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Messages - bobjob

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1
DFRPG / Re: Attack into a block twofer?
« on: October 09, 2017, 10:55:40 PM »
I seem to remember Warden Ramirez doing something similar in White Night when fighting the duel in the Deeps. After doing a little refamiliarizing, YS260 has some rules and an example for redirecting spell energy. The specific rules are:

  • The spell must have been maintained from a previous exchange into the current one.
  • The spell must not have been used already for its original function in the current exchange.
  • You must be able to describe how the energy could plausibly be redirected

And the example text:
Wardens Carlos Ramirez and Harry Dresden have been fighting with White Court vampires in an insane duel to the death gone horribly wrong. Ghouls have also crashed the party, throwing the entire fight into disarray. Carlos has had his water shield rote (page 293) up for most of the fight; its current strength is four shifts. He still has another exchange of maintenance.

In the next exchange, the GM describes a ghoul advancing on the two of them, and it's Carlos' turn. JJ, Carlos' player, says, "Hey, so my water shield is entropic, right? It disintegrates whatever touches it? Can I just use it to intercept the nasty and chew him up, making it into an attack?"

JJ's explanation seems plausible, and Carlos hasn't used the shield to block this exchange. The GM considers this, and she says, "Ok, but obviously that's going to use the spell energy, so you'll be shieldless the rest of the exchange." JJ says he's fine with that; the GM tells him to roll his Discipline (because he's turning the block into an attack and needs a targeting roll), and allows him to attack the ghoul with a Weapon: 4 water attack. He rolls incredibly well, and the GM describes the ghoul being utterly disintegrated as it smashes into the shield.

2
DFRPG / Re: Building a big bad
« on: October 06, 2017, 09:08:54 PM »
I used some elements of boss battles from MMOs in a D&D game I ran a few years ago that really went over well with the players and helped even the action advantage of a group of PCs vs One Big Bad. D&D 5e did something right with Lair Actions for their legendary monsters, but what happens if the PCs are not fighting legendary monsters, but simply a named villain? Legendary Monsters often have a Lair that 5e treated as kind of a separate character that could only be defeated when the main monster was defeated (or if you removed the monster from the lair). The Lair always acts on Initiative Count 20, can do one of three different things (usually an attack of some kind, alter the environment in some way, and possibly some kind of a defense). The entire premise is that the lair is under the monster's influence because it's lived there for a long time.

What I ended up doing is giving the named villains two initiative counts and the second initiative count would go away at half hit points. The villain could only either attack or move on it's second initiative count. I usually had them move, which kept the villain from getting boxed in by the players. The villain would change some environmental variable, remove itself from a surround, or use magic to escape to another place. It kept the battles constantly moving and the kept the PCs thinking and engaged.

Now, I'd like to preface my suggestion with the fact that I haven't run or played in DFRPG in a couple of years, so I'm a little rusty on rules. If I were to do something like what I'm suggesting in DFRPG, I would build a custom "Boss" power. It would have it's own stress track and would essentially act like another character in the battle, one that goes off of a set initiative based on the level of "Boss" power that's initially purchased. As the power is used it would tick off a box of stress. Once all the boxes are ticked off, the Boss power would go into hibernation. Before the Boss Power is used up, it would certainly make things very interesting for the PCs and should be enough to make the PCs expend some serious resources. It would, in my opinion, provide for a more epic battle. Minions are also very useful, but sometimes it's even more fitting to have someone who could take on three or four PCs just by himself as a show of power.

If I can find my PDFs, I'll try to write something up just to see what it'll look like.

3
DFRPG / Re: Halloween sessions
« on: October 05, 2015, 01:57:11 PM »
I'm not running a DFRPG game right now, but I am running a D&D 5e Mystara game with ties to Ravenloft. The party has defeated Strahd von Zarovich and have claimed Castle Ravenloft and the village of Barovia as their own. For my game on October 28th, I'm going to do a Hocus Pocus themed session in which they find out that three statues in the garden are actually Night Hags that Count Strahd had punished by turning them into stone. Since the Count is now dead, he cannot renew the magic keeping them bound and they'll be released in time for All Hallows Eve. At the very least, it should be entertaining.

I love themed game sessions. On December 31st 2012, we played Cyberpunk 2013 to ring in the New Year. On the last day of the Mayan Calendar we played Shadowrun (because that was the end of the current age and Magic would be returning to the world). On Christmas I've run a Die Hard themed Shadowrun game.

4
DFRPG / Re: The Take-Out Chain Game
« on: September 24, 2015, 03:43:26 AM »
Next:  something suitable for thread necromancy....

10-shift necromantic flesh-eating ritual

Targeted with a lock of hair, the spell eats your luscious locks and leaves you bald.  You run away in embarrassment.

Next: A Summer Faery hits you with a 12 shift Biomancy evothaum attack

5
DFRPG / Re: Asking for Opinions on my story arc and villians
« on: September 06, 2015, 10:29:30 PM »
I was going to have the red court be a wizard who made a deal to help build the prison, and he helped lead the dragon there to be imprisoned. If he can convince the party to free him (No one would believe he is red court), then it brings red court back in to the world.

Not a bad idea. Would provide a nice multi-faceted angle, similar to Dracula being half-demon scion/Blampire. It would keep the party on their toes "Oh, it's just a Black Court Vampire. We know how to kill those things! Hey, why isn't this garlic working?" Although I'd probably have him as a Dragon scion/Red Court infected. Imprisoned as he was, the fledgling Red Court spirit was protected from the Bloodline Curse. If he ever were to fully turn, he could start up the Red Court all over again.

The 8-bit characters would have been the summoners favorite characters - who he was picked on for liking. an 8 bit fighter, rogue, and black mage... Have the summoner dressed up as red mage.

The 8bit characters don't sound all that scary. I would ramp up tension for the summoner's backstory. Maybe he wasn't picking on so much as full blown persecution because this kid was different and the other kids didn't understand him. The summoner fell into a particular 8 bit video game as a way to relieve his depression and Skavis type entities that feed on sorrow responded by appearing as those characters.

6
DFRPG / Re: Technomagic Help
« on: September 04, 2015, 03:01:41 AM »
Read some William Gibson:  Neuromancer and the two books that follow (I forget the titles). 

Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Both great stories.

7
DFRPG / Re: Anyone used Hero Forge?
« on: September 01, 2015, 03:14:16 PM »
But Harry does not do hats:o

I built mine off of the book covers.

8
DFRPG / Re: Anyone used Hero Forge?
« on: August 29, 2015, 09:28:38 PM »
As a rambling continuation, the two minis I got were done in the ultra fine plastic. I'm fairly certain the strong plastic is similar to the bonesium or whatever they call it that Reaper did with their Bones line, which I have a lot of lying around. It seems HeroForge sources their stuff from Shapeways, which makes the website a front end with their own designs for a backend printer that's already available to everybody else. Dunno if you're familiar with Shapeways or not, but you can 3D model something with their website and then order 3D prints from them for a price. HeroForge has just simplified it for the model market.

I spent a few minutes building my own Harry Dresden miniature in HeroForge.

9
DFRPG / Re: Anyone used Hero Forge?
« on: August 29, 2015, 06:47:06 PM »
I was in the HeroForge kickstarter and received two minis just last week. I haven't had a chance to paint them yet, but I am impressed with the quality.

10
DFRPG / Re: Paranet Papers has a release date
« on: February 26, 2015, 07:16:37 PM »
Le woot!

11
DFRPG / Re: Champion of god (For other pantheons)
« on: February 17, 2015, 04:27:30 PM »
Actually, there's a Champion of Ishtar in the Paranet Papers preview (take THAT, alliteration!).

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

12
DFRPG / Re: Non-City Games
« on: February 09, 2015, 10:44:52 PM »
I'm also running a game set in the European theatre of World War II. Right now it's confined to a city, but I have grand plans.

13
DFRPG / Re: Paranet Papers
« on: February 04, 2015, 04:42:34 PM »
Wow. Now I'm super excited to see how they've improved upon the rules :)

14
DFRPG / Re: My Suicide Squad as Monster Hunters - what do you think?
« on: January 27, 2015, 08:48:20 PM »
It's also a bit difficult to judge their powers and abilities since they can shift from writer to writer, but I would say that as a group they are just as, if not more, capable than the group put together in Skin Game. I would say they could put up a good fight against almost anyone/anything baring Outsiders, the six Queens, and similarly powered people.

It would be fun playing a game where everyone was an anti-hero, I think it's a good idea.

I've never run a true villain game, but I've played games with a few villainous PCs who were part of the main group but had much different agendas with the end goal McGuffin. They ended up playing against each other in subtle ways. At the end of this particular campaign, the villainous PCs ended up getting their way through sheer trickery, a move that cost two PCs their lives. The thing is, the other PCs knew about the different agendas. They just weren't prepared for the Machiavellian scheming.

15
DFRPG / Re: My Suicide Squad as Monster Hunters - what do you think?
« on: January 27, 2015, 03:09:14 PM »
Were you wanting Monsters hunting Monsters? Either way, that's basically every DFRPG game. I think it would work well.

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