Good to go except equipment.
I also need equipment, though I'm probably not going to have a huge amount of gear.
My stats are also done except for equipment
I don't have combat stuff yet, but from what I understand, this isn't going to be a super combat heavy game. As for equipment, Diana would have some textbooks, a few dogeared 600-page novels, a powerful laptop, a big-ass gaming rig, and an even larger sword.
Physical: Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
Social: Presence 3, Manipulation 2, Composure 3
Computer 1
Crafts 2 (Illustration)
Investigation
Medicine
Occult 2 (Tarot)
Politics
Science
Athletics 1
Brawl
Drive 1
Firearms
Larceny
Stealth 1
Survival 1
Weaponry
Animal Ken 2
Empathy 2
Expression 3
Intimidation
Persuasion 2
Socialize 2
Streetwise
Subterfuge
Language 1 (Spanish)
Resources 1
Mentor 2 (Grandma)
Eye for the Strange 2
Taste 1 (Illustrations)
Willpower 5
Defense 4
Init +6
Speed 9
VirtueCareful
ViceJealous/Envy
I might change things a bit, especially Vice/Virtue as I'm not hundred percent sold on that myself.
Mechanics are done with exception of gear
I think I'm completely ready now.
Far as I can tell, I am completely ready to go!
Ok I should be ready to go now
Alright all, finally gone through your characters and they mostly look good, but I've got some comments/questions for people. I'm a bit busy later in the day, so this may not get going until over the weekend or on Monday, but we're in the final stretch! Please just respond to my thoughts below. (The order of characters is just the order in which I clicked on your profiles, so it doesn't really mean anything.)
Unseen Sense is only 2 dots in Chronicles of Darkness, and you get 1 dot of Resources for free, so you have 2 unspent Merit dots. Enjoy them! I might suggest Professional Training, it's a solid choice that seems fitting for you. At 2 dots, it'll give you 2 dots of Contacts in Psychiatrists, and turn 2 Asset Skills (probably Medicine and Empathy?) into 9-again rolls.
Your Willpower is miscalculated in the profile, although it's right in the stat line. Same with Initiative. I'm guessing you bumped your Composure at one point, the same thing happens to me with characters.
Where did Hunter get 2 dots in Investigation? That suggests a near-professional level of problem-solving and investigative ability. I'm not saying you shouldn't have it, but I'd love to see a reason.
Could you copy your backstory info and Aspirations into the profile? It'd help with referencing.
Where did Diana learn to Drive such that she has 2 dots? That suggests a very cool head and enough knowledge and skill to be a professional in some capacity.
Could you copy your backstory info into the profile? It'd help with referencing.
I'm vaguely intrigued that your Art specialty is in Academics rather than Expression, meaning it's more about Art history than its creation? But 3 dots in Expression and the specialty in Crafts also fulfill that. 2 dots in Occult suggests a lot of in-depth research into myths and folk tales, which seems a little higher than I'd have expected, but it could be explained. I have a similar question about Animal Ken--2 dots is a basic professional level, so where did she learn to do that?
Could you copy your backstory info, Aspirations, and Breaking Point questions/answers into the profile? It'll make referencing easier.
It's interesting to me that your Resolve is the highest of your Mental Attributes, feels like Wits would be the highest there. Thoughts?
In Skills, I'm curious about Investigation being as high as it is, especially compared to Academics or Science if you're an Environmental Science major with a Biology minor. Medicine also seems high... I'd say it makes more sense to switch the scores on those, so it's Academics 2, Investigation 1, Medicine 1, Science 2. If you have thoughts on why it's the other way, though, feel free to let me know.
For Physical, 2 dots in Brawl suggests formal training, which you hadn't mentioned before. Firearms 3 also seems high, because that almost always means combat experience; as a hunter, 2 Dots seems more fitting there.
For Merits, my only comment is that Marksmanship usually only works with actual guns. It seems okay for bows, though, so I'll allow it to work for one or the other--your pick (which I'm assuming is bow). I.e, you take Marksmanship (Bows) at 1 dot, meaning you can have a higher max aiming bonus with bows, but not regular guns.
I'm not sure where you got the stats for your bow, but my first instinct is to give it more or less the same stats as the crossbow from the back of the Chronicles book, albeit without the three-turn reload. Thoughts here?
In the Skills department, 4 dots in Computers is a lot, but it's kind of your character's thing and we've discussed it, so I'm down. 3 dots in Streetwise strikes me as a little odd, especially given your current Social Attribute setup, but it does feel like the sort of thing you could explain--just drop me a line on that idea.
Your Defense should be two higher (Dexterity/Wits ** + Athletics **), but otherwise that section looks good. Could you copy your backstory and Breaking Point questions/answers into your profile, along with your Aspirations? It makes referencing them a lot easier.
It looks like you have 2 too many dots in Mental skills--I count 9 total, and I'm assuming that was supposed to be your 7. Dropping Academics and Science by 1 each makes the most sense to me, but other changes would work too. Otherwise Skills look good to me.
I'm assuming your Contacts Merit is the one that comes from Professional Training; marking who your Contacts are would be good for reference. Probably Military, maybe Police?
If you could copy your backstory info, Aspirations, and Breaking Point questions/answers into the profile that'd be great to help with referencing those.
Worst Thing She's Ever Done: A gentle soul at heart, and despite that all the... things that her father has done to her, Diana feels terrible about the fact that, when visiting her father, she unleashed a vicious, acerbic tirade against him. Especially when he died a week later.
Worst Thing She Could Do: Hurting someone just because they hurt her in some minor way.
Worst Thing Anyone Could Do: Hurting someone just because they're different somehow.
What She Forgot: The force that possessed her classmates to nearly beat her to death when she was twelve was the Wraith of her dead father, still violent and vicious, and especially bitter ever since her denouncement of him just before he died. She saw his face, snarling and howling, imprinted upon each of her classmates as they nearly killed her. Owen, on the other hand, is a friendly Changeling who couldn't decided whether or not to help Diana with her stunted social skills, before supernatural elements became obviously involved. He quickly changed into a schoolchild around Diana's age and fought against the Wraith magically, before finally, temporarily dispersing it. Temporarily. He guided Diana through life, and it brought him great joy to see him finally mature into a joyous young woman with hobbies and friends. In order to not eventually accidentally reveal the existence of the supernatural to her, however, he left. When Bruno returned and nearly drove her to suicide, he came and went all-out on Bruno, once again temporarily dispersing him, and placed wards on Diana before imperfectly wiping her memory of the whole event.
Her Greatest Trauma: Her father nearly raping her before her mother busted him and knocked him out cold with a pipe wrench.
Two dots is a bit much, actually. I'll reassign.
Huh, it just doesn't work in the profile. Putting Backstory up soon.
Reassigned to extra dot in Drive to Academics, and put the backstory in.
The first dot of Professional Training gives you 2 dots in Contacts related to your profession. I figured my publishing agency would be a logical place to know people through. Honestly, I might just grab the third dot of Professional Training if I have one more merit dot to spend.
Thanks Loup, will make those changes you suggested probably tomorrow!
Yeah, forgot that Speed is 5 + whatever; that's supposed to be 10. I didn't notice the mental skills, but I'll fix it (probably in the way that you suggested). My contacts are from Professional Training, and I was thinking they'd likely be contacts within the military as well as local law enforcement.
I'll copy that stuff soon.
Reassigned to extra dot in Drive to Academics, and put the backstory in.
Well, you do have to keep Skills within the category at character creation, so that you keep the 11/7/4 setup. So you couldn't reassign the point in Drive to Academics... but you could put it in, say, Stealth, which seems like it'd make sense.
It actually would. Thanks!
I figure that the reason he had 1s in his social stats is that he did not have alot of time in witness protection making friends, since I imagine that he had to move around a few different times; Plus, he's (at least in my head) a math genius and people who are that level of gifted have problems with getting people to understand them or communicating effectively (it's why alot of kids with extremely high IQ are initially believed to be unintelligent).
John is not quite that bad, but he still has trouble with making assumptions that he would be understood.
As far as his streetwise goes, I took it to more represent his hanging out in "that" part of the internet. Also, he spent some time in the foster system, so he did have a chance to learn basic life lessons about the street.
As for my defense, I thought I got that updated.. It's fixed now.
I'll get all of my character background and aspiration stuff collated and added to my profile.
I looked into the specialties for Expression and found Art not in there. In that case I went for the other specialty that made sense and took Art in Academics.
As for my two dots in Occult, I reckon Michelle's grandma has taught her a thing or two. It explains at least the Tarot specialty. If Occult is too high, I could take a 3rd point in crafts if that's okay. Her father is a carpenter, so that might explain that she's more handy than most besides her usual drawings. If not, where would you recommend I put the extra point in?
Animal Ken is indeed quite high is 2 dots is already basic professional level. I imagined her having a dog so at least 1 point into it. Maybe the other is well put into Streetwise. I don't think Michelle will ever try to Intimidate or use Subterfuge quickly. Hey that makes for a better Virtue: Honest.
I'll put my Aspirations and Backstory in it right away.
I moved a point from wits into intelligence, a point from composure into presence, and a point from investigation into crafts.
I agree that investigation was high so I shifted a point over to science, I intend for medicine to be a bit on the upper end because of his extensive study of after he shot the hunter, the biology minor is also supposed to be a premed first responder kind of deal. I did switch resolve and wits, I was kind of in between on the two so if you think wits fits then sure. For the bow what would you suggest for an initiative mod cause I don't thin a minus 5 fits (that was the crossbows). I'll look into fixing the background asap.
@ Michelle: Remember that the specialties listed in the book are examples, not the only ones you can take. You can pick anything that makes sense as long as the GM agrees.
It seems that tonight is the night for this Loup :-)
Indeed it is! I was up very late last night working on an essay, so I don't know that I'll finish putting together a sensible post to kick things off tonight, but if not it'll happen tomorrow morning/noonish. I'm very excited to get things going here, it should be a very fun time!
Or we'll all die horribly!
Or we'll all die horribly!
I think that is the fun part the DM means :-)
EDIT: Updated based on GM comments.
My sincere apologies for starting this almost two days after intended. I got busier than expected on Tuesday between classwork, homework, and actually packing up and getting ready to head home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Follow that up with my Wednesday being jam-packed with family events, including visiting my great-grandmother for her 91st birthday, and I found myself unable to post or even really check in during the last day. Finally had time to finish this up, met some block in finishing the post, but here we are! I hope you forgive me and are as good to get this going as I am.
By the by, something I realized when setting this up and looking at characters/the book: I missed something in Contacts, and I think several of you good folks did as well. As far as I'm telling in Chronicles of Darkness, each dot of Contacts gives you a separate, individual assortment of Contacts to work with. Most of you have it from Professional Training, and I'd assume it works the same way in that case, so those of you who have multiple dots of Contacts can pick additional groups for that as needed. I drew on several of your Contacts for the opening post, and took some liberties with possible choices there, but you're by no means beholden to my potential choices to figure out your own.
Related to that and as something that's worth noting in a more general sense, I'm a big fan of playing by what makes sense given the world and the characters, and not strictly tying roleplaying stuff to the mechanics. Even if, for example, Aaron doesn't have actual Contacts in the Romney PD, it still makes sense that a detective he's in contact with due to his in-game job would get him basic information. If that's the case, he simply doesn't do as much, perhaps, and doesn't give a mechanical benefit.
Anyway, I hope you're all ready to get this swinging in full gear. I'm very hopeful for a good time!
Hmmm, so one of my dots could be my publisher while the other might be media contacts that I've made giving interviews and the like?
Works for me.
I'm checking in as I can here, but still visiting family and have plenty going on with that, so I may not be able to get a full update here until tomorrow or Sunday. Doing what I can though! Hope folks are enjoying the holiday season, or just the weekend.
Jeez, three posts in a row here, but something important to note that I think some people have missed: the gallery opening is NOT tonight in-game. It's tomorrow. Dressing up to go out and ordering pizza is all well and good, but if your characters go to the gallery tonight they may very well be sorely disappointed!
(Of course, they could also be rewarded with clues. Or met with supernatural danger. Hmm....)
I probably muddled that somewhere with all the typing, or didn't make it clear enough, but just so you all know! I'm happy to retcon things to make sense as well.
Russel is going tonight to scope it out!
In lieu of excuses or reasons, I'll just give an apology: I'm sincerely sorry it's taken me this long to update. I'm now in the final week of classes at school, with a week of final exams to follow, and that workload has been steadily eating away at time; likewise, other personal commitments have been keeping me busy as well. None of that necessarily kept me so tied up that I couldn't get up a post, especially a simple one to the tune of "I'm busy, sorry guys," but my mind's been all over the place lately and it's been hard to make myself sit down and formulate a full, coherent post responding to developments.
So, again, my apologies. Posting for me is likely to stay kind of slow the next week or two, but hopefully it can pick up a little bit as time moves on (although by then we're hitting the holiday season, and I've got a family trip planned in early-mid-January...). I'm doing my best, so please hang in there if you can, everyone! I really hope for all my games to be wonderful things and I'm in it for the long haul--delays may come and go, but I don't plan on disappearing or shutting things down.
My friends and I actually tried to watch that movie the other day, actually. We stopped 17 minutes in.
No worries take your time.
It's fine.
@Aaron SHUT UP CURSE OF THE DRAGONSLAYER IS FANTASTIC XD
I think we're all here patiently waiting. I know I am.
I will soon have all of your secrets, my pretties. yes, sooonnnn....*cough, cough*
Sorry. I'll stop now.
Take your time, Loup. Life always gets in the way of things and always has priority.
So, neat thing just happened. Onyx Path released a new CoD book that they're calling the spiritual successor to Arsenal and Arsenal Reloaded. So there's some very interesting new merits and conditions that just got added.
Hmm, interesting. I'll have to look into it, that'll probably be useful a little way down the line.
Do you happen to have those? As a physical character, I'd like to take a look and see if there's anything interesting in there that I can use in the near future.
I can provide a copy if you'd like it. I bought it last night. Some of its merits are an absolute flood of fighting styles, some neat stuff about intimidation and violence, and a bunch of supernatural merits including things like psychic combat and technomancy.
It also has some crazy ass templates for characters/NPCs. Some of them include being impossible lucky, being infected with a supernatural sentient disease, being a super soldier, being so pacifist that you can actually supernaturally prevent violence, and being a psychic vampire.
Yeah, I'd love a copy. Can you send it to me?
You've got it. Should be in your email.
does it have anything related to hacking? he asked hopefully.
Not that I saw, no. It's pretty much all combat focused.
Actually can I get a copy of that as well?
Hey loup mind if I trade my firearm style merits for the new archery ones. They seem to fit better. Also should have a post up tonight or tomorrow, damn finals.
The bowmanship merits are basically made for hunters.
The bowmanship merits are basically made for hunters.
Exactly