The Gaming Den

Celerity's power to give people extra initiative passes in After Sundown is recognized as being a poor way to implement super speed in that game. Seeing as how I will be starting an After Sundown game in a matter of weeks this seems like a reasonable time to nail down what Celerity should do instead. Anyone with ideas of different Celerity powers write them up and I would be happy to hear Frank weigh in on which ones he likes as well as the community at large. I'll start with 3 proposals for Celerity powers, 2 Basics and one advanced

Basic Powers
*Fast Hands: When you make a melee or ranged attack you may make one attack roll and apply the results to 2 different targets within the attacks range. If you have advanced celerity this becomes 3, if Elder: 4. You also move swiftly enough that your melee attacks can hit targets 1 range further than normal and any ranged weapon you use can count as automatic in your hands.

*Bullet Time: You always count as dodging against any attacks you are aware of

Advaned Powers
*Lightning Fast: You gain an additional simple action you may use each turn

Commentary: Fast Hands is the thing everyone talks about with making the Flash able to punch a bunch of people but not roll 5 times. I went with a relatively low number because I worry about Celerity being too desirable if it is just the power multiplying track. Bullet Time synergizes well with the other Celerity discipline Quicken Sight allowing a dedicated Celerity user to be extremely hard to hit and Lightning Fast would be too good as a basic power but as an advanced power it might allow the fast types to get a couple extra hits or moves in to make them feel appropriately fast without taking too much turn time. I do worry that its too tempting for everyone to take regardless of build.

Bullet Time as a Basic Power has the potential to be better than Quicken Sight, the Advanced Power. Bullet Time lets you get the entire benefits of the Dodge Complex Action for free against attacks you're aware of. Quicken Sight gives you +4 (or +6) dice to a Dodge Complex Action you still have to make, which eats your entire turn. The guy with Bullet Time gets to use all of his actions shooting you while the guy with Quicken Sight either uses all of his actions dodging or has no buff to defense; in any turn where they both attack, the guy with Quicken Sight gets +0 to his to-hit threshold while the guy with Bullet Time gets +>0.

I think a more reasonable effect might be for Bullet Time to reduce Dodge from a Complex Action to a Simple Action. Then you've got some independent utility as well as some sweet synergy with Quicken Sight without making Quicken Sight totally suck if taken by itself.

Lightning Fast seems fair for an Advanced Power.

Fast Hands seems a little bit overbroad - having a power that lets you fire a ranged weapon not normally capable of automatic fire is good (related, a power that gives the effects of one Simple Action spent Aiming without spending an action would be good; perhaps both could coexist in the Fast Hands power?), but coupling that to something that lets you do melee at range seems like it's A) mixing metaphors and B) stepping on Nimble Feet's toes. Considering movement doesn't eat actions and is declared separately from attacks, anyone with Nimble Feet can already effectively make a "melee attack at a distance." If you call this Quick Draw, you reinforce the ranged weapon theming.

Wouldn't you also need to come up with a replacement Elder Power as well? Maybe the Bullet Time as currently written would work as an Elder...

Celerity
There she goes again.

Celerity is the power to move with the astonishing speed of the supernatural. Celerity must be consciously activated at a cost of three power points, and its effects last for one scene. Distinct from other Powers, the effects of Celerity are cumulative. With the exception of Shifting Sands, the discipline as a whole is activated or not during a scene, and may be activated as a Reflexive Action while rolling initiative. When activated, the character gains a +2 bonus to Initiative tests. With Advanced Celerity this bonus increases to +4, and with Elder Celerity this bonus increases to +8. During their turn, a character with Celerity may choose to reduce the speed that they will move at to a more normal velocity. The degree of speed utilized cannot be changed again until their next turn In general, a character whose Celerity more than doubles their speed in any dimension would constitute a breach of the Vow of Silence.

Basic Powers

• Clinging While Celerity is active, the character can hold themselves onto vertical surfaces and even ceilings for extended periods of time without special equipment or apparent effort. They can easily move up or down sheer surfaces at the rate of a steady walk, and scuttle across ceilings at the rate of a careful walk without danger or exertion. When such a character attempts to pull Wuxia or Spiderman inspired stunts involving running on walls or brachiating over a crowd they find this much easier, because they can support their weight merely by putting a hand against a wall. For practical purposes, this means that such stunts are much less extreme for them than they appear to outsiders. The thresholds are generally reduced by 2 (a crazy extreme stunt would be merely a professional stunt from their perspective).
• Quick Hands While Celerity is active, the character may choose to treat any attack they make (including a melee attack) as if it were made with an automatic weapon. This includes the increased dicepools, the increased penalty for enemies in cover and the ability to take the Spray-n-Pray action. In the event a character wishes to Spray-n-Pray with a melee attack, they may make a single attack roll of 3+Strength compared against the melee attack threshold of every potential target within 2 meters.
• Nimble Feet While Celerity is active, the character is able to walk and run at stupendous speeds. The character's personal movement rate is quadrupled. If the character has Advanced Celerity, the speed increase is itself increased to six times. If the character has Elder Celerity the movement increase is eight times. In addition, the character ignores penalties for acting while moving over difficult surfaces (although they may be slowed down by them as normal).

Advanced Powers

• Quicken Sight While Celerity is active, the character may perceive and derive meaning from fast moving objects. They may follow a specific card in a shuffled deck, read a sign on a fast moving train, or gauge the trajectories of bullets in flight. The character may Dodge as a Simple Action and is not subject to Feints from characters who do not also have Quicken Sight.
• Shifting Sands The character can rewind time and change their actions accordingly. The sands of time are heavy and small, and the character can only rewind a split second of time. As such, crucial events whose effects are not immediately obvious to the character have already escaped their grasp long before any calamity is apparent. By spending a power point, the character can shift their position up to one meter, or use any one of the Feint, Diving For Cover or Take One for the Team special maneuvers as a reflexive action declared out of turn. In order to evade or intercept an attack, the character must declare their intent before the soak roll is made. This power can also be used socially to prevent major faux pas, though it is useless if the character merely gradually got on the nerves of someone else. If the character gets no hits at all on a social test, they may spend a power point to re roll all the dice. If they get even one hit, then whatever mistakes were made are too far in the past when they become apparent and this power cannot be used.
• Flight While Celerity is active, the character can fly. Like they were a superhero. So long as they maintain a speed of at least an Ordinary Walk, they can fly through the air unaided. If the character wishes to be able to slow down to a Careful Walk or hover (not move at all) without falling out of the sky, they have to spend another power point. Taking off or landing in cramped areas may require an Agility + Athletics stunt. Flying is not particularly tiring unless the character actually makes a Draining Sprint. Flight can be dispelled as a sorcery with 3 hits. A character whose flight has been dispelled falls.
• Rapidity While Celerity is active, the timeframe for the character to aim is reduced by one, such that it takes a free action to reduce the effective range from Short to Near and five minutes to reduce a character at Remote range to effectively Adjacent. If the character has Elder Celerity, this timeframe reduction is applied twice, effectively negating any Threshold increases for ranges less than Way Out.

Why Move Clinging?

In order to get rid of Devotions, add Monstrous Form, Technomancy and 3 basic powers per discipline, some changes needed to be made. The resulting shuffle left me with the following:

Basic Authority: Command, Mesmerism, Suggestion*.
Basic Celerity: Quick Hands*, Nimble Feet, Clinging.
Basic Clout: Vigor, War Form*, Monstrous Self*.
Basic Discernment: Supernatural Senses, Aura Perception, Thaumaturgical Forensics*.
Basic Fortitude: Revive the Flesh, Supernatural Vitality*, Indomitability*.
Basic Magnetism: Attract, Repel, Confuse*.
Basic Veil: Hide From Notice, Mask of a Thousand Faces, Inanimacy*.
Basic Technomancy: Know Device, Wrath of the Gremlins, Man Machine.

Advanced Authority: Cloud Memory, Conditioning, Will to Power, Purify the Mind.
Advanced Celerity: Rapidity*, Quicken Sight*, Shifting Sands*, Flight*.
Advanced Clout: Devastation, Giant Size, Telekinesis, Burrowing.
Advanced Discernment: Psychometry, Telepathy, Chain of Eyes, Echoes of the Muse.
Advanced Fortitude: Restoration, Cleanse the Body, Empty Body, Adaptive Resilience.
Advanced Magnetism: Dismissal, Summons, Facade of Nonchalance, Betrayal of the Tongue.
Advanced Veil: Lost and Found, Hide in Plain Sight, Desire Reflection, The Familiar Stranger.
Advanced Technomancy: State of the Art*, Rise of the Machines*, Panopticon*, Flesh of Marble*.

*New or adjusted power.

Clinging is more of a Clout than a Celerity power.

There a way to add granularity to super speed though? Like if someone is Lightning Faster than your Lightning Fast character, does he get yet another simple action or what

Lokathor wrote:Clinging is more of a Clout than a Celerity power.

If Clinging goes into Clout, that means one of the powers slated for Clout has to go into Celerity. Probably War Form. But, for deliberation:

War Form As a Complex Action, the character transforms into a shape more suitable for combat. While in War Form, the character's Agility is increased by 2 and they sprout sharp teeth, razor claws, deadly spikes and/or combat tentacles. These constitute a Lethal 3 damage natural weapon. A character in War Form can speak and grasp objects with only modest difficulty. Anyone observing a character in War Form knows that it is an intelligent, humanoid creature and can recognize that character outside of War Form with a Professional (threshold 2) Intuition + Survival check. War Form is a Protean Discipline and may be taken as a Frenzy Discipline.

Monstrous Self As a Complex Action, the character transforms into an inhuman and animalistic shape. A character's Monstrous Self is not recognizable as the same person, cannot speak intelligibly and lacks thumbs, but has 3 more Strength and 2 more Agility than the character's less monstrous form. The fangs, claws, jaws and horns of a character's Monstrous Self constitute a Lethal 2 damage natural weapon. It takes a Hard (threshold 3) Intuition + Animal Ken check to recognize that a Monstrous Self is not natural animal which is merely large, very dangerous and difficult to properly identify. Monstrous Self is a Protean Discipline and may be taken as a Frenzy Discipline.

OgreBattle wrote:There a way to add granularity to super speed though? Like if someone is Lightning Faster than your Lightning Fast character, does he get yet another simple action or what

Nimble feet upgrades your speed based on what level of Celerity you've achieved. So if you're fast for an advanced power character an Elder Celerity character will still outrun you.

Here's another idea for tonight:

Advanced Power
*Quicksilver Contemplation: Your mind moving faster than the world around you allows you to act with perfect precision, accomplishing any task with not a wasted breath or movement. By spending a power point you can move down the time it takes to accomplish any action by one step to a minimum of a simple action.

Mord pointed out that my Bullet Time is plausibly better than Quicken Sight and he's right. Quicken Sight was very powerful with extra initiative passes because you could dedicate your first pass to dodging and your other passes to offense. With no more initiative passes Quicken Sight has been debuffed considerably. It might do to switch Quicken Sight and Bullet Time in this new setup. Where speedsters start by being able to dodge you if that's all they focus on and by the advanced levels they get Bullet Time and can dodge you all the time. I'm also amenable to the idea of making Bullet Time make dodging take only a simple action instead of a complex but Quicksilver Contemplation would do that as well and also serve other uses. Finally it might also be reasonable to make Bullet Time operate like Flesh to Marble, where you pay some power points to activate it and it just makes you count as dodging for an entire scene. Basically just a static defense buff.

Grek wrote:

Lokathor wrote:Clinging is more of a Clout than a Celerity power.

If Clinging goes into Clout, that means one of the powers slated for Clout has to go into Celerity.

I propose the simpler answer: that not every discipline have the same number of powers. That just seems okay to me. If you're going to shake up the whole power list, you'll also want to add some powers based on like, movies and comics and stuff. And as soon as you add one extra power some place you'll have to add an extra power every single place if you're stuck on equal power count per discipline. So then if you can't think of a new power for every discipline are you just going to leave out the cool ones that you can think of? No way, that's dumb.

So just give up on equal powers per discipline. Two should be the minimum per discipline per tier, not the maximum.

Grek; what does Monstrous Self's

Monstrous Self wrote:Monstrous Self is a Protean Discipline and may be taken as a Frenzy Discipline.

Mean exactly? It's a discipline you can trigger when you Frenzy? Does that then involve a Power Point cost, or not?

Judging__Eagle wrote:Grek; what does Monstrous Self's

Monstrous Self wrote:Monstrous Self is a Protean Discipline and may be taken as a Frenzy Discipline.

Mean exactly? It's a discipline you can trigger when you Frenzy? Does that then involve a Power Point cost, or not?

I would assume the concept of Frenzy Disciplines replaces the clause in War Form from 1e:

When a character goes into Frenzy they can (and often do) transform into War Form immediately. This Frenzy-induced transformation takes only a Simple Action and does not cost any power points. A Frenzy transformation discount cannot be saved for later – it must be the character's first action upon entering Frenzy to count. War Form is a Protean Discipline.

Grek wrote:War Form As a Complex Action, the character transforms into a shape more suitable for combat. While in War Form, the character's Agility is increased by 2 and they sprout sharp teeth, razor claws, deadly spikes and/or combat tentacles. These constitute a Lethal 3 damage natural weapon. A character in War Form can speak and grasp objects with only modest difficulty. Anyone observing a character in War Form knows that it is an intelligent, humanoid creature and can recognize that character outside of War Form with a Professional (threshold 2) Intuition + Survival check. War Form is a Protean Discipline and may be taken as a Frenzy Discipline.

Monstrous Self As a Complex Action, the character transforms into an inhuman and animalistic shape. A character's Monstrous Self is not recognizable as the same person, cannot speak intelligibly and lacks thumbs, but has 3 more Strength and 2 more Agility than the character's less monstrous form. The fangs, claws, jaws and horns of a character's Monstrous Self constitute a Lethal 2 damage natural weapon. It takes a Hard (threshold 3) Intuition + Animal Ken check to recognize that a Monstrous Self is not natural animal which is merely large, very dangerous and difficult to properly identify. Monstrous Self is a Protean Discipline and may be taken as a Frenzy Discipline.

I'm having some difficulty seeing why you would have both of these powers. I'm not really sure what the distinct purpose is to having one "turn into a monster" power that gives you +3 str +2 agi and a lethal 2 weapon versus another that gives you +2 agi and a lethal 3 weapon. Are the differences in what observers can recognize you to be supposed to be the distinguishing factor here?

There's obviously something I'm missing here, but based on my current understanding I'd cut Monstrous Self and add a line to War Form along the lines of this:

"As the character's mastery of Clout increases, their War Form becomes increasingly monstrous. At Advanced Clout, the difficulty to recognize the character as themselves increases to [ ], and with Elder Clout it becomes impossible to see the man within the monster. It requires an [ ] roll to recognize that a character with Elder Clout in War Form is anything but a particularly large, dangerous animal."

@JE and Omegonthesane: Yeah, it's a generalization of the 1e War Form frenzy rule to a larger number of disciplines. If a power says a Frenzy Discipline, you can choose to take it as the Frenzy version or as the regular version. If you have the Frenzy version of a discipline, it automatically and involuntarily activates for free whenever you frenzy. And if you don't take it as the Frenzy version, nothing special happens with it during a frenzy. Werewolves, for example, would have Frenzy War Form and Frenzy Beast Form (Wolf) as part of their preset powers. Whenever they succumb to their rage, they turn into a wolf monster whether they like it or not. But Nezumi get Non-Frenzy Beast Form. When they succumb to their rage, they always don't turn into a rat. They're equally likely to murder someone in their human form and escape as a rat once the rage has passed.

@Mord: War Form turns you into a humanoid monster with hands that talks with its mouth and walks around on two feet. Monstrous Self turns you into something that looks like a large predatory animal and has you going around on all fours howling and smashing through walls rather than using doors. If you combine the two (as Nanuuk do), you get the effects of both and end up very fast, very strong, very deadly while at the same time being inhumanly shaped and obviously supernatural. Also available to one or more Lycanthropes are Giant Size (which simply makes you much bigger) and Beast Form (which turns you into an ordinary and unimpressive animal). The full list is:

Werewolf: Basics: Frenzy War Form, Frenzy Beast Form, Revive the Flesh, Vigor, Nimble Feet and Repel. Advanced: Non-Frenzy Giant Size, The Beckoning.
Nezumi: Basics: Non-Frenzy Beast Form, Tongue of Beasts, Revive the Flesh, Hide From Notice, Learn the Heart's Pain and Abyss of the Body. Advanced: Hide in Plain Sight and The Beckoning.
Bagheera: Basics: Frenzy Monstrous Self, Quick Hands, Touch of Darkness, Vigor, Nimble Feet and Hide From Notice. Advanced: Frenzy Giant Size and Quicken Sight.
Zhu: Basics: Frenzy Beast Form, Revive the Flesh, Vigor, Abyss of the Body, Hand of Flame and Supernatural Senses. Advanced: Frenzy Giant Size and Aura of Decay.
Nanuuk : Basics: Frenzy War Form, Frenzy Monstrous Self, Silent Toll, Frozen Note, Light of Ennui and Revive the Flesh. Advanced: Prison of Ice and Devastation.
Nanaue: Basics: Frenzy Monstrous Self, Attract, Vigor, Revive the Flesh, Rising Mists and Touch of Darkness. Advanced: Summons and Tumultuous Rain.

On moving Clinging, it could be on both lists. Like Lokathor said, there doesn't have to be perfect numerical balance.

I'm not buying it. I think Monstrous Form is a waste of space in a game where Beast Form and War Form already exist. I could be persuaded to see it exist, but haven't been yet. I even more strongly think stacking it with War Form is bad design (don't stack everything!) and nonsense to boot. A non-humanoid humanoid is gibberish and I don't see myself being persuaded on that point.

Nanuuk look like Yeti, right? That's War Form 100%.

Having increasing Clout modify appearance War/Beast Form would be a solid way to go.

I'm not sold on the Frenzy/non-Frenzy versions either. Nezumi Frenzy on fear and may use Beast Form to escape. That seems to remove the sole reason for having a non-Frenzy version.

Beast Form and War Form are Frenzy-discounted. Done.

I'm alright with it being on both lists, I suppose.

For Yeti, we have Wendigo. They are a type of Leviathan and get Giant Size but neither War Form nor Monstrous Self. Nanuuk are werebears. They look like this:


Having Clout modify War Form and Beast Form doesn't cut it. We want some Lycanthropes to be able to pass for animals and not to. And we want some to go from passing to not passing as they grow more powerful. Mord's suggestion is to do the opposite and have the Elder Lycanthrope look like this:

while the freshly turned newbie looks like this:


That's the opposite of correct!

Whups. I got caught up in it looking more monstrous, and glazed over the "large dangerous animal". Okay, I guess I don't like Mord's take after all. I'll just default back to the original "what your form looks like is determined upon selection" and whether that is humanoid or not is variable.

For Nanuuk I'd just call it War Form in the shape of a Polar Bear, akin to Bagheera getting a beastly cat form.

In my further quest to make sure things don't stack ridiculously... I'm not sure I even like being able to Giant Size on top of War Form. Is there a playable monster type that does that in stories? If not, then perhaps we should put the kaibosh on stacking shape-changing totally.

Werewolves. Here is the transformation sequence from American Werewolf in London. Notice how first David sprouts claws and only then grows giant muscles and gains a foot of height. We also have the transformation sequence in The Prisoner of Azkaban here where the Werewolf sprouts claws and then becomes three times as big while the Nezumi runs the fuck away. We also have here a Bagheera transforming in Cat People who bursts out of her own skin because she is too big to fit inside now. Lycanthropes honestly just get bigger when they transform.

No, I mean beyond that when I am talking about stacking Giant Size and War Form. We're talking 11'-12' tall with Giant Size. That's much larger than your werewolf examples.

A character’s War Form is about a 50% larger than their normal form, and it has claws, or teeth or spines or something.

I consider that to cover just about every movie werewolf I've ever seen including the ones you've mentioned. Those examples are totally in line with War Form. If that's Warform + Giant Size, then what pitiful specimens are mere War Forms? I don't consider this what War Form is representing


Did anyone?

Then again, 50% larger than Michael J Fox is pretty small.

Anywho, Giant Size's bonuses are assumed from being up-sized from a normal size. Just as War Form is. It doesn't seem sensible to stack them in that light.

If you look carefully at the proposed 2e version of War Form, it doesn't increase the character's size or strength. It gives you +2 Agility and a damage 3 natural weapon. It's also a Basic power instead of an Advanced as a result.

I made those changes because many of the new creature types (and honestly several of the old types) in After Sundown 2 really want there to be a power where you sprout claws but don't do a full body transformation into a 8' tall monster. Endala want to be able to sprout fangs. Naga need death coils to go with their poison fangs. Troglodytes would have liked the option to buy razor claws with a single power pick.

Oooh, your War Form really is Teen Wolf. I was still working from ye olde war forme.

Sprouting claws/fangs can and probably should be a separate basic power, but I wouldn't call it War Form since that already has traction as the full monty of transformations.

Tooth and Claw or Beast Aspect or Woge might work for a name. Something to denote a limited transformation.

That way we can keep original War Form as the more full transformation where they become an honest to ghost combat brute.

I've been lurking AS2 related threads for a while, but disclaimer: I'm not 100% on which changes that have been discussed are all-but-published and which ones are pure speculation. If there's a comprehensive upcoming features changelog somewhere I'd love to see it. That said...

From AS1, we have:

• War Form: Advanced; 4 PP, Complex (On Frenzy: 0PP, Simple). +50% size, "transform into a monstrous beast," lethal 4 natural weapon, +3 str, +2 agi.
• Giant Size: Advanced; 4PP, Complex. Grow to 3.5m tall, +6 str, +1 armor, optional +2 to any carried weapon.
• Beast Form: Basic; 1PP, Complex. Size between mouse and human, max combined bonus to str & agi +2, penalties apply based on form.

Adding Monstrous Self to the existing lineup seems totally unnecessary. My interpretation of the existing rules is that Giant Size applies its "giant" buffs to whatever Protean forms you have access to when activated. So, if I'm just a dude and my only Protean power is Giant Size, I have access to my Normal Dude form and my Giant Dude form. If I also know Beast Form (Wolf), then my options are Normal Dude, Giant Dude, Normal Wolf, and Giant Wolf. No reason to add a totally new power to accomplish something that existing powers already cover.

It's not stated how exactly the size increases from War Form and Giant Size stack up. Seems pretty straightforward to me if you just tweak Giant Size from "set height to 3.5m" to "+50% height" and rule that percentages are additive for a total +100% height from stacking War Form + Giant Size. Or you could add a D&D style size category table and have War Form and Giant Size each increase your size category by one step. There's already kind of an implicit size categorization going on here where being rat-sized sets your str to 1, being normal size is 0, and being Giant Size is +6 str over normal (and then there's Kaiju)... Akuma being unable to turn Giant Size off (presumably it can't be dispelled either) is a crude workaround for the lack of explicit size categories as far as I can tell.

However, there's no obvious way I can see to combine War Form and Beast Form. Beast Form by itself is explicitly one of potentially many normal animals, while War Form by itself is explicitly a "monstrous beast" of an indistinct phenotype (unless mandated by supernatural type). A Werewolf's Beast Form is a wolf and their War Form is lupine, so combining them works out (though is kind of superfluous). But, if you can figure a way to combine a Bagheera's ghost-cat War Form with a potential learned Beast Form of, say, a lemur, you're one up on me.

Also, on the subject of increased Clout changing what your form looks like - I was focusing more on the "recognizable as your human self" angle. If you have Grek's War Form and Monstrous Self, you basically have two powers that differ in minor stat changes and how recognizable you are as a human. Looked at from one point of view, it makes thematic sense for a truly powerful and depraved elder of the Kin to lose the ability to speak etc when transformed, while a lesser, more humane youngling would keep more vestiges of their human self even while transformed.

You can also go the other way - more control over your transformation comes with age, so a stripling would be an out of control ragebeast while an elder could sip tea with you while a 9' tall wolfoid.

In any case, Monstrous Self is a waste of time.

EDIT: It occurs to me that if you really do want a power to represent Troglodytes popping razor claws, you should probably have it as a standalone "Tooth And Claw" power as Erik suggests.

Tooth And Claw (or "What Big Teeth You Have" or something ) costs 1PP and a free action to add +1 lethal base to the character's normal unarmed "weapon" for the remainder of a scene, representing a specific minor physical modification determined by supernatural type or player's choice. This way Tooth And Claw stacks with War Form, Giant Size, and Beast Form while still having independent utility.

There sort of already is a "Tooth and Claw" power, it's just fluffed differently and is an Orphic sorcery.

Touch of Darkness lets you deal aggravated damage with their touch, including biting and scratching into metal without hurting themselves.

This sort of thing should probably be a Clout power, but then we're taking a shtick out of Lure of Destruction.

It should be noted that Trogs have this power, as do Bagheera.

Lokathor wrote:I propose the simpler answer: that not every discipline have the same number of powers. That just seems okay to me. If you're going to shake up the whole power list, you'll also want to add some powers based on like, movies and comics and stuff. And as soon as you add one extra power some place you'll have to add an extra power every single place if you're stuck on equal power count per discipline. So then if you can't think of a new power for every discipline are you just going to leave out the cool ones that you can think of? No way, that's dumb.

So just give up on equal powers per discipline. Two should be the minimum per discipline per tier, not the maximum.

I'm not absolutely wedded to the idea of every discipline having equal numbers of powers. It's good for my sense of obsessive categorization, but it's not in and of itself necessary. There are however, quite a few powers for Celerity, Clout, and Fortitude. It's not really problematic to fill them up to the straining point. My basic idea moving forward is to hand out three basics and four advanced for each Discipline. I could see a few disciplines going over or under that, but it's not terribly difficult to fill power, speed, and resilience up to that point. Here's the current list I'm working on:

Celerity
Dextrous Fingers
Nimble Feet
Speed of Sight
- Advanced
Flight
Rapid Thought
Shifting Sands
Shorten the Fuse

Clout
Burrowing
Clinging
Vigor
- Advanced
Devastation
Giant Size
Telekinesis
War Form

Fortitude
Armored in Life
Blood of Ashes
Restore Flesh
- Advanced
Adaptive Resilience
Flesh of Marble
Monstrous Self
Restore Life

Now all of those are pretty easy to justify as powers, and it fills the lists just fine. Here are the problems I'm having with my current list:

Celerity
- Speed of Sight and Rapid Thought are game mechanically different and easily distinguished, but conceptually similar. I'm not sure they need to be different things, and they could probably just be combined into one thing called "Rapid Thought."

- Dextrous Fingers is very clear on what it does (lets you complete repetitive tasks in a lower time frame or autofire with your hands), but it's not very poetic a name. I keep waffling that maybe something more poetic like "hands without shadow" or "shadow fist" would be cooler and therefore better.

- Shorten the Fuse is a kinda weird power that comes from the game's V:tM heartbreaker roots. It would probably be OK to simply cut it.

- If things get cut, there are lots of Flash inspired gimmicks to replace it. Probably the one that gets top billing is the ability to phase into and out of the Shallows.

Clout

- Burrowing is mostly an Anne Rice thing. It would probably be OK to dump it entirely and replace it with a "Tooth and Nail" type ability that just gives you claws and teeth that act as deadly weapons. Of course, popping claws could just as easily be a type of sorcery (or even more than one kind of sorcery, it's not like there aren't plenty of different body weaponry versions in fiction to draw upon).

Fortitude

- I don't think people really care about Adaptive Resilience. It's a movie monster power and it's reasonably classic, but I think it's problematic in an RPG. If it's good enough, players will take it and then do the stupid training montages that adaptive monsters obviously should do but don't because it's bad storytelling. And if it isn't good enough to justify that, then players will ignore it. So I'm thinking it would probably be alright to simply dump it.[/list]

As for the suggestion of not having Monstrous Self and just telling people who want to turn into big beasts that they can take Giant Size and stack it on Beast Form - that would necessitate that Zhu could turn into piggies, Nanuuk could turn into koalas, and Bagheera could turn into house cats. None of those are really particularly desirable in my opinion.

The core issue between War Form and Monstrous Self is that when you War Form, you rip your pants up but can still carry a sword or something. With Monstrous Self, your stuff merges in and you get your pants back when you turn back into a human. Now, Beast Form also lets you transform your pants, so the Beast Form/Giant Size people do have a point. Still, there's enough Lycanthropes who want to turn into a big monster and don't want to turn into a small animal that having a separate Monstrous Self seems to justify itself. There are plenty of Advanced Powers that don't have three splats that want them.

-Username17

If Shorten the Fuse sticks around and Devotions are out, it strikes me as more of an Authority power than a Celerity power anyway.

Omegonthesane wrote:If Shorten the Fuse sticks around and Devotions are out, it strikes me as more of an Authority power than a Celerity power anyway.

That's reasonable. I think that Shorten the Fuse could actually be combined into the new Authority power of Inspiration. Speaking of which, here's where I'm going with Veil and Authority:

Authority
Command
Inspiration
Mesmerism
- Advanced
Cloud Memory
Conditioning
Puppet Strings
Will to Power

Veil
Blind the Senses
Hide From Notice
Mask
- Advanced
Cloud Memory
Façade of Nonchalance
Lost and Found
Phantasmagoria

A thing you'll probably notice is the idea of Cloud Memory being on both lists. That's because it fits both places, but also because it's a really important power for Vow of Silence, so handing it out to lots of different creatures is just generally a good plan. Another thing you'll notice is the removal of Hide in Plain Sight. That is because the ability to use Veil when enemies can observe you simply comes on automatically as soon as you get any Advanced power. So if you have Blind the Senses, you can blind someone you can see who can't see you, but if you also took Lost and Found or something, you could blind someone while they were looking at you.

Anyway, issues I'm looking at with these:

Authority

- I was never really happy with Suggestion, and I rather like having a "create emotion" power there instead. But it also kind of sits on Magnetism's side of the yard. There's probably room for several "create emotions" powers (V:tM had like a dozen), but I could also see simple reductionism making Authority and Magnetism share one. In any case, Inspiration could subsume Quicken the Fuse and I don't think anyone would mind that much.

- Will to Power definitely does something, in that every Basic and all the other Advanced powers require eye contact to start. But it seems kind of clumsy, and Puppet Strings already doesn't have a continuous eye contact requirement. I'm really thinking of just scrapping Will to Power, letting people do Authority through capturing the target's vision or Telepathy, and just telling people who want to mentally dominate folks without eye contact to go load up on Discernment until they can initiate direct mind contact. There are of course many things that could be created to fill its place such as the old VtM Rationalize power or the Shadowrun Mob Mind effect.

Veil

- As Veil grows into more of an Illusions discipline and less being just the old VtM Obfuscate, it makes less sense to have modular powers. Specifically Lost and Found no longer works as "make your Veil powers persistent" and is more about hiding objects and doors and cars and stuff. Like the VtR Touch of Shadow. I'm not sure if that should be a thing.

- The illusion thing where you make a hologram (like a D&D Image or Shadowrun Phantasm) and the illusion thing where you make someone hallucinate (like a D&D Phantasm or VtM Horrid Reality) are pretty different and could probably be different Advanced Veil powers.

-Username17

Are there going to be Basic powers that are on two or more lists, or only Advanced ones?

My concern here is with tracking prerequisites - if a Basic power is on two different lists, you need to actually specifically track which set of Advanced powers you unlock by picking it up. A moot point for Advanced powers in the new edition where Elder powers are being removed in favour of MRoVP.