Just wanted to apologize for my sparse posting this week, I've been feeling a bit under the weather for the past couple days. Of course it had to happen right when things were picking up too. :(
Also I had a dream about this last night, in it I gained a new power that I guess made me easily ignorable including recorded evidence such as video. So I was sneaking around the base at night. Just thought I'd share that.
I've been using the Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: United States 2007-2010 from the CDC to figure out Dakota's height and weight (which I haven't actually mentioned anywhere.) They only measured about two hundred people at each age to figure out their numbers, but it shouldn't be too far off from the national averages at that time. Anyways, it says that 5'4" is the average height for a thirteen year old boy, and that most of those they measured were between 4'10" and 5'11". So use that info as you will.
You did a great job building what I was envisioning. I don't have any problems with the low physical stats either, it makes sense with the background I wrote up. Two things to note though, her native language is English and I'm not really sure what to do about the home city or area knowledge skill since she moved around so much she wouldn't really have had one. At best she could be expected to know what should be in an average small town.
Ooops, didn't notice that your reason for joining up was top follow an older sibling.... Since that bit's a little too similar to mine, I'll try to come up with an alternative reason for joining the PDF
Yeah, I was worried about that when I saw yours at first too, I almost went back and re-wrote my whole thing. In the end though it was my fault for taking so long. Anyways after I thought about it for a while I figured they were sufficiently different enough for something that could easily be a common occurrence. For one you chose a step-sibling as opposed to my choice of a biological one. Additionally the implied outcome is completely different for both situations, yours being alive and mine probably dead.
Heh, don't worry about it. I've been dragging my feet on my background anyways, mostly because I usually pick something mechanically interesting first and then build my character's personality and background around that. For example I once made a character who was very good at sneaking around, so I styled them as someone who watched without being seen, and extrapolated from there to the point that they were a culturephile and were extremely talkative when they actually had the chance to talk to someone. Anyways, due to that being how I normally operate doing it this way just feels sort of backwards in comparison.
I still did it in the end, although I can't vouch for the quality since I wrote it over several days and likely forgot or added several things in the mean time. So without further ado, here is my submission of Dakota Annabelle Lannings.
Background:
'This will probably be my last post for a while, I just finished my UN PDF application! Anyways, this is DevonD signing off.' With a final click and a split second of loading the young bloggers post appeared on her feed. The virtual darkness that had filled her field of view faded away as she pulled the goggles up from her eyes and squinted against the light that now filled them. A soft giggle escaped her lips, she had finally been able to convince her mother to go along with her decision after all, and was now on the path to her ultimate goal. The thirteen year old took a few minutes to reminisce on how things had finally turned out her way.
'I suppose it all started when I was born December third, 2064 as Dakota Annabelle Lannings in San Fransisco. Not even a year later everything blew up when the aliens came! That was when my mother and older brother escaped with me to some family back east in southern Nebraska. Apparently my father died at that time too, which I guess sucks, but seeing as how I was so young no one could really expect me to know the man.' She was then promptly distracted by a cloud that she would later swear looked like the head of an ancient american president which she just had to take a picture of and then poorly shop before posting it on her blog along with an apology saying this would be her real last post.
Somewhere in Dakota's subconcious her interupted monologue continued to play. Over the next ten years the girl, her mother and brother moved at least seven more times all around the States, which of course made it difficult for her to build strong social skills or lasting relationships with anyone other than her brother or those that she met online. With each move came a new school, and the girl quickly began to detest each and every physical school she had to attend. Unlike her online courses which were consistant no matter where she was, her in person classes tended to be different from school to school and for the most part, although not always, would end up being below her level due to having already gone over the material earlier in the year or simply because she was of above average intelligence.
Of course she wasn't great at every class. The arts, language and physical education all eluded her for various reasons, the last one especially. Due to it being such a soclial class Dakota never really had someone driving her to push herself in that particular class, not that her below average size made it any easier. In the end she had decided that along with most sports, PE and being called by her given name were things she disliked. Conversly she was completely fanatical about tech, both old world tech and the bleeding edge that was currently being worked on, so much so that a good portion of her blog was devoted to it. The web was another one of her passions, to the point where the girl wasn't sure how she could go on without constant access. To a lesser degree she enjoyed gaming, puzzles, mysteries, any digital media that made one think and travelling.
There had been one majour driving force behind Dakota's choice to apply for the UN PDF. She had always been very close to her older brother, he was her role model even, and five years ago he had joied up, so of course Dakota wanted to as well. Unfortunately throughout the last five years she hadn't heard a single peep from her brother and whenever she tried to talk to their mother about him she always avoided the question with far off look and a small frown. The young girl knew that in the best case her brother and mother had a falling out, but more likely her brother had died sometime early on with the PDF. Either way she was determined to either find him, or in the case that he was dead, make him proud.
So I'm pretty new to this system as well. I've taken a look at six roughly half a year ago and I've been looking over character generation in five over the last two days, and I think I'm understanding how this works. Either way I'm kind of wanting to try out character creation myself to help me learn the system, but I did have a couple of questions. My main question is what exactly does 0/50 mean? Does that mean we start with zero points but may gain fifty through disadvantages? Other than that, one of the earlier posts already answered my other questions (such as if we would be starting out with ten points in characteristics and selling them back or simply starting lower.)
Pshhh, maybe? More like definitely interested. Anyways, could we get a more in depth timeline? Like we know that it was two and a half years after the invasion that child testing took place, and that it's been twelve years since. How long have these children been being enhanced on a wide scale? Have any finished training and actually gone out to fight?
I've been toying around with the idea of a character joining up to try and reconnect with a sibling who had threaded years beforehand.
Sounds cool, I especially like the idea that you don't have full control over what your character gets from the threading. I mean how many super heroes actually get to pick what their powers are?
I'm still here, just sort of lurking and absorbing. Anyways, as someone who would probably be playing a caster character I have to say that what you've mentioned about the magic system you would like to use is intriguing. Options B, C, D and E all sound interesting. F sounds like a modified version of epic six or whatever it was called that was popular a while back where you get to level six then stop leveling but continue to gain feats. Personally I was never into that because it stopped your progression towards some of the more interesting effects like higher level spells, but it sounds like option F isn't quite as restrictive.
For A1 I would have to agree with Sam in that it would need to encompass not only damage types but also armour types. I think that could be figured out easily enough by setting up two charts, one with damage type on one axis and armour type on the other axis and the second chart would be damage type and special material. Then it would be a simple matter of checking the damage by armour type chart for base penetration, then modifying it by the special material chart if the armour is of a special material. Either way though, I wouldn't mind using A1 or A2.
Lastly I've been trying to look up EE so I can get a look at how it plays out, but can't find it. :(
Whelp, that's too bad about the death advanced talents. I had assumed at the start that they were all available since it said all spheres of power in the accepted sourcebooks section of the opening post. So which advanced talents are available since it sounds like most of them aren't?
Banned advanced talents? I was under the impression that they were supposed to be your high level spells that you toss around occasionally, or in some cases something you could focus your build around. So to me it sounds like cutting out advanced talents is like limiting a vancian caster to under sixth level spells. Besides, in some instances it seems you can actually do less than vancian when you don't use advanced talents (for example you're limited to four types of undead that can only last for a number of hours without advanced talents in the death sphere.) But then again I really only looked at the death and life spheres, and I have no doubt that there are some advanced talents out there that are completely broken. Just my thoughts on advanced talents.
Either way, which talents are unusable in the death and life spheres?
I understand where you're getting with that, and it makes sense mechanically to not just fill up your repertoire (or spellbook if you take that feat as well) before the game even started. The only reason I had even asked in the first place was because it was sort of integral to the idea I had and if it weren't I would have waited. Either way I haven't actually calculated out the difficulty, but I don't think it'll be too tough to craft the basic version of it. So it shouldn't be a problem taking ten.
Alright, I think I've got my concept decently thought through and a background fleshed out. Incidentally I wasn't worried about the combat stamina feat anyways since I was always going to be focusing more on the caster side of things, I had just picked that fighter archetype as sort of a placeholder since I knew I wanted something to make me a little less squishy. In the end I decided it would be better to swap it out with magic knight for extra sphere talents and spell points though. Also are you really going to want to be rolling spellcraft for spell crafting? As I read it there's no cost to it other than time and nothing stopping you from just trying again if you fail. Or should I just start adding the handful of days for every failure on to whatever age I decide on for my character? :P
Anyways, here is what I came up with.
Victoria Masters:
Race: Dhampir
Classes: Soul Weaver/Magic Knight
Play style: Victoria is a master of life and death, that being said I intend to give her talents in only the life and death spheres with a little buffing on the side if I have the spare talents. In combat she will rely primarily play more of a support role, using minions from her death sphere and soul weaver levels to control the battlefield while she uses her life sphere talents to protect her still living comrades.
One of the main features of this build is the characters tenacity. I intend to use spellcrafting to combine the advanced death talent 'summon spirit' and the basic death sphere ability 'reanimate' and use the resulting spell in conjunction with the contingency feat. This is where the master of life and death part really comes into play, if it works as intended the character will pop back up as an intelligent undead (read 'smart zombie' until I can grab some level fifteen talents) after she is slain and continue taking part in whatever fight ended her. After the fight is over she will then be able to return herself to life with advanced life talents. Finally, if she has nothing else to do Victoria will have some minor skill with ranged weapons.
As far as progression goes I think my build is pretty straight forwards, continue to master the life and death spheres. I'm not going to lie, I haven't really looked very far into the specifics of what I want to do with her yet, although that shouldn't be too surprising since I haven't statted her out yet either. All I can really say is my priorities are to improve casting, imrpove survivability and last would be to improve ranged weapon abilities.
Background:
An old soul.. That's what he had said when the bartender caught her gazing into the slowly swirling red liquid in her glass. 'It was the eyes' he had said. This would have puzzled most onlookers, considering the woman looked barely a year or two into adulthood with her pale unblemished skin and dark flowing hair, but Victoria hadn't even batted an eye. In truth the bartender hadn't been wrong, she was much older than she appeared.
Internally she grimaced as the red wine graced her palate, secretly she hated the stuff, but it was all part of the image she had cultured for herself all those years ago. In the beginning she was little more than the undertaker's.. Unusual daughter, she had spent more time reading amongst the tombstones than with warm bodies her own age. Victoria had been an outsider of course, it tends to work out that way when you've been sired by a known vampire. Her voracious appetite for red meats on the rare side and more noticeable oral characteristics probably hadn't helped matters either.
Still though, the young Victoria was content to spend her time among the dead and listen to the ocasional whisper from the docile spirits only she seemed to notice. That all changed on the eve of her sixteenth birthday though, when she came home to find a monster of a man crouched over the rapidly cooling body of her mother. The woman could only guess what had happened after that, but her next memory was of slamming the small town's tavern door open and throwing the severed vampire head to the floor. Although she hadn't realized it at the time, the fact that the head had belonged to her father wasn't lost on several of the older patrons at the time. Either way a public menace was dealt with and that was more than a good enough reason for a celebration. That day had taught her just how fleeting life really was, and the ensueing party how exciting it could be.
In the end she had chosen to drink only the most cliche drink that day, perhaps it was an attempt at mockery towards the vampire she had slain? Or maybe it was to make herself appear more mysterious and dangerous. It had been an aweful decision, but word had gotten around that that was her preferred drink.
With a sigh The Lady of the Full Circle tossed a few silvers next to her unfinished drink as she left the building towards a dark carriage drawn by a skeletal horse. Even now, after years of helping the people, peasants still hid their children whenever Victoria rode past and inebriated farmhands spoke in hushed whispers of what they would do if the 'necromancer in sheeps clothing' stepped the tiniest bit out of line. These moments always brought forth a dark chuckle, because she knew it was those same poeple who would be lining up the next morning for free healing on the occasions she offered it.
It had been several years of studying the mysteries of life and death in the musty libraries of the rundown mansion Victoria had found out belonged to her father before she was confident enough to use her powers before a public audience, and it wasn't long before just such a situation appeared before her. On a routine trip to gather supplies from a nearby smattering of homes that could barely be called a village Victoria managed to walk in on the middle of several bandits robbing the hamlet for likely more than it was worth. A young boy had run one of the thugs through with a pitchfork and had his head twisted almost completely off by one of the others for his trouble. Suffice to say the child was dead, and when the shouting men failed to notice the young Victoria stepping out from between two houses towards the corpse that gave her all the chance she needed to press her hand to the body and pull it back up in undeath.
The first thing anyone noticed was the supposedly dead child taking a bite out of the bandit leaders jugular, and that was enough to freeze both the cowering townspeople and the brigands in place. After that the bandits ran, and the people cried out, for they believed they had gone from a bad situation to an even worse one. Fortunately Victoria was no ordinary necromancer and had no interest in pillageing the village, with a clap to the zombies forhead it crumpled back to the ground. It was probably fear that kept the farmers at bay for the hour it took Victoria to channel the magics required to bring the boy's life back, but when she did she was greeted by some fear, some elation and mostly confusion.
That was a prime example of how Victoria's relationship with the populace went, noone really knew what to think of her. On the one hand she practiced the vile and dark arts of necromancy, but on the other hand she selflessly handed out magical healing and even the occasional ressurection to those who couldn't normally afford it. It was stories like these that earned the woman her plethora of titles; The Living Death, The Lady of the Full Circle, That Damn Confusing Wench, and several others. None of that really mattered right now though, she simply always got nostalgic before a 'treasure hunt' and this time Victoria had the perfect target. Tomorrow she would arrive at the ominous Dungeon of Graves..
I'm not going to lie, this is one of a few reasons I looked into Spheres, which is pretty much all I've been doing for the past two days. Anyways, after reading through all that I have to say I'm a bit hyped to try out that system. Two things really stood out to me more than the rest of the options though, the soul weaver class and the contingency feat.
Suffice to say that made me want to play a 'master of life and death' character who uses the two conflicting spheres of life and death in a complimentary fashion. I was thinking soul weaver/spirit-wielder fighter who spends switches through life and undeath as if changing clothes. The only problem would be all the negative levels one would accrue from constantly animating themselves then resurrecting themselves afterwards.
Incidentally if one were to take the spell crafting feat would they be able to make use of it beforehand?
I don't suppose you could send more info about the system you were talking about? I love looking at the mechanics. Anyways it sounds like you're going to be going with the second option since that's what everyone who popped up voted for, but if you end up wanting to run a FoE campaign in the future you should take a look at foerpg 1.23. Unlike the other foe systems I've seen it's not... Completely broken and full of glass cannons riding rockets.
Sounds intresting, but I'd also have to ask which system. Personally the second options sounds more interesting to me, that's mainly because I've already played several FoE campaigns though.
I've been putting some thought into what I want to build, and so far I've decided on either some sort of healer type that uses an assortment of random SLAs or bat or boar skinwalker with brute form, rage and monks unarmed strike. The second one would have to stack up tons of hit dice though because that -4 AC really hurts. Anyways, now that I know we can use anything up to level five I might end up coming up with something else entirely.
So umm.. This sounds interesting, but I'm also confused about a couple of things. Mainly where it has conflicting information in the campaign info section, particularly where it talks about leveling up and then goes to say that it is a level-less system. From my perspective it seems like level-less was the intention, but that just raises more questions such as ability DCs, which I assume start at the equivalent of level one and then are increased by purchasing the ability again? And what about level requirements for class features and perks? Can you only take first level features at character creation, and if so how do you meet the level requirements for higher level features?
Consider my interest piqued. Assuming it's possible, I would be interested in playing a shadow caller spiritualist magical girl. I know it sounds a bit.. Off, but trust me on this, it fits my girls personality. The idea is that she could be described as quiet and quirky (if you're generous,) sort of like a cross of Vanilla from Galaxy Angel and the one hikikomori girl from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, but with a bit of a calculating dark side that shows up when she gets really upset.
