Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
These are literally the GM's words. If you don't want to do this... then why are we even arguing? Let's vote no, forget about the huge gift and let Olivia be a background minion.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Prodigy scope would be the easiest; -1 attack dc + 1 damage dice at a single dot. Which would cause her alpha strike to jump to 32 damage dice at difficulty 3 because of the cap.
Which from this calculator has the following profile, not accounting for 10s and assuming a splendor for 1s:
Which are some very nice numbers. Hitting more than 25 successes better than half the time is just cruel. If Olivia becomes a species template this would be their signature trick; if you don't know where they are that first strike is probably the only one they need.
Facing a group of them would be unpleasant, even with worse gear and weaker support powers.
Overall she reads like a proper antagonist for one of the books. Someone assassinating spirits on Halloween to steal mantles that she keeps or sells on the highest bidder depending on how much she likes them maybe? Something like that.
It does requires 5 turns of aiming to hit max, but even 1-2 is a solid increase.
This isn't so much a white room as how snipers play the game. The point is to take your target by surprise to maximize effectiveness. She doesn't need to, and can hit respectably high numbers without them, but she'd always be aiming to be the person starting the fight or working with others to keep a target pinned.
Multiple people have managed this on us, I don't know why it's suddenly too hard to do.
We tend to let the enemy run around till we've wound up a punch, which she'd be compatible with as an active hunter and as an opening act to our assaults.
While that is true there is a thematic reason for those people to have different pools. A werewolf for instance has Gnosis as part of their nature as a partially spiritual being and Rage because they are the children of Luna and thus the Wyld, that is why you use Rage to among other things shape-change and Gnosis to bargain with and manipulate spirits. Olivia on the other hand is not trapped between two worlds, she is one thing.
Also mechanically this is easier to handle and does not have you guys juggle small pools of distinct resources.
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
Olivia is also potentially the character on whom in the future you can drop all the heavy weapons like machine guns, bazookas, etc. With good leveling through Flesh lore and maybe a mega attribute here or there, she will be able to use them without problems and we literally have no other specialists in this.
Mixing them for her could be sort of neat though; we'd basically be making a new sort of whampire that feeds on the energy of the world rather than individual people.
Really it'd be very appropriate for someone born of the turning of the age and magitech industrialization, which I'm sure the Jades, council, and white court wouldn't find alarming at all.
I would drop Performance in favor of larceny. 5 dots Performance is top 100 in the world level, dropping it down to 4 or even better 3 just national level is enough.
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
I agree. 4 is enough for very good results and this is unlikely to be important often. But larceny for stealth specialists is just that the doctor ordered. You need 2-3 points from training in the Five Courts
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
@Yog, thanks for making adjustments based on everyone's suggestions so far. Not so much in this quest, but in others where I've played a more active part in planning, I know how much of a hassle it can be to continually move stuff around in a complex plan to accommodate everyone's input.
The last thing that really stands out to me as missing is at least a single point in Melee or Brawl, to represent basic FFCF training. Olivia's stealth abilities don't just lend themselves to sniping, and it would seem neglectful of her trainers to not make sure she at least has proper grounding in fighting up close and personal, even if that only means she knows how to properly knife someone in the kidney or choke out a target.
If you reduce Performance from 5 points down to 4 points, wouldn't that leave enough to work with to pad a few neglected areas? Even 4 points is going to be a significant improvement in her current skills, and it will be supported by everything else to make her exceptional.
The last thing that really stands out to me as missing is at least a single point in Melee or Brawl, to represent basic FFCF training. Olivia's stealth abilities don't just lend themselves to sniping, and it would seem neglectful of her trainers to not make sure she at least has proper grounding in fighting up close and personal, even if that only means she knows how to properly knife someone in the kidney or choke out a target.
If you reduce Performance from 5 points down to 4 points, wouldn't that leave enough to work with to pad a few neglected areas? Even 4 points is going to be a significant improvement in her current skills, and it will be supported by everything else to make her exceptional.
Part of my point is that she's not one thing anymore. Awakening her P'o means that, like a werewolf, she has a dual nature, split between her Hun and P'o, just like a Wan Kuei or Dhampyr.. Using demon chi is meant to be very different to using other power pool, as it means wrestling with your darker nature to access. That's why using Demon Chi requires a roll, which if failed means the P'o is able to refuse to lend their power to the Hun. The other forms of Ci, by contrast, can just be used, because they belong to the Hun. The mechanical difference reinforces the fluff separation, that the P'o is not fully under your control, just as people don't have full control over their darker impulses
Mana also, as I edited in, isn't an inherent trait. Mana is not part of the sorcerer. It's like the Resources background. When a sorcerer using the Mana background does is own something like an enchanted spring that produces magical water that can be used as part of spells or rituals, or consumed to boost attributes if they have the right merits. It's not a power pool that's part of them. It's external fuel that can be consumed in the moment of performing sorcery. (that external thing can take a wide variety of forms depending on the paradigm of the sorcerer, but it's all Tass. An extraordinary citizen using Syndicate designed Fortune spells and rituals might use literal money, and have a business that is represented by a combination of the Resources and Mana Backgrounds that supplies it).
Mechanically, I can see your point, but they're meant to be things that are distinct mechanically to represent being metaphysically different.
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The problem with this is that the less of a specialist she is the more she falls behind.
A single melee dot is unlikely to do much for her against a melee spec if they do trap her, so it's better to focus on thing like a very short range high rate of fire holdout and making her hard to pin in the first place.
I really want her to have performance 5. For our gift not just being destiny of "forever war". For her to shine in other ways too. That's why I want Performande 5. Because there's no way we'll spend 8 xp on performance for Olivia any time soon. Let me have this one, please.
Brawl can be purchased later, and it was actually intentional that I left It out. Olivia is not supposed to brawl. She's either supposed to use a sidearm, or to teleport away if someone else closes distance to melee.
It's important to note that Performance has been bought with a freebie point, and it is more efficient to use those to raise abilities to max, rather than spread them out.
Quite their is basically no reason for a mortal to ever train melee or brawl, when firearms are a thousand times better for them.
Olivia would be accessing it through a background that gives her an internal mana pool which she fills by draining tass from dragon nests and potentially other rich targets.
Basically sounds like a stomach style resource pool, since she can't use it till she ingests it.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
I agree with this. Honestly, the build is very good as is and needs no further tweaking as it will just effect the build at this point.
That is a very good point on the nature of power with some narrative implications. Since we have not put down anything storywise I am going to change my ruling, but Molly is the queen of a magi-tech society that runs on demon chi in various forms so making a mechanism or rite that converts them back and forth should be very possible. Options include: a splendor that can convert power back and fourth as long as Olivia is in the right mindset or a ritual she would actually perform, though that would be mana manipulation.
Splendor or prodigy? For universal conversion (including essence) I would expect splendor, probably, but for mortal energies prodigy seems appropriate, no?
You guys have not made prodigies other than a few Christmas gifts if I recall correctly? Makes sense for you to get more use out of that so sure a prodigy works, no Ancient Sorcery needed.
That's very much not what Mana is meant to represent.
Think of mana like a spell's material components, objects charged with energy that are used as part of casting a spell.
Although, with this ruling:
The IDU charm would be great for the sorcerers in the FFC. That's because sorcerers don't usually have an internal power pool to store energy in. Knowing a set of paths that can be powered using Demon Chi that they usually need to use external stores makes it very attractive to be able to generate that Demon Chi themselves, rather than pay for objects containing energy harvested from tainted dragon nests.
Assuming the Rage implant doesn't already do this, as Rage basically is Demon Chi for spirits.
The FFC's sorcery paths being built around demon chi manipulation would make those sorcerers look a lot like they're using Dark Paths from the perspective of someone from Earth, which does make sense.
Also that there might be some potential cross over between Devil Tiger ritual magic and FFC Sorcery path magic, as both are about the uses of Demon Chi.
And finally, converting one form of Tass/Mana into another does seem a very suitable use of Mana Manipulation. There are tainted Dragon Nests which make demon chi, and tainted Jade artifacts that do the same, take Chi from the tapestry and defile it to produce Demon Chi.
With her combination of backgrounds she could also make for a brutal Shih. Impossible endurance, alternative refill for her qi, inherent boosts that let her ignore a lot of basic things they need to manage, the works.
That's even a potential source of alternative immortality for her, though I don't like it as much as granting it ourselves because it feels necessary to make her new type of creature a peer to what exists already.
The Qiao of the Feng's peak ability is unusable for most of them, but with merged mana-chi reserves she could pay for almost all of it from her drained dragon nest tass. The real problem would be the occult roll and the permanent willpower loss. But since she only needs one success and is losing the temp dots with the permanent ones anyway she could just spend one on ensuring it works.
I think there's an argument to be made for it related to my last few posts on this.
Merging the pools does make it easier on us and allows some useful but not game breaking tricks. Since she's becoming something new it could be fluffed as one of the defining features of this particular type of demon symbiote. It binds body and soul together in a new way that allows it to devour tass and chi to produce something a little like both for it and the host to run on.
The balance for this being the buy in to form the new connections.
The techne background is Molly forming a Tass stomach and the instincts needed to fill it. Strength of Psyche, which expands mana use to cover mental actions and could represent a new link to the hun. Then flow of Ki, which allows mana to be spent on enhancing the body and represent for our purposes forming the new link to mix in chi.
So a hypothetical Oliviaoid (need a real name for this) would instead take a smoother but probably weaker 5 dot merit combing both of those effects and be obligated to take a background to represent how developed their feeding is.
Pity IDU cannot be used on people from the FFCF.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Dresden... Unless you just meant our Circle then Blackrider.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I would get unaging and old or mayfly. Seems thematic.
I agree that a unified pool of "magic energy" seems like a more appropriate thing. We are not pattern stacking, we are making something new.
I do want unaging a lot. It's thematic. I'll have to pour through the books some more. I mean, thematically some manner of marking probably works best.
@DragonParadox I know that i am ususally the most vocal opponent of buying merits mid game, but would it be appropriate for Olivia to buy unaging merit later? This could represent several things:
1) She isn't fully mature yet, so she only develops (is obligated to buy) the merit once she fully matures biologically (at ~ 25 or so years). So a mature oliviaoid would have to buy the merit immediately, and a child one won't in the future.
2) The development of her po as it fully integrates with her body and matures.
I really don't want to entrap her (or others to come after her) in our direct service by design. Sits wrong with me.
I do want unaging a lot. It's thematic. I'll have to pour through the books some more. I mean, thematically some manner of marking probably works best.
@DragonParadox I know that i am ususally the most vocal opponent of buying merits mid game, but would it be appropriate for Olivia to buy unaging merit later? This could represent several things:
1) She isn't fully mature yet, so she only develops (is obligated to buy) the merit once she fully matures biologically (at ~ 25 or so years). So a mature oliviaoid would have to buy the merit immediately, and a child one won't in the future.
2) The development of her po as it fully integrates with her body and matures.
Random Idea but how about rolling say a d10+1 to see how many times it takes Molly to dial in IDU to get an optimized result. To help preserve the randomness for mass empowering.
Unaging merit does not seem that useful, not like she cannot get it later when Molly has VEE anyway.
Unaging merit does not seem that useful, not like she cannot get it later when Molly has VEE anyway.