User Profile

[Eric Zawadzki]

I missed Planescape entirely, in its time. However, when I picked up the Manual of Planes for 4E (a game my group played primarily as a comparatively casual tactical war game and enjoyed enough to continue doing so for about three years), I was pleasantly surprised by how much world-building was in it for a game that was laser-focused on combat. Based on your descriptions, it sounds like most of the ideas for planes were ripped straight out of Planescape. So, gone but not forgotten, as it were (and certainly not by the people who own the intellectual property rights for it).

[Eric Zawadzki]

It sounds like you might be referring to the Uncontrollable effect of Power Build-Up? If that's the case, Involuntary Scars were still in an early form during the initial round of playtests, and, quite frankly, they disintegrated under minimal pressure.

First, the original Scar Resistance roll formula was Acclimation + Scar Resistance - Scar Magnitude - Instability penalty. This pretty much guaranteed that any poor wretch with an Involuntary Variation could never prevent it from activating or regain control of it once it did. This turned out to be at least one character in every playtest...

[Eric Zawadzki]

I'm not sure I follow. Are you talking about Standard Deviations (which increase the effective Magnitude of other Scars)?...

[Eric Zawadzki]

It works out to a minor Instability on Success or Failure whenever you Falter, no Instability on an Exceptional Success, and a medium Instability on a Dramatic Failure.

Characters receive total Magnitude of Variations based on the chronicle's threat level, ranging from 2 to 15 (plus 1 Scar-free Magnitude of Variation based on Origin). Players choose enough Scars to entangle all the starting Variations. Yes, it is quite possible (especially in a high-threat level game) for some characters to start with a few high-Magnitude Scars, while others start with several low-Magnitude Scars....

[Eric Zawadzki]

So many questions. That's awesome!



I'm excited that you're excited. :-D

Ferals are a wretched, paranoid lot. They have fewer vectors for gaining Instability (since they lack Touchstones and can't forge bonds with new ones), but they have virtually no way to manage any Instability they get, so they're on a path to eventual Instability death from which they can only move forward. They don't derive any benefit from wrecking the conspiracies, but conspiracies are still interested in *them*, for various reasons. This incentivizes steering clear of humanity entirely,...

[Eric Zawadzki]

Minty: I'm glad to hear it. The inherent contradiction in being an extroverted writer is that I want to spend countless hours working on creative projects, but I also want to spend countless hours talking about what I'm working on. It is no exaggeration to say that your enthusiasm for this game (and that of your fellow forumites) only feeds my enthusiasm to work on it. In the same vein, I'm hoping we blast through a kerjillion stretch goals just so I have an excuse to come up with more Deviant-related writing projects to propose as stretch goals!

To some extent, I think Scars are...

[Eric Zawadzki]

Satchel: Lore-Hound, indeed. Nicely done.

Rapid Healing is one of the Variations that is always both Persistent and Perpetual. Others in that category are various effects of Anomalous Biology that do things like make you ageless, or not need to eat, drink, or sleep. Because the activation of a Variation lasts until the end of the current scene (with only a couple exceptions), and it would be silly to stop aging, or needing to eat/drink/sleep for the duration of a scene.

When you move beyond those weird Perpetual-mandatory Variations, most Variations are Toggled. And Toggled...

[Eric Zawadzki]

You would be correct. The way Rapid Healing is built (halving healing times and healing all damage of certain types at the end of each scene/chapter), it really doesn't make sense except as a Persistent, Perpetual effect. Healing Touch and Inhuman Digestion work better as "turn it on to heal" or "instant heal" effects and so are compatible with Controlled and Involuntary Scars....

[Eric Zawadzki]

No. It only works in the other direction. A single, high-Magnitude Scar can support multiple lower-Magnitude Scars. Heck, we're close enough that I'm willing to spoil this bit, now:

A Scar can entangle a Variation of its Magnitude or lower. A Scar can be entangled with multiple Variations as long as the Scar’s Magnitude is higher than the highest-Magnitude, entangled Variation. The number of Variations entangled with a single Scar cannot exceed 1 + the difference between the Scar’s Magnitude and the highest-rated Variation’s Magnitude.

Mag 1 Scar: 1 Mag 1 Variation...

[Eric Zawadzki]

I can't entirely eliminate the disappointment of the Kickstarter not starting this week (as I know many here had hoped), but perhaps a sneak peek at a few Scars will take away a little bit of the sting: http://theonyxpath.com/a-collection-...the-renegades/

ETA: Ninja'd.

[Eric Zawadzki]

The event you describe is largely a narrative one, so we're not going to get into how each Variation manifests when a Deviant has the End Stage Condition. Besides which, given that by the time you reach that point, you've already added 5 Magnitude to various Scars and acquired 5 new ones (some of which are likely to be really awful, due to the way un-entangled Scars work), you probably have multiple Variations you could choose to max out, so it is hard to say exactly which one will get you. Finally, the End Stage Condition kills you at the end of the current chapter, so you're not going to have...

[Eric Zawadzki]

The Directed keyword comes with a set of rules that apply to all Directed Variations and effects (except where noted, such as Bioluminescence not suffering range penalties). Targeting someone with a Directed effect requires an instant action, for example, and the range is 10/20/40.



And I'm eager to share all the Variations! But we must both be patient. The Kickstarter will be here before you know it!...

[Eric Zawadzki]

RE: Hunters vs. Deviants: Several of these takes are in line with how I think things would go down between the two lines' protagonists. The whole "Those who hunt monsters must take care lest they become monsters themselves" sentiment certainly applied to Conspiracies in Hunter 1E, and Deviant conspiracies are, when you get right down to it, ordinary people who have made themselves monstrous in the pursuit of understanding, fighting, or harnessing supernatural power. I want to delve into interactions between the Broken and other supernatural beings in a lot more depth in a Storytellers...

[Eric Zawadzki]

Hm. I don't believe we've spoiled Variations other than Rapid Healing, yet. The Mid-Winter characters had playtest-ready versions of several Variations, but they weren't the full mechanics, and some of them have seen significant changes since the demo (Natural Weapon was folded into Lash, for example). So, I'm going to demure on any specifics regarding them, for now. I will reveal that Cephalists and Coactives both have Adaptations that let them temporarily increase the Magnitude of a Variation.

Activating one Variation is no barrier to activating any other Variation, except in unusual...