Ask a simple question, get a simple answer - Geist edition.

[Satchel]

No. deathmasks were the same. The old system had a tiered system with each memento doing something different. Deathmasks were a geist's deathmask and they gave you a skill bonus in addition to a key. They were weaker then memorabilia. Honestly, why did momentos get nerfed so hard? They used to be a lot stronger then they were in general.

Keystones got replaced by Remembrance Traits, Haunts have a lower base dicepool than Manifestations did, Keys are now optional as well as impossible to simply buy as innate qualities, Reapers exist and geists have alternatives to the Bargain if they just want to exploit their greater mobility, and every Memento is now a way to get Plasm, make your Haunts work better, be more persuasive to other Sin-Eaters, and serves as a largely indestructible supernatural relic you can build a cult around.

A Deathmask's defining features are that someone destroyed a geist to make it and a ghost who wears it assumes a monstrous form hellbent on damning the dead to consumption and misery. Mementos in general just got a buff from flattening the power curve.

[Epimetheus]

Keystones got replaced by Remembrance Traits, Haunts have a lower base dicepool than Manifestations did, Keys are now optional as well as impossible to simply buy as innate qualities, Reapers exist and geists have alternatives to the Bargain if they just want to exploit their greater mobility, and every Memento is now a way to get Plasm, make your Haunts work better, be more persuasive to other Sin-Eaters, and serves as a largely indestructible supernatural relic you can build a cult around.

A Deathmask's defining features are that someone destroyed a geist to make it and a ghost who wears it assumes a monstrous form hellbent on damning the dead to consumption and misery. Mementos in general just got a buff from flattening the power curve.

To some extent yes, but I do remember that memorabilia used to be a +5 equipment modifier and death masks used to give additional abilities and skills. I know that deathmasks give ghosts the ability to become reapers but it kind of sucks that my character concept is probably going to cause a lot of hostilities.

[Neos01]

To some extent yes, but I do remember that memorabilia used to be a +5 equipment modifier and death masks used to give additional abilities and skills. I know that deathmasks give ghosts the ability to become reapers but it kind of sucks that my character concept is probably going to cause a lot of hostilities.

It must be said that the book states that Deathmasks don t give social bonus, but also that they MIGHT give social penalty.
It depends probably on the story of how you obtained the masks, and if your character legend is appropriate probably he can still carry them without causing hostility.

[Taidragon]

So, this is related to a character concept I have. I’m tempted to have a character start with 1 dot of Marionette and Tomb and work up from there, and to eventually use it on vehicles for various reasons. However, given he has a Volkswagen Beetle at the start, I’m not sure what size that would fall under and thus how high in Marionette/Tomb they’d need to be to affect/create such things. Would a Volkswagen Beetle be around size 9 or 10?

[Satchel]

So, this is related to a character concept I have. I’m tempted to have a character start with 1 dot of Marionette and Tomb and work up from there, and to eventually use it on vehicles for various reasons. However, given he has a Volkswagen Beetle at the start, I’m not sure what size that would fall under and thus how high in Marionette/Tomb they’d need to be to affect/create such things. Would a Volkswagen Beetle be around size 9 or 10?

Cross-referencing Wikipedia with Deviant's expanded version of the Size chart, a Beetle is a "compact car" and therefore probably Size 8.

[Epimetheus]

So, this is related to a character concept I have. I’m tempted to have a character start with 1 dot of Marionette and Tomb and work up from there, and to eventually use it on vehicles for various reasons. However, given he has a Volkswagen Beetle at the start, I’m not sure what size that would fall under and thus how high in Marionette/Tomb they’d need to be to affect/create such things. Would a Volkswagen Beetle be around size 9 or 10?

It would take marionette 3 to do that. You'd probably want to do that at CC and work your way towards Marionette 4 though. Servant at Marionette 4 is quite powerful and capable of making it so that you don't have to keep your focus on your car any more and much more versatile. Assume it's Size 8, you'd need to spend 2 plasm to affect it plus another 2 plasm to give the servant condition. If you want it to last 24 hours though it'd take another 4 plasm.

[Satchel]

Trying to make sure I'm parsing the Krewe vs. Krewe rules correctly:

• Attempting to destroy another krewe is a krewe action with an open-ended Complexity (and therefore no set amount of Tasks and no guarantee of success, heavily complicated or otherwise), with success being predicated on accumulating Effort from success or exceptional success on the action's rolls equal to the enemy krewe's Congregation rating (each point inflicting a point of lethal damage), which inflicts the Coup d'Etat Condition.
• Conflicts between krewes are contested actions, with the victor earning the Effort (and thereby inflicting lethal damage on the opposition's Congregation, in the case of war with the aim of destruction).
• A lower-Esotery krewe in conflict with a higher-Esotery krewe (i.e. one that has already committed one krewe action to acting against another krewe) can commit a second krewe action to apply a penalty equal to half its Power to all the higher-Esotery krewe's other Tasks as long as the smaller krewe doesn't start another action.

Put differently:
• A krewe action to destroy another krewe has no Complexity to set Tasks from (though presumably the krewe's Task limit still applies and an otherwise-identical krewe action can be declared from the krewe's pool of actions to continue the process), so its ultimate success is up in the air compared to other krewe actions.
• Krewes acting against each other make a contested roll to see which of them gains the Effort for the action (and applies damage, in war), with their krewe actions and Task limits applying a soft restriction on how far they can push themselves in this pursuit.
• A weaker krewe may effectively fully commit its resources to conflict with a larger krewe by dedicating one krewe action to the contested roll and another to inflict a penalty on all their other actions as long as the smaller krewe doesn't do anything else, having put most of their resources into interfering with the larger group's other actions as they attack it. ("The rest of the higher-Esotery krewe's Tasks" here meaning "any other rolls the krewe makes to generate Effort," not "any other rolls to generate Effort on the ongoing krewe action of destroying the krewe.")

Does that seem accurate?

[Taidragon]

Cross-referencing Wikipedia with Deviant's expanded version of the Size chart, a Beetle is a "compact car" and therefore probably Size 8.

Thanks dude. I forgot Deviant spelled that out more thorough - should look into that for other games.

It would take marionette 3 to do that. You'd probably want to do that at CC and work your way towards Marionette 4 though. Servant at Marionette 4 is quite powerful and capable of making it so that you don't have to keep your focus on your car any more and much more versatile. Assume it's Size 8, you'd need to spend 2 plasm to affect it plus another 2 plasm to give the servant condition. If you want it to last 24 hours though it'd take another 4 plasm.

I should have specified that I wanted to eventually get to doing that, not doing so at character creation. Still, I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on all that. Thanks!

[Andrew Kaninchen]

By the way it is worded, isn't the Stillness Key a very easy limitless suply of Plasm via Free Plasm/accepting the Doom? You just have to unlock any Haunt with it, say something so the Doom resolves and the condition ends and boom, plasm.

[Satchel]

By the way it is worded, isn't the Stillness Key a very easy limitless suply of Plasm via Free Plasm/accepting the Doom? You just have to unlock any Haunt with it, say something so the Doom resolves and the condition ends and boom, plasm.

The "boom, plasm" happens before you say something and ends any Haunts you invoked the power of the Underworld to benefit, which is usually not something you want happening in a scene where you're using a Haunt to accomplish anything.

The basic social contract of "don't waste your fellow players' time putting the camera on your character doing this for literally no reason" applies. The Doomed Condition is a dramatic tool to justify story complications. See also the general fair-play consideration of "if you have the Shaken or Spooked Condition(s), you should probably play that state of mind a bit and resolve them instead of having breaking points/the Boneyard/other jarring circumstance not affect narratively despite having mechanically affected you."

[Epimetheus]

By the way it is worded, isn't the Stillness Key a very easy limitless suply of Plasm via Free Plasm/accepting the Doom? You just have to unlock any Haunt with it, say something so the Doom resolves and the condition ends and boom, plasm.

The Stillness key has one of the less punishing key effects upon getting hit with the Doom, in that all it does is cancel your haunt. However, used without a haunt and your character will be mute until the next game session. Meaning that for the entire chapter you can't resolve the doom, can't speak and I believe you can't use the key until it resolves.

[Epimetheus]

Trying to make sure I'm parsing the Krewe vs. Krewe rules correctly:

• Attempting to destroy another krewe is a krewe action with an open-ended Complexity (and therefore no set amount of Tasks and no guarantee of success, heavily complicated or otherwise), with success being predicated on accumulating Effort from success or exceptional success on the action's rolls equal to the enemy krewe's Congregation rating (each point inflicting a point of lethal damage), which inflicts the Coup d'Etat Condition.
• Conflicts between krewes are contested actions, with the victor earning the Effort (and thereby inflicting lethal damage on the opposition's Congregation, in the case of war with the aim of destruction).
• A lower-Esotery krewe in conflict with a higher-Esotery krewe (i.e. one that has already committed one krewe action to acting against another krewe) can commit a second krewe action to apply a penalty equal to half its Power to all the higher-Esotery krewe's other Tasks as long as the smaller krewe doesn't start another action.

Put differently:
• A krewe action to destroy another krewe has no Complexity to set Tasks from (though presumably the krewe's Task limit still applies and an otherwise-identical krewe action can be declared from the krewe's pool of actions to continue the process), so its ultimate success is up in the air compared to other krewe actions.
• Krewes acting against each other make a contested roll to see which of them gains the Effort for the action (and applies damage, in war), with their krewe actions and Task limits applying a soft restriction on how far they can push themselves in this pursuit.
• A weaker krewe may effectively fully commit its resources to conflict with a larger krewe by dedicating one krewe action to the contested roll and another to inflict a penalty on all their other actions as long as the smaller krewe doesn't do anything else, having put most of their resources into interfering with the larger group's other actions as they attack it. ("The rest of the higher-Esotery krewe's Tasks" here meaning "any other rolls the krewe makes to generate Effort," not "any other rolls to generate Effort on the ongoing krewe action of destroying the krewe.")

Does that seem accurate?

There are also other conditions that can generate as a side effect of a war especially a weaker krewe but yes in general that is correct.

[Tessie]

By the way it is worded, isn't the Stillness Key a very easy limitless suply of Plasm via Free Plasm/accepting the Doom? You just have to unlock any Haunt with it, say something so the Doom resolves and the condition ends and boom, plasm.

Yes. This was discovered the same day the Kickstarter manuscript was released to backers so it's quite shocking it still hasn't been fixed.

The "boom, plasm" happens before you say something and ends any Haunts you invoked the power of the Underworld to benefit, which is usually not something you want happening in a scene where you're using a Haunt to accomplish anything.

The basic social contract of "don't waste your fellow players' time putting the camera on your character doing this for literally no reason" applies. The Doomed Condition is a dramatic tool to justify story complications. See also the general fair-play consideration of "if you have the Shaken or Spooked Condition(s), you should probably play that state of mind a bit and resolve them instead of having breaking points/the Boneyard/other jarring circumstance not affect narratively despite having mechanically affected you."

Honestly, if you gain an advantage for a drawback you can completely ignore it's just bad design. The fact that the Key of Stillness is the only Key that has a different resolution for using it without a Haunt is basically an admission of that fact. And it's hardly a time waster when you can just go "Ah, at the end of this scene I just activate this Haunt with this Key repeatedly to refill my Plasm pool" and then just roll until you've filled up. It's trivially easy to exploit this loophole. The whole "invoking the power of the Underworld" thing definitely should be dramatic, but it's turned comical by the fact that you can actually benefit from ignoring it.

You mention Shaken and Spooked, but in order to gain the benefits of those Conditions (namely, the beat for resolving them) you need to actively engage with the drawback. They're carrots for the player to roleplay according to what they represent. You can elect to ignore them (and I don't shame players for doing so as long as they don't act too much out of character) but then you simply don't get the bonus from them. The key (hehe) difference is that the Key of Stillness' Doomed Condition gives you the carrot while making the drawback wholly optional (and ignoring the drawback is how you get a beat on top of the free Plasm). Combined with the fact that you can freely choose to receive this Condition (as opposed to Shaken and Spooked) means you've got an at-will Plasm refill with basically no character or player investment necessary aside from a few quick rolls. The one limit is that you might not want to do it if you're busy using the Key or your action economy for other stuff, but if you keep yourself topped up between those times you should rarely be able to empty your Plasm pool during those times.

Hell, if you only need to activate a Haunt for a turn or two for whatever reason, using the Key of Stillness appropriately would also lead to you gaining all the benefits (extra dice, free Plasm, beat for resolving the Condition) for the minor drawback of not wanting to speak for a few seconds. So even when you don't actively pursue the obvious loophole that never should've existed in the first place you can still benefit from it when all other Keys would force an actual drawback (or at the very least put you at risk, in the case of the Key of Chance).

Now, my group does have a social contract regarding wildly unbalanced rules or rules that have wildly unintentional consequences: After we see something like that we bring it up in the group and discuss how to patch it away.
And to preempt anyone saying "you don't need to house rule away the OP thing as long as you honour the game and simply don't use it": That's just an unspoken house rule to the same effect, except much fuzzier and it doesn't resolve any borderline cases as mentioned above.

[Satchel]

…Anyway.

Are Krewe Beats and Synergy Beats counted separately from regular Beats for the purposes of the one-Beat-per-category-per-scene limit?

[Andrew Kaninchen]

Yes. This was discovered the same day the Kickstarter manuscript was released to backers so it's quite shocking it still hasn't been fixed.



Honestly, if you gain an advantage for a drawback you can completely ignore it's just bad design. The fact that the Key of Stillness is the only Key that has a different resolution for using it without a Haunt is basically an admission of that fact. And it's hardly a time waster when you can just go "Ah, at the end of this scene I just activate this Haunt with this Key repeatedly to refill my Plasm pool" and then just roll until you've filled up. It's trivially easy to exploit this loophole. The whole "invoking the power of the Underworld" thing definitely should be dramatic, but it's turned comical by the fact that you can actually benefit from ignoring it.

You mention Shaken and Spooked, but in order to gain the benefits of those Conditions (namely, the beat for resolving them) you need to actively engage with the drawback. They're carrots for the player to roleplay according to what they represent. You can elect to ignore them (and I don't shame players for doing so as long as they don't act too much out of character) but then you simply don't get the bonus from them. The key (hehe) difference is that the Key of Stillness' Doomed Condition gives you the carrot while making the drawback wholly optional (and ignoring the drawback is how you get a beat on top of the free Plasm). Combined with the fact that you can freely choose to receive this Condition (as opposed to Shaken and Spooked) means you've got an at-will Plasm refill with basically no character or player investment necessary aside from a few quick rolls. The one limit is that you might not want to do it if you're busy using the Key or your action economy for other stuff, but if you keep yourself topped up between those times you should rarely be able to empty your Plasm pool during those times.

Hell, if you only need to activate a Haunt for a turn or two for whatever reason, using the Key of Stillness appropriately would also lead to you gaining all the benefits (extra dice, free Plasm, beat for resolving the Condition) for the minor drawback of not wanting to speak for a few seconds. So even when you don't actively pursue the obvious loophole that never should've existed in the first place you can still benefit from it when all other Keys would force an actual drawback (or at the very least put you at risk, in the case of the Key of Chance).

Now, my group does have a social contract regarding wildly unbalanced rules or rules that have wildly unintentional consequences: After we see something like that we bring it up in the group and discuss how to patch it away.
And to preempt anyone saying "you don't need to house rule away the OP thing as long as you honour the game and simply don't use it": That's just an unspoken house rule to the same effect, except much fuzzier and it doesn't resolve any borderline cases as mentioned above.

Yeah, that is pretty much exactly how I feel about the whole thing. I asked here mainly to know if I hadn't missed anything that would make it less of an easily exploitable thing, but seeing as there isn't, I'll try to think of something alongside my st and other players. Probably change the Doom altogether. I enjoy the roleplay of being forced not to speak or there will be a penalty, so I'll try to go from there.