Should Heroes have a supplement?

[Primordial newcomer]

let me start off with this. I am not talking about heroes being more sympathetic or the ever ironic "let's subvert the subversion" argument.

now the title is a misnomer to be honest. I'm asking that, in a future supplement, preferably a storytellers guide, should Heroes be further developed? more than just on how to utilize them, but on what makes a Hero, the negative effects (and yes. positive effects) they can have on the environment, and the mystery of their place in the primordial dream. I guess what I'm asking is on the scale of expansion that Angels got in the demon storyteller guide.

[Eternal Darkness]

I find it very useful to emphasize the qualities of Starving and Gorged that can impact character behavior. For example, emphasizing how the character is feeling sluggish and tired, and when the player is attempting a roll to be proactive with something, asking them if they'd prefer to have a Beat by automatically failing the roll instead? All of the Satiety Conditions have factors to them that encourage gaining Beats for making the Beast's circumstances more difficult.

I kind of notice that players tend to take a Beat or two, before they want to move on to another Condition to deal with different circumstances. And I enjoy encouraging that. Kind of helps to have Beasts feel like they're continuously shifting along their Satiety Conditions.

I do this with my Beast characters and NPC's. It adds a lot of fun extra layers and roleplay variety with even one character and i always remind people to consider how their current Satiety level affects their character's attitudes and outlook. I also love that Beast encourages players to keep it moving; in theory Beasts don't have a lot to do, but in practice they can be very self-motivated by feeding alone which easily leads into other things.

[Paradim]

This hasn't been my experience in actual play in the many, many years and many, many chronicles i've played in. I've seen and played plenty that prefer to stay at various satiety levels - Nightmare specialists and supernatural chameleons who like to be stay high satiety and Atavism-slanted ones who stay around 4 or 5 Satiety to pump up their Atavisms and go ham if need be, plus some in the middle who hover around Sated to have decent Nightmare dicepools and still have some juice to empower Atavisms if they need to. Not to mention circumstances where the Beast unexpectedly has to spend Satiety or finds an opportunity to feed they weren't looking for.

I find it very useful to emphasize the qualities of Starving and Gorged that can impact character behavior. For example, emphasizing how the character is feeling sluggish and tired, and when the player is attempting a roll to be proactive with something, asking them if they'd prefer to have a Beat by automatically failing the roll instead? All of the Satiety Conditions have factors to them that encourage gaining Beats for making the Beast's circumstances more difficult.

I kind of notice that players tend to take a Beat or two, before they want to move on to another Condition to deal with different circumstances. And I enjoy encouraging that. Kind of helps to have Beasts feel like they're continuously shifting along their Satiety Conditions.

[Eternal Darkness]

In actual play though the players spend exactly 0.5 seconds in Sated condition before they spend their way down to Starving, there's no mechanic to prevent that, in fact the game encourages that by gaining an extra Beat for doing it.

The only realistic way for a Beast to spend time in Sated condition enough for a Hero to inflict Anathema on them is if they spend too much time at 3 Satiety and the Horror inflicts a successful nightmare on someone while the Beast is sleeping, but even that can be easily prevented by regularly doing a minor feeding then spending one Satiety point.

This hasn't been my experience in actual play in the many, many years and many, many chronicles i've played in. I've seen and played plenty that prefer to stay at various satiety levels - Nightmare specialists and supernatural chameleons who like to be stay high satiety and Atavism-slanted ones who stay around 4 or 5 Satiety to pump up their Atavisms and go ham if need be, plus some in the middle who hover around Sated to have decent Nightmare dicepools and still have some juice to empower Atavisms if they need to. Not to mention circumstances where the Beast unexpectedly has to spend Satiety or finds an opportunity to feed they weren't looking for.

[nalak42]

Well, you don't need a low Integrity to be a Hero; but unless I'm misremembering something, the ones that serve as nemeses for Beasts do have low Integrity. Though you're right that they don't have an impulse to kill, per se. (They do seem to have something of a compulsion to hunt down and kill Beasts; but that's not quite the same thing.)

Still, even though I wasn't entirely serious with the idea, I'm glad you found something useful in it.

It varies around a bit, lower integrity does have some of the more dangerous and problematic ones such as the weaver at integrity 2. Then again the Lightseeker is integrity 6 and she is noted to be under the opinion that being a supernatural entity means you're evil and need to be ended. With Conquering Heroes topping out the highest integrity hero at 7 with the sentinel.

[Primordial newcomer]

Well, you don't need a low Integrity to be a Hero; but unless I'm misremembering something, the ones that serve as nemeses for Beasts do have low Integrity. Though you're right that they don't have an impulse to kill, per se. (They do seem to have something of a compulsion to hunt down and kill Beasts; but that's not quite the same thing.)

Still, even though I wasn't entirely serious with the idea, I'm glad you found something useful in it.

You do have a point with the ones Beasts usually fight being low integrity. And yes, your idea does have credit for a quick and easy way to give them something extra.

[Dataweaver]

Well, you don't need a low Integrity to be a Hero; but unless I'm misremembering something, the ones that serve as nemeses for Beasts do have low Integrity. Though you're right that they don't have an impulse to kill, per se. (They do seem to have something of a compulsion to hunt down and kill Beasts; but that's not quite the same thing.)

Still, even though I wasn't entirely serious with the idea, I'm glad you found something useful in it.

[Primordial newcomer]

To be fair, I want bringing up the Slashers thing as a way to explain why they're killers; as you say, that's already pretty well covered. I was bringing it up as a suggestion of how they could potentially be buffed: they already fit the Slasher model, such as there is one; so why not give them access to the Slasher powers?

That said, it wasn't really a serious proposal; just an off the top of my head musing.

I dont really think they fit the slasher model. Heroes haven't actually lost their humanity, and you dont need low integrity to be a Hero. Their problem is an inability to see things in shades of grey, not necessarily about the impulse to kill.

But I do appreciate it. Things like the Brute ability would work for some Heroes

[Dataweaver]

To be fair, I wasn't bringing up the Slashers thing as a way to explain why they're killers; as you say, that's already pretty well covered. I was bringing it up as a suggestion of how they could potentially be buffed: they already fit the Slasher model, such as there is one; so why not give them access to the Slasher powers?

That said, it wasn't really a serious proposal; just an off the top of my head musing.

[Primordial newcomer]

While it's not a great fix as it relies a bit too much on a different gameline, it's worth noting that Heroes are basically wanton murderers, which puts them firmly in the same territory as Hunter's Slashers. One way to “power up” a Hero would be to turn him into a Ripper or Scourge as well.

Personally, I think the corebook and Conquering Heroes does enough in explaining why Heroes are killers. They require fixing, but it shouldn't be as simple as "make them social threats only". It should be about giving Heroes wider berth of methods in taking down monsters. Some should be able to be epic like heracles or charismatic like Orpheus. They should not all be some master manipulator of civilians. They should all have their own ways of being Heroes and manipulating the narrative.

[Dataweaver]

Like I said, it's not a great fix.

[ArcaneArts]

While it's not a great fix as it relies a bit too much on a different gameline, it's worth noting that Heroes are basically wanton murderers, which puts them firmly in the same territory as Hunter's Slashers. One way to “power up” a Hero would be to turn him into a Ripper or Scourge as well.

Eh, there's more thematic ways to improve Heroes.

DreadQueen I especially like the third paragraph of your post.

Satchel okay. Maybe I was confusing what people were saying about Beast with what was actually in the text.

[Satchel]

everybody else seems to love Beasts

Literally the only textual element that remotely suggests this is the same part of Thicker Than Water that everybody in 2015 kept aggressively misreading because the words "good impression" were used, which only referred to the Social Maneuvering system's "you can make an extended effort to convince someone to do something for you on the basis of trust," was always conditional on not doing anything to wreck that baseline impression, and only ever gave you about the same benefit as being well-dressed (and then only for monsters of a more inhuman stripe; for the most humanlike monsters the sole benefit was that you weren't inherently starting from a hostile position).

Beasts are people that can interact with monsters who don't know them in a neutral setting slightly better than a complete stranger who hadn't done anything to garner mistrust could. They do not have an innate Good PR Power.

[Dataweaver]

I'm saying what you said. You said Heroes should all be those who use their reputation with the people to their advantage and fight with only underhanded tactics. I'm saying they shouldn't be limited to only doing that

While it's not a great fix as it relies a bit too much on a different gameline, it's worth noting that Heroes are basically wanton murderers, which puts them firmly in the same territory as Hunter's Slashers. One way to “power up” a Hero would be to turn him into a Ripper or Scourge as well.