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[Saur Ops Specialist]

Injury-Forcing Technique originally appeared in CB: Twilight, actually....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

"Lunars... ah, Lunars find a way..."...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Hijikata's preoccupation with mayo is fertile ground....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Make "multiple attacks" into a damage boost to a single attack that doesn't count versus hardness (as opposed to fierce blows enhancing one attack but making it punch through a bit more). Let social combat and physical combat occur at the same time, so that the perfect defense against someone trying to change your mind is no longer to draw a sword on them (it's not going to keep them from talking). Replace mass combat with 3e's battle groups because it's seriously too good of an idea to not use. Beef up Guard so that it can grant temporary boosts to soak, ablative health levels, halve...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Disgust at witnessing a meal, you say?...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

It might still be one again in a modified form, you know. In any case, if sex is practice in which someone can excel... Solars get to go there. There wasn't any thematic protection that it necessarily had, much as how Solars can train people to be better soldiers or sailors, and there is also a power that Sidereals got in The Captain that allowed them to train and organize soldiers and sailors, because the constellation is all about hard-assed discipline and overlaps with certain aspects of Solar Sail and War....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I'd characterize the Dragon Kings as more careless and callous than anything else. They also paid a steep price for it when the enemies of the gods killed tens of millions of them for keeps
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The Yozis were even more callous than the Dragon Kings, and arguably got off light if they didn't become Neverborn. Also, I don't think that we're going with the "intentionally created humans to be weaker, easily-scared Mountain Folk" in this edition....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Is permanence common with other transformations that they can grant or force onto others?



Good to know....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

The connection between beastfolk and Lunars has some heavy and unmanageable baggage behind it from prior editions. Is there a particular reason that they're still associated in any fashion? Because the more I consider it, the weirder it seems that the Lunars are thematically associated with non-shapeshifting people with the features of other animals. As a pulp standby, they're likely to show up, but EX3 gave us Izahuaca and a variety of origins for beastfolk in general that had nothing to do with Lunars, so it seems like both halves would have moved on from each other.

(Also, is it...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I was going to mention something about the Diamond Court, but it seems I was not recalling who threw them down correctly (it was the Tepet Legions rather than Guild-backed local mortals, but then, the Realm has lost most of the descendants of those who managed that feat...)



But exactly who started that conflict is rather important, because it did shape Lunars into what they later became.



The Realm knew nothing about Bagrash Kol until refugees showed up in distant lands. They could have tried to paint a picture of it to go along with their...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

And they go in weird places, especially in Werewolf, but we are talking about shapeshifting here. It's not like conjuring up storms or calling the sun back over the horizon at night. Turning someone into a beast is likely vastly more easy for Lunars than for Garou and Fera, and accomplishing a berserker-bomb, probably only slightly more difficult.



Making a character a prophet with Presence grants an Essence pool and a concentrated Charm, so it's arguably a closer comparison to having a Lunar-empowered mortal gain an Essence pool and a single animal shape as a Charm....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

GCG's quote was made back when fae still had massive numbers, so that's one concern down. As for the anarchy of the threshold... maybe it wouldn't have been in that state if the Realm wasn't constantly sucking wealth out of it, bending its policies to their whims, and supporting whatever strongwoman or strongman went along with them.[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]

With regard to House Ledaal, Thorns was their satrapy. They bled it pallid making war on the Scavenger Lands. Their policy made it easy pickings for the Mask of Winters. They helped dig the hole. Their recent concerns about...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Assuming that you mean the Realm, no. It's an oppressive empire out to plunder wealth from the rest of the world so that it can continue to have sick-ass parties in palatial estates. Lunars and Solars, meanwhile, often come from backgrounds at the other end of the wealth and privilege spectrum. Hence, the Lunars and Solars would be punching upward. Dynasts that want to keep the status quo to enjoy sick parties, slaves, and manorial households are part of the problem; Dynasts who want to abolish slavery, enact political reform, and curtail cruelty, though, might be on to something, even if...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

An entire nation of two different types unified into a single society.



Which still leaves them with something less impressive than a WoD power.



Presumably something that looks more like in Earthsea, Ladyhawke or with the siblings of the sorcerer from the Conan cartoon than the free-wheeling, unrestricted Lunar variety, at least when it comes to animal-based shapeshifting. No forgetting your true nature or being restricted by time, here.



Technically, that's also been a part of the really weird Sidereal bag, hasn't...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

But why bother with non-shapeshifting beastfolk when you could probably change someone into a raging Crinos bomb? I mean, if the Garou had Curse of the Wolf to work with in W:tA (or at least, back in the middle ages of the WoD), surely Lunars could have that capacity and then some. Give the angry, crushed masses a fighting chance, or punish mortal Dynasts by making them live out a angsty werewolf story - either way, it feels more distinctly Lunar than something that any of the sorcerers, Fair Folk, or hundreds to thousands of animal gods in Creation could have done....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Would characterizing them as a signature soldier-type of Lunars not qualify as overuse?



Especially if it's not really true. The Dynasts ship in wild animals to make the peasants live in fear of attacks by "vicious beasts", so it's probably a close fear to have an even more transgressive vision of life off the Isle based on strained, tenuous connections....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I would contest that beastfolk are distant enough from Lunars in 3e that they can't really be called a distinct component of Lunar armies, because they (edit: specifically, the Lunars) have none of the luxuries that would allow for a signature force. They don't have connections in heaven, they aren't the understudies and apprentices of the Deathlords, and they aren't related to Fair Folk, and they don't gather in the numbers of the Dragon-Blooded. They're scattered, disparate, and more or less isolated from each other; moreover, the fact that there are independent nations of beastfolk that have...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

They're high in the sky instead of in space (Bagrash Kol's tower needing gates to let the moon pass was a thing since Bagrash Kol was mentioned) and have "perfect patterning" from being spirits and floating bodies instead of stellar objects (witness Luna's perfect 28 day setup interrupted weirdly by Calibration instead of the real world 29.5 or so day orbital period of the moon). The Wyld, which is sounded like you mentioned, is something different that seeps in at different places. The stars seem to keep it out of their territory and confined to places closer to Creation's ground...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Actually, for most of the game, it was a sky-dome that you could cut through to get to Hell, with rarefied air requiring special breathing Charms....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

When Incarnae feel like it. Back in 1e, at least, the writeup of the Eclipse caste noted that the return of the Solars was the first time that one had occurred since the Usurpation.