#downtime with the mooks ^^

[incorrect-star-allies]

Chemitory: I’m not a doctor I’m a medic.

NESP: What’s the difference then?

Chemitory: Well, doctors actually save lives, medics just make you feel more comfortable as you die.

Capsule J3: Note to self, never get shot.

[caffernnn]

Knock knock bestie have we talked about the goldfish but in the mookverse 👀

OKAY HI HELLO I’ve been spinning this in my mind since you’ve sent it (you’re a visionary, truly) and I’m READY NOW !!! 🛁✨🧡

(… putting a readmore bc this got long lmao)

Sooo, we see goldfish come up quite a few times within the show, most often in relation to Makoto. Whether it’s the literal goldfish he’s taken care of (first fish from childhood, plus the ones gifted later by Haru) or the striking visuals of swarms of goldfish that show up within his shrine vision and stress dream in FS/FS2, they’re looming. In my mind, when we get a Makoto scene where goldfish are involved in some fashion, it’s a surefire signal for me to pay attention to how that moment comments on Makoto’s supportive caretaking abilities — do others trust he can take care of the things and the people he holds dear; does he trust that his efforts will be enough to convey everything he wants to before it’s too late? It’s interesting to think about the implications of goldfish imagery, especially the more abstract/interpretive ones seen later on, because it creates this fascinating opening for the mh mookverse to be tied into that collection. Before even jumping into the universe itself, I’m drawn to its conception — how it’s built in a dream that can be read to be from either Makoto or Haru’s head (if not both), and how many points in the story are these call-response moments crafted from fears and reassurances during the ES era. Seeing how goldfish have brought attention to Makoto’s worry and Haru’s responding reassurance in the show, how might they also find their way into this shared dreamverse, where Makoto’s ability to take care of and protect others is a prevailing theme? (theme, right? Lit nerds don’t come for me rn okay I think I’m using that term right)

There were a couple moments that stood out to me with Big Goldfish Energy when I last read through the story, so let me just tack those up on the conspiracy pinboard really quick 📌

There’s… something about Haru showing up, being declared as specifically half-fish, revealing that he doesn’t have a home or people (or particularly strong conviction) to return to, and revealing he “doesn’t care” about whether he has any of those bonds or aspirations or not (okay, parallel to that fight with Rin in the locker room, I see you~). There’s something to Makoto immediately extending care to this version of Haru: someone who is a practical stranger (and creature) in his eyes, yet has a disposition that he takes personally. The suddenness of Makoto imposing this all-important “power of friendship” on himself, then proceeding to open up his home and his downtime and his life to Haru… it’s an echo to the deep bond they have in the waking world, yes, but it also feels connected to Makoto’s ever-present desire to take care of something/someone. Being a pet owner, being a big brother, being a team captain, being a swim coach, being a firefighter — there is a core part of Makoto that’s not begrudgingly bound to responsibility, but craves and almost chases whatever heartfelt pursuit he can to feel useful. So much of Makoto’s character and his dream (as we understand it throughout ES and beyond) is spurred on by this desire to help. Whether he’s trusted with fish from a fair named after his friends, or presented with a half-fish in his home that wears the face of one of those same treasured friends, of course he pounces and takes on that task with pride.

Now, onto that quality of care:

This moment feels particularly telling about how Makoto’s perception of his role in Haru’s life (both in the mook and definitely outside of it) is shifting as time moves forward. He sees Haru comfortable enough, integrating himself into a shared normalcy with Makoto, but he’s noticing how… limiting, this all might be. His efforts in supporting and caring for Haru now orient towards building hope and curiosity. What would it look like for his fish friend to move to a bigger tank, or be released completely? Beyond this also lies a question Makoto refuses to voice to himself, but still makes its presence known in how this whole “trip to the sea” arc proceeds: how much will it hurt if in all of his pushes forward, Haru finds a beautiful life that’s outside of his own line of vision? He wants what’s best for Haru, he wants him to dream, he wants him to be able to do all of this for himself… but there’s also that part of him that will always hope beyond hope that they both find ways forward where they get to stay by each other’s sides. How much is at risk in letting that glittering goldfish grow beyond its small bowl?

This is all skittering off into a general love letter to the mh mook, but I adore the little details that show that shared care they both have for each other. Like, it means something that Makoto insists that they go to the sea together. It means something that he openly wants to be by Haru’s side when he explores the world again beyond the safe bathtub he’s become so familiar with. If you still think about this as a dream, it clears up one of the ongoing points of contention in the ES time period that Makoto struggles to communicate to Haru when everything blows up: he’s not trying to make demands that push Haru towards one specific goal or away from everything he knows. He wants Haru to find a purpose through knowing his options, and he hopes he can be by his side through it all. God, it just makes me think about their fight and why Makoto couldn’t bring himself tell Haru about Tokyo earlier than he did! He’s scared! He’s attached and scared and trying to be hopeful with all of the change and transition laying ahead of him, but homie doesn’t want to lose his best friend and the life they’ve shared for so long together in the process, and it’s agonizing for him to see Haru so openly dig his claws into a beautiful past and normalcy when Makoto knows they both have to keep moving. MAKOTO CARES SO MUCH!!

Ok, back to the mook: I’m obsessed with the moments where it’s made so clear that Haru cares for Makoto and consciously chooses to find his way back to him. Haru isn’t just a passive roommate or pet, but someone who entangles himself into Makoto’s life (shared lunch breaks, walking home, evenings together, etc etc). When given the chance to go anywhere when in the sea, he swims around and then comes back to Makoto. When we get to the fire, where he’s completely out of his element, he actively puts himself in harm’s way to find Makoto (he can’t let his tether to his now beloved constancy and normal burn, right?) to his own demise. He does the scary thing of going somewhere Makoto can’t reach him (bro you 🫧DIED🫧), going through an intense cycle of change (Australia trip could neverrr), and when he pops out on the other side of that cycle with another chance at life, he finds home with Makoto once again. This is our airport reunion, this is our mhtokyo realized — Haru has found a dream, and a crucial piece of that all-encompassing vision is treasuring his most important bonds that pushed him to care about anything. In these moments of Makoto being scared that he failed to care enough to save anyone (the kid from the fire, Haru from the fire, Haru from his ES spiral and breakdown), Haru does his best to convince him otherwise by coming back, sending out a resounding message of not only wanting to be by his side, but trusting Makoto enough to try and build a new path forward with, again and again.

So uhh… the goldfish. Right.

In the story that exists now, there’s a lot to be found in viewing half-fish Haru as a variation or stand-in for the goldfish. It’s an interesting spin in that we see Makoto have a multitude of hopes and fears attached to his abilities to support others through his emerging aspirations, but slapping Haru’s face on a fish reeeally draws our eye to what his subconscious stirs up when focused on his ability to support and take care of Haru specifically. Beyond that, though, if we were to specifically throw visible goldfish into the mookverse, there could be a cute epilogue spin where they have fish in their home together. I love the idea of mook mh getting comfortable enough in their ‘happily ever after’ that they choose to take care of fish together. It’d be cute if it was a surprise gift from one of them to echo back to Haru gifting fish, but establishing growth and security through getting to be the shared caretakers of others? That’s tasty; that’s a nice nod to the domestic mundane security mh get to have in DttF and Tokyo (FS era notwithstanding. She only exists when she’s useful to me) and how they get to focus on helping out their friends for a bit. A lot of soft headcanon or fic potential there tbh.

Oh no, I hope you weren’t originally asking for just a lil hc of them taking care of the goldfish, because if so I 🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️

[vvatchword]

What Things We Have Done

Fontaine jumped out of the bathysphere grinning. His opponents called it a bastard grin, a cocky smile he usually appropriated just before smashing a business off of the map. A couple of years ago, Ryan would have corrected them: “I find his boyish enthusiasm appealing.”

Fontaine just laughed. Let 'em talk. I’ll give them action.

Two big mooks strode on either side of him, smoking cigars, armed with pistols. Fontaine was smoking a cigar, too, an unnecessarily big one that stank terribly. As he strode into the center of the skyscraper that bore his name, he stopped in the middle and looked up. Office upon office. And below…

He laughed and blew a smoke ring.

He took the elevator. He made sure to stand in the center, with his two mooks standing on either side of him. They puffed away like a factory. The other occupants of the elevator leaned away, coughed politely into handkerchiefs, and rubbed their eyes; most of them got off on the following floor. When Fontaine finally left, the remaining occupants glared after him. He didn’t seem to notice. There was a spring in his step as he sauntered up to his office.

“Hello, Mr. Fontaine,” said the secretary. An old woman he’d dredged up from the Fisheries. He would have liked to fulfill his little fantasy of a cute button-nosed girl to be his secretary—someone to fuck in the downtime, on the sly—but loyalty and ability were worth a thousand fucks. So he stuck with Miss Phipps, a spinster who knew how to keep her mouth shut.

“Hey, Granny,” he said. “You got the mail already?”

“Yes, sir. I put it on your desk.” She said it all in that cold angry voice that said, I’d quit if I could, and then you’d be sorry.

He laughed and winked at her, then passed into his office. I pay you too much to quit, you old bitch, and you know it.

It was the ugliest office in the city. He’d made sure of it. Huge ceiling, big windows gazing down on the city, big fucking portraits of his family in luxury attire (which was half the joke, since they had been stuck in a tenement with four other families and his father only showed up on weekends to beg his mother for drinking money), towering bookcases full of books he never planned to read, and garish taxidermy: a moose head, a swordfish, a huge fucking polar bear. He liked the polar bear. He dressed him up for holidays.

The mooks spread out a little and began a cursory examination of the room, as was their wont. Not that anything would happen. Fontaine had enemies, but they were enemies who only knew how to fight with capital.

Paid to be careful, though, you were always careful, you always covered your tracks.

Fontaine stopped in front of his desk and tapped a few ashes into his crystal ashtray, then took the newspaper from the mail pile and shook it out.

RAID ON FONTAINE FISHERIES, said the headline. THIRTY SMUGGLERS APPREHENDED. Beneath, a big photograph of Captain Sullivan strong-arming a darkly tanned man into a bathysphere.

“Good luck getting them to talk, Captain,” he said, and threw the paper on the desk. He looked at the headline for a moment, then up at his walls. There, in several frames, were dozens of news articles he had carefully clipped out and pasted to cardboard. He fit them together like puzzle pieces.

FONTAINE OF FONTAINE FISHERIES: ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR, said one headline, yellowed with age. Beneath, a large paragraph by Andrew Ryan. “Mr. Fontaine has transformed the fishing industry. He has invested in the services of engineers to develop submarines with increased hold capacity and longer fishing times, all while consuming less fuel. He has streamlined his factories, increased his catches, and discovered new ways of luring fish and other sea life into nets and traps to further reduce fuel consumption. In the process, he has lowered costs for consumers, and provided outlets for rising stars in the engineering field. There is no part of Rapture that he has not touched. If anyone embodies the Rapture ideal, it is Frank Fontaine.”

Another headline screamed, PLASMIDS MAKE A WAVE. Fontaine, younger and less stocky, stood in front of a glass window with a big grin and his hands on his hips. Behind him, a shoal of herring in a holding tank; beside him, a woman with frizzy hair, cut off by the edge of the photo. All he could see of her was her shoulder and right eye, which stared out at him sharply. Below, the caption: “The impossible is possible! Fontaine Futuristics rewrites genetic code of herring.” And below that, in the text, Andrew Ryan: “Fontaine is the future.”

Shit, Fontaine had liked that line so much he made it the tagline on his business cards.

Several frames down was the big angry headline, FONTAINE CONNECTED TO SMUGGLING INDUSTRY. Nothing from Andrew Ryan in that one. He had put that one into its own frame. He suspected that Ryan didn’t know what to do for a while, because most of the articles on the subject included the line, “Andrew Ryan unavailable for comment.”

One article showed Ryan Security infiltrating the wharfs down in the Bounty. There were the headlines about raids and the danger of smugglers and associating with dark-skinned strangers, and then something small about Ryan Security and the Wharfmaster teaming up to stop the smuggling problem. One article read: “Citizens have raised concerns about the autonomy of businesses. Should Ryan Security step into the private affairs of the Neptune’s Bounty wharfs? Andrew Ryan of Ryan Industries could not be reached for comment.”

Paragraphs of praise exchanged for two words. “No comment,” said Ryan of Ryan Industries. “No comment. No comment.”

Fontaine chuckled and looked down at his desk, and hesitated.

“Wait,” he said. “Why the fuck did I come up here again?”

He paused, then stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out an envelope. He gave it a cursory glance. The letter had come by special courier earlier that day. One word printed on it, from Dr. Tenenbaum: “Success.”

Chuckling, he turned and marched out of the door. His mooks tailed him.

“Did you find the mail?” said Miss Phipps. By the tone of her voice he could tell that she was saying, You didn’t notice it again, did you? The fact I organized it? I spent twenty minutes organizing it.

“Nope,” he said. “I’ll be back. Forgot that I was supposed to go the other direction.”

She grunted, and he left without looking back.

He took the elevator down to Floor 11 and stepped out. It was a single room with a single door, locked with the latest gizmo from Minerva’s Den. He set his hand on the screen, punched in the code, and then swiped his card. The machine beeped, and the door swung open.

“You guys, stay out here,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He swaggered into the common room. Three big men in black lounged around it, smoking and carrying shotguns. The secretary there—who was a cute button-nosed thing with bobbed hair and big blue eyes, but too far away to take advantage of properly—waved him through.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Fontaine,” she said.

He inclined his head. “Afternoon,” he said. “Dr. Tenenbaum in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

He passed through the door into the testing facility.

Sterile, white, silver, clean. Lines of desks on either side, mystery liquids in various vials and flasks, big machines he couldn’t remember the names of that purred, the air heavy with the stink of chemicals. Scientists darted around him holding clipboards and boxes of God-knew-what.

“Hey!” Fontaine shouted. “Where’s Brigid?”

“I am over here,” said a woman frostily.

He glanced around the room. “You playin’ hide and seek today, sweetheart?”

Brigid raised her head. She had been staring into a microscope’s eyepiece so long that there was a pink circle around her eye. Her hair was frizzy—she must have gone home last night and washed it. That happened what? Once a week?

Fontaine swaggered between a few desks and slipped up beside her. She waited for him, staring at him impassively. She almost never smiled. She wore the same stained cardigan he had seen her in a few days before. There were three cups of coffee sitting beside her on her left, one untouched and cold. On her right were four overflowing ashtrays and the greasy wrapper from a sandwich. Most noticeable was her bared forearm. There was a number tattooed there.

He leaned close to her, dropped one hand onto the small of her back, and tapped the ashes of his cigar off on the floor.

“I got your message,” he said. “Success where? With what?”

“If you would to please get your hand off of my backside,” she said, “I will tell you.”

He raised his hand. The Kraut was so touchy. “Sorry, sorry. Just tryin’ to get friendly.”

“This is business, not party.” She stood tall and turned. “Come with me.”

She took him to a little door in the wall and swiped her keycard. When they stepped inside, the back of his neck prickled, and his smile fell a little. The room stank like a farm. God, he hated it. Reminded him of the tenement. When he was a kid, he had left every day just to escape the stench.

“Clean this fucking place, will ya?” he said.

“We cleaned it.” Tenenbaum turned to glare at him. “We clean it every day. Twice. We can not have subjects getting sick. Hard enough keeping them alive as it is.”

The room was packed with cages and pens. There were rats, mice, guinea pigs, cats, monkeys; pens of pigs, dogs, goats, miniature cattle. There were twenty hundred-gallon aquariums flush against the wall, where baleful black sea slugs covered with bulbous glowing pustules crawled. There were only two narrow corridors between the cages. Tenenbaum led him down the right-hand one.

By all rights, the room should have been noisy. Instead, it was notable for its silence.

The animals were pale and dangerously thin. They leaned against the walls of their cages, or lay on their sides panting. The ones with energy wandered in meaningless circles, jerking spasmodically, foaming at the mouth. Every eye glowed like a little light bulb, yellowish and sick.

“Any luck modifying the slugs?”

Tenenbaum snorted. “No. I grow them larger, they develop sickness, they die. I get them to make more ADAM, they develop two heads and extra organs, they die. I try to make it easy to harvest ADAM without killing slug, they die. I try to inspire reproduction in captivity and… ach, almost impossible. The larvae spend part of life cycle in upper water columns, they require such exact parameters…”

“I didn’t come here to hear you bellyache.” Fontaine stopped at a pen and leaned over the fence. “What was successful? Tell me that it’s the cow.”

The cow he was looking at labored to breathe; she leaned against the wall of the pen, her head hung, her legs shook. He had envisioned cows that he could milk ADAM from, like they milked Guernseys.

Tenenbaum shook her head. “It was too hard. Too many processes involved. The cows die after maturity and make only a little ADAM.”

“Then which of 'em worked?” Fontaine said. He looked at the rats.

“Why you look at those?” Tenenbaum said sharply. “They go mad and tear each other apart. Especially males. Males and ADAM production not good combination.”

“All right, now you’re just making me wait. You want apologies for me touching you? Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll never touch you again. Show me.”

“This way.” She gestured to the end of the room, where there was a cage with thick iron bars. She pointed at the corner, and he looked in. He didn’t speak for a moment.

“Are you shitting me?” he said.

“No.” Tenenbaum rapped the bars with her pen. “Mary. Get up, Mary.”

The huddled bundle on the mattress raised its head, blinking. It was a girl, dressed in a stained, wrinkled hospital gown, with tousled hair. There was brownish-red dribble on her chin. Her eyes glowed like lamps.

“Holy God,” he said. “I thought you said it didn’t work with humans.”

“Wrong. Only didn’t work with adults. Killed every adult within two days.” Tenenbaum leaned against the door. “Something about this little one. Maybe it is because her body is still changing, she produce different amounts of hormones… ach. I will be honest, we do not yet understand. But from what I tell, we feed her a spoon full of ADAM, we induce regurgitation, she spit up ten times amount. We do this by ADAM modification and surgical implantation of ADAM slug, instead of changing embryo into ADAM slug hybrid, like with other animals. Understand?”

“Yeah,” he said, slowly. “So you need to try and replicate this experiment?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. Little kids. You know how hard it is to get those?”

“This is not end-all be-all,” she said. “New subjects are necessary. I am going to surgically implant ADAM slugs on bigger animals, younger animals, see if we get same result. But this is the one that worked first. Sort of lucky. She was only one we had.”

“I’ll find some way to get more kids to you, then.”

He backed away. The little girl sat up on the mattress. She couldn’t be more than eight or so, all skinny stick-limbs and big eyes.

“What’s she in for?”

“Stealing food in Farmer’s Market,” said Dr. Tenenbaum. “I think.”

“Miss Tennabaum?” she said, looking at Fontaine. “Why are there bears in the ocean?”

“Not important,” said Dr. Tenenbaum. “Come here, Mary. I have ADAM for you.”

The little girl rocketed to her feet and sprang to the cage door. Dr. Tenenbaum reached into her pocket and pulled out a small baby bottle full of something red and faintly luminous. She handed it to the girl, who yanked it out of her hand and ran back to her mattress. She jabbed the nipple into her mouth and sucked. The entire time, she stared at Fontaine.

Fontaine scowled.

“And soon we have a gallon of ADAM,” said Dr. Tenenbaum. “Will take her about four hours to regurgitate.” She straightened and fastened her emotionless eye on Fontaine. “You will come back to see?”

“Nah. I’ll take your word for it.” Fontaine had backed up across the room. “If I get you more kids, can you up the production?”

“Yes.” The doctor stared at him, unblinking, slumping a little, her eyes sharp and hard. It was a horrible picture. The doctor standing across from the cage, where a eight-year-old with glowing eyes sucked at an infant’s bottle for the last dregs of ADAM.

I’m going to have fucking nightmares.

“Good.” He nodded. “Then, uh… keep up the good work. Keep me updated.” A pause. “I’ll give you a bonus.”

Dr. Tenenbaum shrugged. “Thank you.”

As he left Floor 11 and collected his mooks, he couldn’t seem to regain the spring in his step. He felt sick. He knew what it was, of course. It was the animal smell of the testing room. Brought him right back down to Earth faster than he could count to three. God, if he never had to go back…

But he had to make sure the Kraut stayed on task. Yeah, she was the best at what she did… but some things, you couldn’t leave up to chance.

UPRISING: BLACK SCRAPBOOK HUB

This Chapter on AO3

[acrisius-ii]

Okay here's the mockup for that. probably... hella unbalanced and some guys are gonna be overpowered or something, but hey i can figure that out later.

NEON DRAGONS

All characters have One Health. If you are hit once, you die. Characters may move a reasonable amount on their turn, then take an action, which is typically attacking but could be anything else that takes about the same amount of time or effort. Choose a weapon. Enemies can either be close to you, or they can be far. Close means within hand's reach, far means any further than that. In order to hit a target, roll 1d6 (a Hit Roll). If the result is 4+, you hit and deal 1 damage to your target. This is enough to kill most people. On anything less, your target counterattacks, rolling 1d6 and hitting (possibly killing) on a 5+.

KATANA Whenever you would be hit, roll 1d6 (a Deflect Roll). On a 6, the damage is reduced to 0.

Upgrades:

Sublime Parry: Deflect rolls succeed on 5s and 6s.

Ballistic Physics: Successful deflect rolls on ranged attacks kill a far enemy.

BASEBALL BAT Whenever you kill an enemy, make an attack against another enemy at far range (Homerun Attack)

Upgrades:

Deadeye: If your homerun attack also kills an enemy, make another attack against another far enemy.

Here to Louisville: Attacks against enemies that don't kill Daze instead.

CLEAVER You may throw the Cleaver as an action, making an attack against an enemy at far range. You can't use the Cleaver until you retrieve the Cleaver as an action.

Upgrades:

Perfect Throw: Instead of you or an ally taking damage, you may throw the cleaver to intercept the attack, causing it to deal 0 damage.

Headsplitter: On a kill, the Cleaver is instantly returned to you.

MEATHOOK On a hit, drag another target from far range to close range.

Two-Piece: When you drag a target from far range to close range, another character may immediately attack them.

Mine Now: On a kill, you may also take your target's weapon (if they have one).

||DRUGS|| Now we're cooking with gas. Player Characters in Neon Dragon have a Cocktail, a specially handcrafted mix of performance enhancing substances from pre-existing medications and items (dubbed Liquors). PCs have a number of Doses of their cocktail equal to the amount they prepped during downtime (maximum of three), and may inject or ingest it before battle, before anyone acts. A cocktail can have a maximum of three Liquors in their cocktail, and the effects of Liquors stack. Effects end at the end of a fight. Note to the narrative-minded: it may be fun to describe the injector or medium through which your character takes the Cocktail.

RED All attacks you make have +1 on the Hit Roll.

ORANGE Whenever you would be hit, you may make a Dodge roll (1d6). On a 4+, you dodge the attack. All effects and damage are negated. For every stack, the number needed is reduced by 1 (3+, 2+, etc.)

YELLOW You may reroll 1s. For every stack, the threshold for a reroll increases. (Reroll 1s and 2s, reroll 1s and 2s and 3s, etc.)

GREEN The first time you would take damage, ignore it. For every stack, the number of times you would take damage increases by 1 (the first and second time, the first and second and third time, etc.)

BLUE You may take another action on your turn.

PURPLE Attacks against you have -1.

||ENEMIES||: Most enemies die in one hit. If an enemy is killed by a dice that rolled a 6, it's considered an Overkill and you steal an Item from them. Items can be used once on your turn, taking no action, then are discarded. You can only be carrying one item at a time.

GUNMAN

Bang!: Starts at Far range and chooses a target to Aim at during the start of a fight. If they're still within sight of the gunman at the end of their turn, they get attacked. Pistol (ITEM): Make an attack against a character in far range.

THUG

Mooks: No special effects. No items on overkill.

SHOTGUNNER

Buckshot: Damage from the Shotgunner can't be reduced or negated by any effects. Shotgun (ITEM): Make an attack against 2 enemies at far range (roll once, apply the result to both).

RIOT COP

Sturdy: The first time the Riot Cop would be hit, ignore it. Shield (ITEM): The next time you would take damage, ignore it.

SKINNY

Quick: The Skinny makes an attack against its attacker before its attacker does. Crowbar (ITEM): Kill an enemy at far range.

katana zero got me thinkiing bout making a game where your powers ad abilities are given to you by drugs insteada implants or something. maybe some sort of thing where everything is melee and ranged combat with guns is out of the ordinary

[dailycharacteroption]

Fun with Feats 11: Monster-Crafting Feats

 The fantasy adventurer and the fantasy monster are two key components of the fantasy genre. However, sometimes it is not enough to beat the monsters, sometimes one wishes to cultivate them.

Maybe your character recognizes that despite their monstrous nature, these creatures are just as much a part of the natural order as anything else, and wish to care for them for affectionate and/or practical reasons. Or maybe the monsters are wholly unnatural, and your character is more focused on proving they can create life.

Indeed, today’s subject is a series of feats that can appeal to the “monster farmer” and mad scientist in all of us (sometimes both at once!)

Naturally, these feats are really most useful for characters with a lot of downtime on their hands, allowing them to have a permanent, or at least set up temporary, bases of operations to grow these creatures.

It also assumes that the character isn’t going to try and use these feats to flood a boss encounter with mook monsters, as most likely said mooks will get obliterated by the AoE.

If anything, these feats are most likely to be used to craft a single monster at a time to aid in dungeons (assuming you can control them), or to create monsters for sale to various buyers, or to make guardians for a stronghold that doesn’t mind monstrous defenses Just be sure to keep them well-fed.

 Obviously, Craft Construct and it’s lesser cousin, Craft Poppet fall into this category, but they’ve already gotten their own entries in previous iterations of this special.

Where the new comes into play is the likes of Craft Ooze, allowing a crafter to cultivate an ooze creature inside a vat from a small sample or alchemical “seed”. The oozes created by this process are always mindless, even if the species in question would normally be intelligent, and they have no concept of loyalty, so training the creatures to differentiate between those that “bring food” and “are food” is necessary, but of course, don’t expect them to learn to fetch.

Next up worth noting is Grow Plant Creature, which allows the character to cultivate various plant monsters at a somewhat accelerated rate by infusing them reagents and spells appropriate to their species (and/or animating spirits if you accept the lore written into the feat text). Such cultivation is a little bit more like crafting traditional magical items thanks to there being spells and skill DCs, but the end result is a plant creature virtually identical to the normal version, albeit lacking the ability reproduce more of their kind, instead producing mundane offspring of the species used in the ritual to make them.

While not a creature feat, we probably won’t get an easy opportunity to talk about this later, so it’s also worth mentioning the Cultivate Magical Plant feat, which allows the gardener to grow magical plants, which produce all manner of effects when grown properly, creating consumable magical items that renew regularly along the lifespan of the plant in question.

We should also mention the Fleshwarper feat, which is used to create fleshwarping grafts and whole creatures, though obviously doing so is a monstrous act.

 Though the most cost-effective way to have a cool monster pet is with class features, the existence of these feats puts the tools for creating your own monsters in the hands of the players, and more options is always good.

That does it for this week, but we’ll be back next week for more archetypes!

[xenodile]

I decided to do some math on the Arts Guards.

Okay so, all max level, max trust, max potential, the Arts Guards are:

Mousse - E2, level 70

2345 health

705 attack (644 base, +26 from potential, +35 from trust)

392 armor  (357 base, +35 from trust)

18 DP cost (20 base, -2 from potential)

Astesia - E2, level 80

2523 health

690 attack (660 base, +30 from trust)

471 armor (393 base, +23 from potential, +55 from trust)

19 DP cost (21 base, -2 from potential)

Sideroca - E2, level 80

3345 health (2845 base, +500 from trust)

620 attack

369 armor

20 DP cost (23 base, -3 from potential)

That covers it for basic stats, so now let’s look at their abilities.

Mousse’s trait grants her a 23% chance to double attack, effectively doubling the damage dealt, but it does not count as 2 attacks for charging her skill.

Astesia’s trait gives her a stacking +5 attack speed buff every 20 seconds she’s deployed, stacking up to 5 times, capping at +25 attack speed after 100 seconds.

Sideroca gains a +15 attack speed and Resistance, reducing the duration of crowd control effects on her by half, after she deals the killing blow to 5 enemies.

All three have an attack interval of 1.25, meaning they must wait 1.25 seconds between each attack.  Astesia’s trait, when fully stacked, reduces her attack interval to 1 second, while Sideroca’s reduces her attack interval to 1.08.

In a 5 second window, if allowed to attack a single target freely, without skills, Astesia could attack 5 times, dealing 3450 Arts damage before Resist.  Mousse could attack 4 times, dealing 2820 Arts damage, and Sideroca could attack 4 times, dealing 2420.

In a 10 second window, Astesia could attack 10 times for 6900 damage, Mousse could attack 8 times for 5640 damage, and Sideroca could attack 9 times for 5580 damage.

Now we should look at their skills, and figure out how that plays into things.

Mousse’s skill 1, Scratch, at M3, causes every 5th attack to deal 75% increased damage, and inflict a 40% attack debuff on the target.  This attack can also proc her trait, potentially dealing 2,397 Arts damage before mitigation.  The attack debuff on her target also helps with Mousse’s survival, greatly reducing damage taken and allowing her solid armor to go much further.  And since this ability is attack based, it has no downtime, so Mousse is never vulnerable or without her tools.

Astesia’s skill 2, Astral Sword, at m3, gives her 80% increased attack and armor, kicking her up to 1242 attack and 847 armor, increases her block count by 1, and allows her to attack all enemies in her attack range at once, for 15 seconds.  With only a 20 sp charge time, this skill has fantastic uptime and turns Astesia into a pseudo-AoE guard, which combined with her high attack speed lets her quickly tear through groups of enemies.

Sideroca’s skill 2, Restorative Surge, at m3, gives her 110% attack up, putting her at 1302 attack, and regenerates 8% of her max health per second, equaling 276 health per second, but reduces her attack range by 1 tile, for 30 seconds.  With an sp cost of 30, Sideroca has a sizable window in which she has the lowest damage output and armor of the Arts Guards, and the reduced range means she can only attack the enemy she’s blocking, making her unviable for use as a second attacker next to another melee operator.

With their skills taken into account, lets go back to those 5 and 10 second attack windows.

In 5 seconds, Mousse cannot land 5 attacks, so Scratch will not go into effect, but she can still potentially get a Combo proc for increased damage, so her damage potential in this window is 2820 to 5640, with the lower being no procs of Combo and the higher being every hit procing Combo.  At 23% activation rate, on average we’ll be looking at 1 or 2 procs in this 5 second window.

When we go to 10 seconds, and Mousse can attack 8 times, not only do we double the chances for Combo to proc, but we also get the powerful Scratch proc on the 5th hit, dealing 1198 damage, and reducing the enemy’s attack for 5 seconds.  Mousse’s potential damage in this window is 6133 damage with no Combo procs, to 12,267 damage if all 8 attacks proc Combo.  While Mousse’s RNG trait may seem inconsistent, her offensive recovery on Scratch means her damage boost and attack debuff will be constantly active, so Mousse will never be at a disadvantage based on enemy spawns or move speed alterations.

With Astral Sword active and her trait stacked, Astesia can deal 6210 damage in 5 seconds to every enemy in her range while packing the armor of a Defender.  The 15 second window it’s active is the same as Eyjafjalla’s skill 3, so while it’s time enough to tear through a group, you’ll still have to make sure you use it when you need it, though the 20sp cost means you can activate it fairly liberally.

While Restorative Surge manages to push Sideroca up to the highest raw attack stat of the 3, Astesia still beats her in attack speed, and can only deal a potential 5208 damage in a 5 second window, or 11,718 in 10 seconds.  More importantly than the damage itself, is that Sideroca can still only attack a single target in this window, and gains no additional defense.  Compared to Mousse’s ability to nearly half enemy attack power and Astesia’s Defender level armor, Sideroca is especially vulnerable to burst damage.  While regaining 2760 health in 10 seconds can keep her topped off while fighting mooks, it will do very little to prevent her from simply taking fatal damage before she has a chance to recover.  While the generous 30 second window allows Sideroca to refill her health nearly 3 times over, it may be difficult to find a situation in which this healing isn’t wasted and/or Sideroca is constantly blocking an enemy to attack.  With a 30sp charge time in conjuction with the long duration you may activate the ability at the start of a wave, have a portion of it go to waste while waiting for enemies to spawn, and then have it run out partway through the next wave, and have it unavailable when you need it.  While not as bad as some other abilities in terms of downtime, the fact that Sidera has the lowest armor and lowest damage of the Arts guards without Restorative Surge is a considerable disadvantage.

Furthermore, we should examine their traits a bit closer.  Mousse’s Combo is always active giving her a constant source of supplemental damage, while Astesia merely needs time to ramp up.  Sideroca must score the killing blow on 5 enemies to activate Mercenary’s Tenacity, and if she shares a lane with any ranged attackers, they can potentially stop her from activating her trait, which will seriously diminish her damage output.  It should also be noted that Sideroca’s defensive utility, that being high health and self healing, is better suited to fighting Arts damage enemies than armored enemies with high physical damage.  Arts enemies often have high resist making Sideroca’s supposed niche of “anti-caster Arts guard” somewhat conflicted, while armored physical attackers often have low or no resist, making Mousse and Astesia’s higher armor more valuable as survival tools.

In conclusion, Mousse is cheaper and requires less set up, and is much easier to use.  Astesia has unique utility and by far the highest and most consistent damage output of the 3.  Sideroca doesn’t really bring anything unique to the table in terms of gameplay outside of her self healing.  Leveling and upgrading her is a labor of love, much like all the other 5 star welfares.

[reflectionsofacreator]

lynmars79 replied to your photoset: One final stand against Cesare in Roma has you...

I think it’s the level of how personal this is; killing mooks as part of the job to get done, it’s even-ish footing, you vs them, and it’s death of the body. This isn’t an assassin being a cold professional getting the job done; it’s an entirely different level, one these fodder can’t reach, and it’s destroying more than their corporeal form, but what makes them who they are by affecting their minds. It IS terrifying and different from what Ezio’s done before.

Yeah, I think that's exactly it!! Thank you, I've been having a hard time to articulate why I find it so just. Cold blooded and horrifying. It's the impersonal nature of the act, when Assassins, Ezio especially, treat their victims with at least some sort of respect. 

Every time you go after a major target, he gives them their final rights. Hells, even his Assassin recruits can he heard giving rites to the mooks they kill. There’s always this sense of “life is precious”, even if you’re slaughtering people with Ezio’s blades or gun. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Ezio gave rites to the guards you kill off screen, or during his downtime. 

But this isn’t that, not at all. This is just. Wholesale destruction. God it gives me the willies. 

[f4liveblogarchives]

Fantastic Four Vol 1 #143

Tues Jul 30 2019 [07:25 PM] Wack'd: So the narration just straight up tells us that Ben and Alicia got kidnapped by Doom [07:25 PM] Wack'd: "YOU'RE TRAPPED! BY SOCIAL CONVENTION!"

[07:26 PM] Umbramatic: pfffffffffffffffff [07:26 PM] maxwellelvis: Yeah, I was about to say, it's no coincidence that Doom resurfaces just after Darkoth shows up. [07:27 PM] maxwellelvis: It probably doesn't take a Richards to see why [07:27 PM] Wack'd: ...why...did Doom invite this dude?

[07:28 PM] Wack'd: Does he also want revenge for having been a benchwarmer? [07:28 PM] maxwellelvis: "BAH! Warming the bench is no place for one such as I!" [07:28 PM] maxwellelvis: And yes, it's shown in flashbacks that Doom has ALWAYS talked like that. [07:30 PM] Wack'd: Doom has low expectations of women because he hasn't been in a Fantastic Four comic since Stan was still writing

[07:31 PM] Wack'd: ...oh, wait, no--they teamed up against Over-Mind! [07:31 PM] Wack'd: So he's just being a dick [07:31 PM] maxwellelvis: So Medusa's upgraded how she goes out as a civilian, in that she no longer wears her mask when not out supering [07:32 PM] Wack'd: I guess not. A shame! What a fun quirk that was [07:32 PM] Wack'd: Guess she got assimilated [07:33 PM] Wack'd: Anyway, Doom wipes the floor with Reed and Medusa [07:34 PM] Wack'd: Coach Thorne decides he wants to get a shot in so Doom stuns him and then decides he's gonna chill with his wife [07:34 PM] Wack'd: TWO! PAGE! SPREEEEEEAAAAAAD!

[07:35 PM] maxwellelvis: How. Can. One. Person. Be. In. Two. Places. At. Once? [07:36 PM] Wack'd: A fun detail during Doom's exposition--he deliberately decked out the alumnae meeting hall in Latverian designs knowing Reed wouldn't notice [07:37 PM] Umbramatic: pffft [07:37 PM] maxwellelvis: You'd think he would; where else but Latveria would you see that much green in 1974? [07:38 PM] Wack'd: 🎶 And the brown and the beige and the brown and the beige and the broooooown 🎵 [07:38 PM] maxwellelvis: And mother of pearl! [07:38 PM] Wack'd: So Doom's new plan is a literal mind bomb [07:39 PM] maxwellelvis: *Janeway intensifies* [07:39 PM] Wack'd: When properly detonated it will use vibrations(?!?) to make everyone loyal to Doom forever [07:39 PM] Umbramatic: brain waves man [07:39 PM] Wack'd: He proves it's effectiveness by bringing in two traitors, using it on them, and then getting them to shoot each other in a show of loyalty [07:41 PM] Wack'd: Meanwhile Wyatt is trying to get Johnny to calm down because he is doing a lot of flaming and reckless shit trying to work this anger out [07:41 PM] Wack'd: In the process of ignoring Wyatt, he knocks him off his sky-bike and onto a roof, bringing Johnny to his senses

[07:43 PM] maxwellelvis: That's an unnecessarily intense face there, Wyatt. [07:43 PM] Umbramatic: cops [07:43 PM] Wack'd: Fuck the police [07:43 PM] maxwellelvis: If they get arrested, at least they can cut their way to freedom with those massive hatchet jaws of theirs. [07:43 PM] Umbramatic: pfff [07:44 PM] Wack'd: Oh my god Doom's got a Weebo! Why don't future writers remember he has a Weebo!

[07:44 PM] Umbramatic: it's so cute [07:44 PM] maxwellelvis: It's not as cute as Weebo. [07:44 PM] maxwellelvis: It's not even as cute as HERBIE [07:44 PM] Wack'd: Also I'm preeeeetty sure there are other absolute monarchs [07:44 PM] Wack'd: But sure [07:45 PM] maxwellelvis: Sure, but he's the only absolute monarch at the time that we didn't help come into power. [07:45 PM] Wack'd: Ha [07:45 PM] Wack'd: I dig how much Buckler loves these imagine spots

[07:46 PM] maxwellelvis: Dated language aside, I do like the little slip of why Doom has always wanted so much power. [07:47 PM] Wack'd: Eeeeeh "turnabout is fair play" is always a bad look on minority characters [07:47 PM] maxwellelvis: I was reading it more as "Look at where I started, and look at where I am now" [07:48 PM] Umbramatic: wait DOOM is romani [07:48 PM] maxwellelvis: Yeah. [07:48 PM] Umbramatic: huh! [07:48 PM] maxwellelvis: Both his parents, I believe. [07:49 PM] Wack'd: How long has it been since we got a building cutaway like this? Not since the earliest days of the Baxter, I don't think

[07:49 PM] maxwellelvis: His mother being a sorceress, not great in that regard, but his father was a physician, which unfortunately sealed his fate; a nobleman's daughter fell ill, and it was terminal, which Doom's father knew would also be a death sentence for himself; the nobleman would accuse him of murdering his daughter, and have him executed, which did happen, but before they took him away, he sent young Victor to America. [07:51 PM] maxwellelvis: I'm truncating a lot, but it's been a while since I read that whole thing. [07:52 PM] Wack'd: Anyway, the Death-Demon--I should probably call him Darkoth since he's apparently insisting on continuing to be relevant--breaks out and starts a fight with Doom's mooks, but stops when Doom reveals himself to have summoned him--and created him! [07:53 PM] Umbramatic: gasp. [07:53 PM] maxwellelvis: Yup. Strap yourself in, this is quite the origin story. [07:53 PM] Wack'd: Not just yet, though. [07:54 PM] Wack'd: Wyatt and Johnny continue to be a great double-act (questionable Native stereotyping aside)

[07:55 PM] Wack'd: Also I love when mooks do things like converse among themselves and just generally treat this as a job [07:55 PM] Wack'd: "Ten credit bonus" indeed [07:56 PM] maxwellelvis: Try reading those two mooks' dialogue as Watch and Ward, or any other pair of Venture Bros minions that are clearly just Jackson and Doc doing silly voices. [07:57 PM] Wack'd: Anti-Gamer's-Rights Doom

[07:59 PM] Wack'd: Max you were not wrong. This is bonkers.

[08:00 PM] Wack'd: Anyway, Darkoth enlists Reed, Medusa, and Ben in his revenge crusade [08:00 PM] Umbramatic: now that's some brainwashing bullshit [08:00 PM] Wack'd: Aaaaaand cliffhangered [08:00 PM] Wack'd: I think this is our first story to go past two parts in a good long while [08:01 PM] Wack'd: (And if you're expecting me to complain that these guys need some downtime, well, there was a two-day gap between Franklin's lobotomy and the college reunion. I was so used to stories being two issues that I didn't think to mention it.)

[rhiannonkthomas]

Writing Lessons from... Rogue One: Modified Three Act Structure

This is the start of a new series on this blog, looking at what we can learn about writing from great (and not-so-great) pop-culture hits, from movies to video games and everything in between. First up is Rogue One, where I want to talk about…

Modified Three Act Structure

The three act structure is traditionally the setup (who is the protagonist and what are they trying to do?), the conflict (the trying to do it), and the resolution (yay, they did it).

The quintessential three act structure is A New Hope. The first act ends with a key turning point for Luke, when he sees his family farm burned and agrees to go with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Act Two is their pursuit of that quest, ending in the rescue of Leia and a successful escape from the Death Star. Act Three is the destruction of the Death Star.

Rogue One is a very different movie, with a very different ultimate tone. And so, although it arguably has three acts, it’s definitely not the traditional three act structure we see in Episode IV.

Spoilers (obviously) below.

Googling “Rogue One three act structure” brings up a lot of debate, where people can’t decide where these three acts fall, because they don’t fit that traditional pattern. Jyn agrees to help the rebellion as the start of her journey, but nothing really dramatic has happened to her yet to motivate that. And then how do you take into account the use of the Death Star? That feels like an act-ender. What about Galen’s death? The start of Act Three would seem to be the decision to go rogue, but what about all that stuff in the middle? It’s not a cohesive, escalating arc or Act for Jyn, like the trip to rescue Leia is for Luke.

I’d argue that Rogue One‘s “three act structure” is more like three acts in a play, or three story arcs in a serialised TV show. They pursue one ultimate goal in the movie — find out how to destroy the Death Star — but there are three smaller quests, each ending with an action sequence that has huge ramifications for the characters and their own personal story arcs. And each quest builds upon the last, with greater danger, and greater emotional impact.

In Act One, Jyn is captured by the rebels and ordered to help them find Saw Gerrerra, the man who raised her and then abandoned her. She’s basically forced into agreeing — she doesn’t want to help, and there’s no trust. On the quest to find him, they struggle against some Imperial mooks, meet more allies, and finally learn important information about where to go next… and then witness the destructive power of the Death Star, which they fairly easily, but thrillingly, escape from.

In the conclusion of Act One, Jyn learns a lot of stuff. She starts to understand how Saw acted, just before losing him. She finds out her father is alive, and has been rebelling in his own way, and she now knows where to find him. And she sees just watch the Empire is capable of, and perhaps starts to think about the value of fighting against it.

And so, we get Act Two! They know where Jyn’s father is, so they’re going to find him. They face danger on the way, along with some downtime where the team builds its relationship with one another. And this act is filled with tension, as we know Cassian has been ordered to kill Galen Erso when they find him. They do find him, but too late, as the Empire have also discovered his betrayal. The battle that follows is greater than the first on a personal, emotional scale. Jyn is in great physical danger. Cassian must make a huge moral choice about killing Galen that will define his character. Jyn is faced with her father’s death, moments after being reunited with him. And in his dying moments, he tells them exactly what they need to do to learn how to destroy the Death Star.

So again, we have action, because this is a big blockbuster, and we need some thrills. But we also have deeper, more developed character drama running alongside it. By the end of this Act, Jyn has decided she must help get those plans. In fact, the whole team has bought into the idea, no matter the risk.

So, Act Three. We start with a bit more character downtime, dealing with the repercussions of the last Act, giving the audience time to breathe and see how things have changed. Then the Alliance refuse to go after the plans, so our initial group of misfits officially team up and go after them themselves. They fight bravely, with many twists and turns, and everything on the line. And although they succeed in the mission, they’re all killed in the process, and their story arc ends with a quiet moment of Jyn and Cassian sitting on a beach, these one enemies holding hands as they face the death barrelling towards them. This is the big, world-affecting fight, and this is where the danger is greatest and the repercussions the largest.

This is also, notably, the first time we see Darth Vader fight. Right at the end, after a whole movie of build-up. It’s what the audience really wants to see, and what will wow them, so it’s held back and back, and becomes one of the shortest, but most memorable, action sequences in the movie.

Finally, we get a very brief denouement to tie everything up, with Leia taking the plans and saying they offer hope for the future. Our protagonists died in their mission, but the adventure continues.

This structure allows the movie to feel weighty and fast-paced, without being rushed. We have our ultimate goal, the Big Confrontation, but two smaller (but still very important) goals along the way that lead to danger, character development and action to help keep hold of those Blockbuster attention spans. Most importantly, those sequences are necessary to reaching the large one. They start off with a vague goal of learning more about the Death Star, but they don’t know what exactly they need to do about it until the other sequences take place. We always feel like the story is progressing and the characters are growing, and we feel the world is exciting and dangerous from the very beginning, without risking the impact of the finale — because hunting for information on plans is not as big as stealing the actual plans, and fleeing from the Death Star as we witness its destruction from a distance is not as big as seeing it kill our protagonists while witnessing its destruction first hand. The final confrontation is the biggest and most important, but we never feel like we’re just wasting time with other confrontations along the way. All of them needed to happen, and all of them change the shape of the story

And about those deaths… they’re another incredibly important element of the movie, but as this point got quite long, let’s talk about those next Friday.

  Writing Lessons from… Rogue One: Modified Three Act Structure was originally published on Rhiannon Thomas

[swipestream]

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 3

This is part 3 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here and part 2 here. In this part of the review, I’ll comment on Advancement and Options, and Playing the Game. The fourth segment will contain my thoughts on with Game Mastering through Appendices.

If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review, you can pick up the free PDF of the playtest rulebook at Paizo’s site:

Advancement and Options

Advancement

When I hit the advancement section, I was expecting a long and involved process, which is the nature of the crunchier games like Pathfinder. I was pleasantly surprised to find the advancement instructions to be only a single page. It’s straightforward and simple. I like this quite a bit.

One thing I made a strong note of is that each level is 1,000 XP. The increasing experience point requirements for higher levels has gone the way of the past for Pathfinder. This means gaining levels is a linear process, not an increasing barrier. I find this incredibly interesting on how higher-powered obstacles will turn in experience points for the characters. I’m assuming the XP award information will be found in the GM section, so I’m looking forward to getting the other side of the coin for this process.

Archetypes

There are seven archetypes offered in the playtest book, and they mention that this is a sample. The seven they have are just enough to give a taste of how things work, but still provide some options for characters during the playtest process. Based on this taste, I can’t wait to see the full buffet of choices for the archetypes.

Archetypes appear to be replacements for prestige classes. Like with prestige classes, some of the archetypes can be taken at lower levels, which others have higher requirements, including some events that must happen with the character before the archetype can be chosen.

There are two types of archetypes: multiclass and prestige.

Multiclass archetypes allow a character of one class to tap into the powers of another class, but in a limited fashion. This allows for a fighter to gain some healing ability or maybe some rogue skills. Like with the rest of the power-gain systems, these are based on feats. One thing to note here is that a character cannot multiclass into a class they already have. In other words, you can’t be a cleric and gain extra cleric goodies by multiclassing as a cleric also.

Prestige archetypes are, as the name implies, more like prestige classes. These archetypes can focus in a character’s abilities and adds some new options for their class. While the text in the playtest book is limited, I can see some expansion happening not only with the choices available, but more in-depth descriptions of the archetypes as well.

I like that the archetypes are placed in the “options” section of the book because they are far from required to call out a character as being special or unique, but there is extra flavor and style that can be gained by leveraging an archetype. One thing to note, is that an archetype does not directly deliver extra “class abilities or powers” like prestige classes did. Choosing an archetype just opens up more options for feats that a player can choose from for her character.

Animal Companions

Building an animal companion is much like building a character in that you have stats, feats, actions, and types of companions. There are some sample builds of animal companions, but they are base stats, not final stats. I’ve read through the animal companion section three times so far, and I have to admit that I’m still fairly well confused about how to stat out an animal companion. Seeing a “final stat block” of one of the examples would have helped me piece things together to see how it all works. My advice to Paizo for this segment is to look at the descriptive and rules text in this section an clarify things quite a bit.

Having said this, I think there are some slick options and actions for animal companions. I like them quite a bit, but I also didn’t see a limitation on which actions which types of animals could use or have. Maybe there were some things taken out of the final text to make the playtest book shorter that could have clarified everything in here.

There is also a section on familiars, and this section is pretty brief, but does explain familiar abilities and how they interact with the spellcaster. Somehow, this section is very clear to me on familiar stats and abilities, unlike the main animal companion section. The only thing I see that’s missing, which will probably land in the final product, is what happens when a familiar dies. This has always been key to this genre of RPGs, so I’m kind of surprised at the oversight in this area.

Deities

There are two pages of brief summaries for the deities found within Golarion. There are 20 of the world’s deities summarized here, and these summaries include alignment, edicts, anathema, and favored weapon. If you note that domains are missing here, that’s because they are included with the cleric class information earlier in the book. This is what I was talking about in my “part 1” of the Pathfinder playtest review. The deity information is split across two section and hundreds of pages, which makes finding all of the details about a single deity cumbersome and slow. The domain listing should be combined with this section for ease of use.

Playing The Game

Now for the meat of the game mechanics themselves. There are 35 pages of rules. I’m hesitant to dive into the details of all 35 pages of the rules because that would make this portion of the review extremely lengthy. Instead, I’m going to gloss over repeating the rules, and just give my impressions and the highlights.

Modes

There are three modes called out in the text. Any veteran player will quickly see these and wonder why they are called out as they are “obvious.” However, to a new gamer, these are excellent call outs for them and are also top-notch reminders to the grognards in our groups.

The modes are encounter, exploration, and downtime. In short, encounter modes occur when seconds matter, detailed tactics come into play, and determining the order of PC and NPC actions really matters. Exploration modes occur between encounters. This can be creeping down a dungeon corridor, traversing overland terrain, or moving across a densely populated city. Lastly, we have downtime modes, which occur when the characters are in their home base, passage of time is measured in days or weeks, and not much dangerous action is going on.

I like these different modes because I’ve made plenty of characters that could create magic items, but never really had a chance to leverage those abilities. Calling out the fact that downtime exists, would allow such a thing to take place.

Checks

The detailed descriptions of how to do a check make things clear. This is a good thing because there are subtle adjustments to the game between current Pathfinder and the new Pathfinder on what gets added into a die roll. The main change is skills are simplified. Basically, each skill add is equal to your level. Then an adjustment ranging from -2 through +3 is added based on the character’s proficiency rank.

The math formula for calculating the final result of a die roll is a little intimidating, but it’s not that bad. Of the 10 numbers involved in calculating the final result, one is the die roll, 4 are captured on the character sheet and summarized there. This leaves circumstance bonuses/penalties and conditional bonuses/penalties as well as the mysterious “untyped penalties” left to deal with. The circumstance/condition/untyped numbers don’t always exist, so it’s still basically, a d20 added to a single number that’s pre-calculated and written on the character sheet. Honestly, the diagram at the top of page 292 is great an should remain a reference.

Degree of Success

Success and failure are still the same. If you get higher than the target number, you succeed. Lower than the number, and you fail. Pretty simple. However, critical successes have changed a bit. If you get a “natural 20,” then you get a critical success. Also, if you get greater than the target number plus 10, then it’s also a critical success. I like this change to reward specialized characters and great die rolls. On the flip-side, a “natural 1” or less than the target number minus 10, then it’s a critical failure. This change makes for interesting storytelling for those times when the die rolls go extraordinarily well, or drastically poor.

Fortune and Misfortune

A new addition to Pathfinder, but not a new addition to gaming in general is the concept of “fortune” and “misfortune.” With fortune, there are two options. One is a reroll, and the other is rolling two dice and taking the better of the two. The same thing applies with misfortune where a successful roll may require a reroll, or two dice are rolled and the lower of the two are taken. This is explained in a sidebar before the actual rules of when fortune and misfortune applies, so I hope they clarify how to obtain and lose these conditions.

Dying

There’s an interesting twist and change with dying. Instead of it being based on HP or constitution, there’s a new concept here called “dying value.” If a character’s dying value reaches 4, then they die. When a character hits zero HP (you can’t go negative in this system), then you gain 1 or 2 dying value points (1 for a lethal hit, 2 if it was a critical hit). At this point, saving throws kick in to see if the character recovers. Success indicates a return to 1 HP. Failure adds 1 dying value, and a critical failure adds 2 dying value. When a dying value of 4 is reached, the character dies. Of course, these rules only apply to PC, main villains, important NPCs, etc. The typical minion or mook should be removed from combat if it reaches zero HP, but that’s up to the GM to decide.

Honestly, I don’t think I like this system very well. It could be that I’m comfortable with the current system and it makes sense. I’m not sure how this simplifies or improves the game any, but I’m willing to give it a shot and see how it plays out.

Actions and Activities

As I talked about in part 1 of this review series, there are different actions and activities. There are free actions, reactions, and activities. Some activities consume more than 1 action in a character’s round. Each character gets 3 actions in a normal round. These can be moves, attacks, spellcasting (which usually consumes more than 1 action), reactions, and so on. These changes in how many things a character can do in a round appear to really streamline and simplify things. I think this is a beneficial thing for the overall gameplay in a system that many already complain that takes too long when encounter mode kicks in. We’ll see how actual gameplay works out when I get a chance to put rubber on the road with this system.

Areas of Effect

I just wanted to note here that with all of the changes Paizo is making to Pathfinder, they are leaving the various “areas of effect” from spells and powers untouched. This tells me they think that these portions of the rules are already clear, play well, and are dialed in. I agree.

Hero Points

Each PC starts a session with 1 hero point. She can earn more through good role playing, heroic action, taking notes, running initiative, bringing food/snacks to the game, etc. The book outlines that no more than 1 hero point should be awarded for in-game actions per session. Also, no more than 1 her point should be awarded for out-of-game actions per session. All PC’s hero points reset back to 1 at the start of each session.

Hero points can be used for three different things: staving off death, rerolling a d20, or taking an extra action in a round. These cost 1, 2, and 3 hero points, respectively.

I’m conflicted on the addition of hero points. I like the meta-game currency that many games use because it allows the players to drive the narrative of their characters more. This is a good thing. However, I think that Paizo dropped the ball here. The use of hero points is so incredibly limited, and expensive in hero point cost, that they are likely to be rarely used. Because of this, I’m not sure Paizo should have wasted the ink on printing the rules. They should open up the use of hero points with more options and consider reducing the cost of rerolling a single d20 to 1 hero point.

Perception

The section on perception explains everything a new or experienced player/GM needs to know about how the difference senses work, how things are detected (or not), and how different levels of light impact vision. While it feels like second nature to “know” these things about a game, having them defined in clear terms will help remove or reduce disagreements about how perception works.

Encounter Mode

This section details how combat works. The key change here is that initiative is based on the perception skill, so make sure your fighter-types have some focus on this skill. Also of note, is that initiative is rolled once at the start of combat to determine turn order and this order stays this way (barring someone with a high roll shifting to a lower position).

The steps in encounter mode are well delineated and easy to follow. I think even a newcomer to the hobby could leverage the text to fully understand how things work. Well done here, Paizo.

Basic Actions

The basic actions are lined out in their own blocks of text. I love this layout choice. In past iterations of games within Pathfinder’s lineage, each action type was smooshed in a paragraph alongside other blocks of identical text without the breaking headers that make things easy to find and reference. The way they have things lined up here, it’s easy to read, easier to understand, and surprisingly easy to find on the page when needing to do a lookup of a detail.

The common basic actions are outlined here along with some of the less common things like burrow, fly, mount, etc. that are in their own list to prevent muddying the waters for the common actions.

Exploration Mode

The exploration mode section is divided up into areas like traveling, socializing, and resting.

The travel section of things calls out most of the common activities that go on while traveling across large swaths of land. The details are fairly high level and allow the GM and players to collaborate on how things go.

The socializing section calls out different activities that go on here, but again it is at a high level. I hope Paizo does a bit of a deeper dive into this area beyond two-thirds of a column on the socializing. Maybe this is just a taste for the playtest?

Rest and daily preparations is pretty basic and doesn’t need much detail, so they cover it well here. To call note to the HP recovery, it is now the constitution modifier (minimum 1) times the character level in HP regain for natural healing.

Downtime Mode

There is all of half a page dedicated to this mode, and I was hoping for more. Granted, the skills section covers the various rules for the skill-based activities that can occur, but I really hoped for more. Things on my “expectation list” were: managing a stronghold, running a business, overseeing a guild, and so on. Perhaps this will land on the list of things we’ll see in an expansion book down the road.

Conditions

The “Playing the Game” section wraps up with a lengthy segment on conditions. It’s a long list of the various ways a character can be changed, adjusted, boosted, and limited. The list is, in traditional Pathfinder style, very long, but it’s also necessary for the game play to run smoothly. I like what I see here. The only thing that could make this a little better would be a bullet list of all conditions with a brief summary like what would be found on a GM screen. Putting something like this up front, before the details descriptions, would be a handy reference for GMs and players alike.

Conclusion

Now that I’ve consumed the “meat” of the book, I’m liking what I see. I think some refinement to the rules descriptions here and there would benefit the final product. This, of course, is what playtesting is for, so I think Paizo is on the right track for getting a 2.0 of Pathfinder nailed down and running smoothly.

Am I convinced to “upgrade” to the new version yet? I’m not sure yet. I think part of this comes from the “edition inertia” that I currently have. I own 30+ Pathfinder rulebooks and Golarion books at this point. That’s not counting third party support material, adventures, campaigns, etc. that I also own. This is a lot of things to step away from and set aside in favor of investing in the new edition. It’s become clear to me that conversions between Pathfinder editions will be required, so I can’t just pull a “1.0” book off the shelf and use it on the fly.

I am liking what I see, and I think this would be a fine entry point for a new gamer (especially if Paizo does a “Beginner Box 2.0”). Overall, I like it, but we’ll wait until I finish up with the book to make a final determination on what I do with the new version of Pathfinder.

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 3 published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[kayawagner]

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 3

This is part 3 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here and part 2 here. In this part of the review, I’ll comment on Advancement and Options, and Playing the Game. The fourth segment will contain my thoughts on with Game Mastering through Appendices.

If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review, you can pick up the free PDF of the playtest rulebook at Paizo’s site:

Advancement and Options

Advancement

When I hit the advancement section, I was expecting a long and involved process, which is the nature of the crunchier games like Pathfinder. I was pleasantly surprised to find the advancement instructions to be only a single page. It’s straightforward and simple. I like this quite a bit.

One thing I made a strong note of is that each level is 1,000 XP. The increasing experience point requirements for higher levels has gone the way of the past for Pathfinder. This means gaining levels is a linear process, not an increasing barrier. I find this incredibly interesting on how higher-powered obstacles will turn in experience points for the characters. I’m assuming the XP award information will be found in the GM section, so I’m looking forward to getting the other side of the coin for this process.

Archetypes

There are seven archetypes offered in the playtest book, and they mention that this is a sample. The seven they have are just enough to give a taste of how things work, but still provide some options for characters during the playtest process. Based on this taste, I can’t wait to see the full buffet of choices for the archetypes.

Archetypes appear to be replacements for prestige classes. Like with prestige classes, some of the archetypes can be taken at lower levels, which others have higher requirements, including some events that must happen with the character before the archetype can be chosen.

There are two types of archetypes: multiclass and prestige.

Multiclass archetypes allow a character of one class to tap into the powers of another class, but in a limited fashion. This allows for a fighter to gain some healing ability or maybe some rogue skills. Like with the rest of the power-gain systems, these are based on feats. One thing to note here is that a character cannot multiclass into a class they already have. In other words, you can’t be a cleric and gain extra cleric goodies by multiclassing as a cleric also.

Prestige archetypes are, as the name implies, more like prestige classes. These archetypes can focus in a character’s abilities and adds some new options for their class. While the text in the playtest book is limited, I can see some expansion happening not only with the choices available, but more in-depth descriptions of the archetypes as well.

I like that the archetypes are placed in the “options” section of the book because they are far from required to call out a character as being special or unique, but there is extra flavor and style that can be gained by leveraging an archetype. One thing to note, is that an archetype does not directly deliver extra “class abilities or powers” like prestige classes did. Choosing an archetype just opens up more options for feats that a player can choose from for her character.

Animal Companions

Building an animal companion is much like building a character in that you have stats, feats, actions, and types of companions. There are some sample builds of animal companions, but they are base stats, not final stats. I’ve read through the animal companion section three times so far, and I have to admit that I’m still fairly well confused about how to stat out an animal companion. Seeing a “final stat block” of one of the examples would have helped me piece things together to see how it all works. My advice to Paizo for this segment is to look at the descriptive and rules text in this section an clarify things quite a bit.

Having said this, I think there are some slick options and actions for animal companions. I like them quite a bit, but I also didn’t see a limitation on which actions which types of animals could use or have. Maybe there were some things taken out of the final text to make the playtest book shorter that could have clarified everything in here.

There is also a section on familiars, and this section is pretty brief, but does explain familiar abilities and how they interact with the spellcaster. Somehow, this section is very clear to me on familiar stats and abilities, unlike the main animal companion section. The only thing I see that’s missing, which will probably land in the final product, is what happens when a familiar dies. This has always been key to this genre of RPGs, so I’m kind of surprised at the oversight in this area.

Deities

There are two pages of brief summaries for the deities found within Golarion. There are 20 of the world’s deities summarized here, and these summaries include alignment, edicts, anathema, and favored weapon. If you note that domains are missing here, that’s because they are included with the cleric class information earlier in the book. This is what I was talking about in my “part 1” of the Pathfinder playtest review. The deity information is split across two section and hundreds of pages, which makes finding all of the details about a single deity cumbersome and slow. The domain listing should be combined with this section for ease of use.

Playing The Game

Now for the meat of the game mechanics themselves. There are 35 pages of rules. I’m hesitant to dive into the details of all 35 pages of the rules because that would make this portion of the review extremely lengthy. Instead, I’m going to gloss over repeating the rules, and just give my impressions and the highlights.

Modes

There are three modes called out in the text. Any veteran player will quickly see these and wonder why they are called out as they are “obvious.” However, to a new gamer, these are excellent call outs for them and are also top-notch reminders to the grognards in our groups.

The modes are encounter, exploration, and downtime. In short, encounter modes occur when seconds matter, detailed tactics come into play, and determining the order of PC and NPC actions really matters. Exploration modes occur between encounters. This can be creeping down a dungeon corridor, traversing overland terrain, or moving across a densely populated city. Lastly, we have downtime modes, which occur when the characters are in their home base, passage of time is measured in days or weeks, and not much dangerous action is going on.

I like these different modes because I’ve made plenty of characters that could create magic items, but never really had a chance to leverage those abilities. Calling out the fact that downtime exists, would allow such a thing to take place.

Checks

The detailed descriptions of how to do a check make things clear. This is a good thing because there are subtle adjustments to the game between current Pathfinder and the new Pathfinder on what gets added into a die roll. The main change is skills are simplified. Basically, each skill add is equal to your level. Then an adjustment ranging from -2 through +3 is added based on the character’s proficiency rank.

The math formula for calculating the final result of a die roll is a little intimidating, but it’s not that bad. Of the 10 numbers involved in calculating the final result, one is the die roll, 4 are captured on the character sheet and summarized there. This leaves circumstance bonuses/penalties and conditional bonuses/penalties as well as the mysterious “untyped penalties” left to deal with. The circumstance/condition/untyped numbers don’t always exist, so it’s still basically, a d20 added to a single number that’s pre-calculated and written on the character sheet. Honestly, the diagram at the top of page 292 is great an should remain a reference.

Degree of Success

Success and failure are still the same. If you get higher than the target number, you succeed. Lower than the number, and you fail. Pretty simple. However, critical successes have changed a bit. If you get a “natural 20,” then you get a critical success. Also, if you get greater than the target number plus 10, then it’s also a critical success. I like this change to reward specialized characters and great die rolls. On the flip-side, a “natural 1” or less than the target number minus 10, then it’s a critical failure. This change makes for interesting storytelling for those times when the die rolls go extraordinarily well, or drastically poor.

Fortune and Misfortune

A new addition to Pathfinder, but not a new addition to gaming in general is the concept of “fortune” and “misfortune.” With fortune, there are two options. One is a reroll, and the other is rolling two dice and taking the better of the two. The same thing applies with misfortune where a successful roll may require a reroll, or two dice are rolled and the lower of the two are taken. This is explained in a sidebar before the actual rules of when fortune and misfortune applies, so I hope they clarify how to obtain and lose these conditions.

Dying

There’s an interesting twist and change with dying. Instead of it being based on HP or constitution, there’s a new concept here called “dying value.” If a character’s dying value reaches 4, then they die. When a character hits zero HP (you can’t go negative in this system), then you gain 1 or 2 dying value points (1 for a lethal hit, 2 if it was a critical hit). At this point, saving throws kick in to see if the character recovers. Success indicates a return to 1 HP. Failure adds 1 dying value, and a critical failure adds 2 dying value. When a dying value of 4 is reached, the character dies. Of course, these rules only apply to PC, main villains, important NPCs, etc. The typical minion or mook should be removed from combat if it reaches zero HP, but that’s up to the GM to decide.

Honestly, I don’t think I like this system very well. It could be that I’m comfortable with the current system and it makes sense. I’m not sure how this simplifies or improves the game any, but I’m willing to give it a shot and see how it plays out.

Actions and Activities

As I talked about in part 1 of this review series, there are different actions and activities. There are free actions, reactions, and activities. Some activities consume more than 1 action in a character’s round. Each character gets 3 actions in a normal round. These can be moves, attacks, spellcasting (which usually consumes more than 1 action), reactions, and so on. These changes in how many things a character can do in a round appear to really streamline and simplify things. I think this is a beneficial thing for the overall gameplay in a system that many already complain that takes too long when encounter mode kicks in. We’ll see how actual gameplay works out when I get a chance to put rubber on the road with this system.

Areas of Effect

I just wanted to note here that with all of the changes Paizo is making to Pathfinder, they are leaving the various “areas of effect” from spells and powers untouched. This tells me they think that these portions of the rules are already clear, play well, and are dialed in. I agree.

Hero Points

Each PC starts a session with 1 hero point. She can earn more through good role playing, heroic action, taking notes, running initiative, bringing food/snacks to the game, etc. The book outlines that no more than 1 hero point should be awarded for in-game actions per session. Also, no more than 1 her point should be awarded for out-of-game actions per session. All PC’s hero points reset back to 1 at the start of each session.

Hero points can be used for three different things: staving off death, rerolling a d20, or taking an extra action in a round. These cost 1, 2, and 3 hero points, respectively.

I’m conflicted on the addition of hero points. I like the meta-game currency that many games use because it allows the players to drive the narrative of their characters more. This is a good thing. However, I think that Paizo dropped the ball here. The use of hero points is so incredibly limited, and expensive in hero point cost, that they are likely to be rarely used. Because of this, I’m not sure Paizo should have wasted the ink on printing the rules. They should open up the use of hero points with more options and consider reducing the cost of rerolling a single d20 to 1 hero point.

Perception

The section on perception explains everything a new or experienced player/GM needs to know about how the difference senses work, how things are detected (or not), and how different levels of light impact vision. While it feels like second nature to “know” these things about a game, having them defined in clear terms will help remove or reduce disagreements about how perception works.

Encounter Mode

This section details how combat works. The key change here is that initiative is based on the perception skill, so make sure your fighter-types have some focus on this skill. Also of note, is that initiative is rolled once at the start of combat to determine turn order and this order stays this way (barring someone with a high roll shifting to a lower position).

The steps in encounter mode are well delineated and easy to follow. I think even a newcomer to the hobby could leverage the text to fully understand how things work. Well done here, Paizo.

Basic Actions

The basic actions are lined out in their own blocks of text. I love this layout choice. In past iterations of games within Pathfinder’s lineage, each action type was smooshed in a paragraph alongside other blocks of identical text without the breaking headers that make things easy to find and reference. The way they have things lined up here, it’s easy to read, easier to understand, and surprisingly easy to find on the page when needing to do a lookup of a detail.

The common basic actions are outlined here along with some of the less common things like burrow, fly, mount, etc. that are in their own list to prevent muddying the waters for the common actions.

Exploration Mode

The exploration mode section is divided up into areas like traveling, socializing, and resting.

The travel section of things calls out most of the common activities that go on while traveling across large swaths of land. The details are fairly high level and allow the GM and players to collaborate on how things go.

The socializing section calls out different activities that go on here, but again it is at a high level. I hope Paizo does a bit of a deeper dive into this area beyond two-thirds of a column on the socializing. Maybe this is just a taste for the playtest?

Rest and daily preparations is pretty basic and doesn’t need much detail, so they cover it well here. To call note to the HP recovery, it is now the constitution modifier (minimum 1) times the character level in HP regain for natural healing.

Downtime Mode

There is all of half a page dedicated to this mode, and I was hoping for more. Granted, the skills section covers the various rules for the skill-based activities that can occur, but I really hoped for more. Things on my “expectation list” were: managing a stronghold, running a business, overseeing a guild, and so on. Perhaps this will land on the list of things we’ll see in an expansion book down the road.

Conditions

The “Playing the Game” section wraps up with a lengthy segment on conditions. It’s a long list of the various ways a character can be changed, adjusted, boosted, and limited. The list is, in traditional Pathfinder style, very long, but it’s also necessary for the game play to run smoothly. I like what I see here. The only thing that could make this a little better would be a bullet list of all conditions with a brief summary like what would be found on a GM screen. Putting something like this up front, before the details descriptions, would be a handy reference for GMs and players alike.

Conclusion

Now that I’ve consumed the “meat” of the book, I’m liking what I see. I think some refinement to the rules descriptions here and there would benefit the final product. This, of course, is what playtesting is for, so I think Paizo is on the right track for getting a 2.0 of Pathfinder nailed down and running smoothly.

Am I convinced to “upgrade” to the new version yet? I’m not sure yet. I think part of this comes from the “edition inertia” that I currently have. I own 30+ Pathfinder rulebooks and Golarion books at this point. That’s not counting third party support material, adventures, campaigns, etc. that I also own. This is a lot of things to step away from and set aside in favor of investing in the new edition. It’s become clear to me that conversions between Pathfinder editions will be required, so I can’t just pull a “1.0” book off the shelf and use it on the fly.

I am liking what I see, and I think this would be a fine entry point for a new gamer (especially if Paizo does a “Beginner Box 2.0”). Overall, I like it, but we’ll wait until I finish up with the book to make a final determination on what I do with the new version of Pathfinder.

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 3 published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com