspect on a target.  requires Templar sword sheathe focus
                                                item to cast
           (note: Claude casts his magic in ancient Hebrew, but I couldn't be bothered to come up with translations for the spells)       

Focus Items:  Templar sword sheathe:  +1 to offensive control for Justice
                   Crucifix:                       +2 to defensive control for Theology, can only be used for Light of Faith rote
                    Prayer Beads:              +2 to complexity of wards

Claude's high Conviction score combined with all of his Conviction focused abilities is going to completely ruin someones day.  He can toss around several powerful spells before needing to switch to weapons, make blocks with conviction, and can use his conviction to replace another skill just by paying a fate point.

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