dr. kekyll's page

Sorry about that. I'm not really sure what happened. I just sort of memory-holed the game until just a moment ago.

you uh... put that in the wrong place.

all good. my dog got sick and i forgot about the game for a week.

it did not work out...

apologies. it occurs to me i left that in an awkward place. i was unsure how aware i'd be of the status of that Forgetful Mind. if it works and i know that, we can assume i rejoined the other two. i suppose the same goes for if i just don't know how successful i was.

has the body been moved?

sorry, i've been sick and it's making it hard to think.

yeah, i went back and looked at the linked rules we're using, but it's been too late to edit that post for a while now.

wait... maybe i haven't and i'm just misremembering how Auspex works in this edition. ignore three of those dice if it's supposed to reduce difficulty.

yikes! apologies. the pace of the game had been slow and i was out of town for a wedding.

Yeah, I figured it was a bit early to need it, so I didn't bother in game, but should probably know for later.

how fine is control over radius of Silence of Death? like... could i use it just to silence my footsteps?

Badger's absolutely the type to be confidently incorrect and expect to just talk his way out of it later. "If you can't be both, better lucky than good."

sorry. i was going to make up some stuff about Beschi and pretend I knew it since i botched, but i'm drawing a blank and have been too long without a post.

Out but will be returning, or...?

Wenzel are you wearing a mask or would I be able to see/recognize your face. Also, we've been modifying the spoiler tag to get the header. It's [spoiler="HEADER"] in case you were wondering.

...and if that's the direction I go in, I am glad I started with Tremere!

Out of curiosity, any idea who would be next?

For those who have submitted but feel the need to back out, please let me know.

Sorry, I just noticed this. I am going to withdraw. Work has taken a lot out of me recently.

dr. kekyll wrote:

And I'm not a fan of DAV20 moving Silence of Death to Obfuscate 1 (and removing Cloak of Shadows).

Agreed, I hated that change, but I'm living with it.

Oh I didn't even see we were going with mostly the DAV20 versions of disciplines. Now I'm slightly sad I can't hide quite as well yet, but I do get the only thing I wanted from Quietus, so...

All fair! One more quick question: Are we able to take the Additional Traits feat? Just trying to work out my options. I'm probably just going to stick with a single class and not bother with Mystic Theurge.

Hmm... we're core only, so Oracle is out for the divine half of a Mystic Theurge, right?

Edit: Also, how do you feel about drawbacks?

Yeah, I had actually been wondering about that too as Ashia is from Osirion. So while the "You are descended from an able and intelligent people, and you have grand ambitions, a mind alert for opportunity, and the tenacity to fight for your goals no matter the challenge. You care for little more than achieving your aspirations" part of Issian fits, the "You see yourself as a citizen of Brevoy through and through" does not. Alternatively, the "Life has been hard for you... [and has] lead you to fall in with thieves and worse" part of Brigand could make sense since they have no connections to Brevoy and wanted to search tombs and ruins, and "you’re looking to get away to somewhere no one would ever think to look for you" part of it works especially if they're still being pursued by Nethysian purists.

The variant multiclass system is cool, but I think for what we are doing we will stay away from it.

No probalo!

No, everyone guards their secrets pretty closely.

Yeah, as much as I wanted a single dot of Quietus, it's practically impossible to justify as a Tremere. And I'm not a fan of DAV20 moving Silence of Death to Obfuscate 1 (and removing Cloak of Shadows).

Ah! That makes sense. Still going to shift a few things around, but good to know.

Hmm... given there won't be an opportunity to advance, I may want to play the electric eccentric or find 7 freebie points to get a second dot in Obfuscate.

I've been brainstorming her as a Mystic Theurge, by the way, so it really is no problem if I need to do something different mechanically. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about the Variant Multiclass system?

Well, originally I encountered the archetype on d20pfsrd where it was called "False Priest," so I didn't know it had anything to do with Razmir. Because of that, I imagined a different Golarion based flavor on the archetype. Ashia's power comes from Nethys (since he's the god of magic and has access to both arcane and divine subdomains of magic). When her people saw her birthmark, they began to worship her as a descendant of Nethys. The worship went to her head and she believes it. She is fervently devoted to Nethys. Her husband, on the other hand, is skeptical of her divinity, but loves her all the same and is certain Nethys has plans for her.

So sorry if I was unclear about the reflavor. If it's not cool, I can totally do something else mechanically.

Also, I'm not sure what her heirloom would be. I've been drawing a blank there.

I googled “wod merits and flaws” and there was voluminous results. I’m not sure specifically which set of lists but it would have been first page of search results.

Oh I found them. They're in the old DAV book. They weren't reprinted in DAV20.

LOL and I forgot there's also a prestige class. So much material. Anyway...

The Archetype

Here's one of the sheets I've been working on if you'd like to review it.

Merits

Discipline prodigy (Thaumaturgy) 5pt merit (all thaumaturgy difficulties are reduced by 1 for all paths and rituals but never less than a 4 difficulty)
Ability aptitude (melee) 1 pt merit (all melee difficulties are reduced by 2)

Where are these from?

Edit: To add my reasoning re: Fortitude, it feels bad to be unable to spend blood to guarantee some success/effect with it like you can with Potence and Celerity. And spending blood on either of the other two is more efficient than it is on Fortitude even if you can do it multiple times per turn because you'll burn through your blood pool much faster than the Celerity or Potence user.

Oh Razmiran Priest is actually a Sorcerer archetype I was re-flavoring as her natural affinity with both magics (if that is acceptable). If necessary, though, I can probably re-imagine her as a Cleric archetype of some sort.

Also, I may not end up having Fortitude, but, for the sake of those that do, can we use the DA version where you can spend a blood point to autosoak (except against fire and sunlight) once per turn? Personally, I think the once per turn thing is unnecessary, but, as written, they limited it.

My thaumaturgically inept concept has Auspex 3 and Dominate 3 out of necessity but the plan is to focus on Obfuscate and Celerity discipline-wise.

Right, but since it does differentiate in the experience section, it could be argued that, RAW, you just can't purchase extra paths with freebie points at all. But since Shadow already said we could start with extra paths, I figured it was worth asking.

Another important question! How many freebie points do additional Thaumaturgy/Necromancy paths cost? It's never been specified as far as I can remember, but if the pattern holds, it would be 4 freebie points. Most things (with the exception of Attributes) cost a number of freebie points equal to the multiplier used for their experience cost.

So far I've built out a thaumaturgically inept thief/smuggler. He's like a British Lupin III. I'm also working on an electricity-obsessed physicist/inventor. I figure I'll probably go with whichever one has less overlap with the rest of the coterie, but I'm leaning toward the guy that can't use Thaumaturgy at the moment.

RAW, Abilities are still limited to 3 dots unless you spend freebie points. No clue if Shadow is house-ruling that.

It's worth noting that there's also a catch all for each category that I think is supposed to represent a potentially infinite number of skills: Hobby Talent, Professional Skill, and Expert Knowledge.

I mention it because Archaeology was one of the suggestions for an "Expert Knowledge" and I remember someone had that concept.

i have a couple of old PFS characters (from long ago) that i always wanted to run together because they were husband and wife.

Ashia, the one that would be the primary character, is a Garundi Razmiran Priest reflavored as just a natural affinity with magic. She was born with a birthmark taking up most of her back that resembles the mask of Nethys and was raised in a cult that worshipped her as his scion.

Parumartish, a Keleshite (eventually Divination Wizard), came to investigate her cult and was struck by her poise and charisma. She felt a similar infatuation, and they became close. The cult's camp was eventually beset by another group of Nethysians who did not believe in Ashia's divinity and did not want this fringe cult to grow into something dangerous. Ashia and Paru managed to escape together and have been raiding tombs and looking for any information that might, at the very least, reveal Nethys's plans for Ashia ever since, falling in love in the process and eventually marrying.

They were headed to the Stolen Lands to investigate some rumors of ancient magicks when they heard the Swordlords' call and thought it a convenient means to acquire assistance.

I just remembered I had a question. When you say 22 Freebie Points in the first post, is that 22 to start or a maximum of 22 if we take 7 points of flaws?

Merits for Linguists:

You know a language in addition to your native one. You can take this Merit multiple times, each reflecting a different language.

You have a flair for languages. You may add three dice to any dice pool involving written or spoken languages, and each purchase of the Language Merit (previous page) gives you two languages instead of just one.

My only objection to the way V20 handles this is that you only get to choose so many points of starting merits. Natural Linguist seems like it should count against your 7 points worth of merits, but not necessarily Language. Also, as Talomyr hinted, it seems odd that the rules don't really support you being able to learn a new language with experience like you can other Abilities.

Edit: Upon re-reading the beginning of the V20 Merits and Flaws section, it seems there is no cap on merits RAW, so just the fact that you can't learn languages later RAW is weird. Am I remembering a cap on merits from Revised or is it just a coincidence that Shadow and my ST from high school had a 7 point cap?

As far as I can tell, being 'partially' blood bound isn't a thing by RAW - you either are or you aren't; but if I'm wrong then please correct me.

There's more detail on Blood Bonds on pages 286-288 of the V20 book, but the relevant text follows:

Second drink: The drinker’s feelings grow strong
enough to influence her behavior. Though she is by
no means enslaved to the vampire, he is definitely an
important figure in her life. She may act as she pleases,
but might have to make a Willpower roll to take ac-
tions directly harmful to the vampire. The vampire’s
influence is such that he can persuade or command her
with little effort (Social rolls against the thrall are at
-1 difficulty).

More importantly, though, I was commenting on how this would affect the clan's policies. The Pyramid is maintained in no small part by an expectation of loyalty reinforced with a second level blood bond. That would mean any Tremere with an out of clan discipline also has another bond tugging at their loyalties. It's a thing the clan would view unfavorably if the practice wasn't outright banned in favor of finding ways to replicate other disciplines via Thaumaturgy.

So about the clan weakness... Originally, we didn't have one and the practice of the Transubstantiation of Seven was treated as the clan weakness since it bound us to the clan not just the seven. In V20, that stuff still happens, but we have an actual weakness of being more susceptible to blood bonds. I don't have a problem with this in itself, but it does create issues given another V20 change: learning an out-of-clan discipline requires ingesting a point of the teacher's blood.

I don't have any real preference about how all this is resolved. I just want to know how it's all going to work because having to become partially blood bound to learn any out of clan discipline would significantly impact the clan's policies toward anyone doing that given loyalty is one of the clan's highest values.

Hmm... might we also consider the versions of personality archetypes presented in Victorian Age Vampire?

I feel that, Wastrel. I got too excited when the first range of dates was presented and came up with this thaumaturgically inept hardboiled private detective, but it's a little early for that stuck-in-the-golden-age-of-detective-stories image I had in mind for the character.

So, it's back to the drawing board, and I'm leaning toward a recently (as in within the last decade) embraced contemporary of Tesla who had collaborated with him on wireless lighting (prompting his study of the Path of the Levinbolt).

you can be from anywhere in the world as the PCs will be assembled in Vienna at the start of the Chronicle

hmm... nevermind then. i think i'm going to have to come up with something different.

sweet! my character is pretty much done. just waiting to know the year, so i can adjust for time period.

if it makes any difference, i'd prefer to start post prohibition era, but i can probably make this idea work regardless.

i'm always interested in playing vampire and have no real clan preference. they all have something interesting to dive into.