Arcanist's Homebrew Hub

[Arcanist]

So, I've written enough of my own content, or tweaked existing content, that I figure this would be a good idea. At the very least, it's an easy way for me to keep track of what I've written, if no one else. I'll sort them as best I can. If you've enjoyed what you've read, or even used it, I'd love to hear from you! Feedback is always appreciated and editing can always make something better.


Crossover

The Sundered World Chronicles (On Hiatus, Multiple Contributors)

Age of Azar (On Hiatus, Multiple Contributors)

Original Content

Irin: The Watchful (First Version of my fan splat)

Irin: The Announced (Second Version of my fan splat)

Chronicles of Darkness

Cults (As Violence Groups)

• Credit to The Kings Raven and their Leviathan: The Tempest for the Foundations, and several of the Conditions

Expanded Investigations: Hunts, Summonings, and the Higher Mysteries

Skills and Souls

Primacy Second Edition

Violent Skills Reexamined

Word as Bond: Pacts

Vampire: The Requiem

Blood Sorcery: Sacraments and Blasphemies 2E

The Owls of Dis

Werewolf: The Forsaken

Shattered Gods

[Arcanist]

Uploaded a take on Blood Sorcery based off the existing mechanics and using Mage 2E's Creative Thaumaturgy as a template. Haven't gotten around to using Blood Sorcery- Sacraments and Blasphemies to cover Improvised Blood Sorcery just yet, but I'll get there eventually.

[Arcanist]

Uploaded Skills and Souls, which includes my take on Reversal Points from Imperial Mysteries and Preternatural Skills from A Thousand Years of Night. The use of Action Points can get a little... broken... towards the upper end of the potential pool. However, characters that powerful should be tackling godlike beings and engaging with the game mostly on a narrative rather than a mechanical level to begin with.

I've also included my own slight variations on how to use souls. Firstly, I took the throwaway line from Blood and Smoke about Strix not being able to draw Vitae from Soulless Characters, and the line from Demon: The Descent about Soulless characters being unable to make a Pact with the Unchained, and went from there. I also made souls in their conventional, ephemeral form a little more useful to the Unchained than they are RAW. Also tweaked the way Awakened interact with souls a little bit to make them more useful. Mage: The Awakening is the game that deals with souls the most, so I figured the rules should reflect their utility and impact in Awakened circles.

There were also a few ideas I had about how souls interact with Ephemeral Beings. Firstly, ghosts with souls should regain their lucidity. A ghost who is capable of Claiming/possessing long-term their own body can more or less carry on with their life, albeit as a potentially immortal character and/or Abmortal as described in Geist: The Sin-Eaters. Spirits with a soul essentially stabilize, they can focus on things other than gathering Essence, for the most part, and Idigam in the Shadow with souls gain Essence with increasing speed per day with each additional soul, nevermind the other terrifying things Idigam can do with them. Not sure what Goetia would do with a soul considering they are from the Astral Realms, which are essentially inside souls. Also not sure what Angels would do with souls, but I'm sure the God-Machine has a laundry list of potential uses for them. A soul plugged into Infrastructure is essentially an esoteric battery.

[Arcanist]

Uploaded Word as Bond: Pacts, which is a revamp of my Pacts for Everyone thread. Much like said thread, I used material mostly from Demon: The Descent, the Mage supplement Summoners, and the spoilers for Goblin Vows. There isn't a whole lot different from the default rules, but honestly, the Pact rules in Demon: The Descent are pretty darn awesome and if nothing else that document does a pretty good job of consolidating the material for Demon that's spread out across a couple of books. I'm thinking of potentially fiddling with negative values that can be added to the Supplicant side of the Pact, since the majority of the stuff that's going to be accounted for are on the Patron's side; stuff like Durations and Sacrifices.

Additionally, there's nothing saying that a Supplicant can't draft a transferable Pact, while it is explicit that a Supplicant can draft a Bill of Sale. So you get some nifty wiggle room there where you can have someone, say, bestow a Pact they made in their youth as inheritance to a descendent. Or a transferable Pact that behaves much like a cursed item. Pick it up and you're bestowed with great power, but your life could potentially fall to ruin... or a debt collecting Patron could show up on your doorstep. Tons of potential there! I'll have to write up some "official" examples, there's a lot of thematic ideas percolating in my brain.

[Raistlin]

Uploaded Word as Bond: Pacts, which is a revamp of my Pacts for Everyone thread. Much like said thread, I used material mostly from Demon: The Descent, the Mage supplement Summoners, and the spoilers for Goblin Vows. There isn't a whole lot different from the default rules, but honestly, the Pact rules in Demon: The Descent are pretty darn awesome and if nothing else that document does a pretty good job of consolidating the material for Demon that's spread out across a couple of books. I'm thinking of potentially fiddling with negative values that can be added to the Supplicant side of the Pact, since the majority of the stuff that's going to be accounted for are on the Patron's side; stuff like Durations and Sacrifices.

Additionally, there's nothing saying that a Supplicant can't draft a transferable Pact, while it is explicit that a Supplicant can draft a Bill of Sale. So you get some nifty wiggle room there where you can have someone, say, bestow a Pact they made in their youth as inheritance to a descendent. Or a transferable Pact that behaves much like a cursed item. Pick it up and you're bestowed with great power, but your life could potentially fall to ruin... or a debt collecting Patron could show up on your doorstep. Tons of potential there! I'll have to write up some "official" examples, there's a lot of thematic ideas percolating in my brain.

Note: the document doesn´t seem to include rules for granting disciplines, gifts, formulas, etc.. to the supplicants.

[Arcanist]

Note: the document doesn´t seem to include rules for granting disciplines, gifts, formulas, etc.. to the supplicants.

That has been corrected now. That should have been in there to start with, but it's there now, thank-you for pointing it out. For perusal of those who don't want to open the document, here's the text that I added to it.

Epic Pacts- Occult Power: In the shadows of the Chronicles of Darkness, supernatural beings cultivate their power, but sometimes they need more power more quickly than they could normally gather it themselves. Sometimes they bargain for it. Sometimes it’s worth it. This Benefit is Supplicant-only.

• Minor (+1): A Rote, Praxis, or Attainment. An Embed or Exploit. A Goblin Contract or Seeming Clause. An Alembic or Athanor. A Gift Facet.
• Medial (+2): An In-Clan Discipline dot. A Nightmare or In-Family Atavism. An Affinity Gift or dot of Renown. An Arcadian Contract.
• Major (+3): An Out of Clan Discipline dot. An Out of Family Atavism. A non-Affinity Gift. An Arcanum dot. A Royal Contract.

[Raistlin]

I take Supplicants can only get level 1 powers

[Vent0]

I take Supplicants can only get level 1 powers

I think the dots stack, like Merits would.

Effectively
Minor = 1-2 XP
Medial = 3-4 XP
Major = 5XP

[Arcanist]

I take Supplicants can only get level 1 powers

Much like other Benefits, such as Assets, you can stack multiple versions of Occult Power to increase the boost from the Pact. Vent0 has it correctly. I would definitely say that if you wanted to boost a Power Stat, for example, then that would be a Major Benefit. I made sure to include all known XP values for published (or previewed) supernatural abilities.

[Arcanist]

Added my little homebrew on the Strix and how to model them using more conventional Ephemeral Being rules. Personally it rubbed me the wrong way a little bit that Embodiments are so, so different than Manifestations. Especially how they need special Embodiments to possess corpses, revenants, vampires, and living things. Manifestations are multi-purpose and allow some neat little character flairs. Also, you can get a Strix with Fetter who can Urge a vampire or a living thing, and a Strix playing "Shoulder Devil" to a vampire (or a human) is just delicious. I like to imagine a Fettered Strix as an extra shadow pooling around someone's feet, a haze of smoke around them.The occasional glint of yellow somewhere where the eyes should be.

[Deionscribe]

Added my little homebrew on the Strix and how to model them using more conventional Ephemeral Being rules. Personally it rubbed me the wrong way a little bit that Embodiments are so, so different than Manifestations. Especially how they need special Embodiments to possess corpses, revenants, vampires, and living things. Manifestations are multi-purpose and allow some neat little character flairs. Also, you can get a Strix with Fetter who can Urge a vampire or a living thing, and a Strix playing "Shoulder Devil" to a vampire (or a human) is just delicious. I like to imagine a Fettered Strix as an extra shadow pooling around someone's feet, a haze of smoke around them.The occasional glint of yellow somewhere where the eyes should be.

This is a nice fix to the Strix mechanics.

What about their other abilities, though? I can see the Dread Powers working in the same niche as they do for idigam, but wasn't there another power set included? Or has the latter been folded into Numina instead?

[Arcanist]

This is a nice fix to the Strix mechanics.

What about their other abilities, though? I can see the Dread Powers working in the same niche as they do for idigam, but wasn't there another power set included? Or has the latter been folded into Numina instead?

I was folding them into Numina, especially since that gives the Strix a little more flexibility in terms of their capabilities, as opposed to just picking from a much less diverse and far more specific power set. On the other hand, I could see giving them a set of Dread Powers in addition to the Numina.

[Deionscribe]

I was folding them into Numina, especially since that gives the Strix a little more flexibility in terms of their capabilities, as opposed to just picking from a much less diverse and far more specific power set. On the other hand, I could see giving them a set of Dread Powers in addition to the Numina.

It makes them even more bizarre, seeing as they aren't ephemeral beings in the strictest sense. Also, I looked at the Embodiments in Vampire 2E. I can see why they had to be folded into Manifestations. Possession covers how the living, revenants, and Kindred can be taken as hosts. Claim also serves the same mechanical function as Synthesis.

For Dread Powers, have you considered using the progression of Potency for Horrors in CofD as a basis? In the case of individual abilities, you could still use the ones outlined in the book as is.

[Arcanist]

It makes them even more bizarre, seeing as they aren't ephemeral beings in the strictest sense. Also, I looked at the Embodiments in Vampire 2E. I can see why they had to be folded into Manifestations. Possession covers how the living, revenants, and Kindred can be taken as hosts. Claim also serves the same mechanical function as Synthesis.

For Dread Powers, have you considered using the progression of Potency for Horrors in CofD as a basis? In the case of individual abilities, you could still use the ones outlined in the book as is.

I'm still thinking about how to handle Dread Powers vs. Numina. There are several Strix Dread Powers that have less fiddly (and in general, better) versions in standard Numina and Dread Powers from the Chronicles of Darkness core rulebook. I'll have to think about it some more.

Additionally, I added some more content to Expanded Investigations: Hunts, Summonings, and the Higher Mysteries. Fiddled with my rules for Investigating Ephemeral Beings so that they run off of Resistance, and added a hack incorporating the "Torches and Pitchforks" subsystem from the old Hurt Locker spoilers with the more recent Investigation rules. This also includes inspiration from Axelgear's Sleeper Curiosity, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Labyrinth. I also added some content on how to incorporate Promethean, which meant fiddling a little bit with how Disquiet works.

[Deionscribe]

I'm still thinking about how to handle Dread Powers vs. Numina. There are several Strix Dread Powers that have less fiddly (and in general, better) versions in standard Numina and Dread Powers from the Chronicles of Darkness core rulebook. I'll have to think about it some more.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, especially since some Dread Powers and Numina overlap in terms of giving the same effects. Still, there are some Dread Powers which can work better if they're refined further.