What's That Under Nuln?

Game Master Aubster

Opening up the discussion tab :)

I found this quote that summarizes nicely what's happening:

‘I never seen nothin’. There were no ratmen, you hear? Just bad luck. Wilbur slipped and fell, that’s all. He got careless, fell down a ladder onto his own knife. Ten times. Just bad luck.’
– Kristiana Fellger, retired Sewer Jack

Hello! Resisting the urge to look in the rulebook at all of the interesting classes. Rather, just looking forward to this starting.

Also, poor Wilbur. Always sad when someone falls on his own knife ten times.

Out of interest are our group old adventuring companions coming back together or veterans in their own separate rights who'll be thrown together?

I think my preference is for some mix of the above. Maybe Dirk has worked with someone on and off. Maybe he only knows someone else by reputation.

If the group would rather be a longstanding party I'm fine with that, but trying a new sort of party dynamic might be fun. What if we are all renowned veterans and then have to sort out party dynamics like beginners?

Let's assume that you only know each other by reputation or not at all unless there's a clear reason why you could know each other.

I'm thinking everyone has probably heard of Ruprecht's character because powerful wizards are pretty rare. There's probably only a handful in Nuln.

Likewise a high level Warrior-Priest that's also a noble? People throughout the Empire have probably at least heard of her.

But a high level coachman, or bailiff or villager? Probably not so much. But, it's possible that the coachman passes through the village on a routine basis so they'd sort of know each other. Up to you.

I like the idea of knowing each other by reputation. I’d also be interested in hearing brief backgrounds if any have it available. Or at least what your reputation would be.

Also...I have Warleader. So anyone who looks at Adela as a leader gets +1 SL on one WP check each round. Her noble blood talent is a good excuse to say that another PC is a subordinate, even if they think she is dangerously incompetent and won’t actually listen. It’s up to you, so use the +1 SL on your WP tests if you think it is in character.

Reputation
* In high society, her reputation is a mixed bag. As a girl she was so problematic that she had to be given to the Cult of Ulric. The fact that she excelled brings honor to her family. The fact that she had to be sent away to die brings shame. Her father, now advancing in age, has done his best to make the former more common. Regardless of how one sees her, she has a reputation for being a headstrong warrior, who is a bit too desperate to prove herself and who is too willing to take unglamorous assignments (such as entering the sewers of Nuln looking for missing peasants).
* In low society, her reputation is quite different. A combination of her combat prowess, good looks, and desire to protect the common man has made her into a folk hero. The faithful of Ulric are quite fond of her. She has led more than one free company in defense of a village or hamlet when other forces either could not, or would not, respond.

Some common knowledge about one of my favorite cities

Nuln is unusual. It has been an independent city-state and has also served as the provincial capital. It even served as the capital of the Empire. There are claims the city was part of the Reikland, Stirland, and Averland as well as being part of Wissenland. Regardless, Nuln is and has always been its own city. Currently, Nuln is not really a part of Wissenland, but owes its allegiance to its Elector Count, the Countess Emmanuelle von Liebwitz. While she nominally rules the city, much of the true power is in the burgher class, the various guilds, and among her own advisors.

Emmanuelle von Liebwitz (Grand Countess of Wissenland, Countess of Nuln, and Duchess of Meissen) gained her seat around the same time that Karl Franz was crowned Emperor. A childhood friend of the current ruler, she had a claim to the title of Elector Count, but not a good one. By currying the favour of Franz—some suggest she seduced him—she took the title of Elector Countess in 2503.

A few years ago, a particularly zealous man named Felix von Halstadt ingratiated himself with the Countess. Having the support of the Knights of the White Wolf, Felix began a crusade to rid the city of Mutants and cultists, to hunt down every one and make them confess their sins in the bowels of the Iron Tower. Von Halstadt established a secret police force, consisting mostly of informants and disreputable types, to watch for suspicious behaviour.

A specialized group of watchmen, the Sewer Jacks patrol Nuln’s sewers. As Dwarfs first constructed Nuln’s sewage system, the tunnels and channels are larger and safer (structurally) than those of other cities, such as Middenheim. Because they are so serviceable, they attract all sorts of nasty things.

My core idea for Ubaldo is an exemplary baliff from poor peasant stock who rose through the ranks through sheer determination. A much higher willpower than any other attribute to start with is informing this idea.

Will do as much as I can now but going to bed pretty soon.

@Aubster: Any Noble house that might especially suit as his employers?

** spoiler omitted **

My core idea for Ubaldo is an exemplary baliff from poor peasant stock who rose through the ranks through sheer determination. A much higher willpower than any other attribute to start with is informing this idea.

Will do as much as I can now but going to bed pretty soon.

@Aubster: Any Noble house that might especially suit as his employers?

The Becker family owns massive holdings outside the city with multiple tenants. Lady Elsbeth Becker is the current head of the house. She spends almost all of her time in Nuln, in the family estate on Nuln Hill near the palace.

That sounds perfect! Ubaldo shall rise from a lowly tax collector through the ranks in the name of Becker!

I'm largely there. Working out a few mechanical details and his background.

Ubaldo is focused on doing his job and doing it well, though he has the odd side task in calligraphy. He can read and write in several languages and is adept at sniffing out problems.

I'm largely there. Working out a few mechanical details and his background.

Ubaldo is focused on doing his job and doing it well, though he has the odd side task in calligraphy. He can read and write in several languages and is adept at sniffing out problems.

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **...

It all looks good.

The gameplay posts have been quite the read thus far. :)

Yup! Great enjoying reading the intros

I still need to finish spending Dirk's equipment money...I never finished that up. I'll try to get it in the morning.

Is there any type of light source that doesn’t require hands? Great axe + darkness = bad without one.

To confirm:

Do we choose from our career trappings OR spend 100 gold, or is that gold in addition to our career trappings?

Yeah, i have to finish up the fluffy bits on Hanna, including trappings....which include a magic item....care to elaborate on that Aubster?

Adela, for light purposes I was planning on having Dirk carry his weapon and a lantern to start with. He has a shield to use as well, but it isn't as important as light (and he's very decent at defense without the shield).

We will want other solutions as well though.

Well, my original plan was axe and shield. As we haven’t started yet I can always switch melee two handed for melee basic. I suppose it would make more sense anyways, for someone who mainly fights in thick woods and under Middenheim. A two handed axe might well be unwieldy.

And Hanna can cast the Petty Magic spell Light , pretty much anytime...lasts for 54 minutes. :)

Switched to one handed. A Greataxe doesn’t do that much more damage compared to a hand weapon anyways. And a light source is more important. She will have her shield on her back for the most part, I think

To confirm:

Do we choose from our career trappings OR spend 100 gold, or is that gold in addition to our career trappings?

Either or not both

Yeah, i have to finish up the fluffy bits on Hanna, including trappings....which include a magic item....care to elaborate on that Aubster?

Hmmm...magic item....

Some choices

A dwarf made weapon of your choice, it can glow brightly when you want it to or be extra damaging to undead

An amulet that changes color as the holders mood changes...if you attached it to someone else it’d help tell if they were hiding their emotions

A whistle that allows you to give simple instructions to eagles

Boots that don’t slip so you can move across slippery ground like it was normal ground

There seems to be three avenues of investigation you want to do as soon as possible. Meet with the seers, meet with the sewer jack and pick up gossip in the taverns, correct?

Where to you want to establish yourselves while in Nuln? Are you staying in the typical spots (Temple of Ulric, Expressway Coach Inn, University visitors lodging, Lady Becker's estate and a decent tavern) or slumming it in Shantytown where the sewer jacks would reside, or something else? It would be no problem for you all to stay at the Coach Inn or Lady Becker's estate if you want. Do you want to all stay at the same place or split up? When you're questioning the sewer jacks and hunting for gossip are you going to wear your finery like you wore to the palace or go undercover?

Boots and weapon seem to be the most useful. The weapon saves you from casting for a light source. The fewer spells that need to be cast, the safer. Plus it can be anything from a battleaxe to a staff.

The boots could also be useful in the slippery underground. Eagles whispering and mood rings, a bit less so.

Yeah, i was thinking a halberd would fit the description :)

Btw, to answer the Gm’s question: Adela will stay in her quarters at the temple of Ulric, unless splitting the party is deemed dangerous

To be clear, Ubaldo plans to sleep in his own quarters in Lady Becker's estate.

Jarvey will head back to his lodgings at the Expressway Coach Inn, and extend the invite to the others.

Trying to understand the Practical quality on Dirk's warhammer a bit better. I can see two valid interpretations:

First: Practical Weapons get +1 SL on a failed test.

#1: An opposed test still counts as succeeding or failing if the check would succeed or fail a simple test. Dirk has a Melee (Basic) of 63, so if he rolled a 63 or a 64 with a normal weapon the result would be the same. With a Practical weapon, however, his result of 64 actually gets him to +1 SL instead of +0 SL and it's actually better than rolling a 63. Whether he hits or misses (or is hit or defends) is a separate question.

#2: An opposed test counts as succeeding or failing based on the comparison of SL, applied after the determination is made. So Practical would never have an impact on an attack since +1 SL after a miss doesn't do anything. If Dirk fails a Melee (Defense) check, however, Practical would kick in and save him one Wound by making up for one of the SL he failed by.

Basically I guess the difference would be whether success or failure is determined before or after the SL comparison on an opposed check.

Now that I've written them out, both seem counter intuitive to me in different ways. In the #1 case, rolling slightly higher in a narrow band can be better than rolling lower. That's weird, but Practical helps to mitigate the effects of rolling even worse which sounds right. The #2 case seems off to me since the impact of your weapon quality only has an impact in fairly narrow circumstances.

Any thoughts GM? How do these things actually work?

--

The ramifications of how the rules terminology works here will carry over to a lot of other places. The first one I can think of is the Test: entry on talents. Those tests get +1 SL on a 'success'. Probably that supports the #1 reading?

Let's say that Dirk is making a Perception (Hearing) 26 check that isn't opposed. (He has the Actue Sense (Hearing) talent) Rolling a 27 would fail, giving a result of +0 SL but rolling a 26 would give a result of +1 SL instead of +0 SL because of his talent. His chance of success isn't improved due to the Test entry but when he does succeed, he gains additional success.

Because it seems relevant: above I was talking about corner cases. I'm looking at Hannah's first cast against the demon here, and I'm thinking that she actually got +7 SL, adding one from her Inherent Diction talent.

Trying to understand the Practical quality on Dirk's warhammer a bit better. I can see two valid interpretations:

First: Practical Weapons get +1 SL on a failed test.

#1: An opposed test still counts as succeeding or failing if the check would succeed or fail a simple test. Dirk has a Melee (Basic) of 63, so if he rolled a 63 or a 64 with a normal weapon the result would be the same. With a Practical weapon, however, his result of 64 actually gets him to +1 SL instead of +0 SL and it's actually better than rolling a 63. Whether he hits or misses (or is hit or defends) is a separate question.
Let's see if we can put our heads together and come up with something.
I do see your point and it doesn't make sense that you get an SL +1 on a failed test and only a SL +0 on a test you pass. How about this proposed Aubster Rule Change #1: If you have a practical weapon, any SL +0 or worse roll gains +1 SL, so a -2 SL becomes a -1 and -1 SL becomes a -0 and a 0 becomes a +1 Basically your weapon is good enough to counteract part of your failure

#2: An opposed test counts as succeeding or failing based on the comparison of SL, applied after the determination is made. So Practical would never have an impact on an attack since +1 SL after a miss doesn't do anything. If Dirk fails a Melee (Defense) check, however, Practical would kick in and save him one Wound by making up for one of the SL he failed by.
But Dirk could 'fail' his attack roll and still cause damage if he failed less badly then his opponent. Derek rolls and has SL -2 but his opponent rolls and has SL -4, Dirk would be victor in the battle even though his attack was a failure. Having a practical weapon in that case would mean Dirk would do an additional wound of damage

Basically I guess the difference would be whether success or failure is determined before or after the SL comparison on an opposed check.

Now that I've written them out, both seem counter intuitive to me in different ways. In the #1 case, rolling slightly higher in a narrow band can be better than rolling lower. That's weird, but Practical helps to mitigate the effects of rolling even worse which sounds right. The #2 case seems off to me since the impact of your weapon quality only has an impact in fairly narrow circumstances.

Any thoughts GM? How do these things actually work?

--

The ramifications of how the rules terminology works here will carry over to a lot of other places. The first one I can think of is the Test: entry on talents. Those tests get +1 SL on a 'success'. Probably that supports the #1 reading?

Let's say that Dirk is making a Perception (Hearing) 26 check that isn't opposed. (He has the Actue Sense (Hearing) talent) Rolling a 27 would fail, giving a result of +0 SL but rolling a 26 would give a result of +1 SL instead of...

I think Aubster Rule Change #1 would take care of that problem

Because it seems relevant: above I was talking about corner cases. I'm looking at Hannah's first cast against the demon here, and I'm thinking that she actually got +7 SL, adding one from her Inherent Diction talent.

That sounds right, I forgot the talent.

Rule change #1 sounds good.

FYI folks - don't have access to the rulebook on my work's laptop, so might be tardy posting in combat. Don't wait for me! :)

Just want to get my accounting right.

So from her attack with the light dart, Hanna has Advantage +7.
Not sure why Instinctive Diction gives her +1...

Then from her dodge, does she get another +7 to Advantage, for a total of Advantage +14 ??

You're mixing two things up, Hanna.

The Dart attack got +7 SL. That helps the effectiveness of the dart (but demons are stupid apparently) but it doesn't change anything about Advantage. You get +1 advantage for winning an opposed test, among other things. That test wasn't opposed, so I'm not 100% that it should give advantage at all.

Winning the Dodge test would give +1 Advantage, so you'd either have one or two.

You can't gain more than one Advantage from any single event that I'm aware of.

***

On the Instinctive Diction thing, the formatting of Talents makes this part easy to miss. The real source for this is the Talent Format sidebar on page 132. If talents have a Test entry, they name the tests for which they add +1 SL per time the talent is taken on all successful tests.

Instinctive Diction has a Test entry for Language (Magick), so any successful Language (Magick) test gives you +1 SL. So when you succeeded with +6 SL just based on the roll, you got +7 SL instead.

One further example. Dirk is sort of bad at Cool tests since his career advances neither the Cool skill nor Willpower. But it did give him access to the Stout-hearted talent. The first time Dirk bought the talent, it let him test to remove Broken conditions at the end of his turn as well as at the end of the round, giving him extra chances to get out of Broken at least. It also gave him +1 SL on any successful test against Broken. Because Cool is such a problem for Dirk and I don't want him running away from fights (for very long at least), I bought the talent a second time. That way, even if Dirk only gets a bare success on his Cool test to remove Broken, he gets +2 SL on it and removes two Broken conditions instead of just one. That's really important if we start meeting critters with Terror 3 that can apply three Broken Conditions, for instance.

So Dirk is pretty easy to scare off for a character of this level (aside from leaving Villager there wasn't much I could do about that), but he should have a decent chance to recover quickly.

Ah, right I was conflating SL and Advantage....got it ! Thanks

So, Hanna has +2 Advantage ? LOL

Ah, right I was conflating SL and Advantage....got it ! Thanks

So, Hanna has +2 Advantage ? LOL

I guess technically 1 because you didn’t wound the demon

Advantage is secured each time you win an Opposed Test in combat, you assess the battlefield using your Skills, or when your spirits are lifted. The following provides some examples of this, but is far from exhaustive, and the GM is encouraged to hand out Advantage tokens as suits the circumstances.
• Surprise: Attacking Surprised enemies brings +1 Advantage. See page 169.
• Charging: Charging headlong into combat grants +1 Advantage. See page 165.
• Assess: If you use one of your Skills to secure a tactical advantage, gain +1 Advantage. See individual Skill descriptions in Chapter 4: Skills and Talents for more details concerning this.
• Victory: Whenever you defeat an important NPC, gain +1 Advantage. Subduing a party nemesis may grant +2 Advantage.
• Winning: If you win an Opposed Test during combat gain +1 Advantage.
• Outmanouevre: If you wound an opponent without engaging in an Opposed Test, gain +1 Advantage. If the demon had been wounded then you would have gotten +1 Advantage for doing so.

Ubaldo has the Nose for Trouble talent, as hopefully do others, so we may not get jumped so easily.

Apologies everyone, it’ll be tomorrow before I post. Tied up by 9 mutants attacking the party in the other game.

No worries! That is an ever-so-slightly complex combat!

I know I said today but finishing off the Ubersreik campaign took all evening. Now I will be able to focus on Nuln for a while as the other characters recuperate in Ubersreik. So, posting starting again tomorrow, I promise. :)

No worries! That is an ever-so-slightly complex combat!

17 total combatants, 11 GM controlled combatants, mutants, and critical hits, and multiple fumbles and spells that actually worked and corruption points and and and...1 GM brain exploded BOOM

A true test of both organization and sanity. Sadly I’m pretty sure that the experience left you with a corruption point

Only one? ;)

Wee heads up gang - our management in their infinite wisdom are pressing ahead with an ISO audit (via Skype) which I'm heavily involved with due to my Ops Super role.

Been prepping all day today and audit is tomorrow - will likely be Friday before I'm back in the saddle again. Bear with and bot Jarvey if/where necessary.

Edit: Hope i fare better than Scheisse Meister Jarvey!

Best of luck!

Good luck, Jarvey!