30 of Chris Hadfield's photos from space.

Good news, 3 crew members on the ISS made it safely back to earth today including Chris Hadfield.

See, if it was me, I'd be linking the ability to hurting normally immune types to interests so it syncs up with the monster slayer

While interesting, I'd be strongly against giving interests any direct connection to bonuses to attack checks (or direct combat utility like enabling sneak attack). Way too easy for that to suck the frolicking charm out them with what amounts to a must-have interest tax for combatant roles.

I've seen something like this in my current game.  I have a character who has specialized in metalworking and he was asking me about access to the various racial Craftsmanship upgrades.  We decided that it made sense to tie those techniques to studies of the given culture or study of general craftsmanship, which typically grants 3 different upgrade types without much knowledge on the accompanying culture.

What happened is a character who had every single interest invested in varying aspects of metalworking*.  Does he have any interests other than metalworking?  You won't really know, he had to spend all his Interests to gain mechanical benefits instead.  In hindsight, I'd rather have left interests to help define a characters interests outside the abilities printed in their stat block.


*For this particular character that is largely appropriate.  He was playing his character with that level of interest in metalworking pretty much from day 1, seeking out and talking to just about every metalworker he could find in every town and city.  When they passed through the dwarven mountains he wanted to see the magma forges they use but didn't have time so promised to return some day just so he could.  Even if he didn't need to use his Interests to further his Metalworking, he probably would have put most of them into something similar.

For those interested in Guns of Icarus, The Game Station recently did multi-POV videos of a few deathmatches.  Looks fun, and it's pretty fun listening to Cox's crew.

I've got that on my PC.  Is anyone else here playing this?

He is my hero.

Agreed.

Science! is awesome and I love it when Astronauts can show us what life is like in space.  Chris Hadfield has gone above and beyond in doing just that.

I am glad to hear that Origins are not going away completely.

I am not a big fan of level-based systems in general where too often I feel shoe-horned into specific paths.  You can choose a class, but then my development is pretty much scripted before I start and my character ends up being very similar to just about every character of that type that has ever come before or will ever come after.

Now, at higher levels,  you get more decision points and it becomes easier to diversify a character and make them unique.  But at level 1, you really don't have many options to make your character anything other than Joe Shmoe Soldier...except Origins.

I thought Origins were perfect in that they have the biggest impact on individualizing characters when they need it most, at their lowest levels.

Holy Unexpected Awesomeness, Batman!

I need my friend's kids to get a little bit older so I have an excuse to play with this.

This is how I would run it.

The general rule is that Resistances stack.  If I have Fire Resistance 4 from armor and Fire Resistance 5 from a magic item then I can reduce Fire Damage I take by 9.  I don't see why they would cease to stack if I was using Fire Resistance and Spirit Resistance together.

Assume a character has Dragon Resistance 10 and Fire Resistance 4.  When a Dragon breathes fire at that character, they can reduce the damage by 14.  If a Hellhound breathes fire at them, they reduce the damage by 4.  If a Dragon breathes Cold on them, they reduce the damage by 10.  And if a Winterhound breathes ice on them, they don't reduce the damage by anything.

If the Spirit tried an unarmed, natural or extraordinary attack like Blankbeard mentioned it would be reduced by Spirit Resistance.  But weapon attacks are not necessarily sourced the same as the wielder.  So in the specific example given, a spirit Man-At-Arms armed a mundane Long Sword would only be effected by the Chainmail's Edged Resistance; however, it's entirely possible the Spirit was manifested full equipped, in which case I'd treat his sword as Spiritual as well and thus subject to both Edged Resistance and Spirit Resistance.

Thanks for the clarification, Bill

No guarantee I am right, just how I would run it.

This is how I would run it.

The general rule is that Resistances stack.  If I have Fire Resistance 4 from armor and Fire Resistance 5 from a magic item then I can reduce Fire Damage I take by 9.  I don't see why they would cease to stack if I was using Fire Resistance and Spirit Resistance together.

Assume a character has Dragon Resistance 10 and Fire Resistance 4.  When a Dragon breathes fire at that character, they can reduce the damage by 14.  If a Hellhound breathes fire at them, they reduce the damage by 4.  If a Dragon breathes Cold on them, they reduce the damage by 10.  And if a Winterhound breathes ice on them, they don't reduce the damage by anything.

If the Spirit tried an unarmed, natural or extraordinary attack like Blankbeard mentioned it would be reduced by Spirit Resistance.  But weapon attacks are not necessarily sourced the same as the wielder.  So in the specific example given, a spirit Man-At-Arms armed a mundane Long Sword would only be effected by the Chainmail's Edged Resistance; however, it's entirely possible the Spirit was manifested full equipped, in which case I'd treat his sword as Spiritual as well and thus subject to both Edged Resistance and Spirit Resistance.

You'd think it'd be more interesting to have a futuristic game with futuristic weapons, then the game that already exists with a different background file, right?

Why change tactics now.  Countless clones have made shit-tons of money each iteration as people keep buying them.  If they actually tried anything innovative, people might not buy it.

I don't always do things in the same order, but when I do...


I usually start with broad strokes and work my way to finer details, so the first thing I usually do is peruse the books for inspiration which means I usually look at and choose a class first  Oftentimes, there is a Expert/Master class I want so the sooner I know this, the better I can plan to meet the prerequisites.

Then I usually pick feats.  Since I know the classes I want, I know what feats I may need to meet any prerequisites.  After I have the prerequisites squared away, then I branch out to other feats based on the personal style of the character.

I usually settle on an Origin around now.  Since I know what feats I will need I know if I need an Origin to help with those feats or if I can pick more freely.

Then I usually settle on my Attributes.  I know what I need for my build and I know how they are going to be affected by my Origin before I actually assign any of them.

Then I decide Origin skills and skill point allocation.  If I need any skills to fill prerequisites, I put those down first, then I fill in the rest again based on my character's personal style.

The last things I tend to decide are Interests and Proficiencies.  I usually have some idea what I want before I get here, but there is usually two or three open slots I need to fill in.




And that is basically it.  There are times where the order changes somewhat.  For example, when I saw Sword Mastery could give you Keen 10, I sifted through the book for other Keen options then took all of those options and built a character around them.  But the majority of characters I have built are done as listed above.

Probably the fact that the Spell Defense only works against unaligned attacks.

In essence you become more protected from the Mundane world but are still vulnerable from attacks originating from some higher, aligned, plane.

I hate to sound like a wet blanket here, but this doesn't really sound like a mechanical check at all if you don't want it to be.

You wet blanket, you! 

It's clever players being clever. There's no real reason not to let them be clever as long as the role-playing is tight and the action at the table is flowing well.

I've been at tables where entire interrogations were simply roleplayed out, no dice needed. As long as the game's not breaking horribly because of a glib player, and as long as the table's gaining entertainment value from the proceedings, it seems perfectly fine to let a clever player Burn Notice his way in or out of an ostensibly secure facility.

But I've also been at tables where shy players, who really want to play the smooth talker, could really use a mechanical system to simulate what their characters can do that they themselves can not.

Thanks for pointing that out Krensky.  I was thinking that a wizard being able to just flash fry 3 enemies every fight was kinda crazy, but the idea of a whole dungeon (potentially) being one scene makes the idea a lot more palatable for me.

And, as always, communicate with your players.  If every fight up until now has always been a self-contained scene, players may be rightly annoyed if they find out after a fight that the scene is still going.

We'll see. Invoking the term "hardcore" is a great way to lessen my interest, at least in a videogame.

For me, it depends on what they mean by "hardcore".

When hardcore means you'll have to deal with the consequences of your actions; success, failure, who you save, who you kill; it's a very good thing.

If it means you will constantly die and each time you die you restart the scene so you may as well plan on spending 2 hours each scene struggling to get through it, then it sucks hardcore.

So, that XCOM FPS?  It's now called The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, and is a "Hardcore Tactical Third-Person Shooter" that is the origin story of the XCOM Initiative.

Well, good on 'em for sticking with it, and we'll see what happens on August 20.

Funny.  I find this game A LOT more palatable since Enemy Unknown was released, which I happen to be playing right now by the way.  Now that the turn-based itch has been scratched, I am much more receptive to them exploring other styles with XCom.