The Tabletop RPG Thread
- Thread starter Bladelaw
- Start date
I was playing a Pathfinder game and was asked by the GM to bring large centipede miniatures for the game he had planned. I found out when they hit the table that one of the players in the group had a severe hatred of all things many legged and freaked out. I was later told that she might not have reacted so harshly if the miniatures hadn't looked so realistic. I took it as a kind of compliment.
Solution: don’t use official profiles
._______
My Monday group & I are having a lot of fun just kinda making stuff up as we go. The warehouse was entirely co-created on the fly, and I’ve just asked them if they want to follow up on another lead next week - right now all we know is that a Lord in the city paid the assassin leader of this criminal group to kill somebody, and where said Lord’s townhouse is. Asked em if they want to try infiltrating a masquerade party (since the assassin has always been seen by them wearing a full face mask it seemed appropriate) as a change of pace with more social elements.
When I started this game late last year, I was meticulously prepping all the pre-written module stuff. Now I jot down a couple of scene ideas and characters to draw from as needed and we ball. About the only thing I’m spending time on is creating a small collection of enemy profiles for dynamic combats.
My PCs never seemed to have what they needed to deal with ability damage in PF1, so anything that does it was really scary. Centipedes start out at CR ⅛, so that can happen pretty early in their adventuring careers too.Solution: don’t use official profiles
Hmm, I should look at some longer term annoying conditions that take restoration style spells to ameliorate. I think the Way of Mercy monk can help there too.
I think in general game designers meant creatures that do ability damage to be challenges that last longer than one combat but didn't mean for them to disrupt the gameplay in a serious way. PF2 implies that you'll eventually recover the ability loss by making enough successful saves. Unless you die. Or unless the rule specifically says the effect is permanent.
There’s some low level creatures with ability drains that last until a rest. Exhaustion also shows up. Talking stuff like that, persistent past an encounter but recoverable with an opportunity cost or resource consumption.
PF1 assumes 30% of your wealth is spent on consumables, so players should have a way to deal with (or at least limit) the damage. Not carrying the appropriate potions or scrolls would be a mistake made by the players, which mine occasionally made. They didn’t seem to like depending on consumables.
Last edited:
...I am immeasurably disappointed in your PCs.
Signed, someone whose rogue took 6d6 Dexterity damage from a poison back in 3.5.
Consumable usage was a point of contention with my group. I’ve tried to be mindful of that when designing my homebrew system.
My homebrew system has some consumables, but their purpose is to let you trade one attrition resource (HP and MP) for another (stress). Strictly speaking, HP potions are mostly for in-combat healing. Out of combat, the First Aid specialty is more efficient (in terms of stress and money). MP is more difficult to restore (requiring either MP potions or a weekly downtime activity), but that’s intended.
How diseases and poisons worn is still up in the air. They won’t do attribute damage, and the Cleanse spell will take care of them. Affiliation rules haven’t really been needed, so developing them has been deferred until they are (most likely involving some kind of tracker, progression, and a penalty or mitigating factor on rolls).
Last edited:
I've been toying with the idea of an Estus Flask style healing potion that players can spend gp to upgrade. Something that encourages use (in a similar fashion to the 4e Second Wind skill), provides a bit of a gold sink, and is also a good indication of daily resource consumption.
Dragonscript
Ars Scholae Palatinae
In a previous campaign, I gave the players a magic wand of healing they could use as many times as they wanted, they just had to slip coins into a slot at the bottom of the handle equivalent to the magic potion. The wand only accepted copper pieces.
It could be worse. It could have only accepted electrum pieces.
Well, wrapped up a campaign yesterday that started back in September of 2022. We started in Humblewood, and then ported into Curse of Strahd. Did a hiatus over last summer, since due to time zones one player could only make it in early afternoon EST and I like touching grass in the warm months, and then we compressed things a bit here towards the end - but they got a nice dramatic fight vs Strahd last night, and with a bit of effort took him down. The 4th player had to drop recently due to personal stuff, but we worked out his arc with the Amber Temple vestiges via text and he gave me some decision trees for the final encounter. he was going to be a potential phase 2, but the remaining players went through RP a bit, dithered, and then decided to let things go.
Nice to be done with that.
Nice to be done with that.
Not to just be the only person sharing in this thread but tonight's game was fun:
Premise: party is trying to track down the assassin running a criminal group operating in the city. They've found a couple significant clues and foiled some plans and are narrowing in on the leader. Asked them if a masquerade sounded fun, they answered in affirmative. Gave them an opportunity from their city guard contact: invitations to a masquerade reception for new art at the townhouse of a Lord they knew had contact (and contract!) with The Veil, the leader of the group.
They go there in appropriate disguise self + outfits and masques. I presented to them: the final person of the group the fighter has been chasing from the patrol of comrades who betrayed him and left him for dead as the captain of the guard at the event; the owlin who cursed the bard (also an owlin) long ago and made off with some treasures from their scholarly group's library; and a bunch of side scenes. We ran largely 3 separated out scenes, jumping from person to person on tension.
Rogue sneaks up to the upstairs rooms, barely misses being caught by a guard, finds the portal mirror in the bedroom, and promptly steps through into an airship with no immediate way home.
Fighter masters his hatred, doesn't do anything stupid. Takes an opportunity to take some wine refills up from the "servant zone" in the basement to the courtyard where his hated foe is. Follows him through a gate with some clever spell + ability usage, spies on him talking to the leader of the group of Hell-sent mercs they faced ages ago (rest of the party is making very tense sounds). He avoids detection, returns to the party and pretends nothing happened.
Host has a bit of a strident discussion with a Goliath lady wearing a red mask + bright red velvet dress. She spurns whatever he was offering and moves off. Guard captain delivers the message he'd received to the Lord + host. He starts to head upstairs, monk + bard angle in, deploying something they'd spotted earlier about the Lord's potential alignment with Betrayer God worship to get his attention. He invites them to follow (they were terrified he was going to head straight up and find the rogue or block her return), tells them to wait as he goes in his office to make a 'call.' Monk hears him confirming the assassination contract on the lady from downstairs. Lord returns, they try and pretend like they're super drunk - and now we go way off the rails.
On the airship, rogue finds the rest of the Hell-sent mercs, and then the Veil himself out on the deck. She's invisible, decides to check the cabin for any info or treasure. Slips in without being noticed.
Back at the party, they flub their deception rolls - Lord goes "I don't have time to deal with this" and casts banishment twinned to keep them out of the way as he summons the guards. Monk fails, bard rolls a 20 + her prof. Tries to polymorph him, he saves and gets annoyed and goes to cast something - she saves, flies out the window as he yells for the guards, and casts enemies abound to a nat 1 save just as his guard captain and some mooks charge up the stairs to his summon.
He fries them with a lightning bolt.
Rogue starts to try and pick the lock on an ornate chest on the airship - rolls under the DC, so she hears the assassin approach the cabin. Dives under the bed to hide.
Guard captain tries to backhand some sense into his boss who just zapped him. Lord fails his concentration save on banishment, and fails to re-save vs enemies abound.
Monk reappears.
Fighter responds to the shouting & zapping by darting upstairs after casting invisbility.
Monk misty steps out the window, lands, starts to run. Fighter yells for his great sword, bard pulls it out of bag of holding.
Rogue tries to sneak out of the cabin with teh assassin distracted by listening to music. Doesn't quite get her timing down, it notices the stuff she's holding she grabbed from the cabin. Misses his knife throw, starts to slowly stalk her.
Fighter exchanges some blades with his mortal enemy, then decides to GTFO - uses his echo to get to the roof, and then get away.
Rogue finds "floatation vest" type boxes of feather fall charms, and takes a knife to teh shoulder. Invisibility drops and she swan dives off the airship.
Aaaand, scene.
They go there in appropriate disguise self + outfits and masques. I presented to them: the final person of the group the fighter has been chasing from the patrol of comrades who betrayed him and left him for dead as the captain of the guard at the event; the owlin who cursed the bard (also an owlin) long ago and made off with some treasures from their scholarly group's library; and a bunch of side scenes. We ran largely 3 separated out scenes, jumping from person to person on tension.
Rogue sneaks up to the upstairs rooms, barely misses being caught by a guard, finds the portal mirror in the bedroom, and promptly steps through into an airship with no immediate way home.
Fighter masters his hatred, doesn't do anything stupid. Takes an opportunity to take some wine refills up from the "servant zone" in the basement to the courtyard where his hated foe is. Follows him through a gate with some clever spell + ability usage, spies on him talking to the leader of the group of Hell-sent mercs they faced ages ago (rest of the party is making very tense sounds). He avoids detection, returns to the party and pretends nothing happened.
Host has a bit of a strident discussion with a Goliath lady wearing a red mask + bright red velvet dress. She spurns whatever he was offering and moves off. Guard captain delivers the message he'd received to the Lord + host. He starts to head upstairs, monk + bard angle in, deploying something they'd spotted earlier about the Lord's potential alignment with Betrayer God worship to get his attention. He invites them to follow (they were terrified he was going to head straight up and find the rogue or block her return), tells them to wait as he goes in his office to make a 'call.' Monk hears him confirming the assassination contract on the lady from downstairs. Lord returns, they try and pretend like they're super drunk - and now we go way off the rails.
On the airship, rogue finds the rest of the Hell-sent mercs, and then the Veil himself out on the deck. She's invisible, decides to check the cabin for any info or treasure. Slips in without being noticed.
Back at the party, they flub their deception rolls - Lord goes "I don't have time to deal with this" and casts banishment twinned to keep them out of the way as he summons the guards. Monk fails, bard rolls a 20 + her prof. Tries to polymorph him, he saves and gets annoyed and goes to cast something - she saves, flies out the window as he yells for the guards, and casts enemies abound to a nat 1 save just as his guard captain and some mooks charge up the stairs to his summon.
He fries them with a lightning bolt.
Rogue starts to try and pick the lock on an ornate chest on the airship - rolls under the DC, so she hears the assassin approach the cabin. Dives under the bed to hide.
Guard captain tries to backhand some sense into his boss who just zapped him. Lord fails his concentration save on banishment, and fails to re-save vs enemies abound.
Monk reappears.
Fighter responds to the shouting & zapping by darting upstairs after casting invisbility.
Monk misty steps out the window, lands, starts to run. Fighter yells for his great sword, bard pulls it out of bag of holding.
Rogue tries to sneak out of the cabin with teh assassin distracted by listening to music. Doesn't quite get her timing down, it notices the stuff she's holding she grabbed from the cabin. Misses his knife throw, starts to slowly stalk her.
Fighter exchanges some blades with his mortal enemy, then decides to GTFO - uses his echo to get to the roof, and then get away.
Rogue finds "floatation vest" type boxes of feather fall charms, and takes a knife to teh shoulder. Invisibility drops and she swan dives off the airship.
Aaaand, scene.
Last edited:
Did some joint world-building ideas for Fabula Ultima tonight, that was fun! Low-overhead game that’s trying to recreate the feeling of JRPG aesthetics and gameplay:
-Floating island nations, probably higher tech.
-Nomadic, dinosaurs, megafauna (dragons).
-Magic: natural on the ground (some sort higher tech, small community), and steam-punk/1800s in the air.
-Floating city: The Democratic Republic of Virakotcha
-Communities on the ground: High Fantasy (stationary - high magic, closed themselves off from the world to protect themselves) highly isolationist, tribes are struggling with nature not each other.
-Nomadic, dinosaurs, megafauna (dragons).
-Magic: natural on the ground (some sort higher tech, small community), and steam-punk/1800s in the air.
-Floating city: The Democratic Republic of Virakotcha
-Communities on the ground: High Fantasy (stationary - high magic, closed themselves off from the world to protect themselves) highly isolationist, tribes are struggling with nature not each other.
i think we've hit the massively OP part of PF1. In last night's game, we fought an ancient Umbral dragon and it surrendered after 2 rounds. It helps that the party was able to prepare an ambush and there were some lucky die rolls on our part.
A friend's mythic campaign fizzled out when one of the players busted out a spell that blinded all the targets, no save, nothing they could do, and the GM flipped out.
DMing a party made up of optimizers with one or more less number-crunching players is a miserable proposition. You can't scale the threat to be relevant without killing the non-optimizers every single time.
Yeah, but even Maze will destroy many boss fights in the endgame. It wrecks the ability to use the boss and minions together. I would have to give the opponents extra ones with my old party to address Mythic levels and abilities.
Off to NY to a comedy club to see a couple of comedians and a few RPG podcasters play some Kong: Skull Island by Evil Genius.
My group got a planes-length (like arms-length, but loooooonger) audience with Tiamat. Not their choice, the party was on a mission to retrieve a knucklebone from Tiamat's last avatar from scientist mages, and what the mages were doing with it was having a chat with Tiamat. (High INT, low WIS! ).
The party was supposed to be observers for the audience, but Tiamat was annoyed by some of the information given (namely, that the Cult of the Dragon was doing things in her name, but not actually for her), and offered one of the party members POWER. That party member rejected the offer in a diplomatic way, but another party member jumped forward and asked for the power herself. The party Bard very nearly traded some levels in Bard for levels in Priest of Tiamat... but one of the other party members remembered that she had a holy token given to the party from a Bahamut Paladin, and used it to interrupt the conversion.
Tiamat was mildly annoyed by the interruption, particularly because they used a shard of Bahamut to do it, but ended the audience with a comment, "I should kill you all for that, but... you've got more immediate problems." Queue a dracolich - a dracolich that is directly tied to the backstory of the bard - landing on the mage tower. Multiple parties want that knucklebone, after all.
The party was extremely underpowered to deal with a dracolich, but I've been cultivating the party making alliances and allies, and the party Mage thought to reach out to Queen Obarskyr's court mage for help. The Sending went through.... but there wasn't a response. Two turns later... a Meteor Swarm hits the top of the Mage Tower (where the Dracolich is perching), hurting the Dracolich and taking out the Dracolich's rider. The Dracolich, who was (unknown to the party) under power for an imperfect reconstruction, chose to leave. The party is now in the debt of the court mage (which, in fairness, they were already in service of, but now moreso).
). The party was supposed to be observers for the audience, but Tiamat was annoyed by some of the information given (namely, that the Cult of the Dragon was doing things in her name, but not actually for her), and offered one of the party members POWER. That party member rejected the offer in a diplomatic way, but another party member jumped forward and asked for the power herself. The party Bard very nearly traded some levels in Bard for levels in Priest of Tiamat... but one of the other party members remembered that she had a holy token given to the party from a Bahamut Paladin, and used it to interrupt the conversion.
Tiamat was mildly annoyed by the interruption, particularly because they used a shard of Bahamut to do it, but ended the audience with a comment, "I should kill you all for that, but... you've got more immediate problems." Queue a dracolich - a dracolich that is directly tied to the backstory of the bard - landing on the mage tower. Multiple parties want that knucklebone, after all.
The party was extremely underpowered to deal with a dracolich, but I've been cultivating the party making alliances and allies, and the party Mage thought to reach out to Queen Obarskyr's court mage for help. The Sending went through.... but there wasn't a response. Two turns later... a Meteor Swarm hits the top of the Mage Tower (where the Dracolich is perching), hurting the Dracolich and taking out the Dracolich's rider. The Dracolich, who was (unknown to the party) under power for an imperfect reconstruction, chose to leave. The party is now in the debt of the court mage (which, in fairness, they were already in service of, but now moreso).
Is that the Glass Cannon Podcast people? I went to one of their PF2 live shows earlier this year, and it was a blast.
Yep. They had an after-party at a gaming/karaoke bar several minutes away. Which show did you attend?
Nice. I listened to that last week. Sounds like it was a blast. I try to hit any NY appearance they do, and then Pax Unplugged in December. I was at their first event in the back of the game store in Queen almost ten tears ago, and Joe lives in the town next to me, so I run into him occasionally.
Not sure if this would interest you all or not. $18 gets you every PDF for Delta Green TTRPG.
I have some in hardback, but picking this up.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/delta-green-rpg-collection-arc-dream-books
I have some in hardback, but picking this up.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/delta-green-rpg-collection-arc-dream-books
I’m not sure I’ll ever play it but I had to grab it when I got the email
Had the climax of an arc the players in my Monday game helped generate together last night! Ended with the party badly beaten up (and after a couple drops and some failed death saves) swan diving off an airship with "life preservers" (scrolls of feather fall) in hand just before its core exploded and took out the top half of the docking spire.
An appropriate end, I think! Now they go off to a ruined underwater city.
An appropriate end, I think! Now they go off to a ruined underwater city.
Last edited:
Are they the type of party that go “We did it! We saved the city!” ?
I think at one point every party has it's moment of But I put the fires out...
One of them did ask "Hey do you think we can get the Hands of Ord (guards) to pay for the damage?" (the answer is yes, they saved a couple of the detectives who went with them to investigate the spire & staved off the assassination of a notable lady)
I did something a bit different: a split-screen combat/encounter. The fighter & rogue went with some NPC detectives to secure the airship spire/docks (they knew the assassin was coming back to town on an airship thanks to the masquerade party last week), running into some old enemies. The monk & bard went with the Lt detective to the Lady's house to warn her of an impending assassination contract with the paper they found. So we went back and forth between the setup there (monk disguising himself w/bard's help as the Lady [both are goliaths]), getting to the spire, signs that the manor was being scoped out, a short ambush at the spire with a detective being shot, another scene at the manor, a full on initiative rolling combat w/ the former squad leader who betrayed the fighter + a rogue they'd faced off against way back, "quiet classical music playing in the manor as the bard patrolled" as one player said - and then double hell broke loose as I said she saw a shadow moved for a second.
Flung a dispel magic in that direction - revealed the assassin prowling down the hall heading towards the study. Scene based combat starts in the manor, and I start cutting between fights on initiative. After some back and forth (and some serious damage chunks in the spire), the assassin flees a bit too united of a front to try again another day. Monk & bard pursue, chase to spire, where assassin quaffs a fly potion (my headcanon for fly now are the harkonnens using their suspensor belts in the opening of Dunc 2) to zoom up to his airship. Monk follows w/spider climb, bard flies (owlin).
Now we have a multi-round big combat, assassin goes "ill take you all with me" once his allies are down and he's ~30% and revs airship up and smashes it into spire top to crumple the containment on the magic core.
And then we wrap with above.
I did something a bit different: a split-screen combat/encounter. The fighter & rogue went with some NPC detectives to secure the airship spire/docks (they knew the assassin was coming back to town on an airship thanks to the masquerade party last week), running into some old enemies. The monk & bard went with the Lt detective to the Lady's house to warn her of an impending assassination contract with the paper they found. So we went back and forth between the setup there (monk disguising himself w/bard's help as the Lady [both are goliaths]), getting to the spire, signs that the manor was being scoped out, a short ambush at the spire with a detective being shot, another scene at the manor, a full on initiative rolling combat w/ the former squad leader who betrayed the fighter + a rogue they'd faced off against way back, "quiet classical music playing in the manor as the bard patrolled" as one player said - and then double hell broke loose as I said she saw a shadow moved for a second.
Flung a dispel magic in that direction - revealed the assassin prowling down the hall heading towards the study. Scene based combat starts in the manor, and I start cutting between fights on initiative. After some back and forth (and some serious damage chunks in the spire), the assassin flees a bit too united of a front to try again another day. Monk & bard pursue, chase to spire, where assassin quaffs a fly potion (my headcanon for fly now are the harkonnens using their suspensor belts in the opening of Dunc 2) to zoom up to his airship. Monk follows w/spider climb, bard flies (owlin).
Now we have a multi-round big combat, assassin goes "ill take you all with me" once his allies are down and he's ~30% and revs airship up and smashes it into spire top to crumple the containment on the magic core.
And then we wrap with above.
Last edited:
One of the things that annoys me with maps is when there's a stupidly obvious "secret" door. "Oh, look, there's this void and there's a clear vestibule down to it, but no door. Huh."
So, anyway, the AV party found the voidglutton.
...and actually lived! I had earlier subtly introduced the concept of "if you think you're in over your head, run...and actually do that!," by recalling an old Dragon article where the writer had been observing convention games where TPKs were clearly in process but nobody actually ran. So that helped, especially when they kept having it no-sell (critically succeed) their attacks. The fighter got two hits in, but needed a 14 base to connect, and even with darkvision had concealment to mess with.
So they ran after the oracle went down the first time (it crit her on a 13...), and all of them ran. However, the oracle did get off an Inner Radiance Torrent, which I had to yell at the player to give me the keywords (which to be fair, I haven't been doing, and need to be better about), actually hurt the voidglutton, as it isn't immune to spells with the Light tag. And it rolled a 1.
It wasn't dead, and if she'd gotten another one off likely might have put it down, but they smartly kept running and it didn't pursue.
I retrospect, she probably shouldn't have gotten even the three action Inner Radiance Torrent off, as being carried/ridden eats an action apiece. But hey.
So, anyway, the AV party found the voidglutton.
...and actually lived! I had earlier subtly introduced the concept of "if you think you're in over your head, run...and actually do that!," by recalling an old Dragon article where the writer had been observing convention games where TPKs were clearly in process but nobody actually ran. So that helped, especially when they kept having it no-sell (critically succeed) their attacks. The fighter got two hits in, but needed a 14 base to connect, and even with darkvision had concealment to mess with.
So they ran after the oracle went down the first time (it crit her on a 13...), and all of them ran. However, the oracle did get off an Inner Radiance Torrent, which I had to yell at the player to give me the keywords (which to be fair, I haven't been doing, and need to be better about), actually hurt the voidglutton, as it isn't immune to spells with the Light tag. And it rolled a 1.
It wasn't dead, and if she'd gotten another one off likely might have put it down, but they smartly kept running and it didn't pursue.
I retrospect, she probably shouldn't have gotten even the three action Inner Radiance Torrent off, as being carried/ridden eats an action apiece. But hey.
Last edited:
Had a session a few weeks ago that went well. The new skill check mechanics may need some tweaks, but they seem here to stay. I may post a recap and share it, but it’s unlikely. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about initiative.
The way initiative works currently is you roll Initiative + Dexterity. If it beats the standard difficulty, you go first. If it doesn’t you go last, but you can opt to go first at a penalty. Monsters don’t roll for initiative. In essence, players are rolling each round to see whether they or the monsters go first. Everything else happens simultaneously. That’s been okay, but the math changes broke things.
(Edit for clarity: Initiative is wave-based. The waves are: fast, monsters, slow. In terms of system, these are defined along with specific timings à la 4e with Phase Start, etc. Since initiative is rerolled every round, your wave can change from round to round.)
Ideally, an initiative check would work like any other check. It would be a level 1 conflict with consequences. After some thinking about it and discussion with my group, I think I have a solution. You roll against the standard target as usual, but if you don’t clear the conflict, you make all rolls (including casting spells since they typically involve rolls) at a penalty equal to the remaining points in the conflict.
For example, if you get an 8, then you would make attack rolls at −2. If you don’t want the penalty, you can opt to go last. If you fail (such as by rolling a 5), then you go last. That removes the decision point and makes going first with a penalty the “success + consequences” case. If you want to go last regardless, you can opt out of going first to go last no problem.
Another issue with initiative is no one has invested in the Initiative speciality at all in 40+ sessions. After doing some research on reflexes and stuff like that, I’ve decided to make initiative a derived stat equal to Agility + Wits. (Yes, I’m renaming Dexterity to Agility.) The Wits component reflects how quickly you can process and Agility is how fast you can make your body react after processing.
With Initiative being derived, that gives me the following derived stats:
It should be obvious at this point where I’m going with this: there’s a lack of consistency. The reflective and toughness attributes are paired together as a derived stat, but there is no derived stat for Strength + Intellect. I’ve proposed changing Inventory to the following: 5 + Strength + Intellect. The Strength represents your raw ability to haul things around while the Intellect is how well you balance and pack it. If you’re bad at it, the load is unbalanced, and you can’t carry as much (or so the conceptual model goes).
The reaction from my players has been:
One said he didn’t hate it, but he also didn’t love it. The other worried about over-complicating things. I think we’ll talk about it some more this weekend before we play board games (since this is an off-week).
I’d like to go forward because it has the following beneficial effect: you can always increase one of the derived stats when you gain an attribute increase because attribute increases happen semi-randomly. At even levels, you roll on your ancestry’s attribute table to determine whether to increase a Physical or a Mental attribute of your choice. If you really want to increase Inventory but got Mental, you can increase your Intellect to improve your Inventory at the same time.
One suggestion a player made was that you could take the best-of, but that’s not how Stress and (going forward) Initiative will work. I didn’t like that for a few reasons. Allowing players to choose is an accommodation for optimizers because it lets them focus on one stat instead of having a balanced build. I also feel like it waters down the meaning of stats when they’re fungible like that. I also don’t want to have a one-off mechanic. The goal is to make things more consistent not less.
The way initiative works currently is you roll Initiative + Dexterity. If it beats the standard difficulty, you go first. If it doesn’t you go last, but you can opt to go first at a penalty. Monsters don’t roll for initiative. In essence, players are rolling each round to see whether they or the monsters go first. Everything else happens simultaneously. That’s been okay, but the math changes broke things.
(Edit for clarity: Initiative is wave-based. The waves are: fast, monsters, slow. In terms of system, these are defined along with specific timings à la 4e with Phase Start, etc. Since initiative is rerolled every round, your wave can change from round to round.)
Ideally, an initiative check would work like any other check. It would be a level 1 conflict with consequences. After some thinking about it and discussion with my group, I think I have a solution. You roll against the standard target as usual, but if you don’t clear the conflict, you make all rolls (including casting spells since they typically involve rolls) at a penalty equal to the remaining points in the conflict.
For example, if you get an 8, then you would make attack rolls at −2. If you don’t want the penalty, you can opt to go last. If you fail (such as by rolling a 5), then you go last. That removes the decision point and makes going first with a penalty the “success + consequences” case. If you want to go last regardless, you can opt out of going first to go last no problem.
Another issue with initiative is no one has invested in the Initiative speciality at all in 40+ sessions. After doing some research on reflexes and stuff like that, I’ve decided to make initiative a derived stat equal to Agility + Wits. (Yes, I’m renaming Dexterity to Agility.) The Wits component reflects how quickly you can process and Agility is how fast you can make your body react after processing.
With Initiative being derived, that gives me the following derived stats:
- Initiative: Agility + Wits
- Inventory: 7 + Strength
- Stress: 10 + Endurance + Willpower
| Physical | Mental | |
|---|---|---|
| Intentional | Strength | Intellect |
| Reflexive | Agility | Wits |
| Toughness | Endurance | Willpower |
It should be obvious at this point where I’m going with this: there’s a lack of consistency. The reflective and toughness attributes are paired together as a derived stat, but there is no derived stat for Strength + Intellect. I’ve proposed changing Inventory to the following: 5 + Strength + Intellect. The Strength represents your raw ability to haul things around while the Intellect is how well you balance and pack it. If you’re bad at it, the load is unbalanced, and you can’t carry as much (or so the conceptual model goes).
The reaction from my players has been:
One said he didn’t hate it, but he also didn’t love it. The other worried about over-complicating things. I think we’ll talk about it some more this weekend before we play board games (since this is an off-week).I’d like to go forward because it has the following beneficial effect: you can always increase one of the derived stats when you gain an attribute increase because attribute increases happen semi-randomly. At even levels, you roll on your ancestry’s attribute table to determine whether to increase a Physical or a Mental attribute of your choice. If you really want to increase Inventory but got Mental, you can increase your Intellect to improve your Inventory at the same time.
One suggestion a player made was that you could take the best-of, but that’s not how Stress and (going forward) Initiative will work. I didn’t like that for a few reasons. Allowing players to choose is an accommodation for optimizers because it lets them focus on one stat instead of having a balanced build. I also feel like it waters down the meaning of stats when they’re fungible like that. I also don’t want to have a one-off mechanic. The goal is to make things more consistent not less.
Last edited:
Buddies were in town for a punk/ska show this past weekend out here in Southern California, we had some free time Sunday night, so rolled some characters for Call of Cthulhu TTRPG. We spent almost 3 hours rolling and creating characters. Was a lot of fun, I haven't played Call of Cthluhu since high school.
I'm 42 on the 23rd.
I'm 42 on the 23rd.