Backgrounds are, and should be abstracted as the results of IC actions. We are working towards getting a Dragon Nest background by restoring Last Station. We got Resources 4 background by creating Chicago synthetics. Buying backgrounds is wasteful and in many cases immersion breaking.
No they arent. And shouldnt.
Some Backgrounds can be earned or lost in play, depending on the QM but most are not, and the source book explicitly has them as things to be paid for by the players both in chargen and in play, regardless of how they were obtained.
Dont conflate houserules and QM generosity for the rules of the book.
Especially since without the protection of XP, Backgrounds acquired in play can be lost in play.
We did not get Resources 4 by creating Chicago Synthetics; Resources 4 was assigned by the QM because it simplified the QM's book keeping. Cyberdevils 2 is something we've paid XP for, and we're only upgrading it with XP.
Familiar 1 Lydia was also paid for in cash xp.
You are free to vote against this, but you are wrong about Molly's IC reaction. Molly is aware that Daniel wants to fight together with Lydia and is training himself to participate in supernatural good fight. We have an AP option to help him train and encourage him. That's not "Molly will never go for it".
No, you're mistaken.
Molly is not aware of any such thing. She knows Daniel is learning to read stuff and improve his Occult rating to keep up with Lydia's interests and what she talks about, but she's not aware of his having any interest in picking supernatural fights.
Because it wasnt actually a thing, and didnt come up until he failed a Willpower roll during the last Interlude.
Hell, the person getting swordsmanship lessons isnt Daniel, its our second brother, the middle boy Mathew.
The thirteen year old anime nerd.
The one who watches Bleach.
You're missing the point. We already have plenty of minions who would be useful in a fight, but since we are unwilling to risk them they are in effect useless. The point of using False hope springs in a bunch of old vets is to get fighters that we are actually willing to risk. But maybe we can get a bunch of military drones with cyber devils.
There's no such thing as fighters we're actually willing to lose.
If we invest effort or magic in a person, they become one of ours
We dont risk our minions because we dont have to; they perform their function just by existing in places that need visible presence.
There are very few factions that could afford to invest the resources to do more than temporarily inconvenience us. Most of the major players are very constrained either by limitations on operating outside the Nevernever or because if they divert too many resources to oppose us their other enemies would take them down. If Marcone can become the Freeholding Lord of Chicago, we most certainly can, and do a lot better a job of it.
No, that isnt true.
Not unless you're counting temporarily as "mundane human lifespan".
And if they don't come to us there's a very limited amount they can do to actually remove us from power. Sending distractions at us just gives us Crown focuses we can use to gather then information required to take them down. We've demonstrated twice now that we can trivially destroy some of the most powerful entities that can exist on Earth. With our ability to travel most places incredibly fast most factions that live on Earth are very vulnerable to being decapitated by us if they give us enough Crown focuses to locate their leadership.
That's
really not true.
A school shooting captured on CCTV by a shapeshifter with Molly's looks would absolutely detonate her life as it currently exists, given our current lack of NWS. Doesnt matter if we can prove it wasnt us; by the time we do so, the press would have gone digging in our life and turned up other interesting shit.
Once we've utterly annihilated the second group foolish enough to challenge us, the rest should be deterred enough to realise that Chicago isn't actually that important to them.
This isnt true either, and utterly ignores the history of the Dresdenverse.
See the Denarians, who have lost members every time they've been to Chicago, and still keep coming back.
See the Black Court, which has done the same thing, and keep coming.
See the Red Court, which lost first a margravine, then a baroness, then a duke and his retinue, and then still sent the Eebs.
Also, see
@BronzeTongue.
I actually don't know who you are talking about.
Off the top of my head?
The Denarians could do it. The Wyldfae Puck could do it. Old One cults like the Holy Ascension of Our Lord could do it, depending on how much power they have access to on a cult by cult basis.
A shoggoth as described could do it, though they are more WMDs than antagonists.
A coalition of the Yama Kings could do it; thats how Wen Lo, First of the Fallen died.
An arhat, or a coalition of older mandarins or bodhisattvas could do it; Devil-Tiger bodhisattvas allegedly are infamous for their monstrosities they partake in to get to their level of enlightenment.
A group of the Black Court's Elders could do it. So could Drakul.
Or one of the surviving Great Dragons; only 2-3 of them in canon DF, but with the addition of WoD and the Great Dragons explicitly mentioned in Kindred of the East, there's probably significantly more here.
Hekatonkhires may well be capable of it. The Fomor could do it, if Ethniu chose to commit the effort and reveal her presence.
A
Bigfoot Forest Person could potentially do it; Grendel from the Beowulf myth was allegedly a renegade Forest Person, and it took Odin himself taking form as Beowulf to do that one in.
And that's just what we have reason to believe has been alluded to so far.
What other elements of this crossover AU were brought over are currently unknown to us, from MtR's Bane Mummies to behemoths like Arad the Hunter and ishvara from Exalted 2E to actual Voormas-tier black archmages from Mage to Thunderwyrms from Werewolf.
But uju is that literally the whole deal with supernatural heavyweights, even without being fey? Make the deal as tight as possible and if you don't explicitly trust the other person, be prepared for them to use loopholes to their advantage.
Reminding me of someone, I think it was you way back on topic, sounding the siren about it.
For agreements with people you dont trust, yes.
And especially for agreements with people who have a history of playing fuckfuck games. One of the ways to get that sort of reputation is attempting to play word games with
See Dresden's agreements with Lily for an example of what Im talking about; neither of them is worried about being screwed by the other, and while Lily is bound by Fae rules and her superior, he doesnt worry about malice. Or even how he walks into White Court venues when Lara has given her word, because he knows she isnt going to play games with them.
There's a lesson both Molly and players need to learn:
Characters have their own agency.
They will fight their own fights, even if you don't want them to.
Like when Harry went after the Naagloshi on his own, but simply didn't find it.
Like Daniel is about to.
Like Olivia so badly wants to.
They have the right to their own life and to risk it for what they believe in.
They want to fight. For their own reasons.
To protect their families.
Because they hate feeling powerless.
Because they feel like it's their duty.
They all have their own reasons, and just because they aren't as powerful as Molly is doesn't mean they can't fight.
Or even that they shouldn't.
They know how outmatched they are. They still want to.
It's not on us to tell them: No, you're too much of a scrub and will always be.
That's telling them they are helpless and will always be so.
At the mercy of those more powerful.
It's what all the monsters out there want them to believe.
Sure they have agency.
But that does not mean you should abet them if they are making a bad decision; you talk them out of it instead.
This isnt like a dispute about smoking weed.
We are talking about setting up a teenage boy with lethal weapons and send him out to police other people because he's feeling insecure about his girlfriend? To kill and live with the consequences of doing so?
The most difficult part of this business is seldom just bringing the boom; its community relations, target discrimination, field judgement about when posturing is sufficient, and when violence is necessary and managing the aftermath, all things that a sixteen going on seventeen year old boy is not equipped to handle.
This wouldnt be controversial if the question was giving Daniel gear/power to protect himself against incidental violence.
Not to go play vigilante.
That was more meant as a topical example than anything else. Though loyalty is a factor here; someone we rescue from decline is more likely to stick with us than a random recruit. The arguments around IDU generally drop us around using it on people without any meaningful skills on the presumption it'll somehow make them useful on any reasonable timescale.
Id frankly be a lot more worried about someone whose loyalty Im buying with age extension/healthcare than a recruit who is with us for ideological reasons or personal reasons.
The former is a significantly more transactional relationship and can be potentially supplanted by another .
Fair enough about IDU.
That said? Most people will still need training, but the abilities conferred by IDU should make training significantly easier, even in the absence of training magic.
Given the model we've been given for training rolls in this AU thus far, assuming the same tutor, a person with Dexterity 2 is likely to do significantly worse learning Brawl than one with Dexterity 2(+2 Fomor magic) from IDU.
Since when does being independent mean you have to be able to stomp on everything at a moment's notice? By your standards even Molly is barely qualified to go anywhere alone.
There's always risk but we're talking about an exalt, not a toddler.
You dont have to stomp everything; would be nice, but isnt a requirement.
But you got to manage your own share of the aggro that the resident Infernal has been pulling like an unshielded MRI.
Dont get me wrong; anyone can be got with sufficient force or cleverness.
But there's a reasonable amount of force I expect someone like Lydia to be able to withstand or break out of ambush in order to credibly operate independently at her level of visibility, and she isnt there yet. Not for someone on the radar of akuma and Walkers.
