A Zenith/Dawn proto-character who I'll use to test out the hacks to the Solar side of the restructured Kerisgame system if and when we get around to finalising them all and drawing them up.
Sorry. I mean, I specifically tagged a mod asking if it was OK, was not responded to by them, and even the only non-mod to respond in any way told me something I'm still sure they're wrong about, without citing any rule that would indicate I should take it down anyway, but that still doesn't mean I should have broken the rules. I won't do it again.
+10 cap-breaking DV is really really really broken. Don't do it. No, not even then.
Alright. Would (+Essence) be okay? This thing needs some boost to survivability and I don't think adding soak is appropriate for a cloud.
In that case, apply external penalties. They're the go-to for making things harder to hit without the problems of broken DVs, and most powers which cancel them are conditional ("external penalties from X" rather than all external penalties).
So something like "all attacks against the Infernal receive an external penalty equal to the Infernal's permanent essence" would be better?
Probably, yeah, but it's still really really powerful.
I use the term "mad scientist" to mean "not particularly stable Maker Of Plot Devices". Alchemists almost always qualify. I suppose I could have been more clear at the time, though.
Interesting. For me, Doctor Light, Doctor Octopus, Doctor Frankenstein, Hephaestus, Professor Kevyn Andreyasn, Agatha Heterodyne, and nearly half the cast of Fullmetal Alchemist all qualify as Mad Scientists. None of them do much science (onscreen) but they're the guys who come to mind.
Wow, that's a fleshed out, canon-compatible version of one of my half formed ideas. And you like it. Cool.
Okay, this is a pretty fucking powerful offensive Shintai. Now, as has already been mentioned, ditch the (Essence*2) DV enhancer, it's too powerful for even a Shintai. Instead crib notes from the GSOTED and get the effect that reduces an attack to one unless they're big enough or have the right charms to effect you. It's the War-Shintai of a Yozi, they're supposed to be powerful. The Offensive effects seem alright, though I'd suggest that making it so that the free Sky-Crisis Strike effect can't strike the same target more than once per action, it's a free flurry otherwise and we all know how bad that can get. On the AOE maddness effect, I'd say make it free and always on, but you need to pay the normal cost if you want to change the effect. It's powerful, mortals are going to die in droves or go bonkers, but that's normal for War-Shintais; Malfeas kills them with magical radiation poison, Cecelyne with a sand-storm that can strip the flesh from bone and Revlid's Black-Star Shintai crushes them with gravitational fields and Metagao's Bottomless Mire-Maw Shintai literally eats them by the squad load.
Well, of course you're going to use it if it falls into your lap, but people are still going to considerable trouble to scavenge this stuff centuries after the fact. All the easy sources are long since depleted; the fact that people are still looking indicates that it must be really, really desirable. Since these are not, on the whole, stupid people, that means that either a) it's useful enough to risk being torn apart by an angry yidak for (i.e. it's very mechanically desirable, exactly what you want to avoid), or b) artifacts occupy a similar niche as eyeball-sized diamonds; their real value is as crown jewels rather than as combat equipment.
Given the current state of Creation, if two polities close enough to come into conflict are both developing "build F-16"-level infrastructure at the same time (as opposed to one getting there first and promptly crushing the other), then something very strange is happening in your game. F-16s are generally more than enough. I mean, it could happen, but it seems more than a bit contrived.
You... could go with the latter, I guess. You'd have to make some serious changes to the way the setting treats artifacts, though. They'd probably almost never actually be used in combat - the preciousractical ratio would be far too low.
Hmm. That requires the Dynast to be absurdly wealthy by Threshold standards, which, of course, he is. It also requires him to deal fairly with the scavenger, which... some fraction of Dynasts will. It raises some questions about the existence of experienced scavenger lords who didn't retire after hitting it big, but that's manageable and not a major issue anyway.
Yes, and I'm sure two of them who hate each other are going to set up shop in neighboring nations and build them up at almost exactly the same pace such that neither has a time when he can just roll over the other. Because that isn't contrived at all. It's not impossible. Maybe relations were fine for years and then abruptly broke down - possibly due to a particularly unfortunate limit break. But it's definitely on the unusual side.
It's not a problem, it's just that it doesn't really justify the existence of scavenger lords.
Hate isn't require for conflict. All you need is two close enough to want the same resources (e.g. a mine or fertile farmlands) and meaningfully present opposition for each other.
Campaign based on The Brothers' War? Do want, for some reason I loved that book.
I wonder if a quickly-stacking extra attunement cost for having too many artifacts attuned simulteneously can help alleviate that. (Kinda like a stacking Dexterity-and-other-stuff penalty for layering armour . . . in systems that allow realistic armour-layering, that is.)
. . . And this is why I asked what sort of world is considered a desirable one for the worldbuilders. Because if a three-dot artifact is just a sword that is about as good as pre-patch Perfect sword, then suddenly ancient noble clans have much less of an incentive to tremble over the millenia-long histories of such weapons or pay half-kingdoms for a few such blades. Artifacts become less of a mythically cool thing, and more of a wall-hanger that might as well be replaced with something different; their symbolic value - that of status symbols - becomes fully divorsed from their ability to actually enable mythic last stands or whatever. And Scavenger Lords, instead of their old role of Lara Crofts and Indiana Joneses trading in ancient wonders, instead become some sort of a glorified hybrid of De Beers Group and KA-BAR Knives Inc. (only also not as large in scale).
That does seem to produce many quickly-rising empires (say, 60 out of those 300 will go empire-building, 120 will help their friends empire-build together, 120 will go murder-hoboing or otherwise not-empire-building, and 60 will fail/die/etc. somehow), but probably will also result in empires distributed pretty far from each other . . . not sure if that's good or bad.
