Actually, it's applied during Downtime, and it's up to the GM whether it happens before or after the PC's get a chance to do their shopping. Could see arguments both for and against, though personally I tend towards the former, since silver would lose all relevance even earlier than normal.

Where I tend to the latter.  My PCs used to spend every last cent they could before applying Prudence so they wouldn't lose any silver until one of them realized he was never going to be able to afford a good mount or better armor unless he started saving up for it.

I found letting them spend it before applying Prudence made them act in a manner more appropriate to their character instead of forcing them to act certain ways.  If you are going to be taking away 50%-85% of their money every time before they even spend it, everyone is going to want Prudence.  If you give them a chance to spend it first, characters with high Prudence are better server by players who save money and characters with high Panache are better served with players who fritter away every last coin every chance they get.

I could see it working for Hemalurgy, though.  You're basically stealing the guys proverbial soul.  Thematically, it makes a certain sense that it could give you access to what was stored in his copperminds.

It also offers another quandary to the heroes.  They can save the information he has stolen if they are willing to repeat the process on the villain.

It's an idea I may steal if I ever run a Mistborn game.

It's a house rule, but it may work for you, too.

It helped me to get rid of the Stress = Unconscious connection.  They may run in terror, they may surrender, or they may just take a step back and tell the villain he's on his own.

"Oooh no, you didn't say anything about Mad Bart being here.  There's not enough money in the world for this."

The important thing is, that target is out of the combat, whether he passes out, cowers in the corner, or surrenders is really all window dressing.  Use the dressing most appropriate to the scene.

XCOM's good too.  Looking forward to the mysterious EW expansion.  There's also some interesting videos makin' the rounds of their preliminary version, the more straight up translation of the original that they threw out.

I've got a respectable list of things I would like to see "fixed" or changed, but I can't pretend I'm not happy with the game so far and am eagerly awaiting more.

Several of the things I wanted to fix in that game were taken care of with the Second Wave options.  Now the only part that annoys me with those is the requirement to beat it on Impossible to use all of them.

Does the explosion taper of in 1 square increments after 15 ft or is 15 ft the increment of the explosion (probably not, as that would be a quite large area even with only 9 dmg at the center on average)?

Neither. Despite the name, it's not a blast. It's just a 15 ft radius. Similar to Fireball.

Per the RAW, it actually does taper off.  Elemental Blast I: Metal inflicts 2d8 Explosive damage.  The first bullet point on Explosive damage says "Explosive damage tapers off (see Blast, page 214)."

Sigh, once again, nested key words make me look stupid.

I blame someone.

The only reason I caught it is I have a player who wants to make a bow that does Explosive Damage, Rambo style, so I just happened to have looked at Explosive Damage recently.

Yeah, and that's exactly the problem: You are at ground zero, making the use of this power quite suicidal

I'd rule that it's like a doughnut.  Empty square (that you're in), then the 15 ft in every direction is "ground zero" - it's an effect that shoots out from you, not through you.  Technically a house rule, but I'm pretty sure most GMs aren't big enough assholes to turn the ability into a bomb vest when I'm pretty confident that's not how Alex intended it.

I don't know that I would make the center an empty hole so much as house rule the user as being immune to his own power.  This keeps the size of Ground Zero consistent with other blast effects, rather than ground zero being 10 feet bigger in diameter, and means creatures that happen to be sharing space aren't somehow immune by also being in the doughnut hole.

Only matters for Metal though (and maybe Air - I'm AFB, but IIRC Sonic Damage tapers off, too).

Yea, Sonic damage also has a tapering effect.

Does the explosion taper of in 1 square increments after 15 ft or is 15 ft the increment of the explosion (probably not, as that would be a quite large area even with only 9 dmg at the center on average)?

Neither. Despite the name, it's not a blast. It's just a 15 ft radius. Similar to Fireball.

Per the RAW, it actually does taper off.  Elemental Blast I: Metal inflicts 2d8 Explosive damage.  The first bullet point on Explosive damage says "Explosive damage tapers off (see Blast, page 214)."

Blast (pg 214) says "Every blast attack has a base area of effect — a blast increment", and "Everything and everyone at Ground Zero suffers the blast’s full damage. This damage drops by 1/2 (rounded down) within each blast increment out from Ground Zero, until the damage drops below 1 point, at which point it tapers off entirely."

Since 15' is generally 3 squares, judging by the blast template, the square the character is in and everything within 2 squares would be Ground Zero.  Then the damage gets halved every 15 foot range band (3 squares) beyond that.

The whole soundtrack album is pretty servicable .

I enjoyed it immensely.  The CD was in my car player for about a month or so when I first bought it, just looping whenever I went somewhere.  Now when I hear any of the songs on the album, my mind starts looping through all of them.

This isn't a bad thing, it was a good album, it just means I have to accept the fact that I'll be listening to it in my head for the next couple of days.

Incidentally, the thread title is a reference to Titan A.E.

Yea, thanks for that by the way.  That song has been stuck in my head since I first read the topic yesterday.

It's also critically important to avoid making NPCs too complex to run. It's very easy to add stuff because you think it fits, without realizing that at the table you might be overwhelmed by the detail. A complex NPC can also slow the game down, in some cases beyond your tolerance.

I can second this.  Just last week I made the mistake of giving a mob of standard characters a breath weapon.  It looked fine on paper, but in practice the time it took for each of the NPCs to calculate the area of effect, roll to hit, roll damage and for the PCs to roll saves bogged the combat down pretty significantly.

Having never been a huge fan of the OGL, I am glad to see it fall by the wayside.

I've never liked the "One System to Rule Them All!" mentality that d20 became and I saw too many awesome settings ruined by trying to shoehorn them into the d20/OGL system.

I'm not entirely sure what youdexing is trying to say, but they seem very passionate about it.

It should all be cleaned up now, thanks.

However, if you are looking for more of the RP aspects, then perhaps a counter for how long you can go without a full feeding (probably lethal) and then start tacking on grades of what amounts to BAFFLED to represent the slide toward your darker nature.  However, rather than rendering you incapacitated, it could drop out your self control.

I like this, but perhaps instead of Baffled, used Tainted.  At V you become an NPC (just like in DFRPG, or full monster mode in the DF books).

I like this with one minor caveat.  Once the character HAS fed and removed his levels of taint, control reverts back to the player.  Now the player has to actually deal with all the sick and depraved things he may have done while he was out of control.

I have a quick question, though the answer may be significantly longer, regarding magic items.

The NPC Quality and Feat Esssences both have lists of which subset of items are available.  Other supplements, such as the Call to Arms and the Adventure Companion, add additional NPC qualities and Feats.

Has anyone looked at which of these new Qualities and Feats would be good candidates to add to the NPC Quality and Feat Essence options?

I plan on going over this this more thoroughly during the week but I was curious if anyone had looked at this already.



Edit:  This came up at game and I hastily wrote a post here during a break.  Updating text and title to something more appropriate.

I haven't used it, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't work.  Many of the GMs here already hand wave experience and just give their players a level every adventure or two.