Hurt Locker Thread 2: Templates and Supernatural Merits

[MachineIV]

Here's a thread to talk about the stuff I just posted here.

[Leliel]

First off: Love the Infection Carriers. I can see an entire chronicle revolving around the mystic pathogen and its relation to humanity. Seems...Abyssal, actually, the disease that makes you stronger at least until things go horribly awry. I would say, however, that enabling the Infection to spread gives a Carrier, oh, a roll of Integrity + Carrier or something like that to return to an earlier stage in the infection, keeps with the Devil's Deal theme as well as why people decide their like their eldritch tiny buddies.

[Badger King]

I've got to second the love for Infection Carriers. I'd had something somewhat similar in the aesthetics of Carriers going on in a Hunter game, and I plan to use this as a replacement for what I had going.

I also enjoyed Invoke Spirit. I think it would be great to play one of the Spirit-Urged. Already coming up with various concepts for the next Mortals game I'm in.

I had a question about Telekinetic Evasion. Would it be reasonable to assume, from how it's worded that the power works, it could apply the bonus successes only against firearms attacks? A little like how Celerity Dots still apply against firearms attacks but not normal defense?

[branford]

The New Flesh at 1 dot indicates that healing times are doubled. I believe this is a mistake. It should indicate that healing times are halved or the rate of healing is doubled.

Does Consecrate Weapon work on firearms?

Dark Passenger is VERY disturbing! [In a similar vein, I'm surprised I didn't notice any power that involved a third mystical eye which opens on a characters forehead, an unfortunate oversight]

Mind Control appears at first glance to be overpowered, particularly since the effect lasts for an entire scence and further uses of the power incur no penalty, exceeding major template powers such as Vampire Dominate and the Mind Arcana under certain circumstances. I would think that, at the very least, the Drawback would include some penalty even with a successful use of the ability, such as incurring a level or two of bashing damage representing sudden migraines or nose and earbleeds. I would also think that a victim's Supernatural Advantage trait should add to Resolve as the penalty to activate the power.

[MachineIV]

I had a question about Telekinetic Evasion. Would it be reasonable to assume, from how it's worded that the power works, it could apply the bonus successes only against firearms attacks? A little like how Celerity Dots still apply against firearms attacks but not normal defense?

I'd probably run it that way. Lemme think on that a bit.

[MachineIV]

The New Flesh at 1 dot indicates that healing times are doubled. I believe this is a mistake. It should indicate that healing times are halved or the rate of healing is doubled.

I believe you're right.

Does Consecrate Weapon work on firearms?

Dunno. Thoughts? My instinct is to have it apply to ammo, not guns.

[branford]

Dunno. Thoughts? My instinct is to have it apply to ammo, not guns.

I would think that the power would work on ammo. However, I do believe that the distinction would not have much practical affect, other than possibly burst fire, since it explicitly lasts only for a single turn. However, if the power lasted for [success rolled] turns or something similar, I could envision the ability reasonably limited by the amount of ammunition rather than the firearm itself.

[Hexmeister Vic]

I'd like to see more grotesquery in the Infected. Not quite Promethean-level grotesquery, but something memorably awful to keep on theme with the rest of the book and drive home that that template was never initially a willing, sober, and fully consensual choice on the part of the character, despite how much "bad fun" the player is having. Not quite Freak Legions awful either, but if there is a common thread between the 3 templates shown, its that they're all cases of having change, and attendant power, thrust upon the character. And keeping the infection vector open and varied is a good idea.

[DrewC]

Supernatural Merits:

• Assertive Implement: I love this merit.
• Consecrate Weapon: I’m a little unclear on the intent here. Is the intent that this must be done in the middle of combat? Having the effect last one turn per success seems to imply this, but describing it as a ritual seems contradictory. Maybe the intent is that it lasts one attack per success? For firearms I feel like one bullet per success is reasonable. That will mean one attack/round per success in most cases.
• Evil Eye: It says “If successful, apply the Insensate Tilt to the victim for turns equal to successes.” Should this be net successes? Also, this seems powerful for a 2 dot merit with no pre-reqs. I have not tested it, however.

[LostLight]

*looking through the Merits when reaching Dark Passenger*
Wait.. what the %@#?!

Also, the Infected gave me an idea about how incorporating Saika from Durarara!! into WoD

[StSword]

Assertive Implement shouldn't be a supernatural merit, the character isn't doing anything supernatural, they just have a magic item. A man has the knife that his brother used to kill himself, protecting his little brother from beyond the grave. Man dies and rises as a sin-eater, his brother's ghost who is obsessed with protecting him is going to say "Well, screw this, I'm out of here!" That doesn't make sense.

Now if the character was able to extend his soul into his favorite knife, making it supernaturally sharp, that's a supernatural merit, and would make sense to be loss in the various transformations possible in the world of darkness.

Bless Amulet- A way to make that effect permanent would be nice. Perhaps at a higher level, or exceptional success, or with an extended roll with however many successes you deem appropriate.

While Medium works on other forms of ephemerals, it's ghost centric. So shouldn't invoke spirit be invoke ghost?

Sacrificial offering drawback do you mean that overlapping effects suffer from the law of diminishing returns? Otherwise the merit would eventually become unusable if every use of it, even if years apart, adds to a never ending penalty.

Tactical telepathy drawback- Have you considered making the damage bashing damage? Telepaths fainting from pain is a bit more common than a telepath dying from shock.

Telekinetic Evasion- How about a higher level effect for attacks defense normally doesn't apply to? Even if you don't like the idea of a telekinetic manipulating bullets, they could manipulate the gun before the shot is fired.

Dreamers: I disagree with making this conditioning a supernatural merit. First of all, it doesn't necessarily mean that anything supernatural happened to the dreamer. Second of all, this is the world of darkness. The players shouldn't say to themselves "Well this person can't be a sleeper agent, they're a vampire or mage or whatever." They should be saying to themselves "Holy shit, that werewolf was brainwashed."

Does the disadvantage of bulletman syndrome slow down the healing of the new flesh?

The infected seem like a perfect opportunity to add in some zombies to a game.

[Leetsepeak]

Supernatural merit seems to be a broad category, not just describing your own discrete abilities, but any kind of weird supernatural shit in merit form.

[StSword]

If a merit isn't about something you do or something done to you, it has no damn business being a supernatural merit.

How does an ordo dracul member learning a mystery to use a ghost possessed knife make sense? How does being turned into a stigmatic by the god-machine lead to possessed cutlery? Why would becoming a ghoul or wolfblooded make the possessed knife magically disappear? If you can't answer those questions about a supernatural merit with something that makes sense, it shouldn't be a supernatural merit.

[ArcaneArts]

I'm not sure this is all that important to be arguing about.

[MachineIV]

If a merit isn't about something you do or something done to you, it has no damn business being a supernatural merit.

How does an ordo dracul member learning a mystery to use a ghost possessed knife make sense? How does being turned into a stigmatic by the god-machine lead to possessed cutlery? Why would becoming a ghoul or wolfblooded make the possessed knife magically disappear? If you can't answer those questions about a supernatural merit with something that makes sense, it shouldn't be a supernatural merit.

I disagree completely. If a vampire's Haven can be a Merit, and an Ordo Dracul member can have a Geomantic Nexus as a Merit, I believe a character can have a supernatural object as a Merit.

You're free to disagree. But that's not going to be material to this discussion.