Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Fri Jun 15, 2018 8:17 am

rampaging-poet wrote:So my pathfinder party found a crystal ball with telepathy at level 7. Teleport is nerfed, so hanging on to it for scry-and-die isn't as effective as it would normally be. Is it still worth trying to hang on to for spying & telecommunications, or should we cash it in for 35k worth of stuff we can use?

Depends on whether you want to play (and whether the GM wants to run) a spying/intrigue based game.

Theoretically, the Crystal Ball w/ Telepathy is a ridiculously potent item on a strategic level, allowing you to not only gather all kinds of intelligence but then sell/trade that intel remotely. You could pretty much become a major information broker based on that item alone. However, if the group wants a more typical game, that's not going to fit so well.

If you do keep it, a tip - don't scry on people directly, scry on their pets/mounts. Not only do animals have lower saves, but they won't be able to effectively communicate "someone just tried to scry on me" if they do succeed. Similarly, you can scry on other people who you know are near the target.

Also, with telepathy you can make someone your willing scrying point. Use the ball to find some info they'd care about (where the rich merchant they hate hides the key to his warehouse, for example), and in exchange they walk around where you direct while you watch the area around them. Or if you're good at bluffing, pretend to be an angel/demon with a divine mission for them.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:36 pm

Any soundtracks y'all use for scifi, cyberpunk games?

angelfromanotherpin · Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:48 pm

For unoptimistic sci-fi, my go-tos are Contagion, the animated Dark Knight Returns, and Babylon 5.

violence in the media · Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:03 pm

Have you tried Melodice?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:38 am

The Cyberpunk 2077 trailer had some really fun designs, does Cyberpunk 2020 RPG artwork look like that? Were there like specific clothing, characters, weapons, vehicles, settings etc that showed up in the video game adaption?

The medivac guys had a neat symbol and cool armor

Hadanelith · Post by **Hadanelith** » Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:16 pm

Cyberpunk (2013 or 2020) has pretty solid artwork. It's basically all B/W lineart, but some of it is really quite good, and very little of it is raw garbage. That said, the line has a significant problem: none of the art subjects are reused. They reused specific pieces plenty of times (that one woman with a cyberarm, kneeling down in a negligee shows up in a couple books, IIRC), but they don't reuse subjects, so there aren't really iconic characters or vehicles or guns or anything. All of the art is one-off. Which means you've got a wide array of guns, sure, but none of them stand out as being particularly well known, in universe or out. It doesn't help that none of the art is captioned or titled, so none of the characters have *names*.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 21, 2018 11:32 pm

What would be a good system for a Fallout tabletop game? I'm kinda leaning Fate, but that's mostly because Fallout Fate would be a great way to get a friend interested in running to actually start.

Trill · Post by **Trill** » Thu Jun 21, 2018 11:46 pm

GURPS

angelfromanotherpin · Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:16 am

This?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:19 am

...I will have to look at that thing I was completely unaware of.

Strung Nether · Post by **Strung Nether** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:56 pm

Vampire the Requiem 2ed question:

Once you have 6 Blood Potency, you need to feed on vampires.

How do you do this while avoiding the blood bond? 6+ gen vampires can go though a lot of blood...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:21 pm

Strung Nether wrote:Vampire the Requiem 2ed question:

Once you have 6 Blood Potency, you need to feed on vampires.

How do you do this while avoiding the blood bond? 6+ gen vampires can go though a lot of blood...

Easiest solution is just to get blood bonded to one of your own bitches because you become immune to further bonds once you have one. If you really care you can get one of thoseblood potion dosciplines because most of the blood beer and blood perfume and shot doesn't bond. You can also take any of the alternate feeding disciplines. The Queen of the Damned thing the book thinks you will do where you drink someone dry and then murder stab them and then move on to the next victim is pretty much pointless in most cases. And it's pointless in all cases for PCs, where blood bonding to other members of the coterie isn't a drawback.

But fundamentally the whole blood bonding thing doesn't work. It's a bad idea all around.

-Username17

Strung Nether · Post by **Strung Nether** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 9:30 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
Strung Nether wrote:Vampire the Requiem 2ed question:

Once you have 6 Blood Potency, you need to feed on vampires.

How do you do this while avoiding the blood bond? 6+ gen vampires can go though a lot of blood...
Easiest solution is just to get blood bonded to one of your own bitches because you become immune to further bonds once you have one. If you really care you can get one of thoseblood potion dosciplines because most of the blood beer and blood perfume and shot doesn't bond. You can also take any of the alternate feeding disciplines. The Queen of the Damned thing the book thinks you will do where you drink someone dry and then murder stab them and then move on to the next victim is pretty much pointless in most cases. And it's pointless in all cases for PCs, where blood bonding to other members of the coterie isn't a drawback.

But fundamentally the whole blood bonding thing doesn't work. It's a bad idea all around.

-Username17

Explain further? I don't think second edition has blood beer?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Jul 08, 2018 6:30 pm

I'm in an urban fantasy game where there's a spell to make objects not suffer degrading from use. It's obviously intended to make swords that don't need sharpening and such, but there must be at least a couple of modern machines that would be terrifying if their parts didn't wear down. Any suggestions?

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Jul 08, 2018 7:29 pm

Grenades.

More practically: break pads, grinding tools, scalpels, bullets, sterno, lightbulbs, clothing and SSDs.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:00 pm

Body armor, chain-fed firearms, incendiaries, artificial hearts, literally any vehicle with a redline.

K · Post by K » Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:04 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I'm in an urban fantasy game where there's a spell to make objects not suffer degrading from use. It's obviously intended to make swords that don't need sharpening and such, but there must be at least a couple of modern machines that would be terrifying if their parts didn't wear down. Any suggestions?

Chainsaws, which are frighteningly terrifying as melee weapons to the user because a broken chain can decapitate the wielder.

Knives made of surgically-sharp and fragile materials like obsidian.

Phosphorus rounds, which I assume would continue burning in the target.

Radioactive material, which would have no half-life.

Very thin wires for garroting or traps.

Battery-powered anything, since battery power is a chemical degradation and high-end items might normally only have one shot. Super tasers to tesla-coil lightning guns.

Organic poisons that might denature over time.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 4:25 am

Oh, hey, yeah, monomolecular edged anything with that spell would be fucking terrifying.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 4:50 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I'm in an urban fantasy game where there's a spell to make objects not suffer degrading from use. It's obviously intended to make swords that don't need sharpening and such, but there must be at least a couple of modern machines that would be terrifying if their parts didn't wear down. Any suggestions?

It depends on how you define degradation. Because this spell could either be incredibly broken or completely worthless depending on the wording and exact mechanics.

It's impossible to say for sure without knowing the mechanics, because different mechanics will produce vastly different interactions with the same objects.

Another key problem is that modern machines that would benefit from this most probably aren't going to have any trouble cutting though flesh in the first place, and aren't used as weapons because they're extremely unwieldy and/or tied to stationary power sources.

But assuming that this doesn't effect chemical transformations or wear that is necessary to its function, a side grinder.

A side grinder uses spinning abrasive discs to cut through steel. These discs wear down rapidly from use and have to be changed regularly. This won't be a useful weapon compared to a sword, but it would be great to cut though barriers.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 6:47 am

A big question is what it does about reactions. So obviously a set of steel armor doesn't become rusty. Does that mean that it simply does not engage in chemical reactions that are entropically favored? If that's how it works, then a battery wouldn't output any electricity, TNT wouldn't explode, and uranium wouldn't produce any radiation. Now obviously that would make batteries and explosives useless, since you couldn't get energy out of them. But it would allow you to use materials that would normally be way too unstable or dangerous to be around.

Another issue is shell armor. It protects the person inside unless and until something breaks through it. But if it doesn't degrade, does that make it impervious? If so, the person inside is basically invulnerable as well.

So depending on how it works you either have metallic sodium fire swords that never stop burning or you have invincible uranium armor that produces zero radiation and is totally safe to wear.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:15 am

This sorta thing is tricky because things either tend to be outright broken (like the stuff Frank is talking about) or relatively meaningless due to timeframe/conservation of detail constraints. For example, the military would be quite stoked to get their hands heat proof barrels and machine guns that never fail to extract but if you have the kind of GM that really frets over that kind of shit in-game then you've got bigger problems than I can help you with.

Anyway, if it's a ruleset where melee actually matters then the easiest bet would be to simply see if you can finagle some bonuses by using sharp things that would normally be awesome but impractical. For example, durable obsidian blades would be good mean-spirited fun for the whole family. Decapitations are just classier when you're rocking a macuahuitl.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 11:13 am

Does the spell have a mechanical description of sorts?

Trill · Post by **Trill** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 12:10 pm

How precise is it? Can you say "this part is safe from breaking down but this part is unaffected" or is it all or nothing?
Because if it isn't, then you can make your own radiation cannon. Just take a cylindrical piece of uranium or other heavy radioactive element of choice, and make the whole surface protected except for an area on one of the circular ends.
Wa la, you now have a cancer stick. Just point towards your enemies

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:23 pm

People bounce around the inside of impermeable armour when it's hit. You can be nicely strapped into a system of belts, as people were with real plate armour, but you're still so much goo on the visor in a sufficiently high-g event, like being hit by a truck.

But really, a truck. Like, just kill everyone and everything. You sort of already can but they eventually break after 50-100 people, or hitting poles or planters, and the driver can be shot through the window, and the fuel leads are trouble, but if your truck is literally unbreakable you just have to make sure and not get hooked up on any of the things you just destroyed by driving a truck through them.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:00 pm

As I understand it, the object isn't subject to age or wear of use, but deliberate attempts to damage it still work, because intention is magic. How that would interact with armor isn't clear.

Lots of food for thought, though. Thanks all.