Author Topic: Item Of Power Master List  (Read 62309 times)

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #45 on: March 15, 2012, 11:50:41 PM »
Looks like I was right to take it as flattering.

Not currently pressed for space, really. I'm just worried that at some point in the future I will be. Having to open up the fourth post after the first real update surprised me. Then again, that first update came after nine months or so. And I could fit more into those posts if I really tried.

Anyway! Let's get to the new items.

Mythbane is very cool, but probably overpriced. Its second power is probably worse than Holy Touch, and it costs twice as much. So let's reduce its cost to 1. Its first power gives social armour that will probably never be used because supernatural social powers don't really exist. And since Supernatural Toughness costs only 1 if anything non-supernatural can break it, I figure that it should only cost 2 if it protects the physical and mental stress tracks against magical attacks.

The Bloodied Cloak is cool, but unfortunately Physical Immunity does nothing against counterspells. Fortunately, it can probably be expanded without increasing the cost because that is an incredibly specific Catch.

Here's what I suggest:

MYTHBANE [-2]
Description: There are many lucky charms in the world. Most of them do nothing. But when one of them is used by many people, many times, to do very important things, it can acquire power. Such is the case with Mythbane, a magical ring that protects against the supernatural.
Musts: You must have an aspect related to your possession of this item. Furthermore, you must be a human being. A real human, not a half-human or another such edge case.
Skills Affected: Fists, Endurance, Conviction, other skills
Effects:
[-0] It Is What It Is. It's a ring, the kind you wear on your finger.
[-0] Unbreakable. The ring cannot be broken save through a dedicated magical ritual that contradicts its nature.
[+1] One Time Discount. Gloves and pockets, 'nuff said.
[-2] Ward against the Weird. Mythbane grants a subtle but potent protection to the wearer, granting them armour 2 and four additional stress boxes against physical or mental attacks. Nonmagical attacks bypass this protection.
[-1] Mythbreaker. The ring is violently incompatible with inhuman entities, and inflicts 1 point of physical stress to anything of supernatural ancestry that touches it. This adds 1 to the stress inflicted to such beings by attacks using it. Furthermore, any such being that owns or carries Mythbane will suffer this stress repeatedly until it relinquishes possession of the ring.

BLOODIED CLOAK OF DEAD WARDENS [-1]
Description: There are some societies where the body parts of slain animals are used to make supposedly-magical charms. Generally, the animal chosen is dangerous and the body part used is symbolic of them somehow. At some point in the past, some psycho tried something similar using Wardens Of The White Council and their famous Cloaks. This is what that psycho made.
Musts: You must have an aspect related to your possession of this item. And realistically, you're probably pretty damn evil if you've got this.
Skills Affected: Endurance, other skills
Effects:
[-0] It Is What It Is. It's a cloak made of Wardens' grey cloaks, woven together and soaked through with the blood of their former owners.
[-0] Unbreakable. The cloak cannot be broken save through a dedicated magical ritual that contradicts its nature.
[+2] One Time Discount. It's a cloak covered, and still wet, with blood. People are going to notice.
[-8] Physical Immunity. The Bloodied Cloak offers complete and total protection from the swords of the Wardens of the White Council.
[-1] Unseverable Spells. No spell cast by or on the wearer of this cloak may be countered by the effect of a Warden's sword.
[+6] The Catch. Anything other than a Warden's blade will not be affected by the cloak's protection. Also, the cloak must be kept wet with blood or it will become powerless.

How do these look?

If there's no problem, I'll update the list.

Which reminds me, I need to fix some of the "Skills Affected".

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #46 on: March 16, 2012, 12:00:51 AM »
Aye, that looks good. I didn't know that Physical Immunity didn't work on counterspells. When I put that in, I meant mostly that you couldn't destroy the cloak itself with the counterspell of the swords. But your way works too.
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Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #47 on: March 16, 2012, 01:29:08 AM »
Physical Immunity makes you impossible to hurt. Counterspells affect spells, they don't hurt you. PI doesn't affect them.

Oh, and counterspells do nothing to items of power.

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #48 on: March 16, 2012, 01:43:07 AM »
Physical Immunity makes you impossible to hurt. Counterspells affect spells, they don't hurt you. PI doesn't affect them.

Oh, and counterspells do nothing to items of power.
I remembered seeing something about Ramirez's sword cutting through Madrigal Raith's ward cloth, and figured it was because of the counterspell, but looking at his character sheet now, it says that any physical attack against the cloth itself would destroy it, so nevermind.
Compels solve everything!

http://blur.by/1KgqJg6 My first book: "Brothers of the Curled Isles"

Quote from: Cozarkian
Not every word JB rights is a conspiracy. Sometimes, he's just telling a story.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_T_mld7Acnm-0FVUiaKDPA The C-Team Podcast

Offline JayTee

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #49 on: March 16, 2012, 04:17:22 AM »
Two questions: first, how are you defining 'magical' and 'nonmagical'? When I wrote it, I intended for it to provide a blanket defense against supernatural powers. The way you've written it seems to imply it only defends against things like Evocation and other forms of spellcasting, which would make it useless against things like an Inhuman Strength empowered punch or Incite Emotion.

Second, as mentioned above some powers like Glamours, Incite Emotion, Marked by Power or Hulking Size grant bonuses to Social skills. Now the case of the last two it would make sense for them to still work in the presence of the social armor as they depend on a context that isn't wholly supernatural, such as 'I'm bigger than you' for Hulking Size and 'I have backing' for Marked by Power. The other two however are from a wholly Inhuman source, and thus are what the Social Armor was intended to protect against.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #50 on: March 16, 2012, 04:49:27 AM »
The parameters of the toughness are intentionally slightly vague. Not sure whether it made sense for it to work against a house thrown by a giant, so I left it up to the person using it. Personally, I'd probably have it work against the unarmed attacks of magical things but not against magical beings attacking with mundane weapons. But regardless, it's a +3 Catch.

Neither Glamours nor Incite Emotion is actually capable of inflicting social stress. Social armour does nothing against them.

Offline JayTee

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #51 on: March 16, 2012, 06:10:58 AM »
Hm, I think I may have taken the wrong angel when I labeled the protective value as 'Armor'. Armor implies a kind of resistance, however in this context the protection comes from skewing probability in the favor of the wearer rather than providing any degree of toughness.

Doing a hard reset of the Ward power, how would you price something that gave a flat +2 to defense rolls opposing Supernatural Powers? Like you said, it wouldn't make sense for a lucky charm to provide resistance against the damage of a house thrown by a giant, but it would make more sense for it to provide a better chance of dodging it.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #52 on: March 16, 2012, 07:14:53 AM »
"Opposing Supernatural Powers" is not really a sentence that makes sense to me. Could you explain what you mean?

Probability fiddling can be armour, but a thrown house is pretty mundane once it's left the giant's hands. That's what bugged me.

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #53 on: March 16, 2012, 08:54:25 PM »
Remember Armor isn't necessarily literally, "Something hits you and does less physical damage," just as a "hit" in combat doesn't necessarily literally mean the sword/claws/bullets made contact with you.

Armor just means you took less stress from the attack--Armor:2 against bullets might mean the difference between taking the mild consequence TWISTED MY ANKLE DODGING and just taking a stress hit.
Compels solve everything!

http://blur.by/1KgqJg6 My first book: "Brothers of the Curled Isles"

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_T_mld7Acnm-0FVUiaKDPA The C-Team Podcast

Offline JayTee

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #54 on: March 16, 2012, 09:29:53 PM »
"Opposing Supernatural powers" means that so long as there is a supernatural element to the roll made against the character holding the ring, that person gets a +2 to the opposing roll.

Some examples:

A gangster tires to cut you with a knife or shoot you with a gun. Mythbane isn't going to do anything agains that. However should that thug be a demon, and he tries to crush you with his super strength or spit acid on you, you would get a +2 to your defense rolls.

A corrupt official is lying to you, Mythbane isn't going to do anything. But if a Fey tries to use Glamours to tick you in to thinking that the candy it's giving you is real. Mythbane would give you a +2 to detect that the candy is false.

In short, Ring gives a +2 to rolls that involve defending against supernatural powers that would harm or inconvenience the wearer.

Hope this cleared things up, apologies for the confusion.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #55 on: March 16, 2012, 10:07:57 PM »
What if that demon thug tries to stab you with a perfectly ordinary knife?

Offline JayTee

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #56 on: March 16, 2012, 10:43:48 PM »
If the thug had a strength power or did something else magic-y to make it more effective, then you would get a +2. If not, then you get nothing
« Last Edit: March 16, 2012, 10:56:04 PM by JayTee »

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #57 on: March 17, 2012, 10:15:08 PM »
That doesn't make much sense to me, I'm afraid. "Using Inhuman Strength" is not something that exists within the game world. Furthermore, that raises the annoying question of whether Strength is optional.

Offline JayTee

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #58 on: March 18, 2012, 09:40:55 PM »
Consider it to be like a broadly applicable stunt, where you get a +2 when defending against or detecting supernatural powers.

And I personally feel that strength should be optional, people can 'hold back' in real life just fine, so I can't think of a reason why someone shouldn't also be able to if they have a strength power. But that's a discussion for another topic, so we can continue it there if you want.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Item Of Power Master List
« Reply #59 on: March 19, 2012, 05:04:48 AM »
"Defending against or detecting supernatural powers" is not a phrase that makes sense. Sorry.